My Story Part 2
A long time ago, I told you all about my history with self-injury and a bit about the mental health aspect of things. A lot of you have shared a bit about your family history, so I thought that I should share a bit about mine as well.
Just had a very emotional moment.
I just had a very deeply personal moment that I felt I needed to share with all of you. A few years ago (exact date: April 25, 2010) I took this picture of myself toward the end of a mental breakdown.
Why would I take a picture like this? Because I wanted to mark a milestone. I took that picture so I could see myself, look myself in the eyes, and promise that sad, lonely, scared girl that I was going to start taking care of her and that no matter what it took, one day she wouldn’t have to feel the way she felt in that moment anymore. Little did she know, there was a long road to take to get to that point.
Update soon:
Hey, just so you guys know I haven’t forgotten about you all, I just started a second job and have been very busy. Feel free to keep the updates coming! Love you all.
~Soul
GothSuccubus’s Story:
Dear Soul,
I’m 22 years old & I’m Mexican (I won’t add my name or city since I don’t want my little sister to find this by any chance).
I actually don’t know how to start my story (I have actually deleted the second paragraph more than a couple times). I think everything happened so suddenly that I cannot tell what happened first.
[Most of the things from here are quite numb since they are memories that I recovered from therapy]
Depression is humiliating. It turns intelligent, kind people into zombies who can’t wash a dish or change their socks. It affects the ability to think clearly, to feel anything, to ascribe value to your children, your lifelong passions, your relative good fortune. It scoops out your normal healthy ability to cope with bad days and bad news, and replaces it with an unrecognizable sludge that finds no pleasure, no delight, no point in anything outside of bed. You alienate your friends because you can’t comport yourself socially, you risk your job because you can’t concentrate, you live in moderate squalor because you have no energy to stand up, let alone take out the garbage. You become pathetic and you know it. And you have no capacity to stop the downward plunge. You have no perspective, no emotional reserves, no faith that it will get better. So you feel guilty and ashamed of your inability to deal with life like a regular human, which exacerbates the depression and the isolation. If you’ve never been depressed, thank your lucky stars and back off the folks who take a pill so they can make eye contact with the grocery store cashier. No one on earth would choose the nightmare of depression over an averagely turbulent normal life.
It’s not an incapacity to cope with day to day living in the modern world. It’s an incapacity to function. At all. If you and your loved ones have been spared, every blessing to you. If depression has taken root in you or your loved ones, every blessing to you, too. No one chooses it. No one deserves it. It runs in families, it ruins families. You cannot imagine what it takes to feign normalcy, to show up to work, to make a dentist appointment, to pay bills, to walk your dog, to return library books on time, to keep enough toilet paper on hand, when you are exerting most of your capacity on trying not to kill yourself. Depression is real. Just because you’ve never had it doesn’t make it imaginary. Compassion is also real. And a depressed person may cling desperately to it until they are out of the woods and they may remember your compassion for the rest of their lives as a force greater than their depression. Have a heart. Judge not lest ye be judged.
(Source: sherunsfromdarkness)
Via We're All Mad Here...
Sometimes when people tell you their problems, they just want you to listen. They don’t necessarily want or need advice. We usually rush to give them advice because we’re uncomfortable handling their grief or thinking that we have to solve it. We don’t have to solve anything, we just have to listen and validate.
The End.
And that is, in part, what this blog is all about.
(Source: kesri)
A personal challenge for all of you (and me):
I know a lot of you have been working on writing your stories to submit and are finding it personally challenging. I shared my story first, because I wanted you all to know where I’m coming from. I did, however, leave out a significant amount. It was easy for me to write what I wrote because it;s the same things I’ve told time and time again. People know about it. People have known about it. It really was not difficult to do. However, I attempted a second post a while ago that would dig a lot deeper. It had a few things in it that I’ve told next to nobody. I want you to know, I feel your pain, at least to some degree. The reason I didn’t post my writing is because I was writing from the heart, and since it was very long, I included a page break. Unfortunately, something went wrong and everything after the page break was gone. Now, I’m in the process of consciously finding the best way to re-tell what I’ve already told straight from the heart, and that is a difficult task.
All that being said, I know it’s hard, but I also know that it will be better for me in the long-run. The challenge: Even if you can’t bring yourself to write your full story, submit something you haven’t told more than a few people about. Something you try not to think about that most people would never know.
I will include mine in my re-telling of my second story. Love to you all. Stay strong!
~Soul
Note from Nichole:
Not so much a story, just something that is bothering me.
My sister recently got her father’s name tattooed on her wrist. He abused me my entire childhood. She knows this is and still looks up to him even though he was also a drug addict (that’s how he died) and an alcoholic. He treated her like gold, so she ignores everything else he did. It just…makes me uncomfortable to see my abusers name on my sister.
About me
This blog is run by a girl, affectionately referred to as Soul by her internet friends. It all started when I was placed in a psychiatric facility after a dramatic episode of depression and self-harm. While I was hospitalized, a very dear friend created the e-mail account "letterstosoul@gmail.com" for friends to send me letters of encouragement while I was away, and she would print them out and bring them to me during visiting hours. It meant so much to me to hear what people that truly cared had to say, that I decided to use that e-mail address to give back to others, and over a year later, I have decided to start this blog based on that. My goal is for followers to find strength in numbers, to be reminded that they are not alone, to be heard when nobody else is listening, and to receive the support of others that are either in the same place or have recently recovered. If only one person is touched by this blog, it will have fulfilled its purpose, though I hope for this space to be a constant beacon of hope for many. Love to you all, and good luck with your journey.
