A Decade With Untreated Depression: Prologue

"Only in the darkness can you see the stars."

-Martin Luther King Jr.

Ever felt so tired you just want to sleep all day depsite not doing anything?

Ever felt your chest is so heavy you cannot even use the remains of your energy to get up on bed?

Ever felt a sudden jolt of pain within, in the middle of nowhere, on unexpected times when you are alone or when somebody criticizes you?

Ever felt so hopeless to the point that it leaves your pillows wet every night?

Ever felt losing all the will to keep going in this life?

Ever felt empty and even emptier trying to find the reason why you feel that way?

I know. That's the feeling of all those people who shared their stories tried to overcome and succeeded (or succeeding) in doing so. I felt them all, again and again. Perhaps you were here because you felt those too and maybe trying to find a way how to cope up.

But... what makes this different? What makes me different? Isn't it so easy to say to ask for help?

Yes, and no.

Our country never prioritized mental health that much compared to other health issues. We don't even have a properly equipped suicide hotline or specific instituions or websites that cater to all mental issues you know of that occurs the most prevalent among the majority of the "normal" people. Yes, gambling problem and other forms of addiction excluding substance will end you up in jail here and not in an asylum or in a rehabilitation center. If you want a cure, you have to endure the stigma coming from 89% of our population that will slap on your face and you have to pay a month's worth of salary per session.

I tried asking for help everywhere, both online and within our entire community. I do not fear the stigma but I fear more about myself and what I can do. Sadly, all they point and tell me is to get a professional help but I don't have the money, and I cannot afford to spend anything on it considering my current financial status. My family relies on me so I cannot just lie down in bed all day like my dysfunctional brain tells me every single day. That fact alone even fuels my disease like pouring gas on a flame. Hopelessness in a nutshell.

But have you ever wondered why I am still surviving despite having this dreadful state of mind for 13 years and counting now? Have I ever thought of ending my life? Am I really that strong?

Yes, but no.

Come to think of it- our body is designed to function to do anything in order to survive. If you eat nothing, it will try to resort on burning your fats for energy. If you try to cut yourself, it will try to stop the bleeding through coagulation. Even imagining this most horrible example that I already did- when you hang yourself- in those last moments you begin to feel choking, your body will try to struggle and chase for breath by trying to remove the noose from the neck. You will feel spikes of unimaginable horror and regret while wriggling in panic while you are suspended after kicking the foundation where your feet stands. (I know the latter because I did it, but still survived.)

What do I mean? Your body will try to keep itself alive despite its futility. At the very end of the road where you wanted to be and just end it all, before you even lose your consciousness, your feelings of hopelessness, views of gloom, sadness and overwhelming emptiness will suddenly be replaced with immediate will to live. Fearing death? Maybe it is science, but that's what's really happening.

If you are on this same boat, before you do harm, I say to you- we don't want to die, we just want the pain to go away.

This is the paradox that I am living at. I attempted to take my own life a lot of times. On those darkest moments I ever had, it was as if my own body suddenly finds that "star", that hope and that thought that I am looking for, telling me that maybe if I don't end it, things will change for the better but after I find myself surviving the act again, everything becomes bittersweet, realizing that everything was a lie and the loop of agony starts again. People close to me will flock again saying I badly need professional help already but no one is willing to support that to make it happen.

Now, you tell me, is it that really easy to say that I or we can be helped? Are you in my same ground? Tell me your story.