Tag Archives: depression

When anxiety changes into depression

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Anxiety is that odd feeling that grabs you by the throat and suffocates you to the point where you wheeze for air. No matter how hard you inhale you can’t seem to get anything inside of your lungs. It’s a feeling that constantly makes you worry. It nibbles on your insecurities and makes you lose your mind. You become tired and restless and your heart starts thrashing in your ribcage and you start sweating like crazy. All the energy you had in your body leaves you, making you feel so tired that you can’t even move. A deep slicing headache takes a hold of you. The pain is so bad that you’re willing to swallow as many pills as you can to make it go away.

The anxiety slowly leaves, and depression fills the void. Everything that once held meaning loses its purpose. Faith that once kept you in one peace starts to suffocate you, making you run around, gasping for air. You sit in one place like a statue staring into space because the wars in your mind are damaging you. You can’t fight the world because you’re losing a war with yourself. You lose faith and then slowly you lose every part of you that makes you human. All you want to do is lie down, curl into a ball, cover yourself and sleep. But even sleep gives up on you and you lay awake, trying to hold onto whatever excuse you can find to keep going.

Things that once made you happy, don’t bring a smile to your face anymore. Even the simplest tasks, like making breakfast seem like a burden. Getting out of bed seems useless.

Thoughts roam around in your mind, making you question the validity of your existence. You lose hope and at that moment everything just seems useless. That soft voice telling you to end it all takes over and you find yourself smiling to that thought. It brings an odd comfort.

Depression or anxiety is not easy to deal with. It’s like you’re drowning in an ocean and everyone else is drowning with you, but they can breathe, and you can’t. It’s like everything is on fire and no one seems hurt but you. It’s like everyone else is living in a parallel universe and no matter what you do, you can’t seem to escape.

Everyone has their way of dealing with anxiety. I write. I wrote a freaking poetry book to deal with my mental health. Curing my Venom. It’s based on the five stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. But no matter what stage I’m on, I can’t seem to move on to acceptance. I always get dragged back. I don’t know what’s holding me, but I do know I have chains as thick as iron grasping my arms. And I’m suffocating.

Be gentle with people who have anxiety and depression or any other mental illness. They’re too busy fighting the demons in their minds that they can’t seem to fight you. Give them assurance. Constant assurance that things will be okay because sometimes the demons in their mind are so loud that they can’t hear you over the ruckus in their brain.

I didn’t give up…

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I wrote this in high school, around eight years ago. But it still gives me hope. Sometimes I feel like the things I wrote in my early days are better than what I write now. Maybe because they came straight from the soul…. It’s a feeling that can’t be put into words….

I didn’t give up
I walked on glass and slowly I fell
Destiny came by and said, “it was fates will.”
Hope eagerly screamed this isn’t the end
Get back up and do as you dreamed
But I fell so hard that no one picked me up
Failure was laughing telling me to stop
Doubt walked over me and trampled me down
I couldn’t get up, but I couldn’t lose
This was my journey and my right to choose
I quickly rose up to get what was mine
Only foot prints of blood followed me behind
This wasn’t the end, I had to go very far
I lost only a battle, but the war was still on

Photo by Tobias Bjørkli from Pexels

The slit of a wrist

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I slide against the door, sitting on the cold floor with my knees pressed against my chest. The back of my head is leaning on the wooden door, next to the doorknob. A pounding headache is wrapping its arms around my temples. I can’t think straight. The voices in the back of my head that I’m trying to ignore are getting louder and louder. They’re buzzing through my mind like bees do when they’re making honey. But the thoughts pulsing inside my head aren’t sweet, they’re as bitter as blood.

“You’re so useless,” a soft echo screeches in my mind.
“Maybe you should just die.” Another argues. “God doesn’t make mistakes, but look He made you.” I find myself nodding, silently agreeing with those greedy voices. Maybe they’re right. Maybe I am useless-

“No,” a softer voice cajoles. “Don’t say that, love.”
“Yeah. You’re amazing.”

The war I’m trying to avoid is taking place within me. I’m tired of begging to a God who has no intentions of listening to me. I’m done fighting a war that only leaves behind scars no one can see. I’m scared of embracing a future I can’t fully comprehend. I’m terrified of looking into a past I can’t understand.

My chest is bleeding, but there’s no blood. My wounds are so raw, yet they can’t be healed. I’m losing, falling, failing, and I’m okay with that. The tunnel that’s supposed to be filled with light, is drenched in darkness.

In my hand, I’m holding a blade that’s an inch long but it’s as sharp as a knife. I twirl it in between my fingers and wait for the voices in my head to subside. Tears as thick as raindrops leak through my lashes and roll down my cheeks, disappearing somewhere in my clothes. The saltiness stings my eyes, making me blink twice as fast. The blue bathroom tiles seem so blurry and the fishes on the curtains, hiding the bathtub from view, seem so alive; I’m convinced I’m underwater. Maybe that’s why I can’t breathe. My lungs are imploding, and I can’t seem to inhale or exhale.

