the friendly introduction to depression and suicidal

ideation, and everything in between.

I dont remember when everything changed.

Its weird because people usually know the exact day something

drastically changed for them. I think my depression and the feeling of

loneliness gradually made their way into my life since I do not recall

the exact day when depression introduced itself. I do remember bits

and pieces, though; like feelings, emotions, thoughts. I remember the

strange sensation in my body; the tingling feeling in my fingertips and

feet, the stiffness in my neck and the pulling at tugging at my brain.

Yet, I dont remember when it happened; I dont remember the exact

day or even year when I started to feel out of place. I dont recall much

of my childhood either; looking through old pictures, I hardly recog-

nise the little girl smiling and laughing; looking like shes having the

time of her life. The little girl seen in the photographs is not me; it feels
like she never was me, to begin with. The past and its events seem so

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distant; its like my brain only allows me to see the hurt and heartache

and nothing else suppressing every pleasant memory. Though, I

hardly remember the traumatic event that happened a few years ago

and lasted another couple of years. Of course, I remember, again and as

usual, bits and pieces of it; but not quite the full tragedy and crisis that

it had turned into. Hell, I even have trouble remembering what I had
for dinner the other night.

I remember the thoughts about death and not wanting to live any-
more and every feeling it brought along with it at age thirteen. Before

that time, I was afraid of death and especially dying; I was afraid to
lose my parents and even had the occasional nightmares to prove I was

terrified of death. And much later, at age twenty-one, I wanted to be

dead more than I wanted to be alive. I fantasised about ways to kill

myself to die or get killed, which, in all honesty, is quite the contrary
to what it used to be; before everything got dark and heavy.

Before I was diagnosed with depression (or rather persistent de-

pressive disorder, because I didnt have major depressive episodes), I

had no real understanding or awareness of the illness of depression.

I didn't know of the strange physical effects of depression; I used to

know it was a mental thing. Depression was completely unknown to me

before I was diagnosed with a dysthymia which, to me, sounds like

some nasty disease that involves parasites eating your flesh and bones,
or something along those lines.

Up until the point of my diagnosis, I had always deemed myself a

sad teenage girl struggling to find reasons to stay alive. I was a girl who

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never truly fit into life and always seemed to have been feeling out of

place and disconnected.

Anyway, I was around thirteen years old when the rather intrusive

thoughts started to surface at least from what I can remember. There

wasnt a time where I felt even remotely normal, to be honest. And

even if I could remember, it would all be a blur. Ive always felt like
something was wrong; out of place and just not right. It was a feeling

that had loomed over me like a cloud. A cloud that would soon start to
rain down on me like monsoons and rain.

Ive always considered the human mind to be fascinating and

something out of the ordinary. I even think its humankinds greatest

weapon of mass destruction; or any kind of destruction to be hon-

est. Apart from that, the mind is able to hide certain things; you, as a

person, are able to hide your true feelings by just acting differently. No
one would suspect a thing; the world would shrug. There could be all

sorts of things going on in ones head, and there is no way anyone

could know what that exactly would be. There was no way anyone

could have known how I was feeling and what I was thinking; there
was no way they could have appreciated my little piece of self-made

hell, or why death would have been so much better than the life I was
currently living. Death seemed like a phenomenally good idea, espe-

cially at the age of twenty-one.

I hadnt told anyone about how I felt; like actually felt. I lived my
life in utmost secrecy all the imperfections and little secrets perfectly

hidden and neatly tucked away by a rather bright smile. A smile that,

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in the end, would be my ultimate demise. I was suffering in silence,

was working way too many shifts and barely getting any sleep. Days
off were almost unbearable; especially weekends off. I hadnt let any-

one in on the deepest and darkest parts of my so-called life, and I was
even terrified to do so. On days off, I would find myself in bed until

late in the afternoon, staring at the ceiling and contemplating my own

life and how badly I wanted to throw myself off a cliff, crash my car

into a tree or overdose on a copious amount of different and supposed-

ly deadly pills. I just wanted to be dead.

Okay, well maybe, it wasnt exactly like that. I didnt really want to
be dead, I just didnt want to be alive at least, not like this. I wasnt

going to live my whole life feeling like I didnt matter; the undeniable
feeling that something felt so out of place. I was tired of being alive, yet

terrified of death. And death only happened to those who had lived;
like truly lived. I hadnt lived at all; I was merely surviving, and I was

getting sick of it. Besides, there were infinitely more people who had
never been alive. At age sixteen, I wanted to have never existed in the

first place. I desperately wanted to be one of those people who never

got to be born I wanted to be one of the three hundred million sperm

that got discarded; the ones that didnt make the cut.
It was hard not to tell anyone what was going on inside my so-

called broken and mysterious mind. The mind that was so complicated it
was basically trying to kill itself; trying to kill me. I was trying to hide

everything with having a huge smile plastered across my face because I

felt like I had to get through this on my own I believed that not one

person could possibly understand what I was going through or what I

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was feeling at that time in my life. I was completely and utterly alone,

at least that was what the voices in the back of my head were telling
me, anyway. I couldnt tell anyone that I was scared, and I couldnt

convince myself enough that everything was going to be alright either.

