I’ve been contemplating whether or not to write this post for a while now. So much has happened this year, things that are very personal to me. Writing has always been therapeutic for me, but this year I struggled to talk about my feelings and emotions more than ever. Here is what I learned about while living with depression.
Last year I wrote about dealing with depression and how I wasn’t going to let depression take over my life in 2018, but that didn’t happen. I completely failed at coping with my depression and anxiety, instead, I was constantly confused. Everyone deals with their personal struggles differently, and I was trying various ways of trying to cope with my feelings but nothing was working. Eventually, it started to feel normal to wake up and hate myself.
What I learned about mental illness is that it can make you do things that make no sense. Sometimes you end up shutting out the people that care about you the most because you are so caught up in your thoughts. Your brain convinces you that nobody cares about you and that you don’t deserve love. You end up isolating yourself from everyone, which only makes things worse.
Living with depression can interfere with the relationships you have with others, whether it is with family or friends, and even romantic relationships. Sometimes you get so caught up in your own thoughts you forget about the other people in your life. What I am learning is that there is no right way to be there for someone. Sometimes people don’t want help, and all you really can do is let them know you are there for them. It hurts to see someone you care about hurting, but sometimes you need to let them go through whatever they are going through. It is not easy.
All I know is that I do not want a repeat of these past two years. I refuse to have another awful year. I want to kick 2019’s ass. I don’t know how I am going to do that, but I am tired of feeling this way.
Feature Image by Steven VanDesande Jr on Unsplash
