#if my depression is bad enough I will not be able to do *anything*

[callyypso]

It is SO FUCKING HARD to figure out what "working hard" looks like when you're disabled.

I want to be a hard worker. I want to learn work ethic. But I HAVE to remember it's going to look different from someone who doesn't live with chronic pain, chronic fatigue, chronic anxiety. There's a difference between laziness and real limitations.

I am in pain all the time. Everything hurts. I have headaches and migraines. My muscles are constantly sore even when I've not exercised. I have constant nerve pain in certain parts of my body that is constant 100% of my waking hours. My feet always hurt. I have a deep tissue skin condition that causes pain. I am always, always, always hurting.

I am tired 100% of the time and honestly? The fatigue is worse than the pain. I would rather have MORE PAIN if it meant I was somehow less tired. The fatigue is so bad I panic when I feel exhausted. When I feel my fatigue getting worse it causes anxiety because I have flashbacks of the days I had to sleep for 2-3 days in a row with no food and only the water I brought with me before crashing. I FEAR exhaustion. Pain is miserable but you can learn to tune it out mostly if you're focused enough on something else. You cannot tune out fatigue. No amount of distraction can pull you away from the despair of being trapped in a body that cannot move the way you need it to because you are simply too exhausted to make it move. Fatigue pulls all focus because you don't have the energy to focus on anything else. When I say I'm exhausted, I don't mean I want to take a nap. I mean that down to my bones, every muscle fiber, down to my fucking eyelids feels soupy and heavy and sapped of whatever life juice keeps them functioning. Exhaustion feels like wakeful death. And sleep doesn't fix it.

I get sick. Constantly. I always either have a fungal infection, or a sore throat, or a nauseous stomach, or a migraine, or SOMETHING. I get sick if I push too hard, even if I had fun. I just went on vacation and spent about 3 days after feeling like I had the flu. My tonsils were red and swollen, I could barely swallow, I had a wet cough, migraine for a week, could barely choke down food. Nobody else got any symptoms. I just get sick because I decided to do something.

On top of the pain, fatigue, and sickness, my brain is a nightmare of anguish. I have a "very severe case" of major depressive disorder that has been treatment resistant since I was a teenager. My head feels like there's constant screaming. I am anxious and fearful of EVERYTHING. There is always noise in my head, screaming in pain and screaming at me that I'm not doing enough, I'm not good enough, I'm an idiot I'm worthless I'm garbage I'm better off dead. I think about suicide obsessively. My brain is a place of torment I am constantly trying to escape.

And then I wonder why it's fucking hard to exist.

Here's the thing: I so, so, so badly want to learn how to work hard. I want to learn how to pour the energy I have into something beautiful. I want to learn how to work hard and take the time and effort to create things that I'm proud of, that can help people feel seen and loved and ease their suffering just a little. It's creation from others that brings me so much joy every day and makes life worth living. I want to create too!

I want to exercise to be physically strong and as able bodied as I can be. I want to be able to cook meals because I love cooking. I want to be able to go for a hike with my dog. I want to spend hours working on something beautiful that makes people feel joy. I want to live a full life. I want to be free.

I have to remember my freedom will still have its shackles. I cannot have a life without chronic pain. I cannot have a life without chronic illness. I cannot have a life without a broken mind.

But if I learn how to work hard, despite all that, maybe I can have something worth it for me.

[tardis--dreams]

I was so concerned with the horrors of making a doctor's appointment and the horrors of finding a job that i completely forgot about the worst horrors of them all. Finding an apartment.

[whoblewboobear]

Knowing that I have to go home after an 8-hour shift at the job I hate to force myself to deep clean the depression nest my room has become while neck deep in the same depressive episode for the past 3 months on top of chronic pain makes me wanna scream like can I just smoke weed and sleep on the couch instead pls?

