Hello, all. Bare with me whilst I just get a little serious at the moment. I do apologise for the length, and the rather sombre tone.
I turned 21 today! In fact, the day is almost over. Less than 15 minutes left. This is so incredible for me; I never thought I’d make it this far. I’m just really proud of myself for doing so.
Since I was about seven years old, I’ve dealt with a few relatively debilitating mental illnesses. At the forefront, for the most part, was a constant severe depression and suicidal thoughts / tendencies. For as long as I can remember now, I’ve dealt with these. I feel like it’s because of this reason that I’ve always thought two things:
1) I am beyond saving, beyond help.
2) I will successfully kill myself before I turned 21.
These past few years have come with a tremendous amount of growth. A few months back, I was offered a job at the flight school where I train. I also successfully received my pilot licence. I fought tooth and nail to get my licence, and for a brief few weeks after these happened, I felt truly, truly happy for the first time. It was more than that, though.
It didn’t last. After a few weeks, I felt simply awful again. I could no longer be happy. I recently quit the job, in fact - it was too taxing on my failing mental health and I had my other job to fall back on. However, things were different this time. Now, I knew that I was able to maintain some level of basic satisfaction and happiness. And dammit, I wanted that back.
I’ve taken some small baby-steps to recovery. I’m seeing a therapist, who has been extremely helpful - she’s brought my attention to my neglected anxiety disorder, explaining that a good chunk of my depression may be caused by it. In my defence, I honestly had no idea I had anxiety to such a bad degree - I thought everyone was like this, like me. I’m learning to calm myself, to analyse my thoughts and challenge them.
She treats me and my feelings with respect. I’ve only opened up about my mental health issues and suicidal thoughts to one other person, and it didn’t really end well.
She didn’t treat me like a villain for wanting to kill myself. She acknowledged that I was in a lot of pain and I just wanted it to end. That it was an option she understood I was seriously considering, and that I had been for years and years. That I wasn’t a bad person for feeling this way. I’m not a bad person for feeling like this, and it’s possible for me to get better without feeling like a bad person for falling back into old thinking patterns. Everything I’ve been told has always been “oh, suicidal people are cowards / they want to make everyone miserable / they’re attention-seekers / they don’t care about anyone but themselves / they’re evil, manipulative people”. Hearing something so drastically different really shook me.
Recently, she suggested that I should be expressing my emotions in a healthy way. Since I don’t really have any good friends, I thought I’d start by writing this to my followers, so at least it feels like I have someone to talk to. I want to prove to myself that I can share a little of my story with people. I also wanted to celebrate staying alive for 21 years!
I still want to die, I still want to run away and hide from it all, I still don’t know how to handle my own thoughts. But I’m getting better. And here’s to 21 years, alive and kicking.
germansingergirl
baratheonpilled
annaxmalina
areudirty
2087
pixelskylines
