Pulling Me Back

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By Amy Meadmore

I’ve always found that it is at the best of times when the voices in my head are at their loudest. Whenever my uni course is going well, when I have the best friends I’ve ever made and I love my boyfriend to pieces. That’s when they start to talk. They strip everything good away. Tell me I’m useless and that they all hate me. And I try not to believe them, I really do.

It causes me to push people away. Make them think I don’t want them around. My best friend the other day said he felt like he was just filler, that I pushed away when I didn’t want him. I didn’t know how to tell him that sometimes I feel so poisonous so that in my head it feels like I’m saving him. People tell me I scare them or that they can’t live without me. Then they seem confused when I get scared and can’t breathe. They don’t know that, to me, I am nothing. When you think you’re nothing and someone says that to you it’s terrifying. I am not nearly a good enough person for those words and those beautiful words shouldn’t be wasted on me.

I’ve had depression since I was 14 and now I’m 19. For some people that is nothing. I know people who have been beaten down their whole lives. But for others, it may sound like a lifetime. To me, it depends on the day. Sometimes I feel so gut-wrenchingly guilty that I feel this way that I will tear at myself in shame. Who am I to think I have it bad? My parents love me, my friends love me and my boyfriend loves me. Or at least I think so. There are other days when it seems as if I’ve been depressed all my life and I just want it to stop.

Recently I’ve been really scared. I’ve had several panic attacks and I’ve stopped breathing in a few of them. My friends think it’s all physical and to an extent, it is. But sometimes I’m not sure I want to start breathing again. And that makes me eerily calm yet frightened. I don’t want to go anywhere but sometimes there’s not much I can do to stop it. It’s not me, it’s my brain.

I am not quite sure how to fix everything. I’ve never had professional help, nor do I ever want it (Editors Note: we strongly advise seeking help in such situations, life gives no prizes for doing it alone). I’m trying to forget the things that have happened to me. And maybe I will but right now I know my life is good. It’s just my brain that’s bad. It is trying to pull me back. These voices living rent-free in my brain taking control of what isn’t theirs. And without meaning to sound corny, I know who I am. And I am going to live by a Dolly Parton quote that I really love:

“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”