Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Monotony

Every day starts the same for me. I am primarily exhausted, and rarely want to attend class. My body aches from either sleeping on my arm or not getting enough sleep or some combination of the two. I attend as many classes as I can, do my homework, go to my job, hang out with my friends, text some other friends, do some more homework and go to bed. I hate living this way. It is in my nature to crave spontaneity and each day becomes more boring than the next. The weekends provide a brief unsatisfying escape from my every day life. Brief and meaningless. I may get drunk, destroy my body or find myself in someone else's bed, but this is ultimately unsatisfying in the long run.


This semester has been difficult for me. When I went off my medication at the beginning of the semester, I struggled with a lot of things. I had a lot of academic problems and emotional problems. I could actually almost hear another version of myself: the anxious and depressed version, screaming at me through almost every social interaction. I doubted myself a lot and didn't trust in my ability to make sound emotional decisions. I hated everything about myself and found myself very close to actually inflicting pain upon myself a number of times. A number of external factors led to me feeling even more out of control; I've always had problems with wanting to control all aspects of my life and knowing that I couldn't be in charge of everyone's feelings and reactions to me sent me deeper into a psychological rut.

Another thing that exacerbated my problems was everyone's insistence that I was "normal". I know it seems like the sort of thing that would be comforting, but it really wasn't. I was hearing voices, in my head, telling me to slice my skin open, or chug half a bottle of rum or to burn my room to the ground. That isn't normal. My voices told me I was worthless, meaningless, a blip on the space time continuum. I could never be loved. I would never love again. I was vile, disgusting and an abomination. I'm sorry, but I know that isn't normal, and my friends' insistence that I was fine drove me even closer to actually hurting myself. Luckily, by the will of some higher power, or just as a result of my general destiny, I managed to make it out of the three weeks of hell without doing anything remarkably stupid.

Those few weeks were terrible on my body and on my mind, but I found a twisted pleasure in the novelty. Fighting against myself brought me something new to do. I found fulfillment in the struggle of survival and in the battle against my mind. If I could find the will not to hurt myself, I felt like I was better. This control over willpower extended to food, and I would go hours upon hours without eating anything substantial. I ate just enough to prevent my stomach from growling and drawing attention to what I was doing. In a sense I felt like this would give me control over the people around me. They would think I was alright, when I really was not.

Now that I've stopped participating in odd deceptions of this kind, I find myself without any kind of challenge. I have never been good at dealing with boredom (or disappointment for that matter). I want to break out of this monotony and be a different person, or experience something different from just classes, school and relationships that leave me emotionally unsatisfied and psychologically drained. I want to be better. I don't want to hear negative voices and I don't want to focus on negative thoughts. How do I combine my need to break out of monotony with my desire to be a happier person? This is something that I suppose I will continue to figure out on my path to freeing myself from depression. It is a difficult thing to do, especially feeling as isolated as I do now.

Other people saying they are here for me is really quite different from the reality of the situation, which is that people are mainly there for themselves. They exist in my world only for whatever life they can suck out of me to boost their self-esteem or for whatever other purposes I might serve. I need to focus on fighting monotony on my own, without relying on other people for suport or falling into depressive habits. I am ill. My brain is at war with itself, but at least I am at the point where I think that I can be better, and I will be patient with myself for this not happening instantaneously. 

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