How deep within the abyss have you fallen?

You mean the abyss is not all there is?

I’ve been pretty far in. I had some awful times with my girlfriend, coupled with family deaths and some other depressed family members.
It all gathered on top of me and I felt myself drowning under all of it. Then, one night, my ex brought yet another guy back to our flat. I heard everything. I was still in love with her but wanted to get over it to end that chapter in my life, and this was doing anything but helping. I found all of the pills in the flat and made a pile. I sat and stared at the pile of pills and everything that it represented.

That pile still exists today, as a symbol of my darkest moments and how I have worked through them. I worked through my problems and am still doing so to this day. I have only created temporary solutions, but they will end soon and I will have to see the light of day once more, I welcome it :-)

I’ve lived through periods where I felt so low I was looking up at sidewalks (curbs).

I avoid dredging up the details of my past miseries. I draw on my past experiences to help others

I was pretty fucked up in high school. I came to several realizations that I strongly disliked and had absolutely no control over any of it. That loss of control about killed me inside. I felt incredibly helpless and hopeless.
I was really depressed, started using a lot of drugs. I did meth over the course of a year. I had trichotillomania among other things.
The depression really ate me alive. All I did was go to school, come home and sleep. I had no motivation for anything. I stopped washing my hair and bathing on a regular basis. I had no desire to want to take care of myself.
I became really numb at one point and completely lost my ability to cry. That was the worst part.

Luckily, I did snap out of it. I began accepting the things out of my control.
As soon as I did, the depression slowly went away. It just took 4 damn years to learn to accept. ::sighs::

So, acceptance was key. I’m thankful for having gone through it though because now when similar things happen that I can’t control, I don’t get severely bent out of shape about them. I just go through the process of acceptance and stay relatively happy.
For example, I’m poor, but I accepted it because it won’t be that way forever.
My grandmother’s Alzheimer’s has gotten so bad, she doesn’t even know who I am anymore, which really sucks, but it doesn’t bother me. It just is what it is. I wouldn’t have that mentality if I hadn’t of been miserable for 4 years over the other shit.

I truly value my life now and appreciate the beauty and every opportunity and friend I make. That was the greatest gift I got out of being in hell for that long.

As people who have been around here for a while know, I’ve gone through some pretty serious depression over the last couple of years. What surprised me was that giving up hope or not having hope seemed to take a big weight off my shoulders. Because I would never get any better, I could give up trying to fight it. Giving up, strangely enough, was what I needed to do.

I found this out, because later on, after my second depression, I realized that I wasn’t willing to say depression was a horrible thing. In part, I wanted it. This was very weird, because, of course, depression is really the worst experience I’ve ever had.

What I think happened when I gave up, was that when I decided I could no longer fight it, then I could allow others to help me. Before that, I was beating myself up for not being able to keep it at bay. Every time someone offered a suggestion or tried to help, I felt guilty and I almost fought them off. I tried to make things worse.

When I realized I couldn’t fight it, and I gave in to it, and let myself be depressed and feel the depression fully, I changed. I don’t think I fully allowed people to help, but I stopped fighting it. But the main thing was that in giving myself permission to give in, and no longer having to fight, everything lightened up a bit. I no longer had that burden of trying not to be depressed. I could just be as I was: depressed.

That started me recovering. Of course, as soon as I felt better, I tried to fight again, which made it worse, and up and down and up and down, the opposite of what one would think it should be. When I fought it, I got worse and when I gave up, I got better.

I guess it’s hard to believe that, even having experienced it. My instinct is still to fight. Part of that is to prove to people I am trying; that I don’t want to burden anyone. I’ve probably been doing that all my life, and in getting depressed, for the first time, I was able to give up my responsibilities, and with that weight off me, I got better. It only lasted a few hours, or maybe a day, but it is something I now know, even if I haven’t “learned” it.

I don’t know why I can’t handle it, whatever it is, any more. Depression brought that home to me. I’m trying to be something I can’t be. I can’t take all these troubles on my shoulders. I simply can’t do it, as much as I would dearly love to do it. But I don’t get that, and don’t let myself give up, unless I have no choice. I don’t want to be a shirker and a slacker. I don’t want to be seen that way and thought of that way. But there are times when that’s what and who I am, and I have no choice but to be that way.

The other gift of depression is empathy. I now tear up at the drop of a hat. Every little emotional scene makes me want to cry. I can also put myself in other people’s shoes more completely. I can see things I couldn’t see before. I know things I never knew when I had no idea what depression was. I think it lets me help people who suffer in the same way I do. I couldn’t do that before because I simply didn’t know.

I’m not saying I like depression or that I want to be depressed, or even that I’m not afraid of it. Although I have learned what suicidal ideation is all about, and I know what it means, and it is telling me I need to be held and loved, and that I may have to give up my protective walls in order to get that.

Those walls are peculiar things. I wall off judgment and fear by trying to please people. I try not to show my true self simply by pleasing others. When I give up, I no longer care what people think, and that allows me to be the sucky me that I am at those times. Or the sucky me that resides inside—the one no one else can see. But I kind of love sucky me. Sucky me knows how to lose and not care. Sucky me knows that I can survive when everyone hates me. Sucky me is a weird character. I don’t know him very well, and I don’t understand him, but when I give up, and he comes out, he does some kind of strange dance through my psyche and it becomes apparent that nothing really matters, which means I can do and be whoever I want to be, and it won’t get any worse. And sometimes it gets better.

I’m on disability from nursing. All of a sudden my life’s changed so much. I’m still working on accepting it. I do know I’m lucky to have the disability money- very lucky.

I’m not in the abyss.

Once upon a time I got caught up in a scheme passing counterfeit cash I didn’t know was phony. Facing the US Marshall who wanted my ass more than the FBI did was an interesting experience to say the least.

It was even more interesting to come to find my wad of cash was only pocket change to the millions of bogus bills funneled into our economy by Iranian Drug lords bent on messing up our banking system.

After I was almost killed in a parachuting accident, the military messed up my pay. I was almost evicted from my apartment for non-payment of rent while I was in a wheelchair and couldn’t even get out to get my own food. My ex-wife had left me… again, and I went into an emotional tailspin for awhile.

I lost my first husband right after our first anniversary, when our son was two months old. If not for the baby, I don’t know what would have happened. I went back home to live with my parents, and they took care of me for the rest of the year. I went through most days like a zombie, but having to be there for my son helped me though.

When I lost my second husband 9 years later, it was not quite as bad, because we had already separated, but his fiance disappeared when she heard he had terminal cancer, and I took care of him for the last three months of his life. Again, my family stepped in to help me and my son.

I learned not to put much trust in the future or expectations, but I have also learned that I can be happy in spite of what life throws at me.

From the age of 15 to nearly 17 I was in a gang. I was regularly taking & dealing drugs, involved in violence, carried weapons etc. At some point I got addicted to Cocaine & ended up getting stabbed in the back…. literally.

@YARNLADY

God bless you for taking care of your ex-husband at the end of his life. My wife left me right after I was diagnosed with incurable cancer, so she could marry some guy from her church, good Christian woman that she is. : /

At one time I left a good job, a home I really liked, most of my belongings, friends and city in order to relocate and get away from a psychopath. As I rebuilt I became comfortable with a lot less stuff even though I like it, I just don’t feel the need to have it all again.

@CaptainHarley I don’t understand that kind of person

@YARNLADY

Neither do I, obviously. One governed by fear, anyway.