Depression Thread IV: Read the first post or...

[Bor the Barbarian Monk]

Manoftyr: The thing is that you are NOT alone. There are plenty of mentally ill people in the world who become depressed over their circumstances. Yes...It sometimes depresses me that I suffer from depression.

Because I can't speak for how you feel, I will give my own prespective. You see, it's hard to see yourself as anything but the disease when you are chronically ill. I often tell people that I'm a diabetic for 35 years. By saying it that way, I am categorizing myself as a disease. But the reality is that I'm a guy who just happens to have diabetes. That's a hard distinction to make. I'm not an illness; I'm a PERSON with an illness.

Once I say I'm a diabetic, people have a degree of understanding when it comes to my disabilities. Most people know someone with diabetes. (And I just love when they respond with, "My (insert relation) died from diabetes." Gee...Thanks. Was that meant to be a pep talk?) My friends and family understand diabetes. It's a disease that one can go to a doctor, have blood work done, and show how it's affecting my body.

My depression and PTSD, however, becomes impossible to explain. They don't understand that there's "logic" to my thoughts when I'm off my meds and thoroughly depressed. That is, I can sit and calmly explain why I don't deserve to live, and inside my head it all makes perfect sense. To someone not suffering with my mental illnesses, it sounds like utter lunacy.

A most recent example would be when I tried to explain why I hang on to a degree of anger with my older brother, Michael. He died when I was three years old and he was five. He left me in the position of the eldest son, making me the one that should have been the shining example of what my younger brothers should be. Instead of becoming a doctor or lawyer, or a wealthy anything that my parents could speak of with pride; I am, to the horror of the entire family, a failure in everything I do. And none of them are saying, "You should be more like Rob." (That would be me...Rob...Bor...See what I did there? )

In fact, they kind of see my positives as negatives. I'm too sensative. I'm too caring. I say things like "I love you" and mean them! For this, I am treated like some kind of alien creature on exhibit. It's as though I've committed some kind of crime for having genuine concern. Alternatively, they condemn my youngest brother for not caring at all. And they call me "mentally ill?" They can't even make up their minds as to what's truly good or bad!

Taking what I said about being a person with an illnesses, I am not a slave to my medications. The reality if that the diseases REQUIRE care. Without them, I come undone. If I don't take my insulin, I could die. The same applies to my psych meds, because without them I could do something very foolish. It becomes a seemingly feeble argument of semantics, but *I* don't need the medications; my ILLNESSES need them. Without my meds, my illnesses represent a danger to my very being.

So to your friend who condemned you for being a slave to your medications, I would say she wasn't much of a friend. Just when you needed the love and support of a friend, she turned her back on you, and that was no way to treat someone she supposedly cared about.

And here's the thing that gets me. I have had "real life" friends feed me excuses as to why they couldn't come to my aid, or treat me as some kind of lesser being for having needs. But here at GitP, I have found people of the highest quality. I have received more care and love from an online comminuty than the friends and family I've known for decades offline.

You are NOT alone, Manoftyr. None of us can know EXACTLY how you feel, but some of us can understand to our own extent. And if venting makes you feel better, feel free to come back here and do it more often.

[HellfireLover]

Hi, Manoftyr:

Read your wee rant and just wanted to say: although we may not have exactly the same situation, I do empathize. I know how it feels to have something that no-one around you seems to take seriously or even recognize as a problem you cannot control. I've been dismissed as 'giving up' or 'looking for a excuse to stop trying'. The truth is, if you have an abnormal mental process, you live with it every day, and cope with it every day (with the help of whatever you can muster), and people, even friends, who see you function on a daily basis on a social level DO NOT understand that there are times when we struggle with our own selves and feel like nothing works and that nothing is worth the hassle. All they see is a person who functions relatively normally most of the time and they make the decision that, because we are not in a constant state of tooth-gnashing, quivering incapability, we must somehow be exaggerating what we face, or even downright lying. The strength we all have is that we choose to get up in the mornings and face that problem, whatever it may be; and make the choice not to let that one problem define us. That takes courage.

As for being alone… I have the same problem. I just don’t trust people. I can’t let anyone get too close, because for me, closeness is equal to betrayal. The people I have trusted have never failed to let me down. I feel like there is no-one who knows the me that’s deep inside, because I have secrets that I have guarded from even my own family for over ten years now, for fear that some of the secrets might hurt those closest to me. Some of my experiences are impossible for others to comprehend, and more than once I’ve tried to discuss them and people don’t want to know.

You are never truly alone though, if someone is here to offer an empathic ear and a virtual hug. It may not help much, but there are people who may come closer to understanding you than you think.

[Gem Flower]

Short venting. Again. *sigh*

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I really thought I was getting better. I really did. But no. The depression monster struck again. I took a knife, and cut myself. Again. Then I lay on my bed and cried for two hours. And now I'm scared that my mother will be mad at me again. *cries*

[Dallas-Dakota]

It's gonna be alright.
And if it isn't, we're just gonna have to make it gonna be alright, got that?
*hugs*

Just remember, you've got us, we care about you, we don't want you getting hurt. Please?
*hugs*

Ps. Could you clear your PM box a little, I tried sending a PM, but the forum thingy is saying it's full...

[Gem Flower]

Thanks DD. I appreciate your never-ending support for my issues. *hugs*

PS: Done

EDIT: Pyrian:Thank you. *hugs*

[Pyrian]

*HUGS* for Gem Flower!

[Ego Slayer]

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I feel like dying. That's all.

"Oh, but Ego... so many other people feel the same way. Get over it."

Yeah, well bull-effin' ****.

Maybe it's just a bad day, and I'm on very little sleep, and I've hardly eaten in the past two weeks... But I've spent the last two hours crying and my head hurts so bad now I'm starting to feel nauseous. And I don't know how to make anything stop.

