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Why?
I know I have it better than most.
I'm not starving. I'm not on the verge of being homeless, at least, not any mor so than any other poverty-level individual in our current economy. I'm not under any particularly large amount of stress at the moment.
So why do I still feel so worthless?
I've been trying, I really have. Trying to dedicate myself to self improvement, or to projects I've committed myself to, but... I just....
Most days I struggle just to convince myself it's worth the effort to even get out of bed. After that I can sit myself down and stare at a document for a half hour, or type in search criteria for research, or even put in the URL for a site I need to visit to help get my life in order. Then I just... stop.
Depression is nothing new for me. Feeling like my life is stuck in a rut is nothing new for me. Contemplating, shall we say, extreme methods of relieving all the pressure and pain, is nothing new for me. It's not even all that rare.
I'm sure I'm not the only person who's ever thought about how simple it would be to take that step into traffic, or to open the car door and simply roll yourself under.
How easy it is to break into a gun cabinet and just be done with it all.
Why?
Why can't I be happy with who I am? Why can I never seem to give self-improvement the effort I want and need to give it? Why do I seem to sabotage things whenever I have an opportunity?
Why does it all hurt so much?
To make it all worse, I have nobody I can really share things with. Nobody to sit with, to talk things over with.
Nobody to help.
My mom... I love her, but as much as I may try to talk to her about my problems, gender or otherwise, she doesn't understand, and she doesn't truly listen to what I try to say. She can make all the right sounds, but she doesn't get it, nor does she really want to. My dad? He still refuses to even acknowledge my gnlender issues at all, and gets angry or upset if it comes up.
Let's not get started on my sister.
Other than them, the only friends and family I really have are on here, and... I dunno... there is only so much text can help, and phone calls do nothing for me.
I just....
Why?
Is being happy really just some unattainable goal I should just give up on? Should I just stop even trying and let myself become a dull, gray, lifeless husk like so many others? It seems easier, some times, to just stop. The world doesn't want me happy. The world doesn't want me whole. Often, it seems, the world just wants me gone.
Why?
Why bother?
I don't know. Sometimes I forget why I even keep trying. Why don't I just take the easy route and give up?
Why have I never been able to take that final step? I don't even seem to have the will to end it all, how pathetic is that?
And all for what purpose? So I can keep sabotaging myself? So I can keep hurting? So others can continue to laugh and stare at how much of a fuck-up I am? Schadenfreude only works when someone else is suffering, so is that my only purpose in life? To give others that feeling of "well, at least they're a bigger waste of space than me?"
Why?
I don't want to be like that. Like THIS.
I just want to be happy. To feel my life is worth living. Is that too much to ask?
And if it is... why?
Melanie E.
Comments
Depression
You said it yourself, It's Depression.
It can affect so much of your life, and feel like it's smothering you at times.
For some people it comes and goes, for others it goes from mild to worse, or bad, to even worse, and for some it's just always there no matter what.
While I understand that there are a lot of people on this site, and others, that council against medication for such things, sometimes it's all that works.
The BIGGEST key however, would be to find a clinical professional that you can talk to, discuss things with, and just work out a plan that works for you and see how it goes.
I for one know it's not that easy to really get help when you need it. I had to FIGHT just to get seen by someone I could afford, and then keep looking for someone that I felt I could really talk to and feel safe discussing things with. But in my opinion, it was a fight worth having, as I feel better about myself, and seem to be doing better on a daily basis than I was before :)
-Piper
huggles, hon.
you're cared for and loved hon.
Huggles!
Hang in there kid. It will get better
You are valued here.
And you are valued at home even if it doesn't seem so at times.
As to dad and sis, their loss refusing to see the real you.
We live and hope. My hope is someday those you love who don't "get it" will.
Please write when the muse is willing.
John in Wauwatosa
John in Wauwatosa
"How To Save A Life"
I can't tell you what you should do. I can tell you what I do and you can try that if you want to.
The VA classifies me as a very high suicide risk, however I have learned to do a bunch of things to distract myself. I used to volunteer a lot. The funnest place I have volunteered is called Bishop's Warehouse, and LDS free food place. There are other free food places besides them. Here in Portland there is a place called "Free Geek" that takes old broken computers and rebuilds them and gives them to the needy public. In another month I will try volunteering there. There are lots of handicapped there, and lots of gays and lesbians. All this is for me, called Radical Distraction.
Another thing I do when my body will let me is go for a long walk.
I was in Dialectical Behavior Therapy for 4 years, 3 hours a week. It seems to be a military thing, but there are books out there on it.
On my darker side, I like to play games with Muslims. The nice thing about being all covered up is that it hides my figure fllaws, and then I talk to them in person, and on line about being involved in fighting terrorism. Recently, none of them questions my gender.
The LDS are fun people to know, though I don't buy into about half their doctrines. They are really loving and kind and don't hurt me any more since I placed boundaries on what I buy into. I did mention that they were nice, right? For those with LDS experience, we believe some of the same things theologically, but I will never be part of the inner circle. It is fun to volunteer at their activities. My presence in their ranks is sort of an indictment against some of the things that their leadership does. And, I would say that about half the membership I meet agree with me. You might say that I am Passive Aggressive and proud of it.