The anxiety kicks in first and then the panic attack. Anxiety slowly slithers into the pit of my stomach as it nestles in my chest. The panic attack creeps up behind me, and I find myself begging for it to leave me alone as a helpless child does to a kidnapper. The voices in my head become sharper and the anxiety is starting to take a hold of my limbs, draining all the energy in me.

For a split second, I numb out the voices and focus on that blade in my hand. It doesn’t seem sharp anymore and for some odd reason, I want it to be sharper. I place it against my arm; the cold metal tingles my flesh as I slide it down, putting more force towards the end. Blood pours down my skin, paralyzing all those voices screeching in my brain. I watch the drops trickle down my arm as they drip on the pink tiled floor. I move the blade and jab it back into my skin, putting in more force then I did before. The sting freezes all the emotional pain, and all I feel is the ache in my arms spreading through my shoulder, palm, and fingers. It’s the kind of pain that brings joy. The one that makes you feel alive when every cell in your body is aching to die. It’s the kind of ache that sidetracks you from pain. The kind of euphoria that comes in the form of a burn. More blood drips down, forming a puddle that’s mixed with my tears.

I take the blade again and this time with rage mash it into my wrist with as much force as I can, pouring all my resentment and anger in that tiny metal. The blood rushes out like a gushing river, and I am so dazed by the red hue that all the pain just vanishes. The white wooden door, my clothes, the tiles, everything is draped in red.

Like a murder scene.

The soft voice whispers in my ear with such ease that I smile. I lie down on the cold floor, on the pool of my own blood.

It’s okay, child. It’ll all get better.

I close my eyes listening to that alluring voice as it wraps me around in its thick arms. I feel an odd darkness take a hold of me.

Photo by it’s me neosiam from Pexels

Feeling empty…

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It’s just one of those days where you feel empty, almost hollow. Like a part of you is missing or is yanked out by the events taking place around you. You’re trying to make sense of everything, but you can’t seem to do that because everything is just mashed together in one big pile. If you try to sort things out that pile will crush you beneath its weight.

In between this mess you’ll only suffocate. So, you leave things as they are in hopes that miraculously things will get better. But they never ever do. And that pile, of all those things you’re trying to ignore, just expands like gas molecules and you’re left wondering where you went wrong. You find so many ‘loopholes’ ‘ifs’ and ‘maybes’ that your mind starts swirling and the road ahead starts to fade away, and you lose focus. You see nothing but emptiness in a future that was supposed to be as bright as the sun. You see a dead end in a road you fought so hard to take.

I hate having these moments because I always end up confusing myself even more, and I make irrational decisions just to get out of this phase. It temporarily works but I end up drowning myself even more.

I was so lost in my thoughts that today I waited twenty minutes for an elevator before realizing I hadn’t even pressed the buttons. I was so dozed out that I took the wrong train. I crossed a red light and took the wrong exit. Literally.

The feeling drains all the energy out of you. It makes you feel like a useless dried out battery.

Picture from Pexel

Self-inflicted war

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The most damaging wars are the ones we fight with ourselves. When our mind transforms into a battlefield and our heart becomes a no-go zone. It’s like we’re torn between shooting emotions, bombarded with sentiments. We’re ripped between reasons, opinions, and facts. And that is the moment where we lose all sense of what is right and what is wrong. It is in that little time space where either everything makes perfect sense or the things that did make sense become undecipherable. We become so captivated in our own thoughts that everything happening just seems like a blur. In that instance what should we trust- our instincts, gut, heart or that tiny slit in our brain magnifying every possible threat there is to existence.

But why is it that this war we’re fighting is leading us nowhere?
Why is it so hard to understand that this self-damage is incurable? 

Maybe because we’re already destroyed, that no damage can cause us more pain then what we’ve been through. Like we’re about to explode. These are the types of sparks that cause flames within. But in that case, which fire should we put out first. The one inside of us or the one outside.

Wars are never easy to fight. Because they sketch their marks all over. Whether they’re fought on land or inside our head. But
I guess we’re all soldiers placed in different battlefields with different weapons.

The worst part is that I’m unprepared for this war and I’m scared. If I don’t have an enemy then why does everything around me feel like a threat? I have no weapons yet here I am fighting with my bare hands.

Will I win?
Do I deserve to win?
Why does failing feel like a better option? Maybe because I’m afraid to rise. I’m afraid of whatever awaits on the other end of the battlefield. What if it’s a bigger storm, a bigger war, a bigger threat?

But just because you didn’t win doesn’t mean you lost. Why can’t you just be in the middle? Establish a cease-fire and maybe stay there. I’m not saying that losing is good but why does it have to be so bad.

Sometimes threat does not come to me holding a sword. She comes to me with a pretty smile, draped in poisonous flowers that smell like Eden. She comes to me holding a mirror, and the threat I see looks exactly like me. And that is the moment where I don’t know what to do. Attack myself? Or wait for her to attack me? Either way the outcome will leave me damaged and there is nothing I can do.

It’s like I have no choice. Is the war worth fighting? Is it better to be safe and lose; or win and be completely broken? Why does victory have to come dressed in blood? Why can’t it shine like the first light of day?