Every day...every ****ing day I can't not think about how I'm a day closer to death. I feel like I have no more than two months left, at most. I'm not sure I even want to die... but I'd to be the one to carry it out, nonetheless. I can't live here. I can't live anywhere.

Doesn't anyone ever stop to consider that maybe I'm not the one who is ****ed up? No, God help you. If you can't accept and live in the world you were born into, then there's something wrong with you. It makes me angry. It makes me want to scream and be violent.

There's nothing in my immediate life that I enjoy enough to make me feel okay. I'm bored and alone day in and out and there's nothing for me here. Maybe there's a few people I don't want to leave, but that's selfishness and guilt. There was never anything anyone could say that ever made anything better for more than a moment.

[Manoftyr]

@Bor: thanks, that really helped a lot and helped put into perspective that I'm not defined by my paranoia or schizophrenic tendencies but as someone who suffers from such things, believe it or not reading you tell me that really, really helped a lot and did a ton of good towards putting things in a healthier perspective. I'm not by nature a very talkative or expressive person so I tend to lurk around on forums quite a bit and post only seldomly, but...I just may take you up on that and post here a little more often; it's comforting to know that there's a place on the internet where I can express these kinds of things without being immediately considered outright insane.

@Hellfire: that's exactly how I feel when it comes to my own friends, since they usually see the 'collected' me and not the, as you put it state of 'tooth-gnashing, quivering incapability' they don't really understand what I'm going through and dealing with on a daily basis. And, when they actually 'do' see me in that state where my sicknesses are getting the better of me they don't at all know what to make of it and are just like 'dude man, snap out of it' without understanding it isn't that damned simple and I'm dealing with this crap *constantly* and these are in fact moments where it gets the better of me rather than anomalies.

You said 'there are people who may come closer to understanding you than you think', well; maybe you're right.

[Neko Toast]

Well, like I said earlier in the Random Banter Thread, I had an emotional breakdown at a friend's house the other day. I feel "better", now, if you could call it that. I still feel sad without an explanation as to why. One friend tried comforting me by massaging my back and saying things that she hoped would help me feel better, but... I hated that. It made me feel like withdrawing even more. She's one of my best friends, but she's not the one I want to talk to when this kind of thing happens.

There is one friend who I can talk to. I sent him an email, explaining myself and asking him to respond once he read it. Unfortunately, he's notorious for not checking email, at least during the summer. I probably won't see him until Monday at the earliest, and I'm not sure that I could hold my composure if I just told him straight out, thus the purpose of the email. I don't know what to do... He's the only one I really want to talk to right now, and I can't...

[Bor the Barbarian Monk]

*cracks knuckles* Okay...Looks like several people are in crisis. Let's see what we can do.

Gem Flower:

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O have good news and bad news, my dear. The bad news is that folks with mental illness have a chronic condition. It doesn't go away, and so you're going to have to expect ups and downs. Would we prefer it if you never hurt yourself? Of course! But you're probably going to have moments of decline, and it's important that you AND your family realize this. Getting angry at you for having an illness...Well, it doesn't make sense. (On a trip to FL years ago, my father got mad at me for reaching his place and being sick. He was a lot more understanding when I got hom, saw a doctor, and was diagnosed with a genuine illness. Still...He was mad at me?!? )

The good news is that you obviously have friends who care about you and love you. Perhaps we don't understand completely. Perhaps we can't offer help. But we're around to at least TRY and help, as well as offer lots of hugs.

My understanding, as it was told to me by a cutter ages ago, is that cutting is a control issue. People and circumstances hurt, and someone who cuts doesn't like that things beyond their control are bringing emotional pain. As a result, they harm themselves so that THEY gain control over who's dishing out the pain.

So try something different in that regard. Oh, you still get to hurt yourself, but it's not as scarring as cutting. Find a nice, loose rubber band and wear it on your wrists like a bracelet. When the urge to cut comes along, snap the rubber band on your wrist and give yourself a nice stinging ache. Only a few times, my dear. Repeating it too much might end up creating a genuine wound. There's a part of me that cringes at the idea of making this suggestion, but it's better to deal with a red spot on your skin and the sting of the snapped rubber band than having scars that mar an otherwise beautiful person. (And how can you NOT be beautiful? You're a gem and a flower! )

Aside from that suggestion, I feel you really should consult a doctor. When the urge to harm yourself keeps winning, it's time to seek a professional. We'll still be here for you, but please, please, please talk to a doctor.

And now, along with everyone else...*HUGS!*

Ego Slayer: I hope there's room in your PM box, as I'm gonna try to talk to you there.

Manoftyr:

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You do what makes you comfortable. Plenty of people come here and unload their woes, but I must stress that you are not OBLIGATED to do so. If it helps, that's great. But if things reach a point where it's beyond your capacity to handle on your own, DO NOT HESITATE to seek professional help. Doing so doesn't make you weaker...if anything, it denotes the strength to recognize that you are reaching a point of illness where you know it's beyond your control, and people will feel that much better when they see you acknowledging your symptoms.

As for "being immediately considered outright insane," it helps when you talk to someone who also copes with mental illness. While I often have little pride in myself, I do manage to have pride in some of the things I do. I like to think that the creation of this thread is one of those things, as it is a place where people can come and unload whatever it is that's on their minds. It's called "the Depression Thread," but any and all with psychological issues are welcome to come along and vent.

I also like to think that I raised the level of awareness of mental illness. For a long time, I dismissed those with mental illness as being "crazy," "loony," and all sorts of other unpleasant monikers. Then I was officially diagnosed with severe recurring depression, and I came to the realization that I was among a large community of people who are SERIOUSLY mentally ill. This isn't a "case of the blues," where one is upset over a break-up or a fight with a friend. We're talking about a mental state where life can appear to be absolutely WONDERFUL to an observer, but the person who still has everything manages to remain emotionally mired in depression. The mentally ill can't just "snap out of it," and I have just the story for an example.