Hell, I was terrified to know the difference between my own happiness

and someone elses happiness the kind of joy that I had yet to expe-
rience. I wanted to be left alone; to live in my own personal piece of

self-made hell. The kind of hell that wasnt so much of a hell to me as it

was to the select few people whom I had let into my secrecy years later.

The thunderstorms and earthquakes that shake the earth were actually
happening in my head. My life was falling apart, and I didnt even

know it myself. Actually, my life had never felt completely whole or

even half-way decent; I had never felt remotely in control. It was al-

ways the thoughts, the earthquakes and thunderstorms; the monsoons and
rain, that made me feel like I was far from being human. As much as I

would have liked to know about alien species, I didnt want to become
one myself; yet, this was exactly what had started to happen. I had be-

come alien to my own body something that would later be known as

depersonalisation and derealisation. I didnt understand the exaggera-

tion and changes that were happening inside my rather fragile brain; let
alone this foreign experience of being outside my own body. It terrified

me, not knowing what was going on or was going to happen terrified
me. I couldnt tell anyone that I was dreading every single second of

being alive either. Yet, I was dying for someone to call me out on my
self-destructive behaviour. I was desperately waiting for someone to

tell me I was destroying myself and that I had to stop digging my own

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grave, despite the fact that I couldn't stop killing myself in the literal

sense as well as figuratively speaking. I needed someone to talk to. I

needed to talk to someone who truly understood my flawed and

perhaps even faulty brain; someone that would actually listen. I tried
to find my solace in therapist and psychiatrist who, one after the other,

had told me that I was a too-big-of-a-mess to fix.

So, after having spent so many futile years talking to therapist and

psychiatrists who totally misunderstood and probably even misdi-

agnosed me, and after several failed suicide attempts, I decided

enough was enough. I wanted to die, this time for real.

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 conundrum n. an intricate, confusing or difficult
problem or question.

Depression is a conundrum.

The invisible ailment called depression had indulged me into self-in-

flicted mental and physical abuse worries, insecurities and defeatist

thinking to the point of having and entertaining irrational thoughts to

end it all.

Depression is both nothing and everything its feeling too much or

nothing at all, and there is no in-between. I was either feeling extremely

low or extremely high there was no balance between those two no-

table moods of mine. It is like my brain was only programmed to know

sadness and head-over-heels excitement which wasnt true excite-

ment, to be honest. Its more like faking happiness around others so

you can curl up in a ball and cry over nothing when finally alone.

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Life wasnt all cakes and ale, especially with depression did life feel like

licking honey off a thorn. Everywhere I went, a dark cloud would fol-
low; there was no pleasure in doing anything. Depression takes away

everything you love and tells you that you will find no joy in doing it,
whatsoever. Essentially, depression robs you from everything great. In

my fight against this mental illness, I was still doing the things I used
to enjoy in a futile attempt to take back my own life to steal it back

from the depression that had clouded my mind for nearly a decade (at
that time in my life). Yet, within a fortnight or so, I would have given in

to the depression and would have given up everything I had ever

loved, and put all my energy and effort into working way too many

hours/shifts. Admittedly, the goal was to drain both my body and

mind just enough to leave me too exhausted to succumb to the depres-

sion or to let the depression take over because I thought I was too busy
for depression. As if my mind was too occupied to even consider feel-

ing a bit blue as if depression was a choice and only happened to

people who werent busy bees. In the end, the opposite of what was

originally intended occurred, and I was left too exhausted to function

properly. In fact, the depression had every opportunity to violate every

goddamn thought in my head and like hell it did.

Depression isnt just feeling gloomy on rainy days, having the blues on
a Monday or feeling the occasional sadness when thinking about your

first heartbreak. Its much more than that. Depression isnt just a sad
mood; it is an actual clinical diagnosis a disease of the brain. It's a

mental illness that screams and yells at you, saying you are undeserv-

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ing of life. This feeling does not vanish after several tough, and some-

times even unbearable days; its not the transient emotion that passes
in a matter of minutes or a couple of hours. It lasts for days, weeks, and

even months at the time.

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 two beers, a vodka red bull and two empty strips of
paracetamol tablets / doomsday

It was on a Friday night, just two days before Spring would arrive
when I decided to go out with friends and colleagues. It would also be

that fateful night where I would have tried to kill myself.

I faced the lowest period of my life and found myself wildly un-

happy during the months leading up to the day that left my parents
and little brother scared and worried about my well-being. I had

thought about suicide before; at age thirteen I started to wonder what

death would be like and even started fantasising about it, and at age

sixteen I wished my birth mother hadnt put me up for adoption and

had just chosen abortion, instead. Suicide and these particular thoughts

about death werent foreign to me, in fact, they were all that had occu-
pied my mind over the past six-or-so months leading up to that memo-

rable Friday night.

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 My mind had already begun to wander, and I had started to doubt

my own worth; imagining the end of my existence. I began to plan;

take matters into my own hand stock on paracetamols and mela-

tonin pills my mother had bought me to help me fall asleep faster and
easy, and without distress of any kind.

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 all the comforts of home

about how home didnt feel like home.

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