Dear Depression

You are not going to win. No matter how much the world around me feeds you, no matter how much you grow, i will have you in the end. Too long have you stalked me. I was once strong and now i am weak, once i was handsome, you made me ugly, once i was confident, now i question my existence.

You’re a fool though. With all your power and sadistic demands you forgot who you were FUCKING WITH. The unmarked grave you buried me in was not nearly deep enough. Tooth nail and claw I’m coming for you. The old me will return and save myself from your demonic grip and the others you prey on. This i promise you.

See you soon your heavy ball of mutual hatred.

Dear Bipolar Disorder

I have known for half my life you were hiding in the darkness in my mind, yet I could not, would not allow myself to admit it. During all the years I went up and down, spiraling through my life like an asteroid destined to destroy anything in its way, you were always there reminding me just how damaged, and worthless I truly am. After the countless hours of beating me down, you would grant me a small reprieve, allowing me to know how awesome I was, better than everyone, and how no party was complete without me.

There was always a drug of choice during these reprieves; alcohol, cocaine, sex, even work. I have lived my life on next to no sleep for months at a time to more sleep than newborns need, lived as a recluse not leaving except for work, lived inside my mind’s delusions, and have pushed almost everyone I claim to love so far away I doubt I can ever save those relationships.

I HATE you as much as I hate seeing my reflection. I wish I had never allowed myself to fall in love with the most amazing, patient man ever! He deserves to have a wife who doesn’t cause him all the pain I do, a wife who doesn’t have so much turmoil inside her head.

I wish everyday that you would leave, just let me find the peace I so desperately search for, allow me to be a wife and mom my husband can be proud to call his.{he never EVER acts like this, but I know he feels like that} I was medicated for a while, but being a zombie is not alive either. All I want is to feel alive, feel something other than complete numbness, and to just feel hope again.

I HATE YOU, I HATE ME, I HATE US……

Dear OCD

How strange it feels to be giving in to you again.

Since I have been home from the hospital in which I battled you off, I’ve felt strong. I’ve resisted you enough to have some success, some normalcy in my life—more than I ever had before I knew that you and I are two separate entities. We aren’t one, OCD. You’re you, and I’m me. You had me fooled for a long time—I thought that you were the most defining part of me. What a shift to realize that in fact, you are not ANY part of me—in actuality, you were destroying me.  

Now, I sit here writing this at 2:00am, hands shaking from caffeine, keeping myself up to ritualize, to check, to perfect, to clean, to organize. I must admit, it feels so very comforting. But it’s different than it was before…when you had me convinced that the hours that people sleep are just hours of the day wasted, that sleeping is laziness. Now, I know you’re wrong. Sleep is a necessity. I really believe that, and you can’t convince me otherwise.

I wish I was stronger right now; I wish I wasn’t caving in…I’ve been doing so much better. I don’t want to slip back into your grasp. So, listen to me when I say this: even though I’m giving in to you at the moment, I don’t want to be. Letting you control me is not nearly as comfortable as it used to be. I feel guilty. I feel angry. I KNOW that if I was asleep right now, tomorrow would be a better day than it is going to be given that I am awake and won’t be able to sleep at all tonight due to the caffeine in my system…which is your fault, your goddamn fault. Will I ever be free from you? I’ve been working for years now to get my life back from your vicious control. But I never feel completely liberated from your hold on me. You’re always here. I’m always afraid that in an instant, you could regain total control over me. What more do I have to do to live the life I want to live? Will you ever let me be on my own? Off medication? Happy? Confident? Healthy? Successful? Will you ever let me live my life in the moment, not constantly consumed by fighting you off? Will you ever just let me be me?

The short-term collapse of Dear Mental Illness

Dear readers (if you’re still out here!),

Last January I was admitted to Newham Mental Hospital for a few months as I was experiencing a severe bout of mania. I mention the name of the hospital because the nurses and doctors in the institution were some of the finest people I have ever ‘worked’ with.

You might also have noticed that the last post made that year was a video. I made it when I was severely ill, and the shame I felt, opening up to the world, sharing myself in my most vulnerable of moments, was something I was unable to handle. I was unable to even think about it. I swore to never touch this account again.

A year on I’ve been considering this blog again. In hospital I printed out and read your stories almost every day to give myself strength and to help myself along the journey to recovery. Today I want to say thank you. Your courage in facing your illness and sharing your strengths, weaknesses and hopes with the world made an enormous difference to me. I hope I’m not the only one.

I hope,that in the coming days I will be able to begin posting submissions once more. Someone has taken the url from me. Someone has also taken the project’s name and made it their own. I hope they’re using it wisely. 

So thank you from the bottom of my heart. I have other projects coming along too, so please look out! There’s more sharing, more healing and more loving to be done. I hope we can do it together.