I was living with my girlfriend of the time, Robin, and I'd spoken to my PCP about a depression I couldn't seem to shake. (This was before my official diagnosis.) He suggested I try a new anti-depressant that he had samples of, and sent me home with instructions on how to take them.

Three days a week, Robin would go to college after a full day of work, leaving me to make dinner, or at least prepare for her to do the cooking. (She had plenty of jokes about my own cooking that she didn't always trust me.) So after I saw the doctor, I picked her up at work, she dropped me off at home, and went to school, knowing that I would be taking my new medication when I was settled inside.

Before I go on, you should know that we lived directly across the street from a market. I was still fit back then, so it was a very short and easy walk to pick up any food we might need.

Robin came home from school to find me in bed, in the fetal position, absolutely hysterical with tears. Word-for-word, here's what was said.

Robin: (almost panicking) Oh my G-d, Rob! What's wrong?!?
Me: (trying to catch my breath, tears streaming down my cheeks) We...we don't have enough bread crumbs for dinner!
Robin: (gently caressing my head) Oh, honey...You're PMSing.

True story. And it was just one dose of those wacky pills did it to me! Amusing in retrospect, but terrifying in that moment.

So...I'm going to stop rambling there. I'm glad reading said ramblings has helped. You come back any time you feel you need to.

Slayer Draco:

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What are you talking about? I check my e-mail every day!

Seriously, my dear...you have plenty of friends here, even though you may not be very close to them. We're around whenever you need us, although it may take us time to reply from time to time. Most of us try to keep open space in our PM boxes, so I leave it to you as to whom you choose to write. Meanwhile, try to hang in there until you can talk to your confidant. In fact, here are a couple of *HUGS!* Use one now, and keep the other in your pocket for emergencies.

[Pyrian]

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I feel like dying. That's all.

"Oh, but Ego... so many other people feel the same way. Get over it."

Yeah, well bull-effin' ****.

Maybe it's just a bad day, and I'm on very little sleep, and I've hardly eaten in the past two weeks... But I've spent the last two hours crying and my head hurts so bad now I'm starting to feel nauseous. And I don't know how to make anything stop.

Every day...every ****ing day I can't not think about how I'm a day closer to death. I feel like I have no more than two months left, at most. I'm not sure I even want to die... but I'd to be the one to carry it out, nonetheless. I can't live here. I can't live anywhere.

Doesn't anyone ever stop to consider that maybe I'm not the one who is ****ed up? No, God help you. If you can't accept and live in the world you were born into, then there's something wrong with you. It makes me angry. It makes me want to scream and be violent.

There's nothing in my immediate life that I enjoy enough to make me feel okay. I'm bored and alone day in and out and there's nothing for me here. Maybe there's a few people I don't want to leave, but that's selfishness and guilt. There was never anything anyone could say that ever made anything better for more than a moment.

*HUGS* for Ego, too. ...What do you need, darlin'?

[Hell Puppi]

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I feel like dying. That's all.

"Oh, but Ego... so many other people feel the same way. Get over it."

Yeah, well bull-effin' ****.

Maybe it's just a bad day, and I'm on very little sleep, and I've hardly eaten in the past two weeks... But I've spent the last two hours crying and my head hurts so bad now I'm starting to feel nauseous. And I don't know how to make anything stop.

Every day...every ****ing day I can't not think about how I'm a day closer to death. I feel like I have no more than two months left, at most. I'm not sure I even want to die... but I'd to be the one to carry it out, nonetheless. I can't live here. I can't live anywhere.

Doesn't anyone ever stop to consider that maybe I'm not the one who is ****ed up? No, God help you. If you can't accept and live in the world you were born into, then there's something wrong with you. It makes me angry. It makes me want to scream and be violent.

There's nothing in my immediate life that I enjoy enough to make me feel okay. I'm bored and alone day in and out and there's nothing for me here. Maybe there's a few people I don't want to leave, but that's selfishness and guilt. There was never anything anyone could say that ever made anything better for more than a moment.

Oooookkkkaayyy....I'm really really bad at this, just so you know, the whole 'comfort' thing. It's nothing against you, I just stink at it.
I just wanted to say something because I've felt exactly like that before. I know it's not exactly how you feel, as no one could feel that. You have your own unique situation in which no one before and no one after will have ever been in. I respect that. I don't think hollow words will really help because sometimes all you need is time, or to come upon the right set of words.
For me it was 'be the change you wish to see in the world'.
Yeah, I know, corny but it helped me because I'm not exactly fond of this world and wanted either to blow it up or make it go away somehow. I know it seems kind of fruitless but I decided to change my situation and look at the things that were bugging me. Is there people that you don't like? Are you sleeping well? Eating well? Maybe your environment is bringing you down and you need to change it somehow?
Maybe you need to change things up, stay busy, or feel like you're doing something. Maybe volunteering somewhere, doing some busy work or maybe doing something silly like learning to cook something new?
Or heck, maybe all you need is time. I don't know you're exact situation but sometimes that's really all it takes to go from hurting so bad you want to rip your own heart out to looking at a situation in a new way and everything suddenly coming into focus.
Just give yourself room to feel miserable if you need to. This too shall pass, if you choose to weather it.

Okay, I gotta stop. I feel horribly cliche and off the mark, but hopefully something had some resonance.

[Neko Toast]

Slayer Draco:

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What are you talking about? I check my e-mail every day!

Seriously, my dear...you have plenty of friends here, even though you may not be very close to them. We're around whenever you need us, although it may take us time to reply from time to time. Most of us try to keep open space in our PM boxes, so I leave it to you as to whom you choose to write. Meanwhile, try to hang in there until you can talk to your confidant. In fact, here are a couple of *HUGS!* Use one now, and keep the other in your pocket for emergencies.

