Even though it’s just a litany of whining misery and suicidal self-hatred, I’ve really become rather fond of this blog. I’ve certainly put a lot of work into both its content and, since the move to a self-hosted WordPress domain, its aesthetics. I even invested money in moving it to its own domain, so that’s my committment to it. In short, despite my sometime criticism of my writing, in subtle ways I am proud of this journal, and have found it to have become a very significant part of my life.
I don’t want to stop writing. I really don’t. I want this blog to chronicle all my future negotiating of NHS (and possibly private) mental health services, all my thoughts, emotions, psychoses, episodes of all descriptions – the works vis a vis my mental illnesses. I want it for my own benefit, and I want it for others. I wish blogging had been in existence when I was a teenager, as I don’t think I would have felt quite so horribly alone back then had I been able to read that others were in exactly the same boat.
The problem is this. I am right in the midst of a major depression. I want to die. I have no energy, I have no focus, I hardly even have any thoughts beyond how much I don’t want to exist. I am consumed by my complete and utter misery. Typing a fucking Twitter message at 140 characters or less is a desperate effort, so you can imagine how profoundly difficult blogging is.
I am forcing myself to write this – and it is genuinely a physical effort that feels on a par with the gym on a bad day – because I know if I don’t write it, that the blog will progressively fall by the wayside, and that is the last thing I want. But I am not sure how much longer I can sustain any writing. Part of my all-consuming lethargy is probably attributable to the introduction of Quetiapine into my medication cocktail, but the cycle of depression had started before I started taking it, so it’s not entirely to blame. Ergo, in short, I’m concerned that even if the sedative effects of my new medication do pass soon, that I’ll still be finding it hard to write this blog.
I am not the first person to be afflicted by a major depressive episode that has a blog. How do the rest of you sustain your writing when your mood is at its lowest? Any advice would be appreciated.
A often tells me that I should describe how I feel whilst in the middle of an episode, so let me see how well I can do that:
- Suicidal ideation. I’ll not act on it in this state though – I simply do not have the energy to try to kill myself. Nevertheless, I’m completely pre-occupied with my death and how I can bring it about.
- Distracted, unmotivated. I can’t concentrate on anything. This post has been written in bits and pieces, has taken ages and is probably still disjointed and figuratively illegible.
- Emptiness. I don’t know how to describe this any better
- Worthless, listless. I have no function. I am pointless and (justifiably) disenfranchised and useless.
- Apathy. I don’t care about anything, and that includes feeling better. I can’t explain this; I feel so indescribably low and miserable, but I couldn’t care less about feeling less low and miserable. I just don’t care. I can only assume that that is because it seems like too much effort.
- Self-hate. Not as strong as it could be, though; I don’t have the energy to hate myself as much as I sometimes do. But I still do feel self-disgust. I feel worthless and horrid and fetid and disgusting.
- Lack of interest in anything. I don’t want to engage in anything that ordinarily gives me pleasure, including this writing. It has taken me absolutely ages to get to this point, and it is still requiring every last ounce of willpower that I have (which isn’t very much).
- Lethargy, exhaustion. I am utterly buggered. All I want to do is sleep. Despite my moniker on this blog, insomnia has been less of an issue (presumably) thanks to my new medication (I’m still waking at random times and finding it hard to get back to sleep, but that’s better than no sleep at all). I’m oversleeping at the moment, actually – maybe 10 or 12 hours on and off – but I am still absolutely shattered. All I want to do is sleep.
- Inability to concentrate. So forgive me if this is a bizarre entry.
- Psychotic. ‘They’ are hassling me. Not in the all-consuming way that they did in October and December, but they’re babbling on and on and on at the back of my head, with their usual ‘slut’, ‘whore’, ‘bitch’ mantras. I don’t have the energy to ignore or rail against them.
- Don’t want to talk to anyone. Self-explanatory.
- Sick of do-gooding. Ah yes, well-meaning interference…
This is going to make me sound like a miserable sod, perhaps with good reason, but I am so sick of peoples’ good intentions. I am not sick of good people’s support for me of course, but there are certain misguided manifestations of that that are driving me up the walls.
Telling me that I should remain in existence because I am intelligent or kind or whatever positive adjective you find appropriate does not make a blind bit of difference to how I feel. I still want to die. Wittering on about how I should have a course of CBT because getting better “can be that simple” denies the truth that CBT is a patronising load of wank, touted as a mental illness panacea by a government hell-bent on reducing costs, whatever they may say to the contrary. I still want to die. Telling me I have to “think more positively” serves frankly only to make me want to punch you in the face. I still want to die. It is not that simple.
I have a mental illness. I am not just having a bad few days; I am mentally fucking ill. Yes, I’m lucky that people care, but there are limits to that in terms of how they present their concern. Some of those that are engaging in this well-intentioned but horribly intrusive do-gooding I don’t even know well. How can they consider it appropriate to get involved in discussion of my (poor) health at all, let alone express such profound failures of understanding about the diseases with which I am afflicted?
Right now I don’t care if I get better. I just crave the comfort of unconsciousness, whether that is death or whether it is more bloody sleep. I am grateful for people’s simple understanding, and their offers to be there for me should I wish to avail of them, but their well-meaning pursuit of dialogue that goes beyond that merely serves to irritate.