Dear Dyslexia

SCREW YOU

Dear PTSD, PPD, Major Depression and Suicidal Ideations

I hate you. It’s as simple as that. I was a normal teenager before I got pregnant and my hormones messed me up. Fuck you for making me so distant from my son who I love so much but who still feels like another person’s baby. Fuck you for making me cry for no reason at all and for giving me absolutely no control over my emotions and anger unless I’m drugged up by two different antidepressants. Fuck you for making me feel distant from my husband, who has begun to feel unloved and unattractive because I keep turning him down for sex. Fuck you for making me relive every moment of that horrible year I spent with you-know-what-bitch-I’m-talking-about and every time she violated me so hard that I wouldn’t be able to walk for days afterward. Fuck you for not letting me let go of my anger towards her, and for making me question my sexuality because of it. 

As for my Depression and SI… I barely know what to say to you. Words cannot express the anguish I have experienced over the last 22 months and it is pointless to try. I hate that my husband and family worry about me to no end, and that I can’t be trusted to stay home alone anymore without overdosing or cutting myself. I feel like an infidel to them when they hesitate before leaving the house. I don’t want to die but I can’t stop thinking about dying. I have so much to live for, a marriage to live out, and a son to watch grow up. I don’t want to leave my family hanging with no way to cope. Because of you, I can’t go through the day without finding ways I could easily kill myself without anyone noticing until I was gone.

I just wish I could be normal again, a normal 20-year-old mom and wife with normal problems. I wish my husband and family didn’t have to worry about whether they’ll ever see me again. I wish I could just go back in time and see the signs of my depression before it got so bad.

I want to be me again.

Hopefully now you will listen.

Dear Nymphomania

We had a fun time, for a while, before I knew your name, and what you were doing to me.

But I want you to leave.

I’m tired of having to crawl away from a snoring, sleeping lump of person I hardly know, hating myself inside, because it is the only way I can feel pretty for a few seconds.

I hate that, even as I slink away, I already want more. That pretty-sex drug that stinks up my world. I hate you, nymphomania. I hate your claws, and I need you to leave me alone soon.

Or I don’t know what I’ll do.

Dear Depression

I know you’ve stalked me for quite some time. The first two years I was able to avoid you. But now, you’re here. And you’ve been here for a while a now. You seem to be the only one to stick around when literally everyone else in my life has left. It’s just you and me.

But thats the thing, I would rather be alone than be stuck with you.  You make me hate myself. You are the controlling abusive boyfriend I never had; and was never able to have because of you. You took away my confidence, my heart, and my self. You pushed away all of the people who loved me, until they gave up on me; and that made you stronger. You make me want to die. You make me a bad person. I feel nothing and everything around you, all at the same time. You make the days go by so slowly and so painful. You make me question my existence. You make me hate all of the things I use to love. You make me fail, at everything. School is so hard with you around. I cant sleep because you’re always nagging. Dragging you around is like carrying the weight of the world.

Why can’t you leave me alone? Why can’t you pick on someone your own size?… Because I know you are much bigger and stronger than me, and eventually you will overthrow me. And until that day, I will keep fighting.

My dear depression, leave me alone. Forever.

Dear High Functioning Autism

what are you? You make me so upset. I can’t stand it. I cannot enjoy cloths like velvet, corduroy or the like because you make me curl up into a ball and bite my fingers if I touch them. Going to the movies, sports matches, the sound of babies crying, people talking or chewing loudly set me on edge and I yell grabbing my ears and cry. If someone gets a haircut, I get upset because I keep thinking it’s not them unless I study their face. Im am terrified of unplanned change. I get phone numbers, license plates, codes, songs stuck in my head obsessively. You make people think I’m weird, or that I’m looking for attention. All I want is to be normal. Because of you I have so many problems. I know you will probably never go away, seeing as we’ve been together been over 20 years and there is no cure, and barely any treatment options. So here’s a proposal- you back down and I live my life as best as I can, okay?

Dear Mental Illness

Just to let you know, I have HAD IT with you; the agony and misery which you instill on me. I have R to help me who is doing a grand job. I will beat you believe that.

You have controlled my life l-o-n-g enough and I am taking back the control over you instead of vice-verse.

I go to bed at midnight, so I get my rest. I do physical exercise to make me feel good. I eat healthily to beat the gain of weight your tablets cause. I go to my Doctor’s with any problem and I don’t take anything which will interfere with my healing. Plus I am doing more nice things for myself.

R has and is turning my life around for me and I put ALL I have into self work to get shot of you. In Therapy now I talk about what caused you in the first place and I am beginning to like myself. I hear the negative self talk which you give me and I challenge every statement; I am getting better.

Your hold over me will be gone one day and not a day too son. Yes it is a battle bt I keep on keeping on with all the good things that are fighting against you.

I will win and I’ll help others to do the same.

I have a lot of anger as I write this because of how you have screwed up my life and dominated it. And every day I am getting one step closer to beating you.

I will put what you have done to me to good use in one way or another and I will continue to heal.

I hate you and when you have gone, I will create and am creating a life worth living. So for now, know this: I AM winning the war battle by battle.

Until next time…