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The hugs are appreciated.

I still can't help but feel bad about what happened, mostly when I was telling my friend to leave me alone. She meant well, and was worried, but I just hated it. She's not the one I could, nor wanted, to talk to. Is... does this make me a bad person? Is it bad that I should deny comfort when it's offered to me?

And the waiting... It's crushing me. I might see him on Monday, but other people will be over. We always hang out in a group. I want to talk alone, but I can't just pull him away when a bunch of us are hanging out. Rrrgh, I just don't know what to do.

[MethosH]

I think this thread needs this

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Also... @Ego Slayer

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01000101-01110101-00100000-01100101-01101110-01110100-01100101-01101110-01100100-01101111-*

*I'm totally serious.

[Bor the Barbarian Monk]

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The hugs are appreciated.

I still can't help but feel bad about what happened, mostly when I was telling my friend to leave me alone. She meant well, and was worried, but I just hated it. She's not the one I could, nor wanted, to talk to. Is... does this make me a bad person? Is it bad that I should deny comfort when it's offered to me?

And the waiting... It's crushing me. I might see him on Monday, but other people will be over. We always hang out in a group. I want to talk alone, but I can't just pull him away when a bunch of us are hanging out. Rrrgh, I just don't know what to do.

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My dear, if you were a "bad person," you wouldn't even ask. You be just fine with your behavior, even if you hurt your friend's feelings.

I'm fond of "explaining without excusing." In other words, don't act as though an explanation to your friend will make it okay for you to behave a certain way. Explain it, say that your explanation doesn't excuse your behavior, and then apologize. Let your friend know that you ultimately appreciate her efforts, but in your mental state at the time, it wasn't helping. Give her an affectionate squeeze of the hand, or a hug, or whetever will help the situation, and make sure that she understands you didn't mean to shoot her down...it's just that the stress of the situation was more than you could bear, and while she had the best intentions, the results weren't what she was looking for.

As for the trusted friend...Well, you CAN just pull him aside and talk. That's what friends are for. And if people can't understand that, then they aren't very good friends to start with.

But I'm going to top this off with a PM to you. Here's hoping your PM box is open.

[Nano]

Wow, I've spent the last hour complaining about everything to someone, and coming here, I still don't know what to write. Even so, this post has been a long time coming - Ever since I found the Depression thread over a year ago I've written up posts and half posts almost weekly, trying to figure out how to get out... whatever it is that's troubling me so constantly. I've never managed it completely or really even partially before, so I never posted, but... now I NEED to.

For the past few (days? weeks? months?) I've been getting even more bitter, angry and depressed, without ANY clear explanation. It's disturbing, not knowing why, almost like I was walking just fine even with all of this crap on my shoulders for the past sixteen years, and now suddenly the floor's disappeared and I'm just falling and falling with no sign of slowing down. I'm angry at the few friends I had (and am losing), I'm angry at people I don't know, I'm angry at anyone and everyone I see who is happy or sad or... anything. It's funny, because today one of my best and only friends here on GitP or anywhere blocked me from all of her chat programs - I had freaked out over it before, the last time she did it, so she knows it was exactly the perfect way to make everything a hundred times worse, and yet it was perfectly justified.

The weird thing about being so angry and scornful is that in all my life I never can summon up any passion save for when I've happened upon a particularly crushable individual. I'm not going to scream and throw things because... Whatever is happening in the emotional center of my brain just does not translate to anything else. This has the effect of filling my mind with these absolutely horrid, rancid, rancorous thoughts about everything, almost to bursting but never quite there because I simply don't have the capacity to burst. I'm smothering myself in my own damn baseless angst. Today isn't the first time that this has been particularly strong... It's been the worst day in a series of bad days, and I have the biggest headache, I'm feeling so weak in all my limbs, and my gut is just twisting itself into knots. I actually had to get out of the shower earlier because I was sure I was going to pass out - I was leaning against the wall, scalding hot water pelting me, my eyes shut, and it would have just been so easy to slip away out of consciousness. But I don't even have the faintest twitch of the lips into a frown, I'm not clenching my fists, I'm not crying - I haven't done any of that in the longest time, not since I was a child crying because I didn't have my turn with the videogames in time. And I can just tell that it's only going to get worse. I'm not going to eventually shut down, I'm not going to one day panic and start whimpering and sobbing, I'm not going to start screaming at people and throwing the dishes around the kitchen. What I will do is sit, and think, and think, and endure everything because all I know how to do is grin and bear it.

My feelings and emotions, they're fake. I know that sounds particularly odd, I guess, but it's true - If they aren't to start with, it swiftly becomes that way. What happens is, something depressing or irritating or whatever occurs, I'll go through about half a minute of the proper emotion before my brain takes a step back and goes, "Hey *******, you're just doing that 'cause it's what you're SUPPOSED to. You're not really sad. Suck it up!" It sounds stupid, but it's led to, whenever I feel anything, I take a step back and look at things (particularly, what I'm thinking at the time) objectively, which is... I'm sure part of what's caused not being able to step -forward- again and feel things. It's... tiring.

I'm incredibly lonely during the day. I haven't left my home for more than a few minutes at a time all summer, except to go to the pool that one time. I used to have more friends, or at least people to talk to, but one way or another they're just not there anymore. The result is me struggling to get through the day alone - Even if I'm incredibly bad at it, it turns out I'm a social creature, at least a little bit. Or at least I just got used to having people around to talk to over the last couple years, I'm not sure.

