Depression Support Group
Depression is a real and debilitating condition that is often misunderstood by family and friends. Its meaning can range from a prolonged period of sadness to an actual mental illness with specific symptoms. Find and share experiences with others who are going through the same struggles.
Here comes a disorganized rant.
I feel bad that I'm on here asking for help again when I haven't really been participating in the community and helping others. I joined a few months ago at the suggestion of my therapist, but things got a little better, so I disappeared.
The thing is... I've been doing pretty well on a lot of levels. I'm not sure how real it is or if I've just been pressing down the demons in my head to focus on problems in the real world. I bought a house a few months ago and getting to that point had me very stressed on that outside stuff, and then I was searching for a roommate to make things affordable, and I was starting to worry about dipping into my savings doing it all on my own... and I just had my roommate move in 10 days ago. Part of me is afraid that I wasn't actually coping well, but without that stress and panic hanging over me all my insecurities have reared their ugly heads.
I've been pretty much single for about 2 years now, after my first relationship that lasted more than 2 months (1 year, woohoo! Such epic crash after). I've been on a dating site for a while, and to be honest I've been primarily talking to women. I'm young and modern and I want to see these new life views and find what truly makes me happy. I'll call myself bisexual for now. Anyway, at the same time the roommate situation was resolving itself, I started talking to a guy who was so enigmatic and compelling. He's polyamorous, which is just another thing I want to explore anyway, but in this context it means he already has a girlfriend, but he might want to date me, too. She knows he's poly and talking to other people. It's very agreed upon and open. This is probably too much information for most of you and likely too modern. If you read this and say well that's just wrong, of course you'll be miserable, I probably won't really hear your advice out.
To continue, we met after exchanging many lengthy messages about things I'm so passionate about (justice, feminism, etc), and it awoke a lot in me. I haven't felt this way about someone since I was 16... but there are also a lot of similarities to that boy I dated at 16, both the situation and the personality, even speaking style to an extent. I feel like I'm almost confusing reality (I am not hallucinating. Not one of my problems). I feel lost at sea, looking for anything to hold on to so I can anchor to myself and who I am today. I'm not my 16 year old self and he's not that boy that I feel in love with for the first time ever.
So all of these unresolved emotions about my first love have surfaced and raised my desire and muddled my perceptions and that pain and longing for my first love is there beneath the surface aching once more. I've been so tempted to message him. A tad bit more context, though I only dated him for the prescribed 2 months... we kept talking for a few years. He helped me survive the roughest time in my life that did eventually lead to my first suicide attempt, and the last thing I did before drinking bleach (wouldn't recommend) was to text him "I love you." Well it was a failed attempt, but he cared so much when I told him the truth of the moment. A few more years later I cut him off because he did cause a lot of turmoil in my life and I thought I wanted a normal happy relationship (yep, that boy who made it a year with me).
On top of that, a friend who has a terrible relationship with her mom sent me an article about getting over the abuse of a narcissist. Her mom is a narcissist and she's still trying to straighten her life out... but reading the article I realized that it applied to my dad and helped explain so much of my low self esteem that causes my depression. Sometimes those hateful thoughts in my head are even in his voice. The article talked about how narcissists convince us were worthless and make us dependent on them, how the only thing to do to move past it is to cut them out of our lives. So here I am panicking with all the extra emotion and memory, and now memories of my fucked up childhood crying every xmas are bombarding me as well. I'm trying to think whether I need to cut my dad out of my life, and what that would mean for the rest of my family and how if I do it in an active way of actually telling him, he's going to tear me apart and make me feel like such an awful person.
So my mind is supplying me with every example of a time I wasn't good enough in someone else's eyes as the new boy needs to reschedule and ultimately cancel our second date. He's got family things going on right now and something happened with his partner. He's been very open and upfront and frankly we've bluntly discussed things many partners don't until much further along in their relationships. While apologizing for having to cancel our second date, he brought up that he might not be so satisfying to me romantically based on previous conversations, which sounded so much like a bullshit it's not you; it's me thing to say that I instantly broke into tears that yet another person couldn't bare to be around me anymore and was using every excuse to get the hell away from me. It hurt so much to seemingly have all those worthless thoughts in my head reinforced by his otherwise benign statement. Now with part of me so certain that he's at best ambivalent, I want to drive him away. I want him to run so far to escape the terror that is being with me. And I'm also afraid that I'm falling for him and it's going to hurt me as much as my first love, that I need to break it off now before I invest any more emotion into him. And then... what if I'm sabotaging the first good thing that's come along in 2 years because I don't think I'm good enough? What if my dad's voice inside my head is ruining a chance at happiness because I couldn't give this new guy 5 minutes to sort his own troubles? Goodness know I have enough issues that I need time and space to process.
I don't know what to do. I don't what part of me is logical and what is depression trying to hurt me. All I know is I'm hurting... and I kind of want his arms around me.
