jennywords

[jennywords]

I’ve let demons eat me inside out. I have become defined by my depression. It’s going to take a long time to come out of this and to rebuild my life from nothing but I hold onto the tiny bit of strength I have. It’s going to be a long and lonely ride, I just hope I don’t crash along the way.

[jennywords]

I’m so sick of the bad days and don’t know what to do with the good ones

CW: mental health, depression, anxiety, like lots of it

badly summed up, seriously just frighteningly dark and boring and awful. I don’t know why I’m writing all this and why its public but here we go

Maybe someone will read it and come along and solve all of my problems all at once (obvs not), maybe it’s another form of shouting into the void in a therapeutic way. Maybe I’ll find someone who can relate and make me feel a bit better about it all?

Whatever reason it is, I’m writing it down because I don’t really know what else to do anymore . I’ve been trapped in these feelings for a some time now. Mental illness is literally one of the worst things I’ve ever experienced. Depression and anxiety has eaten me from inside to out so many times. I can’t remember the last time I made an effort with make up/physical appearance and felt good about it. Mental illness is starting your days at 3pm, it’s questioning everything you’ve ever done to help you grow as a person feel utterly pointless. It’s sitting in group settings of people to drown out your own thoughts but not having anything to say. It’s believing that there is no point in achieving in anything because someone else who is more confident, happier, prettier, less lonely will be achieving those dreams already and taking the place you will never get.

I can’t remember the last time I truly felt like I loved myself or did something I really enjoyed, or really connected with someone, or came home and felt like I had a successful day. I have spent so many days bedridden and wallowing in self pity. I’ve tried hard to not feel isolated but I am isolated almost all of the time. I’ve moved to a city and I’ve tried to meet people and even though it has been sometimes a little bit successful, it takes a lot of energy to do. I’m also afraid to do this with complete confidence because I don’t know which part of me I should introduce people to. The fear that soon they’ll realise that they’ve met someone that carries no identity and just leave me (as it feels most people who have come into my life have done). It’s lovely meeting new people but having no roots or basis with them makes it harder to maintain or have easy going friendships where you have shared experience and nostalgia that ties you together. It’s having to start again, talking to confident people with separate lives in which you try to share and join with each other but it can be so utterly hard. I’ve lost true connection and contact with almost everyone I know including past family connections. 

And I realise I spend most of my time not even being around people which it’s dangerous because then you are left entirely to yourself and your own thoughts.  Mental illness makes you feel so self-absorbed almost all of the time. Your own thoughts, as they say, can be your worse enemy. It’s like they’re holding an axe and every time I am alone it chips away at me bit by bit. I’ve worn away and feel like a shell of a person. I don’t want to do anything I enjoy anymore and when I do, I don’t have the attention span for it. I only have enough attention span to mindlessly scroll through the internet, hour after hour, and seeing everyone I know on the internet having a greater/better time in life than I am with their friends and their family, whilst I am left here thinking what the hell have I done to deserve what feels like having no one in my life. I know people care and that people are looking out for me but if when I sit with people for a while, I’d have no clue what to say, how to interact, how to be “myself”, whatever that is. Loneliness is dangerous. Most people avoid trying to stay away from danger, physical danger, mental danger… but how do you avoid loneliness? How do you avoid it destroying you? It’s so pervasive that silence in your mind is the only peace you can have. But then anxiety creeps in again… and when I am with people, how do I communicate knowing that the only communication I’ve done is with myself about the same stupid, draining shit for days on end. I am the only person I can talk to and it’s hard when its only dialogue is negative 80% of the time. And when I remember some of the good times I’ve had in life, I just feel a sense of nostalgia, followed by a short stab of sadness that I have let myself come to this point where none of those good times make sense in my head anymore. I watch people in crowds, and families together, friends together and desperately wish I was part of it, just any of it, doesn’t matter. 