[theygender]

*checking the tracking information for my package from under a pile of overpriced teas and vitamins* this next herbal supplement will fix me

[satiricaily]

crazy thing abt life is u can have bad day on top of bad day for two weeks nonstop but at the end ur still gonna be writing that exam and attend those driving lessons and permit exam and prepare for that end of year finals and whatever the fuck else bullshit u need to do so like whatever. the bigger picture will never give a shit anyways i just literally need to go through it no other option

[toastsnaffler]

tried going to bed early bc ive just been sitting staring at the wall or my phone all afternoon but it's been 3 hours now and I can't stop crying. :(

[lovsome]

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[gay-michael]

I think my suspensions were correct, the headache meds I take interferes with my sleep meds and causes adverse effects, such as being unable to sleep, being shakey, feeling slightly like shit. atleast I know now, though! imma be bringing it up with my mother

[kindacreepy-kindaugly]

kinda feel like at this point I need to choose between him n everyone else

[macabrevampire]

chat i might be mentally ill ( ↖ guy that's suffered tremendously his entire life and is only getting worse)

[tortademaracuya]

Everyday feels exactly the same and it makes me wonder if there's even a reason to do anything

[virtualgirladvance]

Hi, my name is Lan I'm a 30yo Australian transfem currently living with family. A lot of you know me from this blog or my sideblog , @virtualgirlafterdark , where I'm a funny little robot girl. Unfortunately it's getting harder and harder for me to be that kind of person, and it's affecting both myself IRL (depression, anxiety, isolation, etc) and who I am here. I don't want to beg or take advantage of anyone, but I could really use some help.

Ever since I moved back in with my family this year after a tough breakup and a couple hospital stays, things have gone from bad to worse and I'm worried about my safety and future here. Everyday I'm stuck with abusive people who don't treat me as human, and the threat of violence keeps growing. Today somebody punched a hole in a door, so now we just have a door with a hole in it. I don't know how much longer I can stay here, and I've been looking for a job but haven't found anything due to how remote I am. My disability payments aren't even enough to live in a shared house, let alone by myself, which would be ideal and safer.

If you enjoy my content you can tip me here and I'll be making a fansly/OF soon and continuing to stream on Twitch and potentially other places. I want to do more, but right now it's just so hard because of my environment. I'm in between meds as well which definitely isn't helping and I'm super overwhelmed and having trouble right now.

Please consider helping by reblogging or donating to my Ko-fi

Current goal is $2500 to cover a rental deposit and move somewhere I'll be safe and able to work from.

Thank you so much for reading, I really appreciate it.

[arolesbianism]

Oh baby I've Kanoned unit swap Kohane even worse than than before how the hell am I supposed to explain this one without sounding like I'm losing my mind

[borkborkheresadork]

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[commiefarm]

The mentally ill struggle when you want a pet but you just know that you won’t be able to take care of it regularly

[weaselle]

RECOVERY

I spent a lot of my life depressed without admitting it to myself and then i spent a year so depressed i could hardly make myself do the bare minimum to keep my body alive, and now it's about 3 years since i got up from that lowest point and while i am still struggling with myself things are objectively a lot better.

and i just want to put a couple things i've learned, both to remind myself of how far i've come, and in case any of what i've experienced helps anyone else.

You can't run from the darkness

When you're super depressed it's easy to focus on how much you don't want to be depressed. When everything is darkness you tend to wish you could escape that darkness.

but you can't. The darkness is all around you. You can't run away from it without running deeper into it.

instead, follow the light.

don't think of it as escaping depression, think of it as seeking joy. Don't run away from the darkness, walk toward any lights you can see.

At first it will be very small things. The taste of a food. The way your favorite color looks. A smell you like. For me one of the first things i could find to remind me of joy was the way a warm shower feels.

I would just stand in the shower and lean into the tiny, tiny joy of that feeling. I would describe it to myself, how it felt good, what about it felt good. It didn't cure me, it didn't make me less depressed, but it was a little point of joy to focus on, to breathe into like a tiny candle flame in my darkness.

I would memorize that feeling, so that later, when i felt like nothing ever brought me joy anymore, i could think, no, that's your depression lying to you, you felt joy, however small, right there in the shower just yesterday. And, maybe there is more somewhere else.

Even today, it's been a hard week, i'm feeling a lot of hopeless and helpless feelings clamoring away at me, but... i have spicy soup. And spicy soup is a NEW joy. I found spicy soup joy as i was following any little light i could out of the deepest part of my depression.