And this song is playing over and over in my head.
https://youtu.be/BY6OfsQCgLQ
I feel bad that I'm on here asking for help again when I haven't really been participating in the community and helping others. I joined a few months ago at the suggestion of my therapist, but things got a little better, so I disappeared.
The thing is... I've been doing pretty well on a lot of levels. I'm not sure how real it is or if I've just been pressing down the demons in my head to focus on problems in the real world. I bought a house a few months ago and getting to that point had me very stressed on that outside stuff, and then I was searching for a roommate to make things affordable, and I was starting to worry about dipping into my savings doing it all on my own... and I just had my roommate move in 10 days ago. Part of me is afraid that I wasn't actually coping well, but without that stress and panic hanging over me all my insecurities have reared their ugly heads.
I've been pretty much single for about 2 years now, after my first relationship that lasted more than 2 months (1 year, woohoo! Such epic crash after). I've been on a dating site for a while, and to be honest I've been primarily talking to women. I'm young and modern and I want to see these new life views and find what truly makes me happy. I'll call myself bisexual for now. Anyway, at the same time the roommate situation was resolving itself, I started talking to a guy who was so enigmatic and compelling. He's polyamorous, which is just another thing I want to explore anyway, but in this context it means he already has a girlfriend, but he might want to date me, too. She knows he's poly and talking to other people. It's very agreed upon and open. This is probably too much information for most of you and likely too modern. If you read this and say well that's just wrong, of course you'll be miserable, I probably won't really hear your advice out.
To continue, we met after exchanging many lengthy messages about things I'm so passionate about (justice, feminism, etc), and it awoke a lot in me. I haven't felt this way about someone since I was 16... but there are also a lot of similarities to that boy I dated at 16, both the situation and the personality, even speaking style to an extent. I feel like I'm almost confusing reality (I am not hallucinating. Not one of my problems). I feel lost at sea, looking for anything to hold on to so I can anchor to myself and who I am today. I'm not my 16 year old self and he's not that boy that I feel in love with for the first time ever.
So all of these unresolved emotions about my first love have surfaced and raised my desire and muddled my perceptions and that pain and longing for my first love is there beneath the surface aching once more. I've been so tempted to message him. A tad bit more context, though I only dated him for the prescribed 2 months... we kept talking for a few years. He helped me survive the roughest time in my life that did eventually lead to my first suicide attempt, and the last thing I did before drinking bleach (wouldn't recommend) was to text him "I love you." Well it was a failed attempt, but he cared so much when I told him the truth of the moment. A few more years later I cut him off because he did cause a lot of turmoil in my life and I thought I wanted a normal happy relationship (yep, that boy who made it a year with me).
On top of that, a friend who has a terrible relationship with her mom sent me an article about getting over the abuse of a narcissist. Her mom is a narcissist and she's still trying to straighten her life out... but reading the article I realized that it applied to my dad and helped explain so much of my low self esteem that causes my depression. Sometimes those hateful thoughts in my head are even in his voice. The article talked about how narcissists convince us were worthless and make us dependent on them, how the only thing to do to move past it is to cut them out of our lives. So here I am panicking with all the extra emotion and memory, and now memories of my fucked up childhood crying every xmas are bombarding me as well. I'm trying to think whether I need to cut my dad out of my life, and what that would mean for the rest of my family and how if I do it in an active way of actually telling him, he's going to tear me apart and make me feel like such an awful person.
So my mind is supplying me with every example of a time I wasn't good enough in someone else's eyes as the new boy needs to reschedule and ultimately cancel our second date. He's got family things going on right now and something happened with his partner. He's been very open and upfront and frankly we've bluntly discussed things many partners don't until much further along in their relationships. While apologizing for having to cancel our second date, he brought up that he might not be so satisfying to me romantically based on previous conversations, which sounded so much like a bullshit it's not you; it's me thing to say that I instantly broke into tears that yet another person couldn't bare to be around me anymore and was using every excuse to get the hell away from me. It hurt so much to seemingly have all those worthless thoughts in my head reinforced by his otherwise benign statement. Now with part of me so certain that he's at best ambivalent, I want to drive him away. I want him to run so far to escape the terror that is being with me. And I'm also afraid that I'm falling for him and it's going to hurt me as much as my first love, that I need to break it off now before I invest any more emotion into him. And then... what if I'm sabotaging the first good thing that's come along in 2 years because I don't think I'm good enough? What if my dad's voice inside my head is ruining a chance at happiness because I couldn't give this new guy 5 minutes to sort his own troubles? Goodness know I have enough issues that I need time and space to process.
I don't know what to do. I don't what part of me is logical and what is depression trying to hurt me. All I know is I'm hurting... and I kind of want his arms around me.
And this song is playing over and over in my head.
https://youtu.be/BY6OfsQCgLQ
And then where is the depression part? I'm not trying to be mean..I want to be helpful and because I am so depressed...that I am having a hard time reading this...