stronger

I've noticed a repetitive theme in my writing and my thinking and my life dealing with mental illness.

I constantly feel like I'm so detached from the person that I used to be "pre-mental illness". I always strive to be back to that person.

I want to be that person that didn't feel dead inside. The person that took joy in everything. The person that always had a reason to be happy to be alive.

The weird thing is that lately I've noticed I will occasionally start to feel like my old self again.

And the more I feel it, the more I realize that I don't want to be her again. The time that I idolize in my mind never really existed.

She was unhealthy.

She had so many issues.

She wasn't a nice person. To herself or to those around her.

She let her emotions take over Would go blind with rage. Red with jealousy.

And she would let herself fall so far into the black hole of her mind, that it would take days to get out if it didn't destroy her all together.

The more that I sit and think about these things, the more that I realize that depression has always been a part of me and who I am.

I don't want to be the old me anymore.

She's bullshit.

I just want to be one thing.

Stronger.

I want to move forward with life and allow myself to feel my emotions, but not let them overpower my common sense.

I am learning to be kinder to people, including myself. Because everyone is already hard enough on themselves.

I'm not going to let my mind take over anymore, not allowing myself to get destroyed from the inside out.

I strive to build healthy relationships with people and not let myself get the better of me. I want to understand that everyone has a past, including myself. It does not define them.

I accept that I have my issues and that what I am will always be a part of who I am, but it will not define who I will become.

I will not be in denial about who I used to be. But I will not be that person again.

I will be stronger.

black hole

The thing about black holes is that they look so beautiful from afar.

They look peaceful.

They literally redesign the universe around them.

And in their eyes, you can see into an entirely new universe. Or maybe you see into nothing.

No one really knows.

Sometimes I feel like a black hole.

I start out as a star.

Bright.

Providing to those around me.

Going along just like I always have been.

And here's the thing; all I want to be is a star.

I just want to go about my day as I was intended to, providing happiness to the worlds around me.

I want to enjoy things and not worry about breaking and destroying it all.

All I want is to be happy.

But I feel myself starting to crack. I feel everything that I've built up inside of me, the strength and the power that has taken me billions of years to form, start to fall away. I feel myself imploding.

And I've seen it happen before.

I break and slowly, so slowly, I start to fall into myself, start to fall into darkness.

And everything that made me happy, everything that I helped, everything that I helped build and grow gets sucked away.

The light I once had is gone.

And I'm wasting away into nothing at all.

numb.

Is this what happiness feels like?

It's been so long, I think I've forgotten how to feel.

Because it's been so long, and all I've ever known is numb.

One day at a time, I try to feel something new, something real. I try to enjoy the little things in life. I try to feel the breeze that brushes across my face and actually feel something. Anything.

And all I want to feel is happy.

Sometimes I wonder if I do feel happy, and my brain is so confused, so shocked, that all it's letting me feel is nothing. 

Sometimes I worry that I will never be able to experience true happiness again because my brain has forgotten how to respond with anything but numb.

Sometimes I think that maybe I'm fooling myself into thinking I'm happy, when in truth, I'm still nowhere near.

Mental illness sucks. I can never be sure that the feelings I feel are mine, or if they're part of the messed up chemicals that are misfiring in my brain. I never know if what I am is actually me.

Things have been going so right for me lately.

So many reasons for me to have moved on and feel like my life is improving. So many reasons that I should be happy.

And yet, the more I fight to have access to my feelings --the more I try to engage with those parts of my feelings that I haven't touched in years--the harder it is to feel anything at all.

But I still fight, because I know I'm meant to feel more than numb. I'm meant to feel happy.

This is what happiness feels like, right?

crash

I've almost managed to tune it out completely.

It plays constantly, but I move so fast, it fades into the background.

The faster I move, the farther away it seems. The more normal it seems to feel.

If I don't stop, it won't catch me.

And if I take a moment to breathe, it will consume me whole.

And so we keep going. Going, going, going. And it's never gone.

It's loud.

It consumes me at every moment, so loud I can barely hear myself think. I just have to process louder, think louder, talk louder, be louder than the loudest thing I've ever known.

From time to time, I'll sit down and can ignore the noise. Pretend like everything is OK.

It's not until I'm truly by myself, until I truly have nothing else to do to occupy my time, does it take over.

Like waves, the noise inside my head crashes over me, time and time again. It's overwhelming, it's too much to handle, and it doesn't ever stop for long. It comes to be too much where I can't hear anything else, can't see anything else. It's just everywhere. And it never ends.

And if I stop and sit there for too long, I will drown.

There are times, though, when all is silent.

Those scare me.

Times when I listen to the right song. Times when I'm with my friends and having a good time. Times when my dog is cuddling with me and everything just seems OK.

Perhaps the most terrifying of all are the times when I'm the most vulnerable, but I feel completely protected. When I'm content to lay there in silence, and have it actually be silence. To make it feel like the noise never even existed in the first place.

Like none if it was ever actually there. And it just feels so...right.

I sit there and wait for the next wave to break, wait for it to crash into me. And wait for my safety and protection to turn back into drowning. The anticipation of the ending of that feeling lasts a lifetime.

And that's what scares me the most.