MY ILLNESSES DO NOT DEFINE ME: DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY

My illnesses do not define me.

A few months ago I wrote this post on how I suffer from pretty extreme anxiety and depression. You can go and read it if you'd like, but as my following on my blog has dramatically increased I'd like to write another one. It's hard really, trying to get how you feel across to people when you can't really put make sense of your own thoughts. It's hard to explain to people who can never understand.

And that's the thing; unless you've suffered from mental illness you never really can understand. You can watch it all of your life, but until you've felt  it, until it's completely consumed your entire existence, you can never really understand it properly. To put it simply, imagine being stuck in the middle of the ocean on your own. The waves are rough and choppy and the current keeps pulling you under. You're desperately trying to drag yourself back up to the surface, back to normality, but it's too strong. You try to swim but you can't. Your arms and legs aren't working. You're pulled further and further under until every part of your body is filled with water, it's burning your throat, your chest, your lungs. But you can't get it out of you. You try but you can't, you just don't know how. Eventually there's nothing you can do anymore, you're drowning.

For all of the times I've sat in my bedroom alone, staring blankly at the walls. For all of the times I've laid awake at night desperate to fall asleep so I can find some sort of relief. For all of the times I've found it hard to breathe because every breath I take burns my entire body. For all of the times I've cried for hours, unable to stop. For all the times I've been unable to cry because I'm consumed by emptiness. For all of the times I've been so lonely I've felt nothing. For all of the times I've been surrounded by people and pushed them away. For all of the times I've been unable to get out of bed for days on end. For all of the times I've felt like I'm drowning. For all of the times I choked on my words because I can't describe how I feel. For all of the times I've stared into the mirror and hated myself. For all of the times I've starved myself to the point of incapacity in an attempt to gain control. For all of the times I've shoved my fingers down my throat. For all of the times I cut. For all of the times I wish I'd cut deeper. For all of the times I've hated myself for cutting.

That's why I'm writing this. Please, I beg you to stop romanticising mental illness. Depression isn't lovely. It doesn't make you cool or interesting. It consumes your life. It weighs down your chest until you're gasping for breath. Nobody is coming to save you. Nobody is going to kiss your scars and hold you while you cry. It isn't a fairytale. It isn't tragically beautiful. It's life ruining. It takes everything from you and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Depression isn't being sad for a day. It isn't finding out your favourite tv show has been cancelled. It isn't getting a bad haircut. Depression is trying to grasp onto something, anything at all in an attempt to feel real again. It's seeing the sadness in your mothers eyes as she silently watches over you from the opposite side of the room. It's waking up every single day with permanent reminders of all of the times you've lost control etched permanently into your skin. Anxiety isn't being nervous for a test. It isn't the deep breath you take before you give a presentation. It isn't the butterflies in your stomach as you talk to your crush. Anxiety is staring out of the window, frustrated, wishing you could go outside. It's locking yourself in your bedroom and refusing to come out. It's being unable to breathe, unable to speak, unable to move, unable to function at all when you're in public. It's laying awake at night, fretting, planning conversations over and over in your head, rehearsing what you could say if someone was to talk to you.  

I don't sit around all day wearing black and pouting. I don't lay in the dark and listen to The Smiths. I don't write sad poems or paint all day (although incidentally I do like painting, but that's not the point). I sit alone in my room. Some days I can't get out of bed. I cry myself to sleep. Some days I can't sleep at all. You want anxiety because you think it's cute? You think it's a quirk? It'll make you interesting? You want depression because it'll make you tragic? Because it'll make someone love you? Mental illness isn't a trend. Saying you're depressed because you had a bad day is damaging. Saying you're anxious when you have a twinge of nerves in damaging. Stop self-diagnosing. It stops people with real problems who need real help getting it. It makes mental illness seem less serious. It is serious. Deadly serious. You want a mental illness? Fine, take mine. I would give anything to be free again. I would give anything to feel again. I would give anything to have a somewhat normal life. There is nothing beautiful about mental illness. 

The only thing that's beautiful is recovery. 

