Posted by HyperFocus on September 23, 2008, at 3:37:00
I remember reading that part of the process of recovering from mental illness is coping with the grief over the years you've lost.
I turned 30 recently. The past couple of months I've started having a robust response to my meds. It's still patchy and there's a long long way to go but, at the least, I've learned to distinguish the depressed, anxious, dissociated mood that I've spent most of my life in from the mood reinforced by the meds where I feel comfortable in my skin, where I can again start enjoying the things that gave me joy before mental illness took over my life.
I've been suffering with mental illness for almost twenty years. It started about when I turned twelve because some people at my high school decided I was a good target to pick on.
The details could fill pages and pages but the end result is that today I can barely leave my bed without being overwhelmed by intense feelings of shame and guilt about my body, my actions, etc. etc. I can barely leave my house without being overwhelmed by anxiety. I had mediocre grades, dropped out of university, worked in some mediocre jobs but could never excel at anything, personally, professionally, socially.I wanted to be a scientist. A computer programmer. A writer. A musician. Tonight there was this extended moment I could just close my eyes and feel consciousness washing over me - it's hard to describe but it's like this spiritual feeling staring at a great mystery and
wanting to explore its fabric.This same hypersensitivity that I have is the reason I'm plagued so badly by disease. I'm pretty sure the majority of babblers are like that.
But it's not just grief I feel. It's anger, rage. But more prominently guilt and disbelief. How could I have allowed other people to destroy my soul like that. My integrity as a person has been shattered, damaged perhaps irreparably. How could I have allowed something like this to happen to me. Where is the justice that allows the people who have hurt me so badly to enjoy their life while I remain suffering for so long. Sometimes I fantasize about taking justice into my own hands. I don't condone what that Cho kid did but I understand why he did it. You get to a point in your life where the only thing you can do is destroy the system that destroyed you. At least Cho had the guts to do it.
I'm in a bad place right now. I made a promise to myself that if I turned 30 and was still suffering like this...well most babblerss can finish the thought. Maybe I won't have to keep that promise. Maybe I will, But how do you come to terms with what you've lost?
When I was 8 or 9 I used to wonder how it would feel to be twenty or older, how incredibly far into the future that seemed. I remember I was at the age where a year seemed like such a long time. Turning ten was like a huge deal (I had my first and last birthday party then.) Now 15,20,25,30...the years just seem to blend together all with the same motif of suffering and failure. If somebody had told me that is what my life would be like and it would go on until I was was thirty and older...I dunno. It's like serving a prison term for twenty years and coming out and wondering how to start living again.
poster:HyperFocus
thread:853578
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20080905/msgs/853578.html