I used to think that I was lazy. That the reason I was scared of being happy was that if I did allow myself to be happy, I would have to start being a functioning human without the excuse of depression to hide behind, and that idea seemed so overwhelming and unappealing that I just rejected it completely. I thought it was because I didn’t want to work hard, but now that I’m doing better (thank you Aripiprazole), I’ve realised that that wasn’t the case at all.
When I was fifteen years old, I confided in a doctor that I felt suicidal on a regular basis, and that if I had the means for a painless death, I wouldn’t be alive. I was told that this was normal and sent on my not-so-merry way, thus beginning a lifelong battle against depression that somehow turned into a battle against happiness, a battle in which I would lose no matter the outcome.
I guess what it boils down to is being told there’s nothing wrong with you. The fear that what you’re experiencing will never go away is a cruel, cruel fear. In fact, it’s more than a fear. It’s a monster, a monster that lives in your heart and taunts you for being sad and taunts you for being happy and taunts you for being somewhere in between.
When you’re happy, the monster tells you that there’s nothing wrong with you at all, that there’s nothing to fix, that you’re being dramatic and wasting people’s time and being a burden. It tells you that if you’re not ill then you can never get better, and that this is the best your life will ever be. It makes happiness an overall unpleasant experience.
When you’re sad, the monster drags you down. It reminds you that the doctor said this is normal, that there’s nothing wrong with being suicidal. It once again tells you that things will never get better, but it also tells you that everyone else is just as miserable as you are, but they’re better at hiding it. It tells you that you’re weak and pathetic and that life will never get better than this. It whispers at you to just give up. You think that it might have a point.
Sometimes, you will not be happy or sad. This is the monster’s favourite state. It will use logic rather than emotions to mess with you, and logic is a lot harder to shake. It will twist every thought into a negative and it will make a frankly impressive speech about why your life is pointless, why happiness is a burden, and why you are a lazy piece of shit who deserves nothing but craves death. You won’t agree, but you won’t disagree either because your emotions are gone and whilst the monster isn’t necessarily right, it also isn’t wrong. That’s when it gets dangerous.
I gave up on life before I turned eighteen. I tried to commit suicide when I was twenty, and then again when I was twenty-one. It was sad, I was sad. I didn’t expect to be sad. I thought that I’d be happy, finally being close to death, but I was just sad. It was weird.
After the suicide attempts, all means of a peaceful death were taken from me. It didn’t matter, I didn’t have the energy to fight life anymore. I just did whatever it took to make my day-to-day as easy and painless as possible, including going to therapy and occasionally doing chores and meeting friends to keep my parents happy and stop them worrying about me. I was sadder than ever, and it was because I was as close to happy as I’d ever been and it still sucked. I had no job, no studying to do, nothing at all stressful, and I got to live with my parents for free in peace. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want any of it, and I certainly didn’t want things to get any better because if things got better, I’d be expected to do more, and that would just make me more miserable. Every step forwards felt like a step backwards, and every step backwards felt like a freefall into a pit of despair. I could not cope.
See, this is the thing. If you can’t see a way to be happy, actually happy, you’ll shy away from the idea of happiness because it seems wrong, somehow, and you don’t want to be stuck with it forever because it doesn’t seem appealing. But when you do find happiness (and I did), you suddenly realise that your previous idea of happiness was just being mentally ill but on a good day, which isn’t happiness at all if your mental illness stops you from being happy. We’re scared of happiness because we don’t know what it is, and what we think is happiness is actually a horror show.
I stopped fearing happiness when I started taking anti-psychotics. I could suddenly see a path that wasn’t horrible, and the monster vanished. I had been ill, and I wasn’t going to be suicidal forever. I could do things without hating every second of existence, and I could be happy without wanting to cry or scream or just make everything stop. I hadn’t even realised that my idea of happiness still included wanting to cry all the time because I hadn’t ever known what it was like to not have that. Now I do, and things are better.
I spent eleven years being suicidal and not understanding what happiness was, and I still made it out alive. Fearing happiness is not normal, it is an illness, and illnesses can be treated. Do not give in. There is always hope.
