By the time I was diagnosed with Depression, I guess you could say the realm of this hopeless disease had already taken an uncontrollable grip on my life. Being such a young minded soul, what intelligence should I of had to of known that I was undergoing a psychological warfare? You grow up and go throughout elementary to highschool in and out of health classes, and all they teach you is about physical harm; broken bones, head injuries, STD's, sports injuries, basic health problems....But now that I look back at it, where was all the information about psychological and mental health? Where were the lessons on Depression and Anxiety? Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disease? Dementia and Personality Disorder? I dont recall going through school and one-time being educated on the severity of Depression. We are all brainwashed into learning about causing OTHERS physical harm. But that cant be all we know, because if you want to take the little picture and blow it up, you start to realize that you can be your biggest enemy. Your mind. Your body. YOU. As soon as John Doe goes out and murders someone, every news station in the local area wants the coverage, but when little Jack hangs himself, or Susie Q has a last meal of a nice .45 caliber bullet through the mouth, NOBODY wants to hear it, so its never projected into society because as a society, we avoid these type of things. Its disgusting. And you might venture out and be eager to know why Im disgusted, and I will straight up tell you. I learned everything on my own before anyone had said a damn word. Thank god for bittersweet google. All you have to do is type out a couple symptoms and BAM. Pages and pages of material that I was desperately seeking. Its one thing to be diagnosed with depression and accept it, but its a whole different story when you have to teach yourself and learn about this disease on your own. Its scary as shit. Yes, theres alot of knowledgable information, but theres also input from different people and different perspectives, and some of them are dark. And i mean DARK. For instance, I remember one of the first stories I read from a third person view. It was about a recently divorced widow. The topic was about dealing with your depression. This was years and years back so I cant vividly word what all was said, but one thing was said that just bitch slapped me and basically woke me up. I knew this disease was bad, but lord have mercy I had no idea just how severe things could get back then. I remember reading from her excerpt this exact quote that I'm referring too: *WARNING, THIS QUOTE IS GRAPHIC* (''I've hit rock bottom and theres no light at the end of this terrible tunnel. I just cant handle it anymore, last night I tried to end it all and slit my wrists, I was going to hang myself afterwards but never got to it because I passed out due to the blood loss out of my wrists"). Wow. Im just having the blues and you mean to tell me..... that you sat in your room, slit your own wrists, and tried to hang yourself, but failed because you passed out? 9 years later I can honestly say I fully understand what she was going through. Maybe not fully in the sense that I knew the pain from her exact experienced scenarios, but I understand the darkness she was at, when your mind turns on you and tells you death is the only way out.
Freshman year, about halfway through my first year of what is widely known as ''the best 4 years of your life'', the onset began. That quote didnt apply to my life and shouldve been re-worded to ''And so it begins''. I had just turned 16, so life wasnt throwing too many curve balls at me at the time. New truck, new stereo system, and an absolute beautiful 10/10 on my right hand side making my new whip look that much better. This is around the time that my brother was battling severe addiction to pain killers. Addiction hasn't necessarily ran in my family, but wherever it was present, it was heavy. My brother is my absolute best friend. Always will be, so if this seems like an excuse to blame, your intentions on what I mean by including this information has been crucially mislead. I will never blame him for any of my problems. It was essentially the choices I made that led to the start of my mental health issues. I was a very young user, which I truly do believe contributes to my current mental health. I started experimenting with drugs at a very early age. Me and my brother right before his admission into rehab used to mess around with pills and we would smoke very often. *NONE OF THIS IS TO SUGGEST HE HAD ANY PART OF MY ACTIONS*. Of course I was just ''experimenting'', completely oblivious to the fact that he had an actual problem. Once he left off to rehab, my oblivion was soon answered. The so called ''actual problem'' came upon myself. I was absolutely devastated. My best friend in the entire world just got loaded into a car and driven off to the middle of the woods 8 hours away where for 3 months I would probably speak to him a total of 6-7 times. Heart breaking. Although I was in an intense relationship with a very beautiful love, my ''real'' other