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0 By Neil Evans
I’ve been unhappy and insecure my whole life. No happy childhood to fondly remember, no family holidays to recount anecdotally to my friends. My life, thus far, seems like a blurring of one continuous unhappy experience. Depression and bad experiences have robbed me of what should have been the best years of my life. It’s left me pretty much broken, in a fog that never ends.
Children need love and protection
The most important thing any human being can have is ’emotional stability’; knowing that when you are small and vulnerable you are protected and loved; something I never had. Throw in poverty and the lack of any sort of male role model it’s hardly surprising that I could not beat the odds, overcome my circumstances, conquer my demons and live a full life…just like many do.
Depression is a cruel master, that feeling of being almost disappointed to wake up after another (disturbed) night’s sleep, of facing another empty and lonely day and knowing exactly what it will be like before repeating the cycle over and over again. It’s actually amazing just how much unhappiness and distress a human being can put up with over a long period of time, but our capacity to absorb suffering is incredible.
An endless desert of despair
Sure, there have been periods of hope like going to university or (much later) getting very very close to getting into journalism but those hopes and dreams proved to me a mirage set within an endless desert of despair. It’s been 10 years since I have been able to work, time which has dissolved into a (largely benzodiazepine based) fog which has meant my being completely unable to focus on that thing called the future.
For many of us I’m sure, the future means little more than the rest of the current day. I know in mine I have never really known who I was and what I was for and that awareness of what has caused this illness has not in the slightest helped me to overcome it – with all the self-doubt, insecurity and self-loathing that goes along with it. The last 10 years I have measured in my daily trip to coffee shops, my mind lost in this fog which simply will not lift. I know that the changes in me over the last decade have not been for the better and that reinforces the despair that it’s now too late.
Going through the motions
I feel that I am doing nothing more than merely going through the motions. I’m just dragging my life around without purpose or direction. In fact it’s a return to the very feelings I felt as an adolescent. I was terrified of leaving school and having to fend for myself. And in that same way, I am still unable to even cope with the thought of thinking about the future.
Like I said, emotional stability is a person’s most precious commodity. Without it, you can be bright, talented, attractive and able, chances are life will be more than difficult. This haze is like being on the longest, straightest road you can imagine but being hemmed in by the horizon. The journey feels altogether meaningless and pointless.
The fog that never ends
Depression controls my life, from the moment I awaken (usually as near to the afternoon as possible) until I shut my eyes. It denies reward, pleasure and achievement. It dictates and it reinforces and consumes and destroys. It’s relentless and it’s cruel and mendacious. I so wish it wasn’t there.
UNITED STATES
UNITED KINGDOM
This pretty much perfectly summed up my life. The only differences are that it’s only been a month since I stopped working because of my health and that as of yet I haven’t been prescribed anti-depressants.
I commend your flair and ability with words though. I don’t think I could have written about my experience so eloquently.
[…] feels so unfair when the fog descends after an especially good period. I wake up and I think “Again?!” I’m so […]