Have you ever had someone say something hurtful to you and it stick with you all day long? It’s hard enough dealing with one person saying hurtful things to you, but to deal with yourself is a totally different matter.
That’s what my depression is. It’s the voices of my two worst enemies berating me day in and day out. One of those voices is my most recent ex, who will remain unnamed. Why? Haven’t you ever seen Fatal Attraction? I’m not putting myself through that! My ex, we’ll refer to her as Miss S, often brings up how thoughtless I am, how I gave up a great person for her, how I am fat and ugly and dumb. She is like a parasite. She buried herself in my mind and she still hasn’t crawled out of my ear or nose in three years. Three years I have been like this. Of course, I have always suffered from depression because of that other voice in my head. That other voice is me. I have always had self-esteem issues and most likely always will.
Have any of you ever heard the song Make Me Wanna Die by The Pretty Reckless? The first half of the chorus goes:
Your eyes, your eyes, I can see in your eyes, your eyes/Everything in your eyes, your eyes/You make me wanna die/I’ll never be good enough/You make me wanna die/
That’s exactly how I feel. I feel that I’ll never be good enough. I wasn’t good enough for Miss S, I wasn’t good enough for anyone before, so how can I be good enough for anyone else? If the Devil doesn’t think you’re worth it, why would the angels?
I feel tortured, like I’m drowning. I keep kicking and moving my arms, but my fingertips barely graze the surface. I’m always in reach of air and just when I am about to reach it, she pulls me under again. So I resort to hurting myself.
Why would someone that’s hurting hurt himself? I wish I knew. I am so tired. I am weak. I am ready to give up. I’ve attempted suicide multiple times throughout my life and now have a few permanent scars because of it.
Verbal abuse is a real thing. I have been made fun of because I have mentioned being abused before and it’s verbal not physical. Physical abuse does a lot of damage, but verbal abuse stays with you and destroys you slowly from the inside out. Many times I feel like if I screamed to the top of my lungs, no one would stop to help, no one would care. They would just keep on about their business and I would slowly slip into insanity.
There’s one other thing that happens to me in times when my depression gets really bad. I see her. I see and hear my ex as if we never split up, and everything she says is degrading and hurtful. Her only purpose is to hurt me. I even often have shouting matches with her. That must really turn heads. You know what’s really crazy? There was a time when I thought I couldn’t live without her. Now I’m forever stuck with her inside my head.
Some days are better than others, some days are worse. Sometimes all I do is pace the room and consider every type of death imaginable. I could hang myself, shoot myself, cut myself, throw myself down the stairs, lay down on a moving saw, stab myself, eat rat poison, drink bleach, fall asleep with a bag over my head, suffocate myself…. the list goes on. I literally pace back and forth, considering every form of self-harm, death and torture imaginable and then I try to find a reason to not go through with it.
Sometimes my mind turns against me and I convince myself that the positives in my life will turn to negatives, that there’s no reason to believe in hope, no reason to go on.
My friends have always left and surely they’ll continue to…right?
Everything dies, which means my dog won’t be around forever and when that happens, I’ll spin into a worse depression….right?
I failed Statistics twice so there’s no point in going back to college…right?
It’s constantly one thing after another and then I finally find that one unchanging constant and cling to it. Will that constant ever change? Maybe. But right now, I can always count on her. She calms me, makes me feel wanted, makes me feel loved. She’s my best friend in the world. Sometimes I worry about remaining attached to her because I am afraid she too will one day be gone and I’ll once again be left alone.
One thing I have realized, though, is that you can’t live in fear. Fear and worry will make you old and ugly. Trust me, I feel and see that every day when I look in the mirror. Speaking of which, I only have one mirror in my house, and that’s in the bathroom. I think that’s because the one person I hate more than my ex is myself. The real battle is against myself. I sometimes feel like I’m split in half and my two sides are always at war with one another.
One day the pain will stop. Jesus put me here for a reason. I don’t know what that reason is and sometimes I don’t care. There are times when I want death more than anything and there are times when I ask Him for help and pretty soon, I’m okay.
I’ve been told that I carry the weight of the world on my back, that I try to help everyone and then get destroyed when I find that I can’t help that person.
What can I do? What can I say? How can I get better? Am I fooling myself? Will I always be this way? Will I never be happy? Will I never be at peace while in this body? Will I ever gain control?
Or am I fated to an insane asylum, arguing with my ex for the rest of my life?

me1Steven is an amateur film critic that is actively looking for employment. He is 25 years old and lives in Sylva, North Carolina.

Steven can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

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