I may be depressed but I am the SAME PERSON

I have had a really bad week, and its been made worse by the fact that a number of people have "unfriended" me on facebook after I made a status update openly talking about my experience with seeing the psychiatrist and about how at that moment in time I was feeling very suicidal.


What I don't understand is the way that some people treat you very differently before and after knowing you have mental health problems or are suicidal.


I am the same person, I am the girl you met at the party, the girl you played football with, the girl you know through your friend, the girl you worked with and the girl you went to school with. I am still her, I have always been her and I always will be her.


Yes I'm evolving as a person but everyone is, so why should it make any difference now that you know a tiny bit more about my medical history. For the record I've also had my tonsils out and I'm also having an echocardiogram soon if that makes any difference to your feelings on me as a person. No? Didn't think so, so why does it matter that I'm clinically depressed?! 


Also it's not like I've become depressed over night, the majority of people I know I have met, or at least got to know a lot better since I've been on antidepressants. And for long periods before I was prescribed any kind of medication I was experiencing many of the same symptoms that I experience now, so chances are most people I know have not known me when I have not been unwell.


The thing that I don't like is that sometimes I feel that I can't be the open honest person that I am, because of how other people will react. I hate altering myself because of other people. I will dress how I want. I will say what I think. And I WILL talk about my depression, because I'm not ashamed, and it shouldn't change what you think of me. 


(Also I would like to say that I am incredibly grateful for the wonderful kind words that I have received over the last few days. I have some truly amazing people in my life, that I feel most of the time I do not deserve and even though I say this you do not give up on me. I am, although I frequently cannot see it, extremely blessed.) 

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.