#mentalillnessblogging

[the-prickly-pear]

kill yr hopes and dreams 2014 is going pretty well so far.

[the-prickly-pear]

it's pretty depressing that the only way I can cry is by doing harmful things to myself. And also that crying doesn't make a difference.

[the-prickly-pear]

my mood is as unstable as my tumblr activity graph, lol.

[the-prickly-pear]

Panic on the streets of Baltimore!

[the-prickly-pear]

Tw: death, depression, mental illness

I spoke to my grandmother on the phone because it was the best way I could think of to hurt myself without doing a single thing. (Yes, yes, I'm fine, I'm cooking, how is your health, yes, I don't know when I'll be able to come to India next. Yes, I'll take care.)

As my dad drove me back to my rented room this morning he told me to keep my options open, to try to do different things (Exercise? Yoga? Anything). He casually listed the black sheep of the family. So-and-so doesn't work now, so-and-so doesn't leave the house. They were afraid so-and-so would turn out like that but he seems to have turned around. A few years ago, so-and-so hanged himself. And this is what my family does. We pretend that these are random occurrences, blips in an otherwise perfect system. We act as if it was that person's fault for becoming derailed because of a bad marriage - that there is no hope, so it is best to move on. We hush it up, we pretend they don't exist, out of sight out of mind. For god's sake, my mother's first cousin who was her age, who also had marriage related problems and depression, died of alcohol poisoning less than a year ago, and there were no tears, no discussions, no show of emotion. My mentally ill aunt with her similar name, who my mother always said I would be like if I didn't "grow a thicker skin" is still somewhere in India. And who knows how she is, does she relapse, is she still schizophrenic like I keep telling the therapists she is? When we go to India we don't even bother talking about visiting. She has a better husband now and is being taken care of. Out of sight, out of mind.

And one day a few years ago when I was still in college, I started crying because I fully realized that in this family, I am just one of all of these black sheep relatives. I am shut up, glossed over if I am talked about to the relatives (I have a job, so at least there is something to say about me). And if I cry, I get in trouble. If I don't try and argue with my mother, she will demand to know why I don't argue back or say anything to prove her wrong, but if I do argue, I get in trouble. Silence is the only option. There are no safe spaces.

This afternoon I went to a cafe and finally deactivated my Facebook (Are you sure? So-and-so will miss you, so-and-so will miss you - this is what Facebook says in order to make you reconsider, but I haven't talked to the majority of my "friends" on Facebook for ages, so in the end, it wasn't a hard decision). This is self-harm, but it is only a way to finalize the isolation that has already been occurring all along.

I am writing this on tumblr and I hear my mother telling me that nobody wants to hear this, that I am just selfish, that I am looking for attention, that she has done absolutely nothing wrong and that these are my own problems, problems of my generation. I hear my own brain saying that a personal post of this length is embarrassing, that my mother is absolutely right, no one wants to hear this. It enriches nobody.

I am writing this on tumblr anyway, not because I care if the post get likes or notes but because it needs to go somewhere. Because writing is the only stable thing I have, the only way I can make sense of anything, the only platform where I have any control whatsoever, where I know that no one will manipulate me or overstep boundaries I pretend don't exist. A platform where no one will shut me up, or shut me down. It doesn't make me feel different or "better," but it's all I can do right now.

[the-prickly-pear]

anxietea drinking all day every day

[the-prickly-pear]

Sometimes I think I can't cry/feel anything when I'm sober, but then my mother proves me wrong, happy valentine's day everyone!

[the-prickly-pear]

Waiting for the day this company comes to their sense and realizes that I'm crazier and more useless than I appear since it takes me forever and a day to get anything done and I've been "working from home" for most of this week, partly because of the weather, partly because I was sad and/or sick and/or too apathetic to care about it. Oh well.