SAD

This is going to be one of those not-really-happy posts but I think it's going to shed some light on that post from couple of months ago (the one that did not exist) and is also sort of a lesson on mental health problems.

I'm finally "coming out" with this because I think I sort of need to write it out to make sense of some stuff and I know that in a couple of months I will be too far gone again to be willing to actually discuss it. This is of course putting it on a much larger bell than strictly necessary but screw that, I can cover it up with lighthearted travel posts later. God knows there are so many that I've neglected to write.

Anyway. Have you guys heard of SAD? It is quite a stupid acronym for Seasonal Affective Disorder and in a nutshell what it means is that a person with (in my case relatively) normal mental health will experience the symptoms of depression in the winter months. It has something to do with how much light one gets during the winter vs how much light in the summer. Skimming over the wikipedia article there are some mentions of theories about it but really, nothing conclusive.

However I am really not that interested in the actual scientific side of it. The reality is that the shorter the days get, the moodier and eventually depressed I get. No, I haven't been to a psychologist. Frankly even if I could find one in this godforsaken town, I doubt I could ever open myself up enough for it to be useful. Perhaps I'm just unwilling to get better but I hate to dwell on that. Pessimism makes me self destructive.

It is too easy for someone who hasn't experienced this feeling to say that instead of being depressed I should "cheer up instead" or "when you feel sad, do something you like". But that's the entire point. If it were that easy, I wouldn't be trying to arrange these words on paper at the moment.
Because it is easy to say those things when you don't know the helpless feeling you get when you come home from school, feeling entirely spent. And maybe something bad happened that day. Because no matter how insignificant in the long run, at that moment you feel like the house of cards you have built to make yourself reach the light, just crumbles away from under your feet.
Sorry for being badly poetical but I'm trying to explain the feeling. You come home and that insignificant bad thing just feels like the end of the world and no amount of reasoning could possibly make you see it for what it really is. You just curl up somewhere and wonder to yourself: how can the world still be turning when I'm feeling so alone, so helpless? Why can't it just stop, I can't do this anymore, I want to get off this ride!
But the world doesn't stop. It keeps on going, whirring on around you so fast that everything is a blur. You feel your breathing getting faster and you can't even control that. Everything is just slipping away and crushing you under its weight. But the world doesn't stop and instead I have to go to bed in the evening where I get to be alone with my thoughts, trapped in my own self-hatred until sleep claims me.

And you see next day I have to go to school. I can't just explain to my teachers that my homework is undone because "I didn't feel like it". People often mistake depression for laziness and that just makes me sad. I want to take those people by the shoulders and shake them hard yelling "You don't know what it's like!" You don't know how it feels to be unable to do anything because what's the fucking point? I'm already a failure, how much worse can it get?
It is not a voluntary thought and a part of my mind knows that if I don't do stuff I need to do, it can and it will get much worse but when you're so far gone, you can't make yourself care anymore. You just want to make all the pain stop.

I'd hate to be a whiny teenager who keeps making up shit that maybe wrong with her to get attention. I'm sorry if that is how I come across. And maybe I am just making this up but then again, what kind of attention I'm really hoping to get from a blog that has all of two readers. I do apologise to Kairi and Bambs for I'm sure it's easier to think everything is alright. Specially when I've gone to such lengths just to make you guys think it's all nice and dandy but I can't anymore.

Perhaps for clarity's sake I should point out that this, for me, is nothing new. I've been having trouble with how winters treat me, since perhaps 6th or 7th grade. 8th grade was when shit hit the fan and I couldn't deal with it normally anymore. That's when the self-destructive part of me came out to play. I wish I could say that I'm learning to deal with it, but in reality I think I'm not learning at all. Winter 2012 was, in a way, harder on me than the previous ones. I don't really know why but it was anyway. Irrational, considering I'm finally sort of happy with where I am. Then again, nothing about depression is rational.

I know that seeing a friend in trouble is hard, specially if you know that there's nothing you can do. I do apologise for putting you in this position now but I can't help it. I need to put it out there even if it doesn't make anything better. At least I can come back to this post at some point and see if anything has changed. Maybe I get to be more open on my blog now although some things I can't talk about still. Some things are better kept for yourself because making them someone else's problem just isn't fair.  

Meh

I apologise in advance for this angsty, dark post that I just need to get out of the way.
Sometimes I wish that I could just gather all my friends up in a big room, keep them close to me and personally make sure nothing happens to them. But reality is that I cannot. No matter how badly I want to keep my friends from harm's way, bad things happen to good people.
I'm sorry if this doesn't make much sense but I'm slightly sleep deprived, tired and refusing to go to bed. Truth is, I haven't been sleeping well having woken up every morning to some kind of a nightmare or two. This morning I fell asleep 4 times only to wake up to something nasty again. 4 nightmares, 4 or 5 good hours of sleep. Then, during the day, I met up with an old friend again.
I know this sounds nasty and egoistical and terrible but I kind of wish I hadn't. Seeing her in such a bad condition hurt me deeply. I just wish she'd listen to her friends rather than what her depression is telling her. Do what's right rather than what feels good in the moment.
I know it sounds all teenager-ly but I'm in pain right now. I just don't know what to do, I'm not even sure if I will publish this long, rambling speech. But I can't stop. Can't stop writing because I'm afraid of what I'll do to myself if my hands aren't kept busy otherwise. The sunny days haven't quite kept the darkness at bay.
I don't know. I don't know what I'm thinking anymore or why seeing her affected me like this.
A part of me just wants to spill my guts on this stupid blog but I don't think I'm quite ready to put it all out there yet.
Sister is coming home the day after tomorrow, I just have to stand strong until that.

I'm not sure I can.


Again, I apologise for the post. So far I have managed to keep mostly off the blog if I feel like this (i.e. winter) but I do recall now a similar post from last summer or perhaps the one before that. I don't know. Maybe it's a thing. But I'm still not ready to try sleeping...



-Kels

In a strange way, I had fallen in love with my depression. I loved it because it was all I had. I thought depression was the part of my character that made me worthwhile. I thought so little of myself, felt that I had such scant offerings to give to the world, that the one thing that justified my existence at all was my pain.

~Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation (1994).