I can’t do this.

I haven’t been the same since 22nd September. I don’t know where to begin. I don’t know where I am going with this post. Pain is temporary, I’ve heard of that saying. Countless times. For the sake of maintaining my sanity and out of respect for some individuals I love and care about, I will not go into full details of what has taken place, or maybe I will, when I am in a better headspace. I have not been able to think clearly. My emotions have been difficult to contain, to sustain. It’s too much. I am given too much pain and care at the same time it has been hurting me. It’s overwhelming me. Fear. Panic. Confusion. Helplessness. Lost.

That’s what I am feeling all at once.

It’s inconsistent. I could be doing the things I love, and I am hit by a wave of sadness. Then I can’t continue what I’m doing, what I was doing, or what I had planned to do. Since I deactivated my Twitter account on the 25th September, I have struggled to live normally. The simplest things became impossible. It’s still hard, because as I am typing this now, I am dealing with a fever, my chest hurts, and by the time this gets published, I don’t know how I am and I cannot guarantee what will happen to me. Maybe I won’t be okay, maybe I will be okay. I am unsure if this post is a cry for help. Maybe it is at this moment, and maybe I will regret having shared this. And there are plenty of people who have shown me concern and care. There is not a single day I do not receive a text, a phone call, or an email asking me if I’m okay.

So, please, just let me state here once and for all, that I am not okay.

This post is not a walk in the park. So, I am putting it out first, that you do not have to proceed further this time around if a topic around depression and soft suicidal thoughts is something you rather not see at this moment. My posts have and will always be honest, no matter how rough it gets. But it’s not supposed to make people feel confused or down. And I cannot lie to myself as to how I am feeling. Some of you have been there before, I know.

Now that I’ve gotten that disclaimer out there, I will continue.

Don’t ask me if I’m okay, because as much as I appreciate the concern and love, I am physically and mentally exhausted to explain, over and over again, what has happened, and I don’t open up fully, the extent of the pain I am experiencing or the cumulative events that has led me up to this stage. You can check up on me by leaving words of assurance, that’s more than enough for me. I am politely asking that for the sake of my sanity, while I am still capable of being rational without going into my survival mode or being indifferent, please do not ask me for details, don’t ask me how I am doing. I cannot keep up with more than 20 messages a single day of repeated questions. Yet, not answering is unfair to any of you because you’ve taken the time out, the care to ask me how I am faring. Not answering you worries you. Not picking up your phone call worries you. It worries me too. I am a danger to myself right now. It is unsafe.

All I can ask, from the ones that sincerely care for me, from the bottom of your heart, please continue to care for me but do not worry about me. I need you to trust in me that I will be okay and that I will be able to make it through this confusing and difficult phase. All this loss that I am dealing with, I have not been able to grieve at all. I still haven’t grieved. What all these events have done, has removed me from the world here. I am here, but I’m not fully here. I don’t see the light right now. I don’t feel any real strength in me, to reconnect with the world and weave myself anew into the fabric of living. 

Every single day is a day of drowning. I can’t swim. I feel the cold wash over me. But I also feel nothing, numb, almost. I can’t seem to get up. I can’t seem to want to move at all. I’ve stopped telling myself “Maybe the pain I am feeling now is preparing me to face something else.” In this depression, right now, because I am typing what I am feeling right now, is such that I am not seeking the happier version of me. My memories are distorted. My childhood memories are blurry. I don’t know how it got dark so fast, but I remember every single detail of the fear and pain of abandonment, fresh, like it only happened yesterday. I don’t know if I still have it in me to reach out for that child-self I once was, the innocent child who loved the sunshine and rain all the same. I started to see darkness around the lights instead of the other way around, and soon there were no more colours in my world. They say there is a rope ladder out of depression, one you can use to climb out of it. The problem is, that I just can’t find the will to reach out for the first rung, let alone try.

I had always loved observing and listening to people. Their facial expressions, their gestures, the shift in their tone when they talk… I loved the flowers and the birds that sing, loved the sunlight and the clouds that drift by as I make my way to work. Loved the way the leaves move in a breeze and that soft whispering sound they make, like nature loves to chatter too. Yet, the tiredness remains like a veil over my skin, grey and cold. And as I watch the other residents carry about with their lives in their own space, spending time with their loved ones and smiling, from my balcony, there is only a creeping sorrow where there should be joy.

This hurts so much. Just expressing how I feel right now too, doesn’t feel right. That I can’t even express my sorrow without coming off as attention-seeking. It hurts so much that I’m slipping into old habits again. I have just wanted to take my life so many times. It hurts that it’s easier to tell my pain here than to anyone I have ever known. It kills me on the inside that each morning, I wake up with a sense of defeat and unbridled desolation. I just want to feel something. I just want friends to know I am trying. I don’t want to hurt. I don’t want to stay depressed. I didn’t ask to be traumatised at a young age, I didn’t ask to have to relive my trauma every single day. I want to have a group of friends where I could tell them how happy I am, how proud I am of them for all they are doing, for all that they are. I don’t want to hurt on the inside anymore. I want to be happy, even for a second, I want it so bad.

But the voice inside my head is that cruel, isn’t it?

At any other time I would have called a friend, asked for the warmth I needed to ward it off, just a little is enough. I don’t know how to, because at the back of my mind, the voice tells me I am taking up space. It tells me I am unworthy. It tells me I am bothering them. And it makes you sad too, reading this. It hurts you because you are sitting on the other end, behind your device wishing you could make me feel better. You wish you could tell me that’s not true. And you know what? You’re probably right. You hate that I am feeling this way and I had experienced pain and such. I know. I know you care. My mind just tells me you don’t. It is a constant battle I deal with myself. 

And I dissociated again.

I don’t know how to continue this now. My whole life, I never felt like I belonged. Not in my group of friends, family, or country. I have always felt as though no matter where I go, I just don’t feel like I belong. Growing up where emotions were consistently repressed, where the blame always fell on my shoulders, the feeling of being inferior to everyone was so much that I feared speaking up at home, in school, and hangouts. Now, I’m just a 20 something that never got closure for plenty of things, has friends and family members that care for me but I don’t know how to receive their care. I would rather fill that void with starvation than reach out to them because it’s safer than potentially setting myself up for even more rejection. To face disappointment. To deal with abandonment, again. 

I don’t want to kill myself, but every time I wake up I can’t help thinking… Just how many more days do I have to continue with this?

But.

I might as well, live the best I can, while I’m still breathing, hey? Just have to patch up my old wounds with promises of bright tomorrows stitched tight with half-hearted hopes. The pain? I just let it come. Drop by drop. And I feel like it is an ocean falling upon me. Instead of rain. Yes, imagine that. That the grief of years I carefully suspended. All of them. Condensed right above my head. Into a cloud large enough to block the sun. They say it can’t rain forever. That there will come a time when it must cease. That the last drop will have fallen. I will still be true to myself, still help others, but I plan to just stay here in the cold, comfortably numb. 

I don’t intend to be that way forever. I am still trying to stay strong here. Feeling empty and experiencing loss have such a strong connection to one another that I need to fully rest before I can figure out what is what. Hope this answers everything. Hopefully. If you care for me, stay on, and trust in me to make it through, even if it seems impossible for me now. Reading back everything I’ve wrote now, it makes me feel sick. I need some time to heal.