blind hope for so many years: it's fading away...

This post is about my hopelessness, but don't believe it for a second: I have to have some hope, otherwise, why would I be posting here anyway?

Well, I can't say how long I've been depressed, because I don't know if I was ever happy. It all blurs in, and happiness is just something so strange, like heaven or something. I don't know what it's like: I know material things and physical comfort, I even know about good and a little about love and that stuff, but happiness doesn't mean much to me because I don't know what it is.
Around when I was 8 I became a very nervous person and had anxiety. The trichotillomania began then, and hasn't ended since. It makes me feel so ugly...
Since then, I must have not been a very good friend because I always made friends pretty easily but lost them. This happened in late elementary school and middle school. I felt like everyone hated me...I still do.
At 10, I had my first thought of death, and although I wasn't thinking of killing myself, I wanted to die.
When I was 12, I wrote a suicide note to someone...The school found it and sent me to the emergency room. My parents begged and pleaded that they don't make me go, but they did. I went there and I had to wait a long time to speak to someone, because they were busy with people with bigger problems than me. Eventually, of course, someone spoke to me. I hated him and was a little bit dishonest with him, because my parents didn't want me to have to stay inpatient, and so I lied to make my depression seem smaller. Part of me wanted to stay, just because I didn't want to go home to my problems at home and in school. My grades were almost perfect all my life until this point, and then they dropped tremendously. I hated school because of course, i thought everyone hated me, and I begged my parents to move. Sounds like a rediculus request, and maybe it was, but my parents were just as desperate as I was, and my dad was willing to do anything for me so we moved to a new house in a new neighborhood.
So we moved. For the tremendous price we payed for the house, I should have been happy. But I wasn't. In the new district, everybody liked me for shallow reasons. But I still felt like they all hated me. Soon, the school found some poetry I wrote about suicide, and sent me to the emergency room. Over there, they were confident in my treatment because they thought I had a good psycologist. They were wrong. I hated my psychologist, he didn't like me and only spoke to my mom, made a hurried decision about what medication I would take, and saw me 2 months later to check on it. The meds never helped me. the pattern was
try, deal with side effects like getting tired and feeling sick, still feel depressed, change meds over and over again.
Despite so much unsuccesful therapy and medications, I was basically super depressed for a few years, and I couldn't go on with daily life. I tried to kill myself a few times, maybe 7, weak attempts. Once, I overdosed, and when I started feeling sick, drank a lot of water and was fine. I didn't realize I was saving my life, so when I woke up I was like [/b][/quote]dammit, why didn't I die?

. Eventually, I could no longer dodge hospitalisation. They sent me, and I was not pessimistic about it. All I knew was that I wouldn't have to go on with daily life, and that was good. As soon as I got there I was scared out of my mind. I got there at night and was put on constant observation so I couldn't kill myself, and I was scared out of my wits. I did not sleep that night at all. I just spent the whole night being not only depressed, but scared and nervous. I got there on a friday night, and didn't speak to a therapist for the whole weekend or monday either, because that was a holiday. I hated being on CO (constant observation) The first morning I called my mom as soon as we were allowed to and immediately burst into tears. She did too. The only barable part of my day was when my visitors came. The bathrooms were dirty and, growing up with a housekeeper in a luxurious house, I never saw this kind of dirtiness before. I can't explain why I hated taking a shower there, but I did so much, and I needed my mom in the bathroom while I took a shower. I hated the hospital so much I eventually lied and wrote 11 pages on why I was cured and so they let me leave saying they "usually didn't feel so optimistic sending out a patient" without realizing I was not cured at all, I was just afraid to feel suicidal or be honest about my depression.
I was unable to carry on with life after I was released, and I was home tutored.
Then, I went to a therapeutic school. I'm still there. I like it here: finally I like it somewhere. But I am nowhere near happy. I'm so depressed and I still hate myself and I don't eat much. It's just not helping.
But what is help? From school they send you to a therapist who sends you to the emergency room who sends you to inpatient, they send you home feeling optimistic and then you're sent to a special school...There's not going to be any help for me.

Reply. Just talk to me. Say something nice...please?

lifeslave,

I have felt very badly in my life. I have not known what to do, what is next, why do I feel this way.

But eventually things started to come together on the understanding side better. I have taken a lot of steps. I feel better. I fit in better.

I do not know if I will ever be "cured". I think that thinking about that too much will cost me progress. So I focus on what I can do right now, and let someone else tally the results. That's the best I know how to do.

For me, the mind with its scientific Western culture oriented traps was always falling over when I tried to tackle my issus (extreme neglect, sexual/physical/mental abuse) leading to PTSD, cutting/SI and DID. So I had to take myself in hand and heart and relive a lot of this with compassion as my guide. Dunno that is what you need, but, it is what I needed.

Say something nice? I don't know. Hard work, reality, compassion - that's what works, so it must be nice.

Take care,
W

i think the biggest thing that we miss when we are stuck in a rut is that we can get out. it's ok, you can be happy, i've made it, no wi still get down, but i do not stay there, there are no accidents, so if you get out alive, there's a reason for it, maybe for you to help others get through their depression one day, to make somone that feels just awful, not feel so alone, because they aren't, we are alike, on some basic formula, so don't feel so alone, my dad always said horrible things to me, and so i blamed myself, for my whole life, i'm 20 now, and i know that it is not my fault, that i am ok, and that i can move on, i hope some of that helped, if you have any q. just message me back, have a good one, rem, you're here for a reason.

I also still remember the times I awoke when I thought that I had taken enough alcohol and pills to kill myself. It is indeed one of the worst feelings. I'm glad today that I did not succeed in killing myself. Eventually, I found help and have had a life beyond my wildest dreams. I remember right before I graduated from college being almost in a catonic state. All I did was just sit in a chair all day, every day--for months. I never, ever dreamed back then that I could be well enough to go back and finish college, then become a teacher. A few months ago I was named to Who's Who in American Education. That sort of means that officially, I'm one of the top teachers in the country. You never know what you might give to the world if you don't give up.

I love the little quote that moramind has at the bottom of her messages. I have had experiences when I did experience a great flash when things were great. One flash was when I was ranked third in the state in Judo. Another was when I got to use the Hubble Space Telescope as an amateur. Another was one I received my first picture back from Mars with a NASA satellite. Another was hiking for 9.5 hours across the Grand Canyon. I could go on and on. Please don't kill yourself, you don't know what is in your future.

Good Luck,
Jim S

ya, i'm definately agreeding with jim, good advice, anywho, yea, i never thought of my lil quote that way before, but that totally applies, for me it was a bunch of scramble words that came together when i had psychosis, lol, but idk, somtimes people say that i can be very poetic, and i dk how it happens, but o well, don't question, lol just write it down:) anywho, don't feel like such a slave, for some reason, we are all here, if juts to make ourselves happy with a new shirt, or a cup of tea, just whatever, idk, i just hope that you don't keep feeling this depression so much anymore, because yea, it feels like death, ifelt that way my entire life, and it's just awful, idk, get out if you cn, make yourself happy, just say f-it to depression, i'm gonnajust be fine from now on, well, idk just try it, i hope you get ta feeling better:)goodnight

ls,

it can work to change ones orientation to how we feel about things.

but if you keep returning to the same feelings and same pattern, then I think you may need some professional help.

w