No tags yet.
Disclaimer: if you're allergic to dramatic writing and think I'm glorifying bad mental health by posting this, don't read. This is an honest account of my ongoing battle with depression, written in a way that I think conveys my feelings better than just stating them. My experience will be different from everybody else's, but as I respect your experience, please respect mine.
Do you ever feel like an island?
In the middle of the ocean. So alone that you begin to wonder whether you were ever part of the mainland at all.
You're so out of control.
You've always been on the outside. No-one cut you off, you did that yourself. You didn't know how detrimental and destructive that was until you were floating away from that mainland - unable to rejoin even if you wanted to.
Poor mental health can make you feel completely isolated from everything and everyone around you. Science has proven that loneliness creates a deep psychological wound. One that makes you afraid to reach out and distorts your perception of surroundings and people. Loneliness doesn't just make you miserable, as Dr Guy Winch states, it kills you.
You build up these walls that are impossible for even you to climb, and then you just get hurt when you try to time and time again.
You thought you could rejoin that mainland by building bridges.
So as you grew in understanding and maturity, you tried building some bridges along the way. You put your entire life on the line in a bid to make that selfish connection (do you even care about other people?). All you care about - all you've ever wanted - is just to mean something to someone. You are selfish. You are needy. And maybe this was why those bridges always got washed away by the angry sea - or crumbled as you didn't have enough substance to cross the mighty distance. But you did care! You always have! It's your fatal flaw - you care too much! You don't understand - it goes wrong time and time and time again and you don't know what to do.
Things on your island have started to decay.
It's one thing being stuck in the past, but when you don't think very brightly about your future, you start withering up inside. It's too scary to plant new seeds or start a new bridge on your island now. You've learnt your lesson too many times.
It gets even scarier when you know that in theory, you have to keep trying. You have to keep hoping, even if you're certain that you'll shatter yourself every time.
But then you get to a point where you're just too tired to keep trying. You're exhausted. You hope that one day, someone's gonna build a bridge to your island so strong that it will make your island blossom again. Trees will grow again. Life will flourish again. You will have a door to the outside world. You won't be so bitterly alone with your terrible thoughts and the horrible voices in your head anymore.
You crave that connection. You ache for it. The type of person who will look at you and see past all of the decay and barriers and pain. Who will tell you that no, you're not an island - you are much much more than that. Who will pick you up and let you pick them up and meet halfway instead of falling in the abyss in the middle.
And it hurts, hoping for this, because some part of you knows that it's too much to ask. It's too convenient that someone will come along and see you in that way. It's too unrealistic. Because you are just an island. Although some people say you are special, you know you are not - because if you were, wouldn't you be able to cross those waves? That's what the voices drum into your head every minute of every day.
But you still hope. Because hope is the only thing you have. You are decaying but you are not dead - and this fuels your fight because no matter how much you do want the excruciating battle to end, you want to win the war. You will keep going. You will make it through the sleepless nights and the ache and you will wake up tomorrow. You will battle each day. You do not know how long this war will last, but you do know that you can't lose hope.
In the darkest times, when you can't see a way forward - when you are trapped and you're choking and it's all too much - hope still lives. It's there inside of you, the light at the end of the tunnel.
I have been an island for most of my 17 years. I started realising about 5 years ago. I hope one day I can make it over the ocean of my depression.
Love, SS xx