There's a Tool concert I'm going to, this Friday, which a couple months ago was cause for joy and celebration, because the band is easily my favourite. There're problems, though - The concert will likely have (A number I pulled randomly out of my ass) ten thousand or more people, and rather than going with one of my friends from GitP like I planned on, I'm now going with some members of my extended family that I've hardly ever spoken with. I have problems being around more than three or four people at one time, and now I'm going to San Antonio to hang around ten thousand people I don't know, and now I don't even have a friend to bring with me!

[Pernix]

I was going to gripe about not being able to find a job and being out of bogies, but I guess I won't.

Say Nano, would you like to be mailed pictures of kittens playing?

[Nano]

Had one curled up in my lap not three minutes ago, and there's thousands and thousands of them just outside.

Or ten.

[Recaiden]

I'm really sorry Nano. I wish that I could do something for you.

[Dallas-Dakota]

I was going to gripe about not being able to find a job and being out of bogies, but I guess I won't.

Say Nano, would you like to be mailed pictures of kittens playing?

3: YOUR PROBLEMS, WHATEVER THEY MAY BE, ARE NO BETTER OR WORSE THAN ANYONE ELSE'S! No matter how often it's repeated, someone always comes along and writes an approximation of, "My problems are petty and stupid and not worth posting." If such a statement were even vaguely true, your problems wouldn't be problems at all. Contemplating suicide? We're here to help. Strained relations within your family that are causing you to burn out? We're here to help. Your favorite MMO is being revamped in such a way that's it's causing an emotional meltdown? We are STILL here to help.

So post your problems if you want to, please.

[Moonshadow]

So, I think having most of the last 2 weeks off from work has helped a little bit.... though now I have even less money than usual, but I'm working on that.

However, my mother noticed that I got sort of edgy and hostile when the family caught a train into the city when we were going to the museum, and asked why.

When I told her that I disliked trains because of my ex, she said that maybe I should see a counselor. Which I've been considering anyways, but still

Disassociating memories from things is annoying =/

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The reason why I dislike trains now, is because I used to make weekly trips on a train that took 4 hours there and back to see my now ex, who was abusive and lied about being pregnant and stuff and it turned out horrible, and now the residual memories keep popping up when I don't want them. I dislike the ride in general, though it gets worse when we stop at her station

[Nano]

Slowly updating my post. Should I save RWA and LGBT stuff for their respective threads, or is here fine?

[Bor the Barbarian Monk]

Instant Crisis:

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There comes a time when one wonders what on Earth one is fighting for. Wouldn't it just be easier to surrender and be done with it?

My brother drove up to visit my father last week, and I called my father to find out how the visit went. What started out as a nice conversation rapidly turned into a shouting match, when my father decided to say, "There is something I have to talk to you about, and that's your mother." (My biological mother lives very near to Stu.) "If you don't behave yourself around her, you're going to find yourself out on the street."

Well, isn't that just great. I haven't even moved there, and already I'm receiving threats about "my behavior." It's like these people whom I call family don't even know me. Of everyone I'm related to, I'm "the nice guy." My youngest brother, Barry, is a complete bigot, and my middle brother, Stu, is as apathetic as one can get. And when my father started placing threats over my head, the tears started to flow. Just when I thought I was making a move toward something better in my life, he felt the absolute need to sour it by trying to intimidate me. And as he heard me starting to cry, he responded by trying to shame me. "Oh, don't give me tears over this."

Every ounce of control I hang on to with both hands - white-knuckled - went out the window. I shouted to the point of tearing up my voice. He attempted to use the claim that "I'm the father, and I get to say these things," I shouted, "And I'm the son, and I get to remind you that that woman, of whom I'm ashamed to be the son, is neither human nor humane. She was the same CREATURE who came home to find me overdosed on drugs and my lefy arm caked with blood, only to tell me that I should 'get up, clean up, pack up, and get out.' I shouldn't DARE die in her home; I should die alone and on the street. And now you think I'd actually WANT any kind of contact with that THING?!?

"Oh, that's right! You don't understand that your eldest son is mentally ill! You only understand diabetes, which can be represented with x-rays and blood tests. You don't think about how many times I've been hospitalized for mental illness, because you just don't get it. And I can try to explain until I'm blue in the face, and all you see is the failure and responsibility that I've become. No one wants me around. I'm just some unwanted piece of crap that people think they HAVE TO keep around because they don't know what else to do with me."

Mind you, that was ALL shouted, and my father tried several times to talk over me. There was also quite a bit of "colorful NY language" from the both of us. The above tirade was written to conform to forum rules.

But I was absolutely hysterical, and my poor step-mom tried to take over and talk to me. Unfortunately, things had gone too far. By the time she tried talking to me, I was having a full-blown panic attack, complete with chest pains. I told her as much and hung up, thenimmediately grabbed my anti-anxiety meds and popped a pill to calm me.

But the tears are still flowing. I'm not even wearing my glasses to see the screen right now, because tears keep dripping onto the lenses. I lean forward and squint to seen what I'm writing, then check the keyboard for tears that have landed on it.

The people who should care, don't. The people who don't have to care, do. Foolishly, I asked about how I'm going to ship my computer to TN, and my father acted as though I'd asked him to send me $10,000. And to use his airline miles to get me to TN also seems like a drastic burden, even though it boils down to him spending no money whatsoever.

I'm fighting for so long, so hard. I've been the nice guy for years, now, trying not to let the darker parts of my personality come to the fore. And in the span of five minutes, I've been left with little else but to wonder why. So I can be the thoroughly unproductive human being that I apparently am? So I can be the perpetual burden to friends and family? So I can live a life of panic and fear? So I can live a life beneath poverty and "revel" in that claim?

No...this isn't living. The is exisitng in the worst way. The only step lower would be to become utterly homeless, and that's apparently the next step if my father has things play out the way he imagines them. I've been hanging on to my life by mere threads, and the people who SHOULD love me are making every effort to cut the threads I'm grasping.

