I remember starting this blog at what was rather a difficult time in my life. I had suffered a full mental breakdown, triggered primarily by a throwaway, trivial event, but also collectively by a combination of circumstance and non-trivial occurrences. Stress. Heartache. Financial worry. Work pressures. All of it combined led to that one day when everything exploded and fell apart. I was suicidal. I was self-harming. I couldn’t cope and I didn’t want to be here. Nothing anybody said or did made the slightest bit of difference. I went to weekly therapy sessions. I tried out every cocktail of antidepressant and antipsychotic medications that you can imagine. I was subjected to cold, emotionless assessments with mental health professionals. I was told I must not work for my own good. I drank too much. I ate too much. I shut myself away for weeks on end. Life, in the traditional sense of the word, very much passed me by.
It took years for me to get myself straight, to actually get to a stage where I felt I could put myself out there and embrace life again, and eventually, I did.
I went back to college. I studied to get the Maths and English GCSE’s that I needed to secure a place on an Access course. Then, halfway through all of that Covid hit and I was once again stuck at home. We all were. It was like I’d taken one step forward and three steps back.
Now of course things are back to normal. I’ve almost finished my second year at university and I’m learning lots about myself as a writer. I feel like my written work has improved tenfold, and I have a good, strong group of friends to share ideas with and talk shit. Compared to five years ago life is good.
Only, there’s an issue. I’m struggling with my mental health once again, and I know what triggered it. Of course, I’ve had blips here and there over the past few years but this time it’s a blip that just won’t seem to lift. I can feel the familiar dark clouds beginning to form in my mind and it’s hard to think my way out of them. I’ve had the urge to self harm again. Not as strongly as before, but it’s bubbling away beneath the surface. I’d like to say that I wish it would all just go away and leave me alone, but it doesn’t work like that. Depression is an illness, but it’s an illness that quickly takes over all aspects of your life. Somewhere in my head there is a tiny little voice, shouting for all it’s worth at me to fight the darkness, but it’s struggling to be heard over the booming 50,000 Watt amplifiers that are replaying the same message, over and over and over and over and over again. “You’re useless. You deserve to feel like this.”
I’m not going to do anything though. Well, I have no plans to. But it’s hard trying to live a normal existence when you’ve got that constant drone of negativity in your head every day. It’s exhausting. I’m exhausted. I just want to sleep all the time.
But I can’t, of course. I still have assignments to crack on with for university (although I’m nearly there) and sleeping all the time is not living. I’m only attending university twice a week at the moment for my own wellbeing, and I’m trying to be kinder to myself, doing things that I enjoy and that help me to relax. Obviously, that mostly means losing myself in a video game, but both reading and writing are a great way to take my mind off of things.
So what was the point of this post? Well, nothing really. I guess I just wanted to try and empty the thoughts that are buzzing around my head and put down a record of how I’m feeling at the moment on paper. Well, a screen. That’s what this blog was always for.
Chris Hack 