I never put hot sauce in soup before then. But today i am drinking the broth of a very spicy soup and as much as everything else is complicated and difficult and scary and dark, there is a bright mote of joy in this sip of spicy soup. And in the next one. And the next. I enjoy it, i love it, all the more that it is new, and if i had given up four years ago, i never would have known this small joy, this new favorite tiny thing.

Who knows what other little joys i may find?

If you have come to a place in life where you have lost the knowledge of how to feel joy, it is important to remember that feeling joy is like anything else in life. The more you practice, the better you get, the more of it you can do at higher levels.

And there are only so many minutes in the day. The more of them you spend acknowledging what feels good, the less of them will be left for feeling bad.

you can't escape the darkness by fleeing from it, but you can find the light by moving toward it.

Chop Wood Fetch Water

Another thing i learned was a truth about the exercise advice you always hear.

For where i am in my recovery now, common exercise has very little impact. I don't really get the endorphins people talk about, and i don't tend to feel better about myself after i work out unless i already feel pretty okay about myself to begin with. i don't mean to say there is no point in me exercising, but, i walk about ten miles a day holding onto 8 energetic dogs and i do a fair amount of lifting and bending and stuff for my job, and it's fine but it's not, like, doing a whole lot for me at this point in my recovery (tho i do think more recreational exercise will come back into play a stage or two on in my healing process)

HOWEVER

There was a year there where i was only getting out of bed to go to the bathroom. When i was only able to force myself to eat just enough each day to stay alive because i'd made a promise to myself, and that promise was almost all i had left.

and the right kind of exercise is what pulled me out of that.

the RIGHT kind.

See, someone close to me needed help with a physical job. That was an important part and why this method is known historically as some variation of Chop Wood Carry Water -- it's intensely physical, which is important, but also, it helps the people around you. These days our personal communities tend to not need wood copped and water carried the same way. But you can get the same effect helping someone move all their furniture, doing all the yard work for your friends and/or family, volunteering for a charity that builds housing for homeless people, SOMEthing physically taxing that helps people.

In my case, my aging father needed help re-shingling the roof. So i promised i'd help.

So i got up every morning because he was expecting me. And i climbed the ladder because he would see me if i didn't. And i lifted and carried and hammered and worked hard. It took a week of six to eight hour days.

Right away, the fact that it was helping someone else made it not matter so much that it didn't feel like it was helping me at first. I couldn't deny that i was doing something good, that my existence had positive meaning, however small.

But very soon, it changed something fundamental in my state of depression. You can't do physical labor in the sun 7 hours a day without drinking a bunch of water. Without working up an appetite. Without getting very tired at the end of the day.

See, i had been struggling to make myself drink enough water, i was fighting to make myself eat even one small meal's worth of food each day, and i couldn't get a good night's sleep to save my life. And these things all made my depression much much worse. You think you get sad or angry from skipping a meal, consider being chronically undernourished. You think your mental state is worse after pulling an all nighter, think about what never getting a good night's sleep does.

But a couple days into this job with my father, and suddenly i was hydrated, i was eating full meals, and i was sleeping soundly at night.

THAT is what pulled me out of that deepest part of my depression.

So in a way, it was exercise that saved me. But not how people often say "have you tried exercising?" More like pushing myself physically to the point that my body demanded the things that previously i couldn't get it to want for itself.

Instead of forcing myself to eat i was craving food. Instead of staying up to all hours and then tossing and turning, i was physically exhausted and slept early and hard. (and, weirdly, being physically exhausted was somehow a relief from being emotionally/mentally exhausted)

Lastly

Healing often isn't noticeable while you're doing it

"healing is a process" is something you hear a lot, but i think it's more helpful to say something like

"Healing is like growing your hair out from short to long. You can look in the mirror every day and not notice it happening. And even when you can tell for sure it's longer than it was, you still can't really do anything with it, and it may seem pointless. But then one day you can tie it back in a ponytail and you realize how much it's grown and how many options are open to you now and you're really glad you stuck with it"

Now excuse me while i go meditate on the joys of my remaining spicy soup.