Another Black Wave Comes

Imagine that you are underwater. Holding your breath. Holding it as long as you can. Your lungs start to burn. Your body is telling you to exhale. You need to swim to the surface. 

But you can't. 

You allow your lungs to burn. You dream of breathing again. You ignore the signals your body is giving you, to breathe, to swim to the surface. To exhale. You let yourself drown. 

That's how I feel right now. 

When my depression is at it's worse I imagine myself being swallowed by a big black wave. My body sinks to the bottom of the ocean and I struggle to hold my breath. I can't swim to the surface. I ignore my body as it starts to shut down, I just let it happen. I let myself slowly die and I'm completely aware of this. 

When I get really low I stop eating, I know I should eat. But I lack any appetite. I go days without eating, despite my body telling me to. I ignore the stomach rumbles, the shaky hands, the lack of energy and the lightheadedness. I know I should eat but I can't. 

There's no food at the bottom of the ocean. 

I isolate myself. Stay in my bedroom popping anti anxiety meds so I can sleep for short periods of time, because the alternative of being awake is too much of me to bear. If I'm awake all I will do is mindlessly stare into the abyss, think about anything and everything...my thoughts consume me totally and completely. I think about my future, I think about my past, I think about that one time I said something fucking ridiculous and made an ass of myself 7 YEARS AGO. I just think. Thinking too much is not the key to stability or happiness, it's the key of madness. Especially of you have thoughts like mine. 

I ask myself questions with no answers. "Why am I like this?" "Will I always be chronically and clinically depressed?" "What did I do in a past life to deserve this? I try to be a good person, why is this happening to me?" 

Over and over again I ask these questions. I read Wikipedia articles on people who have committed suicide, I listen to music created by depressed artists so I won't feel so alone for once. A favorite is "How Soon Is Now?" By The Smiths. 

What do I do though? How do I move forward from this? I don't know, and I probably never will. I've been asking the same questions for 10+ years and I'm no closer to a solution...of there is one. 

Lost wild child sleeping under DVD stars, the y'all grass is my bed and I breathe in air once again? 

The black wave hits the shore again

The Complexity of Confusion

I didn't get out of bed today. 

All I had was my thoughts to accompany me. My thoughts have never been good company for me. My thoughts are sicker than I am. 

I spent the day staring at the ceiling, spacing out the TV and trying to organize my thoughts better...so I know what I'm thinking. My brain is upside down right now and I'm suffering in silence. The second people know...they try to help you...but the thing is...there isn't a person on this earth who can help you, because they don't understand. They will never understand. 

I think I need to break up with my boyfriend. I don't want to. But I think I need to. Our relationship is just one big lie with an inevitable expiration date. As badly as I didn't want to believe this...it's true. The weird thing is, I convinced myself that the longer I stayed with him, the more he would want to be with me permanently. The more of a future we would have together. I named out children. I dreamed of waking up next to him every morning. Falling asleep in his arms every night. Living together. Being married to him. Taking his last name. 

None of that is going to happen. It never was. 

Today I texted him telling him how confused I was about everything and he replied back "follow your heart"... THAT was a bunch of bullshit. I've been listening to my heart over my head for over a year now. He's the one that's ignoring how he truly feels. He's the one that is rejecting any type of future with me because of what everyone else expects of him. He's not listening to his heart, or his gut or even his dick...he's listening to his parents. His family who says, despite never meeting me, that I am not, nor will I ever be good enough for him because I'm black, I'm American, and I'm not Muslim. 

The worst part is that even though he says he loves me, he doesn't even want to fight for me or our relationship. He just seems very cowardly and lazy about the entire thing. He won't break up with me. He wants me to decide the fate of this relationship. But then again, he won't fight to keep me...this isn't the hot, passionate love that I once thought it was. 

In the end, I'm the one left hurting, left curled up on the floor crying...pumped full of drugs to stop me from going on a rage filled terror. I'm just stuck. Staring at the ceiling, tuning out the TV, wondering what the fuck I'm going to do. 

