I'm going to tell you a story. This story might surprise some of you. This story might disappoint some of you because it might change how you look at me. However you react to this story, it's ok. I've made my peace with it. I suppose if I disappoint you, you'll make your peace with it eventually, too. At least I hope you do.
Once upon a time, I was in an immense amount of pain. I still am, but we'll get to that later. I don't know if you've ever felt terrible all the time. And I mean all the time. Day and night. Even when you're with people you love. Even when you're laughing. Even when you're doing things you ordinarily love. It's like a night that never ends, a tunnel that goes on forever, a weight that is always on your shoulders, a fog that never lifts. It is utter hopelessness. It is depression. I have severe major depressive disorder and battled against it without any help for more than a year before I ever sought help.
When you're in pain like that for that long, all you want is for it to end. You want to feel better. Heck, you just want to feel anything. You spend days on end chained to your bed, sobbing, trying to remember what it's like to be part of the real world, trying to think of ways to do anything but what you're doing. Sometimes the only thing you can think of that will make you feel different comes in a bottle. So you drain as many bottles you can find. Perhaps the answer is somewhere near the bottom of one? Not that one. Maybe the next one? And you keep trying. But that bottles never seem to hold the right answer. They make you feel a bit lighter though, make the fake laughter come a little easier.
And feeling even a little bit lighter is nice. So you try to figure out how to stay lighter all the time. What good is it to only feel ok when you're home alone at night? So you get yourself there during the day, too. You put things that have the opposite effect of coffee into your travel coffee cups. As far as you know, nobody suspects a thing. You take stupid risks, opening cans while you drive, sipping from them as you're driving down the road. Work isn't off limits anymore. Heck, work is where you need to be the most 'on' for people. You have to appear happy and you don't know how to make it through a whole shift pretending if you don't have help.
You know it's a problem. You're hiding things. You're lying. You're making sure to throw bottles in the dumpster so no one sees your trash can overflowing with them. But you try to play it off like it's not a big deal, like they can't tell. In a way, you want someone to ask, you want help. You want someone to step in and make you stop destroying yourself. Every time your best friend asks why she has to drive to dinner, you want her to look you in the eye and tell you she knows you're lying. You want her to tell you that you need help. You want someone to be the one to tell you they love you too much watch you go down the road you're going. But no one seems to notice. There's a point when you want to see how blatant you can be about things before someone says something.
Then one day, it happens. That best friend of yours has not been blind. She has not been ignoring you. She just didn't know what to do, didn't know how to help. But finally, she speaks up. She tells you how dangerously you're living. She gives you the facts about how what you're doing is more hurtful than helpful. She begs you to stop. But you still don't know what to do. At this point, it's become habitual. It's just a normal part of your day and you don't feel normal without it. But she tells you that you're not in it alone. She tells you she's there for you; she'll hold your hand no matter how hard it gets. And she does. And you send text after text, day after day about how hard it is, how much your brain is screaming at you to make it feel lighter again. But she sticks by you and answers every message, helps you stay distracted, reminds you that you're never alone. And you make it through, slowly, but successfully.
You stop hiding things. The bottles disappear. You stop craving what you know is terrible. The darkness doesn't go away, but you learn to live in it without your crutch. Even after several months, you still sometimes get the urge to feel that lightness, to embrace that easy laughter, but you fight it. You know you would only regret it and feel like a failure if you were to give in. So you stand in that dark tunnel, feeling your way along walls that seem to never end. You can't see even the tiniest sliver of light ahead. But at least you're no longer stumbling through that tunnel; you're standing upright and strong. Nothing outside of your brain is controlling and you're no longer ashamed of everyday choices.