half was taken from me. Its a day Ill never forget for as long as I live. I remember a family friend coming to pick me up from school one day, and we were on our way to ''JackAss 2.5'' when I was informed that we were going to stop by my mom and dad's car in the parking lot of the La-Z boy to say goodbye. Casual. Nobody informed me. There I was, on my way to see a comedy after I just hugged my bestfriend goodbye. I watched as my father, a medical doctor, who has seen the worst of the worst, curl up in the passenger seat bawling his eyes out. I didnt really understand. The days went by and I sat alone watching tv by myself days on end. This is when my mind started to finally pull the trigger on the mind games. I just want to put it out there that I love my brother with all of my heart and none of this was his fault. Depression runs rampant in my family, this is strictly just the first memory of my depression being triggered. As he was gone, I became in a sense obsessed with making myself sad. My normal CD's became infiltrated with sad music. I became in love with gloomy days, dark clothes, and sickening thoughts. I loved sad music, downtempo music that put this sickening grip on my mind. I started cutting friends off left and right, thinking it was due to my ongoing relationship with my girlfriend at the time. I was extremely wrong. She had nothing to do with it in fact. Now that I think back to it, I pushed everyone away except her, because she was the only one I felt that understood my problems and would be by my side through everything. Little did I know it was this sickness, pushing everything great away in my life, and balling all my happiness into a relationship with a girl that I would end up never speaking to again just a few years later. As the year came to a close, I started to notice problems in my relationship. I was living this ''double life'', just being a bad person behind everyones back, especially the person I cared about most deeply. I remember meeting up with my girlfriend in the middle of the cafeteria hallway in my highschool, and telling her that I had a problem with depression. This was the first day I mentioned anything to my mom, and it all started with a text saying ''I need help''. I was starting to have a feeling of worry and fear for absolutely nothing. A sense of hopeless-ness. My comedic attitude turned into a dark regiment of a sadistic lifestyle and bad choices. I was finally admitted to my first counselor. Then referred to my psychiatrist, who to this day will forever be one of the most important people in my entire life. I owe it all to a man named Gavin Brunsvold.You may be 14 or you may be 80. Regardless, I understand what its like. Im not one to sit here and tell you what the things you've experienced are like, our struggles may be completely opposite. I have no bias and I will never judge anyone. Ive dealt with this disease for almost 10 years now. Currently, I would consider myself at one of the toughest points of this disease. Just some clarification on my behalf. If anything, I would want nothing more than advice or help to be taken from this.
First of all, I want to send my love and condolences to anyone suffering from either of these disease'. I want tp start this blog off by stating that my intention here are not to whine or complain about how ''miserable'' my life is. In fact, disregarding the main issue at hand (my mental health), I live a good life in a beautiful family that provides absolutely everything I need, and I cannot express my deepest love and gratitude torward them and all of their efforts and time spent helping me out. Im not homeless, nor do I struggle to pay the bills. As a matter of fact, I don't pay bills yet at all, which scares the hell out of considering how tough my state of mind already is in.
My names Austin Carter, 21 years young, and everyday of my life I suffer from a massive battle with Depression and Anxiety. Im your typical run-of-the-mill guy. I: attend college,have tattoo's plastered all over my body, own my own dog, go out with friends (ocasionally), I drive a blacked out car yet have no thug mentality, as almost all I listen to is instrumental music. .was first diagnosed during my freshman year of High School. Back then it was such an easy order, only a ''side effect'' so to speak. I had everything at the time being, all the friends, the beautiful girlfriend of some odd years. I was the class clown and I can vividly remember people being STOKED that I was in their classes. I was one of the happiest kids alive it seemed, there was nothing I didn't have, and I clearly remember boasting out-loud by myself about ''how can my life get any better'' multiple times back in the day, and its time like these that I reflect on as I sit here alone in this ''prison-cell'' of a house, locked in my room in solitary confinement, constantly beating myself up and always convincing myself everything is my fault. Its such a dark place. It's something hard to talk about, because the disease itself cripples any ability to talk about how dark of a mental state that either of these might put you in. |