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Friday, January 20, 2017

What My Mental Illnesses Feel Like At 3 AM

“You’re so useless.”
“You got nothing done today”
“Could you be a worse friend?”
“Call them. Tell them to leave you. They deserve better.”

I am sitting in my bed, the couch I have been sleeping on since I moved to Boise; the voices of my anxiety and my depression are getting loud again. Sad music has been turned on to try to drown my own thoughts out. Usually, it helps. Feelings of uselessness and despair are completely overwhelming me as I struggle to find rest. Nothing eases it. Every attempt is met with still more self-loathing. Two days now. I have felt so sapped by my depression that I have gotten almost nothing done. My mother is growing impatient with me – as usual. She is blaming it on me being “inherently lazy”, calling up memories of me before I really got any help at all and I was so much worse than I am not. At least now I 

“They are never going to hear you.”“You are never going to be okay again.”“They are only going to assume it is your fault.”“There is no hope. You are always going to be like this”
The noise just keeps flooding my thoughts. I know that if I fail, again, to be a productive member of this family; one who always validates the other members, and never disappoints them… that I will always be judged as wrong. I had once hoped that my sister’s struggle with Depression and Anxiety would have helped them understand that I am not lazy, or unwilling – but that I am sick. It is the same as any physical illness. I am so numb that it hurts. It hurts my muscles, nerves, bones, eyes, nose, teeth, mind, soul, relationships, and anything it can bring suffering to. It’s almost kindred to being clasped in on by a massive breaker at the ocean’s edge, only, instead of being able to roll with the blow and float back to shore – I am chained and cemented to the very place I am standing. I am bearing the full brunt of every pound of force the wave has to exert on me… and I am feeble.
“Just give up.”“Run away from all this.”“You are not worthy of them
My skin is clammy, and I have adjusted the thermostat a dozen times in an effort to find comfort. All of my hair is standing on end because I keep pulling it and running fingers through it. I desperately wish I had someone to curl up against and to cry on and to tell all of this to. Yet here I am, telling it to you. Telling you all of my pitiful thoughts. In a mere 3 hours, I will have been awake for a full day’s time and I am nowhere near tired. Instead, I am wide awake, panicked and miserable. 
“What were you thinking? You’ll never fit in here…”“You are literally failing at everything.”“Nothing about you warrants compassion or affection.”
And there I am again, twisting in my own sweat. Hating every part of this illness, and of myself. I believe my gamily when they berate me for laziness and slacking off. Those thoughts embed themselves in my mind and echo until I can hear nothing else but them. It is literal torture. And what’s worse, no one seems to care when I am in this headspace. I know that they do. It is just a fact. Yet, all I can feel is them hating me for being so chronically ill, with diseases that don’t seem to have any physical symptoms or valid inputs. Genuinely, this feels as if having the distinction on my Illness as being “Mental” instead of “Physical” means that I am not valid in having it.
In case you were wondering, this is what my illnesses are like at 3 in the morning.
Peace, love and bulletproof marshmallows
Mandey T

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