I keep asking myself...am I really in love? Or do I just deeply care about this person and say I'm in love because I am scared shitless of being alone. It's true. I break up with him and I have nobody. No friends, family that won't even try to understand my mental issues...I got nobody. And if I am the one to call it quits...it will be my fault I'm alone. I will turn into that girl that reaches out to random guys just for some kind of attention and affection...because my life lacks either and I'm lonely and desperate. 

What the fuck am I going to do?! I can't lay in this bed, hopeless and helpless, for the rest of my life. 

Decisions must be made. 

That Itch You Cannot Scratch

I just got sick of resisting. 

I used to cut myself. The last time I did it I was 17. I'm 22 now. 

I made it over 5 years without cutting. When things got bad and I couldn't emotionally handle things, I would want to cut. I would dream about running the blade over my skin. Feeling the sharp pain. The warm blood coming out from the cut. I missed it. 

It's like smoking. I've quit several times. But you just get a taste for it. In your mouth. No matter how much gum you chew, or patches you have, or e-cigs you smoke, you will still miss that taste. The feeling of pulling the smoke into your mouth is the best. 

Tonight, I had a fight with my boyfriend. We had a really good day together, but then everything went badly after he went home and we began texting back and forth. I found out some information he was hiding from me, and it made me reconsider everything else he had ever told me. Was he ever in love with me? How could I not have seen the signs of his underhanded-ness? They were clear as day, but I was too blinded by 'love' or whatever you call it...to use my reasonable observation skills. 

I started to panic. I started to cry. I could feel my breath becoming heavy and quick. I could feel myself shaking like a leaf. I was going into a full blown anxiety attack and nothing was going to change it. I left the house. Took a long walk. But my problems still weighed heavily on my back. I kind of randomly asked myself: why don't you just hurt yourself ? 

So I did. 

I didn't cut, I burned myself. With a lighter. I tried to cut. But all this time

Must've turned my into a pussy...I just couldn't dig deep enough to cut. 

Instead I wake up with a squid shapped blister on my wrist. 

I won't deny that it felt good... The pain. 

The Real World

There's a point in life where you stop dreaming and start to adjust to a real world acceptable boring life...one you never thought you would have. 

I wanted to be an actress when I was younger, the idea of making a career out of being someone other than yourself was appealing to me, someone who never liked themselves all that much in the first place. 

I lived life believing that one day, I would be someone important. Living in a dream world, doing things that made me happy. 

Instead I barely made it through High School due to this crippling depression. Can't make it out of college (again in part to the sadzies) and now I'm working this shit job (which I've been at for 2 years and have yet to get a promotion despite numerous promises from my boss), drowning in credit card debt and medical bills, can't pass the damn driving test despite 6+ attempts, no friends, a boyfriend who doesn't even want to be with me and I find myself online looking for another job to pay off this ridiculous hospital bill that my crap insurance won't cover because apparently I didn't get Pre-approved for it? (I wan fucking dying, when the fuck should I have asked for approval?) 

I'm still living with my parents, who are fucking sick of me and remind me at every turn that they want me gone. 

Experiencing the worst of the worst in mental health care because I can't find a new doctor to take me on. 

My credit is fucked for some reason. 

I have all these problems. I'm sick of dealing with. I wish I could just die in my sleep, because I lack the bravery and decisiveness to actually kill myself. 

My reasons for living are very limited. 

I don't know what to do. The burn of existing with all these resonsibilites and pressures that a healthy person would have trouble with, completely swallows me whole. I don't know what to do. 

Falling and Failing

Yeah it's been a while.
Sorry I've been too busy trying not to drown in my depression.

Wanna know something weird. I often compare my depression to a 'black wave of sadness', and my struggles as 'drowning'...in real life, I can't swim. Nope. I cannot swim. My mother took my to the YMCA as a youngster to learn, but I just got so anxious at the very sight of water that I never actually retained any of the lessons.

Kind of like with me and driving.

I just kind of fail. I get anxious and I fail to do anything right.

Life is (still) a bit sucky right now.

Broke. Still lonely. Not single though, still have the boyfriend. He's not handling my depression very well. It makes him sad then he gets mad at me. Sorry for having emotions.

