I watched some (new) feels-focused videos, and now I’m on a heavy feels-trip. Having any emotions at all is so rare for me currently the smallest stuff hits hard. It went downhill right when I got out of stationary therapy june last year, but going off my meds around new year’s eve caused a week-long heavily suicidal phase at the end of january; the longest and worst I ever had. I thought it would never end and I knew I never want to get back there ever again.
I rearranged some priorities, took some new stances on (social) life and consciously AND subconsciously started to conceal myself from ANY potential threat to a flat-line emotional status quo. It kind of worked – my emotional down-phases are rarer now than ever, and not as bad. But you can’t shut off the negative feelings without keeping any positive ones in. I still have down-phases from time to time – no positive ones, outside of very short-term amusement. At all. I haven’t felt happy anymore since 4 months.
How could I? I don’t do anything. Minimizing risks for potential emotional effects, and affects, comes with not participating in social life, work or even going outside more than absolutely necessary. Instead, I stay inside and fight with strangers on the internet over politics mostly of a country I don’t live in. And meanwhile, life outside of me goes on, while I stand completely still.
It’s a shell I’ve built, a thick one, and I’m not letting anyone, or anything, inside. Life taught me that if I try, I will get hurt. And life taught me that if I get hurt, I might get get into that dark space again, with no sign of rescue, especially just by myself. And I’m afraid that if it happens ever again, I won’t let it take the rest of me. This dark… “thing” inside of me is so strong it made me rather be a lonely hermit than actually try having fun.
In above-average good phases, though, I open up just a little, if I’m lonely, at home and the sun is out. Now, for the first time since months, I randomly stumbled across material that touched me just a little. It wouldn’t for most people, especially me a year ago, but a shell this thick makes the skin under it so sensitive it reacts to the slightest touch heavily. It only works with unknown material of course, so the course stopped after watching the two videos on my backlog I was too scared to touch before, and while typing this the feeling is gone again, too. I did feel, though. It is still possible, and I know it can feel good, too.
I just have no idea how to convince myself to allow for more of that, especially given the risk of breaking down again – and the consequences of that. Higher sensitivity for happiness means higher sensitivity for depression, and subsequently suicidility, too. If such small stuff has such an effect on me, and lets me feel this good just for actually feeling something besides emptiness, or depression, what would actually negatively-effecting content do? Just thinking about that is really, really scary.
This is depression. This is NOT just sadness. I am #notjustsad.
jatenk 