“I want to write to tell you every small thing that happened, which felt so huge and consuming at the time, to expel it, or expose it: a self-awareness so acute that I could feel each of my pores prickling; unconquerable irrationality; the sudden and uncompromising inability to eat, or to sleep, or to write. Compulsions: the surging impulse to rip the skin clean off my face and the hair out from my head and to escape from my own body, or disrupt it somehow. The realisation that I was no longer who I was supposed to be, that I was barely a person at all, and the frightening acceptance that I might never feel happy or loved or worth anything again.
I want to write it all to you not for your sympathy or to make you look at me, but because, for the first time in six long, wordless months, I feel compelled to write, and because I am desperate to try and make you understand how it felt so incredibly isolating, so contained within me and only me, so utterly convincing and so fucking lonely. Though I know with renewed perspective that I was most certainly not, I felt like the only person on the planet to feel it. Now I want to pour out my heart and start again.
Does it sound pitiful, and self-indulgent? It does, doesn’t it. But, fuck me, it does that to you. Depression comes out of the arse end of nowhere and not only takes away control – of who you are, of what you believe and what you see – but also the will to gain it back.”
See the full article here.
If you need support please call the Samaritans on Free Phone 116 123 or visit www.yourmentalhealth.ie