Next month will be our 1 year anniversary. Ask him. He didn't think we would last 365 days. He thought we would break up over our prominent cultural and religious differences MONTHS AGO. But we didn't. Sometimes he will just look at me and say 'I'm in love with you." and everything gets a little brighter in my pit of sadness and despair.

Oh yeah, and I'm quitting smoking...so I'm an anxious pile of knots and I just want to slap everyone. It's for the best though.

The Good Girl

I always try to be a good person, above anything.

Being a good person, a good woman, a good girlfriend, a good student, a good worker and a good daughter isn't as easy as it should be.

What must it be like to be bad?

Does it mean you just don't care anymore so you just do what you feel like doing?

Well, I just don't care anymore. I don't know what I feel like doing. I'm not going to go on a nationwide killing spree and knock over a few 7-11's on my way. I'm not going to cheat on my boyfriend (even though he's being a real asshole and I'm thinking about why I'm with him anyway).

I keep trying to think of the worst things I've ever done. They aren't all that bad. The ones I feel like I can admit freely without judgement.

So I've smoked a little weed. It doesn't keep me as relaxed as I would like to be. When I smoke alone I end up freaking out and getting really anxious. So I don't smoke that often.

I used to steal a lot when I was younger. I liked to have things. Didn't have any money to buy them. I took them. Yeah, I shouldn't have, but to be honest I never felt all that guilty about it.

I think the worse thing I ever did was when I was dating this guy when I was 19. It was my first real relationship. I thought I was in love. He was lazy, homeless and didn't have a job. He also couldn't preform sexually. I don't know why, he just couldn't. After 4 months I had it. So I broke up with him for 3 weeks. In that 3 week break I slept with my ex-boyfriend. I feel like I cheated even though we were officially broken up. Ex-boyfriend ended up breaking my heart anyway and I ran back to the lazy boyfriend because I didn't want to be alone. That's the worst thing I've ever done. The whole time we were broken up, he was still calling me, saying he loved me and would be there for me when I was ready. He was under this illusion that I was just being overly emotional and unstable. But the whole time I was screwing someone else. I don't know why I did that.

Now that I'm in another relationship, my past sins haunt me.

Me and the current boyfriend have been dating for 10 months now and I can tell you I am madly in love. I love him. I really do. He makes me feel things I didn't think I could. Emotions I didn't know I had. I love him so much, just thinking of  having to live without him makes me want to die. But I might have to. Boyfriend is originally from Pakistan. He is Muslim. It's his cultural and religious obligation to spend the rest of his life with someone who is Pakistani and Muslim like him. I think it's a load of bullshit. He loves me. Why can't he be with me?

His parents want to arrange a marriage between him...and his cousin. He's 23 now he he 'needs' to get married. To someone who his family accepts. I am not that person.

Call me crazy but I would marry him tomorrow if he asked me. I would become a Muslim, I would learn to speak Urdu. I would take care of him and he would take care of me. But thats not going to happen. He thinks that if our relationship was to go any farther than it is, his family would shun him.

I have managed to love every part of him. It's like his love for me has conditions. I love you BUT you aren't Muslim. I love you BUT you're black, you aren't even Indian, I could never introduce you to my whole family.

It hurts like hell.

Lately he has been pulling away more and more because he doesn't want it to hurt so bad when he inevitably breaks it off to marry is stupid cousin.

I know it will hurt. I don't know why I am even in this relationship. Maybe the longer we stay together the longer I have to convince him that he could be with me? Or it would just be even more painful when it comes to an end. I don't know what to do.

I'm not good enough for him.

Am I Crazy?

Maybe I'm too emotionally invested.

Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I'm hopeless.

Like a penny with a hole in it.

I am in love. That's what it is. Love.

With someone who loves me.

But because of our cultural differences, he has set up this emotional barrier. A Chinese wall. So that WHEN we break it off (not IF, but WHEN), it won't hurt as much because we both knew this point would come.

Knowing this I still went all in. I put all my emotional eggs in this emotional basket and the thought of them breaking makes me want to die.

I can't live without him. I don't want to. I will be less of a person without him because he will take half of me when he leaves.

I can't face that moment.

Prepare all you want for the storm, it doesn't mean it will rain less.