Despite these "wonderful" thoughts, I'm off to see my podiatrist. G-d knows I should have healthy, well-groomed feet for when I come back and continue to have my mental breakdown.

[Moonshadow]

Instant Crisis:

Spoiler

Show

There comes a time when one wonders what on Earth one is fighting for. Wouldn't it just be easier to surrender and be done with it?

My brother drove up to visit my father last week, and I called my father to find out how the visit went. What started out as a nice conversation rapidly turned into a shouting match, when my father decided to say, "There is something I have to talk to you about, and that's your mother." (My biological mother lives very near to Stu.) "If you don't behave yourself around her, you're going to find yourself out on the street."

Well, isn't that just great. I haven't even moved there, and already I'm receiving threats about "my behavior." It's like these people whom I call family don't even know me. Of everyone I'm related to, I'm "the nice guy." My youngest brother, Barry, is a complete bigot, and my middle brother, Stu, is as apathetic as one can get. And when my father started placing threats over my head, the tears started to flow. Just when I thought I was making a move toward something better in my life, he felt the absolute need to sour it by trying to intimidate me. And as he heard me starting to cry, he responded by trying to shame me. "Oh, don't give me tears over this."

Every ounce of control I hang on to with both hands - white-knuckled - went out the window. I shouted to the point of tearing up my voice. He attempted to use the claim that "I'm the father, and I get to say these things," I shouted, "And I'm the son, and I get to remind you that that woman, of whom I'm ashamed to be the son, is neither human nor humane. She was the same CREATURE who came home to find me overdosed on drugs and my lefy arm caked with blood, only to tell me that I should 'get up, clean up, pack up, and get out.' I shouldn't DARE die in her home; I should die alone and on the street. And now you think I'd actually WANT any kind of contact with that THING?!?

"Oh, that's right! You don't understand that your eldest son is mentally ill! You only understand diabetes, which can be represented with x-rays and blood tests. You don't think about how many times I've been hospitalized for mental illness, because you just don't get it. And I can try to explain until I'm blue in the face, and all you see is the failure and responsibility that I've become. No one wants me around. I'm just some unwanted piece of crap that people think they HAVE TO keep around because they don't know what else to do with me."

Mind you, that was ALL shouted, and my father tried several times to talk over me. There was also quite a bit of "colorful NY language" from the both of us. The above tirade was written to conform to forum rules.

But I was absolutely hysterical, and my poor step-mom tried to take over and talk to me. Unfortunately, things had gone too far. By the time she tried talking to me, I was having a full-blown panic attack, complete with chest pains. I told her as much and hung up, thenimmediately grabbed my anti-anxiety meds and popped a pill to calm me.

But the tears are still flowing. I'm not even wearing my glasses to see the screen right now, because tears keep dripping onto the lenses. I lean forward and squint to seen what I'm writing, then check the keyboard for tears that have landed on it.

The people who should care, don't. The people who don't have to care, do. Foolishly, I asked about how I'm going to ship my computer to TN, and my father acted as though I'd asked him to send me $10,000. And to use his airline miles to get me to TN also seems like a drastic burden, even though it boils down to him spending no money whatsoever.

I'm fighting for so long, so hard. I've been the nice guy for years, now, trying not to let the darker parts of my personality come to the fore. And in the span of five minutes, I've been left with little else but to wonder why. So I can be the thoroughly unproductive human being that I apparently am? So I can be the perpetual burden to friends and family? So I can live a life of panic and fear? So I can live a life beneath poverty and "revel" in that claim?

No...this isn't living. The is exisitng in the worst way. The only step lower would be to become utterly homeless, and that's apparently the next step if my father has things play out the way he imagines them. I've been hanging on to my life by mere threads, and the people who SHOULD love me are making every effort to cut the threads I'm grasping.

Despite these "wonderful" thoughts, I'm off to see my podiatrist. G-d knows I should have healthy, well-groomed feet for when I come back and continue to have my mental breakdown.

I'm sorry Bor. I really wish I could say or do something to magically fix everything, because I really feel for you If I could do something to help, I would.

Alas, all I can say is that I care, and give you a hug -hugs-

[Hawk7915]

Instant Crisis:

Spoiler

Show

There comes a time when one wonders what on Earth one is fighting for. Wouldn't it just be easier to surrender and be done with it?

My brother drove up to visit my father last week, and I called my father to find out how the visit went. What started out as a nice conversation rapidly turned into a shouting match, when my father decided to say, "There is something I have to talk to you about, and that's your mother." (My biological mother lives very near to Stu.) "If you don't behave yourself around her, you're going to find yourself out on the street."

Well, isn't that just great. I haven't even moved there, and already I'm receiving threats about "my behavior." It's like these people whom I call family don't even know me. Of everyone I'm related to, I'm "the nice guy." My youngest brother, Barry, is a complete bigot, and my middle brother, Stu, is as apathetic as one can get. And when my father started placing threats over my head, the tears started to flow. Just when I thought I was making a move toward something better in my life, he felt the absolute need to sour it by trying to intimidate me. And as he heard me starting to cry, he responded by trying to shame me. "Oh, don't give me tears over this."

Every ounce of control I hang on to with both hands - white-knuckled - went out the window. I shouted to the point of tearing up my voice. He attempted to use the claim that "I'm the father, and I get to say these things," I shouted, "And I'm the son, and I get to remind you that that woman, of whom I'm ashamed to be the son, is neither human nor humane. She was the same CREATURE who came home to find me overdosed on drugs and my lefy arm caked with blood, only to tell me that I should 'get up, clean up, pack up, and get out.' I shouldn't DARE die in her home; I should die alone and on the street. And now you think I'd actually WANT any kind of contact with that THING?!?

