On realising and then accepting that I’m ill.

For a long time I’ve accepted that I am depressed. I also have accepted for a long time that I am disabled, as I have multiple invisible impairments. But for some reason I never really thought of myself as ill, despite the fact that I’ve been trudging back and forth to the doctors with quite alarming regularity over the last few years, for some reason I saw my depression as something other than illness, as just a part of me of who I was.

That was until this summer, it wasn’t until I started living in a house with people other than my parents and talking more openly to some of my friends that I realised that a very large number of my thought processes are atypical. I just assumed as I had always felt like this, that lots of other people had also felt like this and it was completely normal to do so. So here are a few of my atypical thought processes that I assumed normal:

Self hatred:- I’m not just talking momentary passing self hatred as I’m reliably informed of the normality of that, but total and sometimes overwhelming self hatred. And I don’t ever remember not feeling like this, I don’t ever remember liking myself.

Wishing I were dead:- This goes hand in hand with the above, but I guess slightly more severe. Again I’m informed that not everyone goes to bed wishing that they won’t wake up in the morning – who knew?! But I wouldn’t say for me this is feeling suicidal, for me being suicidal is actually wishing to act on these feelings. And I don’t think I’ve been suicidal my whole life but I have thought the world would be a better place if I were dead.

The fear of the worst when people aren’t where you expect them to be:- So if someone is late, or not in the house when I expect them to be I fear the worst, that they’re dead, that there’s been some kind of terrible accident, that someone they love had died and they’ve had to go and sort things out, ect, ect. I’m told that doing this isn’t completely atypical it’s just the speed at which I get these feelings, it can be within seconds, and I can’t focus on anything else whist this is going through my mind.

The belief that my friend’s aren’t my friends:- I believe my friends are part of a big conspiracy and they’re all just acting, and one day they’re all going to simultaneously turn around and leave me as part of one big practical joke. I’m going to log onto facebook and have no friends but have 800+ messages just saying “AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!” I don’t think that as I’ve gone through life I’ve made better friends, I just feel like I’ve become friends with better actors.

A complete inability to accept compliments:- compliment me on anything and one of a few things will happen: I’ll pull a face, I’ll laugh it off, I’ll ignore it completely or I’ll come up with a some kind of self deprecating retort. I just don’t believe any of the compliments that people give me, so I bash them away as quick as I can.

So putting all of these things together has made me realise, I’m ill, and I have been for the majority of my life, but with these and certain other situational things (I’ve recently been told I have PTSD amongst other issues) right now I’m really unwell, and it’s unpleasant, and I want to be better, it’s just I’ve been ill for so long that I don’t know what it’s like to be well.