Hey Steemit Community.
Sienna here!
I've decided I want to start writing about my recovery from depression and anxiety. I want to write about the techniques I employed on my own, and I want to share them with the world, and maybe help others out there, too. Even if only for a little while, even if only one person. I intend to do that once I've written out my plan, and each blog post is going to be a chapter, starting with basic materials that I used every now and again, up to every day things that I use to help me get through.
This post however, is what my 13 year old self wrote, a year after being properly diagnosed with depression. This is only a glimpse, and it's not some amazing article that will open your mind and automatically make you understand, but it's a start.
I would also like to mention, even when you've recovered from depression and anxiety, it does not mean it's not still a constant battle every day. I am going to expose the way I live with it everyday, and how I try to conquer that. If not for helping others, as a documentation to myself on my journey. But, as I said, that will be in future posts.
I am also aware this isn't Steem related, but I will be making FOREX blogs along the way, once I'm in the bigger chunk of my trading course. This is only the beginning of my cryptocurrency travels. But this to me, is just as important for everyone to try and understand and for even just a glimpse into the world of someone who is depressed.
And now the letters I wrote when I was 13. I've fixed up spelling and grammar, because they were hand written. I found them when I was moving house recently. In a previous post I have talked about my depression, as well, maybe on a more current level.
Letter One
Dear Page.
I hate life. I don't want to leave my bed in the morning, and when I do, I just want to get back there and curl up and pretend I don't exist. But everyday I get up out of bed and shower and get ready for the day ahead of me. A day that is sometimes difficult to face, torturous, in fact. Scary. I'm afraid of the day to come and the days to come. I am depressed. Everything seems like such an effort. Even the things I used to love doing. The things that used to make me smile, that used to help me get through the hard days that just get harder. I think I still love those things, I just can't find enthusiasm and motivation.
It's a difficult time, my world, the planet I'm on is dark. And only very little does it get bright, and I can see what is in front of me. It's lonely, my world, I am the only one on it. The only one in it. Even when it does get bright, sometimes it's still cloudy and nothing is totally clear to me. But I don't care. Because I have forgotten my manners, and I have forgotten what it feels like to care. About anything. It's a lonely place, and it's a hard place to be in.
It's quite scary when you have so many people around you but you still feel alone. It gets harder, everyday, every minute of every hour of every day. In my world, there is a monster. It swallows me up, every day. After I travel the long hard road, I am swallowed up. That's when I go to sleep. That's when everything is at it's best. When I wake up in the morning that's when the feeling comes back. That's when the monster spits me out and wants to play this haunting game, another time. That's when I give up, but the monster persists. And that is when I fall apart, because I don't like this game and it does. I want to find the potion that kills this monster, but there is none. It is time for me to go, to get swallowed once again.
Letter Two
Dear Page
The game is still playing. The monster is still chasing. Sometimes it gets easier, or lets me cheat, but sometimes it is too hard and the monster gets me sooner than I expect it too. I still don't like this game and my world is still dark. Today was a little brighter but it was still dark and lonely. I cheated the game today. Only today, never does the monster let me cheat for more than one day. I feel broken. Well, I am broken. Like a record, I just keep playing one part of the song over and over again. Except this isn't a song, this, this is the game. I'm stuck on the same level and I can't ever succeed, or pass.
On my world, there is no sun, it is dark, that is all you can see. There are things in my way on the road I travel. Sometimes walls, sometimes other monsters, or fences, or poles, or anything protruding that can stop me from getting away from the monster I'm being chased by. Sometimes, well, most of the time, the monster sits on my back like a monkey before it decides to swallow me up. It makes it all that much harder.
Today, well today my world was brighter, and there were not so many things stopping me from getting where I needed to go. I still haven't found my final destination yet. It isn't here, or there, or anywhere. It seems like there is none, though all the signs point the same way. I want to stand up to the monster, but I'm too afraid. I have found some nice monsters too. And they're all I have to help me get through. These nice monsters aren't monsters though, nothing that special could be a monster. More like angels. They are all I can depend on except for myself unless I find something, a cheat or potion to fight the monster. Even if I do find this cheat or potion it won't be easy to get it, I'll have to use my strength. And the angels, they take me higher sometimes and the higher I get the more I can see, the less dark it is. But eventually I come back down, and the monster still chases me until I get swallowed. It all ends then.
...
If you've read up to here, thank you. Rereading these things brings back a lot of memories, and it reminds me of how far I've come. I still have a long way to go, though and I remind myself every day. And without being vein, I believe my 13 year old self did a damn good job of explaining depression. Especially to my future self.
I do have to mention, I had a giggle as well when I read them as my writing ability was shocking!
Until next time, Sienna.
