9/3/2014
Dear Depression,
I really try hard to not hate anyone, but I have to be honest when I say, I hate you. I hate what you do to me. I hate that I feel out of control of my feelings, actions, and the negative thoughts that circle through my head. I hate feeling powerless to stop them. I hate feeling sad, or numb when good things happen to me. Life is really short and I don’t want to look back on my life and realize I missed enjoying some of the best experiences of my life because I wasn’t in control – you were.
I don’t like to complain. I don’t like to be a burden on others. I hate feeling overwhelmed, or feeling like I just can’t do anything. I used to be able to gather my courage and strength and just go out there and try hard things, but that has been nearly impossible the past year. It’s hard to explain exactly what you do to me, but it’s as though a gray fog is in my mind, clouding my emotional vision, making it difficult to decide what is true and what are lies you make up.
I believe you must be working with Satan. Because God would never purposely make me feel this way. Yes, when I make bad choices, it may be harder to feel His love, but I’m not a horrible person, and you make me feel that way. I don’t want you to have that power over me anymore. I’m sick of it. In order to get through the challenging things in life, I need Heavenly Father’s help. I can’t do it without Him. Nor can I do it without my husband, kids, and other family members and friends. But you try to convince me that nobody wants to help me, that I’m not worth it, that because of mistakes I’ve made, I’m just not worthy to be loved. So I push them all away – the very people who can help me. You make me so sad that no one wants to be around me, or at least that’s what you tell me is true.
You make it impossible to believe anything good about myself. When people give me compliments, you whisper to me, “if they only knew what goes on inside your head, they wouldn’t praise you like that”. When I accomplish something I’ve worked really hard for, you remind me how I still could have done better, leaving me feeling like a failure every time. You convince me to have such high expectations for myself, that I’m never good enough – because of your standards, not God’s.
It really makes me angry that you refute everything good in my head. If I think I look good with all the training I do, you tell me my tummy still pokes out, or that my breasts aren’t what they used to be. When I try to counter that I had two kids, which is more important than having perfectly perky boobs, you snicker and say, yeah, but bigger is better and more attractive. Think how much more your husband would like it if they were bigger. Then I think about how I don’t even have the money for any surgery so I could be prettier. And you remind me of the pay cut I took with my new job. I remind you that I have really good benefits, but you remind me that I’m not doing what I went to school for, that I’m not being challenged, that I’m not doing what I love. And then I feel worthless.
You scare me. I’m scared one day you’ll be so powerful, I won’t be able to resist and I’ll do something to really harm myself or someone I love. I don’t want it to ever get to that point. I’m afraid you’ll never leave me alone. That I won’t be able to push all of the negative junk out of my head once and for all. And I’m afraid that if I do, next time you try, I won’t be able to recover. Because right now, you just keep wearing me down until I’ll eventually get to the point where I just don’t believe it’s possible to feel anything but sad and bad about myself. When you are in control, I’m not. What will happen if I can’t get you under control? What will happen if something tragic happens in my life and I completely lose it and can no longer function? All that schooling, hard work to take care of my kids, set a good example and help support my family will be for nothing.
I feel so hopeless and helpless when you are around. I want to be a good mom and wife, but I feel like that’s impossible. Will my kids grow up resenting me? Will my husband get so sick of me that he kicks me out on the street because he doesn’t understand what it’s like, that it’s so hard to push you away, and that it’s you that makes me act the way I do, not him? I want him to know how much I love him, but I can’t seem to speak his love language, no matter how hard I try. And I’ve missed so much time with my kids already because I had to work, go to school, and just check out when I was consumed with sadness and hopelessness.
It’s for these reasons that I often think I don’t want to be alive. Yet you try to persuade me that Heavenly Father wouldn’t want me, that he’ll just be disappointed with me and my inability to change my thoughts to happy ones, and to fight you off. He’ll be disappointed with my complaining, with my difficulty in bearing my burdens with joy, with my lack of patience and faith. So I continue in a never-ending round of not wanting to be alive – to spare my family any more worrying and stress and putting up with me and my down moods – to not wanting to be dead either. Honestly, I don’t need to go to hell for a visit because I feel like I’m already living there, inside my own head. And I hate it. I hate living with myself. I hate what I become when you are there. I hate not being able to feel happy, of not being able to overcome things, to refute bad things, to plunge into the unknown. I feel like a scared, tired, sickly dirty orphan, roaming the streets looking for something I’ll never find – feeling loved and accepted. You make me angry because it is so all-consuming and I don’t understand why I can’t just break out of it. You make me feel ashamed, embarrassed. I rarely ask for help, even though I need it, because I’m so ashamed. And I feel like a loser when I can’t fulfill responsibilities. I feel guilty that someone else has to pick up my slack. When you take over, I feel powerless to break free, to choose to live and be happy. I’m just not me anymore.
It just hurts. It hurts to feel unlovable all the time – something I’ve struggled with since I was a little girl, and you just make it worse. I have good moments, and then you whisk them away from my memory so I can only dwell on the bad things. I wish you would just leave me alone and pick on someone else. No, I don’t wish that. I don’t wish this on anyone. It is such an awful feeling to feel like there is no hope, no end to the negativity, and to believe that no one loves you, no one can help you, and you can’t even help yourself. I’ve never felt so alone. I’d love to purge myself of all of this and pretend that you never existed. And although I’ve been feeling better the past few days, I am always wondering when you’ll strike again. I’m still scared of you. You’re like a playground bully, but one I can’t fight, at least not in the usual way. I can’t punch your lights out.
Just go away. I never want to feel/hear you in my head again.
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