Hello, formerly suicidal depressed twentysomething replying from an old throwaway account here.
As you might have noticed, I did found some reasons for continuing to live.
However, I won't tell you! If I told you my reasons, you would find them trivial because I would talk about my family and friends, I would talk about beauty of nature, warm bread, long and lonely morning walks, and other blah blah like this. Also, you might not even need all these things right now to feel better. The whole point here is not the reason.
I've been locked into my house for about one year because of a major depression that degenerated into agoraphobia. I whispered my own name and found it not to be familiar anymore on some nights. No wonder I felt suicidal!
But I kept repeating to myself: "One day I'm going to be fine again. I just have to hang in there a little bit more". And it worked. That simple thought gave me something which stands between hope and curiosity. That simple thought made me feeling prepared to something good. They say you have to be always prepared to handle bad things, but sometimes we forget to be prepared for good things! With this in mind, I found the strength to continue living, which resulted into understanding what was the cause of my depression in the first place (I won't tell you that either), and then one little step at a time, whitout even noticing it, I found myself living a happy life (...again).
I'm not a doctor but these practical things helped me a lot feeling AT LEAST alive during that time:
- math exercises; there is no way 2 + 2 is going to equal 5, do some simple math and enjoy the relief of dealing with something that works as expected everytime
- keep notes of what you do everyday; depression flattens your days, and it gets harder for you to distinguish yesterday from the the day before yesterday and this gets the whole thing harder
- write down some day-by-day to do list; simple things just to get to the end of the day with the feeling of having done everything that was supposed to be done
- turn off the computer; when in an alienation-prone mood, computers don't help at all
- do not expect gratitude from other people; right now your mood cannot possibly rely on someone else! Do good things and forget about it. You have to be the only one to know how good you can do right now
And in the end, put yourself first. Yes, I said it, be egoist until you find out who are you now, what you want now, what you need now, and why you feel so crappy now. One day you're going to be fine again, you just have to hang in there a little bit more.
As you might have noticed, I did found some reasons for continuing to live.
However, I won't tell you! If I told you my reasons, you would find them trivial because I would talk about my family and friends, I would talk about beauty of nature, warm bread, long and lonely morning walks, and other blah blah like this. Also, you might not even need all these things right now to feel better. The whole point here is not the reason.
I've been locked into my house for about one year because of a major depression that degenerated into agoraphobia. I whispered my own name and found it not to be familiar anymore on some nights. No wonder I felt suicidal!
But I kept repeating to myself: "One day I'm going to be fine again. I just have to hang in there a little bit more". And it worked. That simple thought gave me something which stands between hope and curiosity. That simple thought made me feeling prepared to something good. They say you have to be always prepared to handle bad things, but sometimes we forget to be prepared for good things! With this in mind, I found the strength to continue living, which resulted into understanding what was the cause of my depression in the first place (I won't tell you that either), and then one little step at a time, whitout even noticing it, I found myself living a happy life (...again).
I'm not a doctor but these practical things helped me a lot feeling AT LEAST alive during that time:
- math exercises; there is no way 2 + 2 is going to equal 5, do some simple math and enjoy the relief of dealing with something that works as expected everytime
- keep notes of what you do everyday; depression flattens your days, and it gets harder for you to distinguish yesterday from the the day before yesterday and this gets the whole thing harder
- write down some day-by-day to do list; simple things just to get to the end of the day with the feeling of having done everything that was supposed to be done
- turn off the computer; when in an alienation-prone mood, computers don't help at all
- do not expect gratitude from other people; right now your mood cannot possibly rely on someone else! Do good things and forget about it. You have to be the only one to know how good you can do right now
And in the end, put yourself first. Yes, I said it, be egoist until you find out who are you now, what you want now, what you need now, and why you feel so crappy now. One day you're going to be fine again, you just have to hang in there a little bit more.