I want to be creative and be surrounded by fun loving creative, open, intelligent people. I want to have a great time with people I’m closest with. I want to feel like I’m really laughing and talking about everything and nothing with people I love. I want to be loved and I want to love other people deeply. I want to spend my time exploring places and meeting people and doing normal things like going for food and sitting in parks and doing standard shit that people do. I want to not have spent most of my days stuck inside because I am too afraid to go outside for long periods of time. Many have said that this will past but how long do I have to wait? What do I do to change things? I am living a life in such a way that is completely not how I wanted it to be or intended it to be. On days where I feel like things could be different, I am suddenly attacked with deep pangs in my stomachs and my mind telling me that there’s no point. I think I used to be fun loving and lovely and and had loads of goals but I think am neither and have none now. And when I try to set goals for where I want to be in life, I kind of figured that it is pretty unattainable. I never thought I’d be 21 and feel this empty and alone. sometimes I feel like I must just be living in a story or a nightmare and this reality I am living isn’t really real. 

This whole post will probably make things worse because admitting to people that you really are at rock bottom, a very deep rock bottom, can only come with it a sense of humiliation and pity from others. So I’m sorry if you know me and you’re reading this. I don’t know what to do anymore. (apart from get help which there is fuck all of).  It’s all very bleak and a bit pathetic isn’t it. Sorry. I just never expected to be this sad ever. 

[jennywords]

Perhaps it’s quite self indulgent to start a blog. Why does anyone need an online platform to which they document their thoughts and feelings? I know blogging is popular but it’s weird that it’s a very popular thing to care or think about what other people are thinking. Why do I need a space to write how I feel or what I care about? Couldn’t I just chat to people around me about what I care about? Or maybe I’m thinking too much into it.... I guess it occured to me that I have spent hours, days even, mindlessly clicking buttons on my computer, idly reading information about everything, consuming, taking in but shitting out the information and forgetting that I had even read it or even thought about this topic or thing in the first place. I do this with conversations I have too. Stability and focus is something I hugely lack in my life right now. When people ask me ‘what do I care about?’ I want to reply with ‘I guess music, art, anything creative?’ but if you sat me down I could tell you that I couldn’t really tell you anything about any of these things. I just like them. I just consume them and forget about them. I am a consumerist of information but I don’t take time to really think about the illustrations I see on instagram, or the song I listened to once on a random playlist suggested to me on spotify. Maybe that’s okay too... sometimes enjoying things for that moment in time is OK, good even. But my sense of identity is very fleeting when I realise I couldn’t really tell you anything about anything, not really. I love lots of things but my passion for ‘lots of things’ comes in dribs and drabs. I click, I read, I forget. It becomes easy like eating and shitting. Maybe no purpose will come out of this blog but that isn’t going to stop me from making one. So welcome to my blog, stranger. Welcome to nothing and a little bit of everything? Most probably the former

[jennywords]

I wake up again, waiting to be bought a train ticket to Scotland, maybe to the highlands, or to a rural village in Spain. But it doesn’t have to be far. Just far enough to forget that where I am doesn’t really exist. I want someone to tell me about their favourite trees, or their favourite thing about the breeze. Their parents. Their history. Please don’t expect me to say anything back. I am a good listener. My story isn’t worth hearing, but I have good ears to hear yours. We can walk in silence and take nice photos. We can complain about life, or pass the time with a few jokes. Show me what it’s like to be happy, to be distracted. I want to take a break from looking after myself for a bit.

[jennywords]

In my soul I feel like an orphan. I know nothing about my mum and she knows nothing about me. I’ve pushed aside years of resentment and now all I have is a numbing feeling when I think about us. She knows nothing about me and I know nothing about her. I take her money, food and shelter in exchange for giving her my presence. There’s very few times in my life where I understand my selfishness. But I don’t understand how she doesn’t feel an absence of myself as a person too. How she doesn’t realise that I am not just her doll and I can be more. I am more. Maybe it’s too late to form any real tangible relationship. I am an orphan but with a strange (paradoxical?) feeling of guilt by her just being alive and in my life. 

I yearn for a new mother, another mother. Someone who wakes up and treats me like I’m their child, like they forgotten that I was their child as though they’d forgotten to do their laundry the night before.