PEOPLE LIKE ME

I don’t often reblog. It feels dirty to repost someone else’s work on my own blog without their permission. Luckily, the way it works on WordPress is that only a 100 or so of the other’s words show on your blog, followed by a link to the original post.

I’m reblogging this post because it so accurately captures what writing means to me. I didn’t start blogging as an emotional outlet used to vanquish my demons, but that’s how it’s ended up.

I relate to so much of this. Much of the reason I neglected to treat me depression for so long was because I felt weak, and thought I should be strong enough to deal with it on my own. I, like many other people, thought it was simply a mind-over-matter thing. Guess what? It’s not.

As much as some people would like to think you can “fake it ’til you make it,” that’s simply not how it works. No matter how much you may try to cover up your depression it never goes away. Faking happiness doesn’t alter the chemical imbalance in your brain. You can hide it among the skeletons in your closet, but it’s still there looming over you like a rain cloud on a sunny day, poised to let loose on you at a most inconvenient time.

I, like Hasty, have found value and therapy in writing. Writing my feelings out is like an exorcism for my negative emotions. Like there’s a hole in the bottom of the baggage holding all of my angst and feelings of worthlessness. The more I write the more negative emotions seep through that hole and dissipates into the emotional ether. Or wherever stupid feelings go to die.

I highly encourage anyone who is struggling emotionally to write, whether or not you think you have a talent for it. What a poem. Write a story. Write a journal. Do it publicly. Do it privately. It doesn’t matter. Just do it.

HASTYWORDS

There are some things we just have to experience to understand.

I couldn’t stand listening to them whine. My classmates, my co-workers, my friends and my family coming to me and sucking my positive energy dry. Those with so called “depression” were always so negative and I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand. I am ashamed of myself for not understanding.

I didn’t understand that depression wasn’t a mood or a frame of mind. I didn’t understand that my loved ones weren’t wallowing in self-pity. I was angry every time one of them attempted suicide or succeeded in killing themselves. I was angry at how selfish they had to have been to think only of themselves, to “take the easy way out”. I am ashamed of myself for not understanding.

I remember lying in bed one night with thoughts flying through my head faster than I could grab them. One night…

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