I am 21 and yesterday my manager informed me I have no hours due to Easter. I cried, but then realised it didn't matter because I don't go out anymore anyway. Going out means putting on a bra and mental make up. It means working so hard to project an image that I'm ok and that I won't scream or claw at my skin in the street- even though I want too, every hour of every day.
I have a boyfriend, whom every day tries so hard to love me and yet whom I feel indifferent too. He may be the best thing that's happened to me in years and I know it but I can't feel it. My mind tells me I love him, but I can't remember the last time my body felt excited in his presence, that I felt like his actual girlfriend and not just a sock doll with painted on lips and eyes.
Some days are better than others, some days I can get up, clean the house, drink half a bottle of something and appear happy and normal to the world. But days like today I can't. I see no point in getting out of bed and question why I even bothered to shower.
At first depression is a really sad stage- we cry and drama to our friends and slowly but surely push them away. But as the disease advances- we stop caring, we feel horrible numbness and darkness and become committed to hiding it when we do venture to the world. I talk to my friends all the time on Facebook, but they never know what's going on inside.
Everything irritates me, and anything can set me off- So I try not to leave my room and my doona. For the first time in my life I am experiencing not just the emotional symptoms of depression but the physical too- and that really scares me.
All I want is to be normal, have energy and be able to get up and do things like normal people. I want to be beautiful and skinny and have a good job and wear nice clothes and a group of friends. But that will never be normal for me. If I can write half a job application today- then that's something big.
Quite often it feels impossible to explain my definition of 'normal' but I imagine it's like the weather......in Melbourne. On average I get 180 days of sunshine a year if I'm lucky and even then I can go from freezing cold to sweltering heat to pouring rain to dust storms in the space of 30 mins.
Do you know how hard it is to study or work like that? When some days you feel like you never grew out of puberty with your hormones and others you just don't see the point of getting out of bed. My illness isn't a choice and I can't just get over it. It's a cage and I really don't have control over how I feel.
Convincing people that I'm not faking it or lazy or have a vicious personality or am attention seeking is hard. I even struggle to convince doctors sometimes. "Just because you don't understand it, Doesn't mean it isn't real to me!" is what I feel like screaming sometimes, but I don't because even then they'd laugh at me.
I am not writing this to garner attention or pity but to try and explain what it's like from the inside out.
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