a warped view

How much mental illness can people take? How many posts on a blog? How many text messages asking for help, for comfort, for reassurance? How many sob filled phone calls? How many times can you show up with a tear stained face with nothing to offer but melancholy and pain? How many times can you cancel at the last minute because you realise you can't bring yourself to leave the house before people stop asking you places? How much depression can you show people before they stop trying to be sympathetic and get fed up with the drama? Every time I want to tweet that I'm not doing ok, or post on Facebook that I'm not coping, or write a blog post about the darkness I worry about people's limits. I worry that I'm THAT whiner who just goes on and on about depression all the time. Who never has anything good to say. Who brings everyone down with her constant downers. I wonder how many eyes will roll. How many will want to unfollow or unfriend me. How many will try and offe...

I am feeling down. Have been for a while. That's why I haven't been posting. It's not an all encompassing downness, I have moments and days where I feel fine, but the thought of blogging (along with numerous other to-dos) have left me feeling tight chested and anxious. I've also been avoiding people, avoiding social situations and I've been crap at communicating with the people I love. I've stopped tweeting, stopped texting, stopped calling. I'm hiding. It's impossible however, to hide from yourself. Today, right now, I am feeling particularly down. I was fine this morning, I had a lovely day with the HSP and saw a movie I've been desperate to see (Oz). Yet this afternoon the cloud descended around my shoulders and I suddenly felt the darkness wrap it's fingers around my heart and squeeze. I suddenly and instantly wanted to bury my face in my pillow and cry. Not just cry, sob, that physical crying that involves your shoulders, your chest, your ...

Growing up in Darwin we always had very laid back routines. In my early years my mum, dad, nanna and grandad worked in a family business and so there were long days spent at work with dinner time often being after 7 or 8pm. This kind of laid back attitude to dinner time continued through my childhood and into my teenage years. This meant that I would regularly get to bed quite a lot later than other kids. It was a shock to us when we moved to Perth in my 16th year and discovered that the weirdo southerners would sometimes eat dinner at 5:30 or 6. Ridiculous! I don't know if it's because of this laid back start to life but I have never really had a time that was my bedtime, even as an adult. I have a time that I know should probably be my bedtime but it comes and goes with little notice most nights. I'm also what is generally classified as a night owl, the later at night, the more productive I feel. I can often be found on my computer until 2 or 3am. Sometimes this is b...

Quite often, when trying to explain my depression to people I use the phrase "my depression voice" or the "irrational voice" to describe the constant critic that lives in my head. Occasionally I wonder if people are going to take that to mean that I hear voices Beautiful Mind style or that I might start conducting a fight club with myself or talking to a giant rabbit. I can promise you that none of those thing are true, or are going to come true... well I might start talking to Frank but it's unlikely. However the truth is that I do deal with a constant voice in my head. The depression voice is always there, sometimes whispering quietly, sometimes screaming at me until I break. The depression voice is that arsehole that is constantly telling me that I'm not capable, that I'm worthless, that people don't like me. It's the voice that stops me from leaving my house, its the voice that looks in the mirror and tells me how ugly and unlovable I am...

So apparently I am one of a very small percentage of ADHD adults who experiences a worsening of depression symptoms when taking Dexamphetamines.  To start with I didn't notice, but as I continued to take my daily doses my depression symptoms have gotten worse and worse. The situation reached critical mass on Sunday night. My thoughts and behaviour got beyond my control and I had a complete meltdown. The rest of the week has been nothing short of difficult. There has been tears at the drop of the hat, an inability to regulate my emotions (more than usual), and a highly emotional state in general. The smallest things have sent me spiralling out of control. The hsp says its the worst he has ever seen me. It has left me feeling afraid and ashamed. My logical brain knows that there is no reason to feel this way but my logical brain is not exactly the loudest at the moment.  Luckily I had an appointment with my ADHD doctor today and I informed him what was going on. ...

one of my most favourite people in the world wrote a blog today about how she feels like she isn't doing anything significant with her life but more importantly, she feels like she doesn't have a best friend, a close friend. this made me so sad, and it made me stop and wonder about the subconscious messages that i am sending my friends. when i am feeling down or dark i hide myself away. i struggle to interact with the world, even with those closest to me. i refuse to talk on the phone and am struck down with anxiety every time it rings. my once safe haven, twitter, sometimes feels too big, too loud, too much so i even hide from that. this makes it hard for people to be friends with me i'm sure, its hard to be friends with someone who is absent a lot of the time. sometimes i feel that i must appear like a ghost in people's lives, they know i'm there but they can't see me. i don't mean to shut my friends out and a part of me thinks i am protecting them. ke...

So last month I wrote the post " There's nothing wrong with you " about being told by well meaning people that I couldn't possibly have depression. That is one side of the depression coin, the people who don't believe you have it because you manage to smile sometimes. The other, much darker side of the coin, is the people who try to use your depression against you as a weapon. I have one of those people in my life. They may be in the peripherals of my life, but sadly they have enough impact for their archaic, biggoted and uneducated views to affect me. In fact this person even tried to use this very blog against me. Using my own words, my own outpouring of truth and emotions, my own confessions of difficulty as a way to hurt me. They tried to turn my truth, my confessions, my words into a sword and to cut me down with it. Taking advantage of my own moments of weakness, my own doubts, my own irrational fear of not being good enough, they attempted to kick me wh...

Twice in the last couple of weeks I've had well meaning people tell me that I shouldn't be taking anti depressants as there is nothing wrong with me. I mean everyone feels a bit sad sometimes right? That doesn't mean they have one of those mental illness things. Neither of these people meant to be offensive, I'm pretty sure that they both quite like me, they just don't understand and belong to a way of thinking that is full of stereotypes and misinformation. Neither of them has any experience dealing with mental illness, neither of them know what it's like to have a constant black cloud hanging over you. Sadly, they are not the only two people who think like this. Despite the struggles for greater awareness, understanding and acceptance, mental illness still has a very special stigma all of it's own. "Normal" people seem to believe that only specific personality types suffer from depression, that depressed people are lazy, that they want to b...

So I'm adding something else new to my blog. It will be called 'In Conversation' and will be my collection, recollection and interpretation of conversations I have or overhear. I love people watching and am fascinated by the overly loud public conversations that strangers often have. I find myself tuning out of my own conversations desperate to hear every scrap of shared personal lives, opinions and thoughts from people I've never met, and will most likely never see again. I love nothing better than a public, loud and overly emotional disagreement between lovers. I also love the nonsensical conversations I occasionally have with one of my most favourite people in the world when one of us is feeling down. We are both owners of depression and each knows, with unspoken recognition, the darkness that haunts the other. So when we have those moments of blue and black we talk about everything but the darkness and both come away feeling the light shining a little brighter than ...