Living with mental illness…it’s normal…

…and don’t let anyone tell you differently. If you’ve been diagnosed with any mental illness please take a moment to congratulate yourself. And know that it’s okay! It’s okay!!! You not only made the first step to getting help, but you knew there was something going on, maybe not right with you and went to check it out. If you feel that you or anyone close to you may be having “real issues” why haven’t you went to go seek help or encouraged them to go seek help. The reason for this is because you’re scared to find out what you already know. The reason for this is because you’re afraid of what other’s will think about you. How do I know? Because that was me for quite a few years of my life. I’ll admit the only reason I went to a psychologist is that it was a requirement of my bariatric program. I only thought I was going to talk about how I felt about getting ready for surgery and how I felt dealing with a sickness that caused all of this in the first place. Listen…I was sadly mistaken. What happened during that first visit completely changed the course of everything.

I’ve talked previously about being diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety in a previous blog. You can check it out here: My Health Journey Part 3 Clinically Depressed Mixed with High Anxiety. Right now, I want to discuss what it’s like living with it and how I’ve just had one of the worse weeks of my life dealing with this. I’ve noticed that even when I’m struggling, I still like to make other people happy and laugh. I still like to put a smile on someone else’s face. It takes my mind off of the bullshit that I’m dealing with and how I’m feeling. But it’s also challenging to be that person all of the time. I’m not going to lie, it’s hard living with both depression and anxiety. One day I feel like I’m…”normal,” and other days I feel like I want to bang my head on a wall until I just pass out so that I can at least temporarily not have to feel this way. It’s a complete and total mess, but it’s my reality. If anyone in your life makes what you’re going through about them, or any other way to try and make you feel guilty and worse than you already do…try and educate them, and if they still don’t get it…DUECES! You don’t need that in your life. 

I was inspired to write this blog after this past week. I’ve never had a week like this before. It was almost scary. Over the weekend I was fine until Sunday evening when I started getting irritated by little things for absolutely no reason. I’ve been having trouble falling asleep over the past couple of weeks and Sunday night was no different. I kept waking up in the middle of the night so my sleep was really f’d up. When my alarm went off Monday morning at 4:45 am, I laid in bed for about 20 minutes and I just couldn’t get it together. I couldn’t get out of bed. I felt that if I could just get in the shower, then I could get moving and drag myself into work. I really hate missing work for no reason. However, there was a reason, I just didn’t recognize it at first. Time kept ticking away and I just decided to call off. I ended up going back to sleep for a couple of hours. When I woke up, I didn’t feel any better. Actually…I felt worse. I didn’t feel sick; no headache, no stomach ache, no sore throat or anything else; I just felt bad. Real bad! I couldn’t explain it at all and that was pissing me off even more. I was just down and feeling sorry for myself. I went downstairs to my office and attempted to start researching for this week’s podcast. I couldn’t concentrate on that. So then I went to start outlining my book I’m working on and I couldn’t focus. I ended up sitting in my office pretty much all day just staring at the computer screen with Netflix on in the background. Once it got late, I realized that I hadn’t accomplished anything that day. I went upstairs to go lay down and couldn’t fall asleep. I planned on forcing myself to work the next morning regardless of how I felt. It was like the night and morning before replayed itself giving Groundhog Day tease. I still felt the same and to make it worse, I still couldn’t explain it. I was able to get a little bit of research done and started writing some, but I couldn’t stay focused. I went out that night and treated myself to a meal and a couple of drinks. It made me feel a little better.

As of today, Thursday that I’m finishing this post, I feel better than I did, but still extremely unsure as to what made me feel like that in the first place. What do I have to be down about? What do I need to be depressed about? On the surface, everything is “appears” to be great! I don’t have much of anything to complain about. That’s the scary thing about having a mental illness. This shit just hits you out of nowhere without any rhyme or reason and not an explanation given. People will ask you what’s wrong, but you can’t tell them because you don’t know. I had never felt like this before so I didn’t have a reason. It just hit me out of the blue. I post about these things because I want to let people know they’re not alone. If you ever can’t explain how you feel, then maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it’s better that you don’t know. I could be wrong, but to this day, I still have no idea what made me feel like I was a zombie for the past few days. Something triggered it though. What I do know is that I don’t want to feel this way again, but I’m sure that I will. Hopefully, now that I embrace having a mental illness, that’s what makes episodes like this finally stand out. Before I was diagnosed, I’m sure that I had my moments of feeling down and depressed; I just ignored it. Now that I’m aware…it stands out.