I know I’m selfish and nasty and horrible for even thinking these things, and I know I should be grateful and to that end I’m sorry, but I’m so fucking miserable that I don’t care. It took me all my time to write this shit so I’m going to publish it anyway. At least it chronicles one of the bad days in an accurate, if intensely negative, fashion. Let’s see if I can manage to write up last week’s C session whilst continuing to endure this abject psychological torture. Hedge your bets now, my dears!
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Fuck being greatful. That’s overrated. Utterly overrated. Stick with being you which is someone stuck in the middle of sucky circumstances doing your best. I’ve been there – in some ways I’m there at the moment. Stuck in the neverending exhaustion and profound aloneness of madness. It sucks.
As to blogging – I rarely blog when I’m like this. I did today but only to try some pathetic distraction attempts to please the cmht woman. Thats why there are so many big gaps in my blog – times when I just couldn’t face it. A blank screen is a terrifying prospect.
Please look after yourself as much as you can and I look forward to when you reemerge because you will do.
Hugs xxx
You should be proud of this dear and we’re glAd to hear of it! Not so much of nohing you’re so self-perceptive. Keep writing keep writing keeep writing! Hugs
Thank you, Splint. I will try my best
All hail our Twitter support group in the meantime!
Hugs to you xxx
Keeping the blog remains a difficulty. It wouldn’t matter so much if I wasn’t generally so prolific, but since I am, I know that if I start leaving entries until later the whole thing will end up fucked. So I’m forcing myself to keep trying, but who knows.
At least it’ll still be here waiting when I emerge
Wish I could say something to help you too – at least we are mental together. Big hugs hun xxx
I could have written this myself (except I don’t have the fucking motivation to do so!!). I can relate so much to the entire thing, bar the psychosis which I luckily don’t have, but the rest of it is just spot on. Agree re CBT. Totally agree re patronising people saying to think more positively. My mum does this every day, and I love her to pieces, but god it makes me want to hit her. No Mother, I think we are past the stage where going for a nice walk and eating properly is going to fix me, and that is ignoring the fact that I also have an eating disorder remember?! I think you did really well to write this at all, I know how hard it is, and I am not sure that I could have, or certainly not in a way that would have made any sense, which yours manages to! Thinking of you, and you know where I am if you want to talk. xxx
Thanks hun, I really appreciate that. The offer is returned to you, of course. I always hate to hear of anyone else experiencing this kind of shit, but at least you are not alone and we can all be mentals together.
Bourach and I often talk about getting our own tropical island just to be mental together on. You are hereby invited
Hugs hun – take care xxx
Great documenting of the miserable day.
Multiply that 10,000 or more (put in your own exponent). THAT is mental illness.
Manifestations seem to be back in fashion, along with The Secret. And I was accustomed to associating that word with demons (literal and metaphorical).
As in: “My parents manifested when they saw my report card.”
I apologize but I’m not really sure what you are saying?? Confused also by you denying the author’s mental illness–what ELSE are hearing voices, BPD and clinical standard depression?
BTW hi S.I. I am a lurker but a fan
Katy.
SerialInsommniac and Katy and anyone else reading my previous post:
The mental illness is self-evident.
I was trying to express its cumulative quality over a lifetime or at least a long time.
Perhaps my last two sentences were misplaced.
OK, sorry for the misunderstanding–I see what you meant now.
My 2 cents on this–my diagnosis is dysthmia so [luckily] I don’t get the full-blown depressions, but get so fed up of people telling me to pull myself together–so don’t feel guilty for feeling that way S.I. Society is still pretty ignorant regarding M.I. It’s not your fault. F**k em!
Katy.
Fair enough Adelaide – I think you’ve made a valid point there, as ever
Thank you x
Always welcome Katy – good to have you on board
You do realize you cared just enough to share what it really feels like to be in the choking grip of depression? The energy it takes to keep it going. I am glad you didn’t succeed in your suicide attempt, because then we wouldn’t have a chronicle of of what goes on in the deepest darkest days of mental illness. You are a intelligent, caring, forthright person, you need to blog as much as we need to read what you write.
Take a break if you need to. We understand that it has to be sometimes. I fight almost everyday taking my blog down. What’s the point you say? Well you left a comment on my blog that made me see past a few things. We need these blogs so we can realize we are not alone, that we have somewhere, someone to share our deepest sorrows with who understand. I am glad your alive
I’m very touched by your comment. I don’t really know what to say except ‘thank you’. I really appreciate your lovely words.
SI x
It is quite interesting. I am at my blogging best when I am at my worst. For some reason I have this craving to write it all out. No, it does not provide a cathartic result. However, I have been grateful as it has provided me with a rolling history of my mental status.
I can write the exact same list of symptoms you described. Perhaps the one I associate the most with and is always my “default” mode is isolating myself from everything and everyone—the goal is to be absolutely disconnected. I have that ability as I live alone within my fortress. I do not answer the phone (albeit 95% are from telemarketers based on the CallerID), respond to emails or leave my house. However, I will connect across the ether.
Unfortunately now that I am forced back into my full-time job (my short-term medical disability at full pay ran out and long-term disability only pays out at 70% which I cannot afford), I don’t have the luxury of isolating during the work day—it pains me to answer the phone only to have to deal with my clients, or take any action items from any phone/data conferences I am involved with (I have the luxury of working from home, so at least I am spared with the face-to-face experience).
Take heart, SI, you know you are not alone. Love, Alix xx