"Oh, that's right! You don't understand that your eldest son is mentally ill! You only understand diabetes, which can be represented with x-rays and blood tests. You don't think about how many times I've been hospitalized for mental illness, because you just don't get it. And I can try to explain until I'm blue in the face, and all you see is the failure and responsibility that I've become. No one wants me around. I'm just some unwanted piece of crap that people think they HAVE TO keep around because they don't know what else to do with me."

Mind you, that was ALL shouted, and my father tried several times to talk over me. There was also quite a bit of "colorful NY language" from the both of us. The above tirade was written to conform to forum rules.

But I was absolutely hysterical, and my poor step-mom tried to take over and talk to me. Unfortunately, things had gone too far. By the time she tried talking to me, I was having a full-blown panic attack, complete with chest pains. I told her as much and hung up, thenimmediately grabbed my anti-anxiety meds and popped a pill to calm me.

But the tears are still flowing. I'm not even wearing my glasses to see the screen right now, because tears keep dripping onto the lenses. I lean forward and squint to seen what I'm writing, then check the keyboard for tears that have landed on it.

The people who should care, don't. The people who don't have to care, do. Foolishly, I asked about how I'm going to ship my computer to TN, and my father acted as though I'd asked him to send me $10,000. And to use his airline miles to get me to TN also seems like a drastic burden, even though it boils down to him spending no money whatsoever.

I'm fighting for so long, so hard. I've been the nice guy for years, now, trying not to let the darker parts of my personality come to the fore. And in the span of five minutes, I've been left with little else but to wonder why. So I can be the thoroughly unproductive human being that I apparently am? So I can be the perpetual burden to friends and family? So I can live a life of panic and fear? So I can live a life beneath poverty and "revel" in that claim?

No...this isn't living. The is exisitng in the worst way. The only step lower would be to become utterly homeless, and that's apparently the next step if my father has things play out the way he imagines them. I've been hanging on to my life by mere threads, and the people who SHOULD love me are making every effort to cut the threads I'm grasping.

Despite these "wonderful" thoughts, I'm off to see my podiatrist. G-d knows I should have healthy, well-groomed feet for when I come back and continue to have my mental breakdown.

This is sorta a long rant, written late at night, so bear with me...
Bor:

Spoiler

Show

I lurk a lot, so you may or may not remember me. Wyoming kid, wheelchair, bouts of depression and anger over my lot, yadda yadda yadda. I wish I could help you. I feel for you. Just the other day, I felt the same sort of feeling actually. "Why bother? What's the point? What's the point of being good and fair? What's the point of being humble and honest? Why bother even playing this worthless, rigged game?". I felt, as I often do, that life was stupid and painful and no-one would understand...and then I amended that thought.

"Bor would understand", I thought. I do that a lot, on bad days. I hope that doesn't come off as creepy...but when I feel like surrendering to life, I always remember that you've survived worse, and help people to boot. And I fight a little harder.

Why do it, Bor? Because you inspire us all. You've saved countless people here, and you've made countless more (like me) keep fighting when we might have just given up. You are a hero in the purest sense: a man who struggles against incredible odds and who takes time out of his day to help others even as he himself suffers. It's not fair, everything you have to go through, and I wish and pray things could be different...but your life is far from meaningless. If I could meet your family and smack some sense into them so they could see that, I would (a dude in a wheelchair, hopping up and down out of it, wielding the pop-off wheel and a cane as weapons would be a pretty epic sight, eh?), but we all see it.

I know you don't really like praise like this, and there's a good chance you are, like me, dismissing this as someone who doesn't know all the bad stuff you've done and you aren't really a saint and etc, etc. And to that I say "BS!". Even if you have done terrible awful things (like, say, be merely human and yell at someone who totally deserves it ) no one could "fake" the generosity, wisdom, and kindness you display here.

So thank you Bor. Thank you for inspiring and saving me, even if you didn't know you did. I wish I could be more help. Alas, all I have is this random rant and a big ol' *HUG*. If you have any ideas on how I could be more helpful, let me know!

[Thanatos 51-50]

Bor:
To try, and probably do so poorly, to help in one of my patented horrible metaphors.
- A man does not lift a sword to defend himself. He lifts it to defend the man to his left and the man to his right. A man does not wear a shield to protect himself. He does it for the man to his left and to his right. A man does not wear armour to preserve himself. He does it so that he may not fail the man to his left and to his right.

...
Yeah, I'm bad at this.

[ChameleonX11]

So, is it bad that i've lost 2 - 3 of my 4 best friends i've ever had, in the span of about 4 weeks?

Moreso, shouldn't I be more upset, rather than just... relieved? Whats that say about me?

[V'icternus]

So, is it bad that i've lost 2 - 3 of my 4 best friends i've ever had, in the span of about 4 weeks?

Moreso, shouldn't I be more upset, rather than just... relieved? Whats that say about me?

That depends... lost them how? Give us a story, and we can work better with that.

As for your releive...

Friends can be a handful. So can family. So can pets. So can anyone you love and want to hold on to. So much so that when they're gone, you feel as if a strain has been lifted off of you.

But maybe I'm not the right person to talk to about emotion related issues...

Luckily, there are a lot of people here with better emotional connections than me. Just hold out a while and let them have a go at making you feel better. All I really have to say is, releif isn't as abnormal as you think it is.

[ChameleonX11]

Spoilered for a wall that I didn't see coming:

Spoiler

Show

Well, the first two were THE best of my friends, one was a guy and one a girl. You've all probably heard this story before, but both of them kinda liked eachother, and since neither of them ever had much luck with finding boy/girlfriends, I decided that it might be good for the two of them to hook up.