I no longer have any contact with any family. Family can be real ass holes.
The bad thing about suicide is that it hurts people you don't even know. Not that long ago, I was sat on the rail of the Hawthorne Bridge here in town thinking about, do I or don't I? It was late at night and there didn't seem to be many people around, so I had waited for a break and then hopped up there.
All of a sudden, someone grabbed me with the ferociousness of a professional wrestler and started dragging me down. Then I heard this little voice, "My brother just committed suicide and I am NOT letting you do it too". She was maybe 5' tall and less than 100 pounds. I did not want to hurt her so didn't resist. When she got me off the rail, she would not let go and was in fact holding on so tight that it hurt.
Well, as you might expect, the Police hauled me off to the VA and I spent a few days there.
The thing I learned is that suicide can hurt people you don't even know. A Lot!
With my First People blood, I know and accept that I can not drink, not one bit, because it makes me depressed after I get sober.
So, go out and volunteer. Try to get your mind off your self. It might help a lot. It does me.
Love
Gwen
I know...
how you feel. I'm in a similar situation.
And I'll be honest, most nights I go to sleep wishing I wouldn't wake up in the morning.
They keep telling me it gets better. I pray it's true. Just realize you're not alone.
~And so it goes...
Hang in there Melanie
I'm with Piper on on the drug part, I don't like it but there is moment that it will help you see around and help yourself.
Doing some volunteered work can be good for self esteem, and improve your will to life. Writing some fiction based on real life situation can to be a way to help see possibility, options, action-reaction. Some of the badder stuff once on paper can be further from the mind.
Find specialist help, go out and find good purpose to life.
Big caring hugs tmf
Thanks for all the support, everyone.
I get pretty depressed sometimes (I'm sure I've shared that before) but it still helps to just be able to write about it and get it off my chest, you know?
As for medications: I've tried those. Zoloft, Celebrex, and a couple of others. Back in high school when I first tried to commit suicide my mom and dad got me to the doctor's and we started trying a regimen, but none of them really worked: instead of making me feel less depressed they just made me feel more numb to everything, and suddenly the idea of taking myself out of the picture was even less scary than before, so we all decided that antidepressants were NOT the way to go in my case.
Exercise helps. Eating right helps. But I don't really have a lot of opportunity to do either at the moment.
Hopefully I'll be back north soon. I think that will do more for my well-being than anything else, not least of which because I'll be back to my main compy and able to access some of my better depression distractions, like Skyrim and Borderlands.
Melanie E.
Oh, hun, don't leave us.
Although we've never met, I do have a sense of who you are and what sort of person you are. It comes from reading the stories you write, the things you blog, the brief exchanges we've had in the comments and so on...
I'm surprised by what you wrote here -- you always struck me as a bright, sunny, funny, happy person. I understand that that's only part of you, and that what you've said here is just as real and just as much a part of you.
For the sake of that darker part in you, I wish that I could give you a sense of how much I like and admire you. I wish you could feel what I feel.
I hope you can find your way out of the hole -- and if not that, that you'll find some way of accommodating yourself to it. But please don't think that no one cares or that no one would miss you.
And as to suicide... if you kill yourself, you'll never see how the rest of your story turns out, and you'll leave a jagged edge at the end for the rest of us.
Do you know... I was thinking of you this week because I've been casting around for a story to write. It occurred to me that many things I've written were inspired by your challenges, so I told myself, "I've got to go look through Melanie's challenges. I'm sure there'll be something to get me going."
... and then another part of me said, "Yeah, you can do that tomorrow..."
Hugs,
Kaleigh Way
I won't be leaving any time soon, Kaleigh
As depressed as I may get, I've never had the willpower to go through with suicide.
Honestly, I'm not sure how to feel about that. *shrug*
Most of the time I DO try my best to be a "bright, sunny, happy person," because I feel that the world really needs more people like that. On the other hand, I'm also somewhat of an optimist/cynic/nihilist as well, as weird as the combination may seem. I pretty much live under the assumption that everyone and everything around me is always going to do as much as it can to make my life a living hell, while still trying to give things every opportunity I can to prove me wrong.
I just wish I was proven wrong more often, you know?
Melanie E.
everyone and everything around me
I get pretty damned depressed too, in that deep dark fuck it kind of way, and I know that having people offer affirmations doesn't always help with that. All that said, from the little I know of you online, I like your style, and I feel the world would be much the poorer for your absence. So I'm glad the suicide thing doesn't work for you.
Life is ridiculous and people are tedious and sometimes it feels like Kafka wrote the script for it, but there are little moments that make it work. Even if you're a nihilist, there's no reason to think there aren't purely subjective joys that aren't utterly meaningful. I mean, thousands of people have labored to bring us an amazing communications medium we use for pictures of cats and food, and that's not bad.
In the meantime, there's Woody Allen's opening in Annie Hall:
not as think as i smart i am