My anxiety is pretty much in control of my life. Anxiety really isn't something to joke about, and I'm so sick of people seeing it as nothing. It's completely ruined my life.  I'm twenty years old, if everything had gone according to plan I would still be at university, in fact I would be just five months away from graduating right now. I would still be living with my friends, going on nights out and going off on holidays. Instead I'm so nervous all the time, like I'm just so embarrassed about my entire existence and so desperately worried about what people will think or say that I just can't function outside my house anymore. I haven't been out on my own in over a year. I haven't picked up the phone to someone I didn't know extremely well (close friends and family) in over two years. When I buy things from shops, I get the person I'm with to do it for me. I have to have my parents order my food for me in restaurants. I can't even answer my own front door. 

The thing I fear most is not recovering. Not getting better. At the moment I can't even go to the shop, which is literally 10 meters away, alone. I first went to the doctors over two years ago now, I was dragged kicking and screaming by my mother. I didn't want to be labelled. I thought people would think I was weird. I was referred to the emergency crisis team by my doctor, I sat in a room with two very nice women who tried to calm me down and asked me questions about well, everything. It was exhausting. From there I was put on a sort of wellbeing course, it didn't really help me. In fact, it didn't help me at all. I was then sent to see a nice woman named Lynn for therapy. The NHS only let you have a maximum of twelve sessions of this, and at the end of mine I was told they hadn't seen any improvement in me. It was so disheartening, I felt like giving up. I just wanted to go and sit in my room for the rest of my life. I was tired of going to appointments, of talking about myself, of putting myself through it only to have nothing change. I gave up on recovery. I wanted to be discharged from mental health services. I tried to discharge myself. They wouldn't let me. I was then referred to outpatient mental health services, they have more freedom to help and there's no limit on the amount of times you can use their services.So there I am, that's where I'm at. I drag myself backwards and forwards every week in an attempt to fix myself. It's exhausting, mentally draining and honestly more often than not I just want to give up.

I desperately want to be better. I want to be able to go to the gym alone if I want to, or meet a friend for a drink. At this time it's just not realistic. I spend my days sitting at home with way too much time on my hands, and time can be dangerous when you have nothing to do with it. I spend it over thinking. I put myself through the countless appointments and all of the crap because I want to be better. I want to be normal. I'm sure someone will be thinking 'what's normal anyway everyone is different' but to be honest normality for me would be being able to function alone in the outside world. I want to go back to uni, I want to get a job, I want to go travelling and see the world. Those things are so far out of my grasp at the moment and it seems so ridiculous to think about them as I know they're so far away, years probably, but if I don't I have no reason to recover. I want to do something with my life, that's why I want to get better. 

At the back of my mind there's always a thought: 'what if it doesn't work and I'm like this forever'. Honestly it terrifies me. It keeps me awake at night. I could drag myself through appointment after appointment, take all of the meds in the world and force myself into going outside but what if it never becomes any easier? But I need to believe I will, I need to at least try. I can't go on sitting at home alone day after day anymore. I'm so frustrated with myself, my depression is starting to come under control. I take a tablet every single day and most of the time I manage to get out of bed and do normal people things like eat and clean the house and concentrate on something for more than five minutes. Heck, sometimes I even put clothes on instead of strolling about in my pyjamas all day. But my anxiety just won't let go of me. It's squeezing all of the life out of me. I'm no longer content with laying in bed every day, I'm getting the feeling back into my life now and I want to do things. My best friend Beth for example is currently having the time of her life in Austria working on the slopes. I want to do things. I know I'll never be an extreme extrovert with millions of friends and the life and soul of the party, I have no misconceptions, but even just being able to get a job would make me ridiculously happy. 

So many times I've been told to 'snap out of it' and the likes, it's because people just don't understand. I don't blame them, I didn't understand properly until it hit me like a tonne of bricks. But people need to try and understand, and they need to realise that it's real. It's not made up and it's not imaginary. You wouldn't make someone with a broken leg walk on it so please don't try to force people with anxiety, depression or any other mental illness into doing things that they really genuinely believe they can't. If you recognise any symptoms of mental illness in yourself or someone you care about please go and see a doctor, please get help. Please don't self diagnose. It's so damaging and it undermines people who are really struggling. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy, and I know that without my family and my group of friends I could very well have killed myself by now. If you feel like things have got too much please remember you don't have to do this alone, there'll always be someone to talk to and if you can't find anyone, I'm here.