So I kick started the process, got them to do something about it rather than wait around and just beat around the bush. They thought it was kinda awkward at first, but they did something that I wasn't expecting, and got very serious, very fast. Naturally, I realized that neither of them would hang out as much as they used to, but what I didn't realize is that they would do nothing buy text eachother when they weren't within 5 feet of eachother, and that did annoy me.

But whatever, no biggie, I can cope with it, its not like they haven't done more irritating things in the past, I'm just over reacting. But everything continued down hill.

They both randomly decided to be pissed at me for no apparent reason, insulting me for no excuse, which can REALLY hurt if they were your best friends, cause they knew ALL of my weak points... It never took long for my self esteem to crumble, but I was always able to hold back the anger that comes so naturally to me, i'm not someone who just throws friends away.

That was January.

4ish weeks ago, while the boyfriend was on vacation, it reached a boiling point after another random attack on my defenses, and I couldn't hold it in... It wasn't a pretty sight. Most of my friends are in awe of how much she has changed in her attitude towards people. But I know that whatever she is, she isn't my friend anymore. And I know that she is going to turn her boyfriend against me when he gets back, just because that the way they are.


As for my other friend... it basically just boiled down to us getting in another, more common, argument, one in which he just completely ignored what I said, ranted and insulted me, then used what I just said to him, to act like he was superior to me in some way.. It really hurt.

My favorite part of this entire thing is that the only one of the people that I can still count on, is the one that I was the least closest with.

[Dallas-Dakota]

Instant Crisis:

Spoiler

Show

There comes a time when one wonders what on Earth one is fighting for. Wouldn't it just be easier to surrender and be done with it?

My brother drove up to visit my father last week, and I called my father to find out how the visit went. What started out as a nice conversation rapidly turned into a shouting match, when my father decided to say, "There is something I have to talk to you about, and that's your mother." (My biological mother lives very near to Stu.) "If you don't behave yourself around her, you're going to find yourself out on the street."

Well, isn't that just great. I haven't even moved there, and already I'm receiving threats about "my behavior." It's like these people whom I call family don't even know me. Of everyone I'm related to, I'm "the nice guy." My youngest brother, Barry, is a complete bigot, and my middle brother, Stu, is as apathetic as one can get. And when my father started placing threats over my head, the tears started to flow. Just when I thought I was making a move toward something better in my life, he felt the absolute need to sour it by trying to intimidate me. And as he heard me starting to cry, he responded by trying to shame me. "Oh, don't give me tears over this."

Every ounce of control I hang on to with both hands - white-knuckled - went out the window. I shouted to the point of tearing up my voice. He attempted to use the claim that "I'm the father, and I get to say these things," I shouted, "And I'm the son, and I get to remind you that that woman, of whom I'm ashamed to be the son, is neither human nor humane. She was the same CREATURE who came home to find me overdosed on drugs and my lefy arm caked with blood, only to tell me that I should 'get up, clean up, pack up, and get out.' I shouldn't DARE die in her home; I should die alone and on the street. And now you think I'd actually WANT any kind of contact with that THING?!?

"Oh, that's right! You don't understand that your eldest son is mentally ill! You only understand diabetes, which can be represented with x-rays and blood tests. You don't think about how many times I've been hospitalized for mental illness, because you just don't get it. And I can try to explain until I'm blue in the face, and all you see is the failure and responsibility that I've become. No one wants me around. I'm just some unwanted piece of crap that people think they HAVE TO keep around because they don't know what else to do with me."

Mind you, that was ALL shouted, and my father tried several times to talk over me. There was also quite a bit of "colorful NY language" from the both of us. The above tirade was written to conform to forum rules.

But I was absolutely hysterical, and my poor step-mom tried to take over and talk to me. Unfortunately, things had gone too far. By the time she tried talking to me, I was having a full-blown panic attack, complete with chest pains. I told her as much and hung up, thenimmediately grabbed my anti-anxiety meds and popped a pill to calm me.

But the tears are still flowing. I'm not even wearing my glasses to see the screen right now, because tears keep dripping onto the lenses. I lean forward and squint to seen what I'm writing, then check the keyboard for tears that have landed on it.

The people who should care, don't. The people who don't have to care, do. Foolishly, I asked about how I'm going to ship my computer to TN, and my father acted as though I'd asked him to send me $10,000. And to use his airline miles to get me to TN also seems like a drastic burden, even though it boils down to him spending no money whatsoever.

I'm fighting for so long, so hard. I've been the nice guy for years, now, trying not to let the darker parts of my personality come to the fore. And in the span of five minutes, I've been left with little else but to wonder why. So I can be the thoroughly unproductive human being that I apparently am? So I can be the perpetual burden to friends and family? So I can live a life of panic and fear? So I can live a life beneath poverty and "revel" in that claim?

No...this isn't living. The is exisitng in the worst way. The only step lower would be to become utterly homeless, and that's apparently the next step if my father has things play out the way he imagines them. I've been hanging on to my life by mere threads, and the people who SHOULD love me are making every effort to cut the threads I'm grasping.

Despite these "wonderful" thoughts, I'm off to see my podiatrist. G-d knows I should have healthy, well-groomed feet for when I come back and continue to have my mental breakdown.

Spoiler

Show

Bor, my heart is literally and in figure, hurting now.
Gods, why did you have to do the worst to the best?
I know, I know, you're not perfect goodie goodie Bor. But you are amazing. You have kept other people in their time of need while you were needing yourself. Please let me beat the crap out of your relatives?
*hugs*
I'm just....Bor, you are a wonderfull person and don't ever forget that.
AND DON'T YOU EVEN DARE THINK ABOUT SUICIDE, BECAUSE IF YOU DO THAT, THEN I'M FOLLOWING JUST SO I CAN WHACK YOUR SENSE BACK INTO YOU! You got that?!
Bor, gods, we care!
*hugs*
Now I want good news...*sniff* Dangit Bor, you deserve better. Stupid world...