A while ago, I read something online that asked what 50 words would you say to your 10 year younger self. I thought about this and thought about what age I was then, and what was going on in my life at the time. This coming December will be 10 years since I got depression – a whole decade, that’s a long time. In some ways it feels like a whole lifetime but I can still remember, as if it were yesterday, the days leading up to it where I felt happy and like I was managing, the events that triggered it to develop pretty much over night, and the all-consuming feeling that I woke up with the next day, and for countless days afterwards, that I could no longer cope. It was like the life and joy had just been sucked out of me and I was left, gasping for air, clutching at hope and feeling the most intensely bad things I’ve ever felt. I didn’t feel able to cope, I no longer wanted to live, I could see no other way out and I was scared of myself, of all of the horrible things I was thinking and of all of the bad things I felt I was capable of, not least of which was ending my own life. So, 10 years on, with more diagnoses than I care to remember and having gone through more suffering than I like to admit, this is what I’d say to the 15 year-old me. This is not what I’d say to a person with depression, or any other mental illness, it’s not what I would want someone to say to me now but, with the benefit of hindsight and with 10 years of experience under my belt, it’s what I would say to myself aged just 15 – sad, scared and suicidal.
You will be OK. You will suffer and it will feel unbearable. But you will bear it and you will come out stronger. You will fight harder than you realise is possible. But you are strong, you are a fighter and you will survive! Keep fighting. Keep going. Keep strong!
What would you say to yourself 10 years ago? What would you have needed to hear? I doubt that it would’ve have helped me 10 years ago to hear this, I doubt I’d have listened or believed it because the feelings were so all-consuming at the time but it’s what I feel like I needed to know, even if it would have just given me a glimmer of hope, that I was in such desperate need of at the time. I now try to tell myself these words every day. I don’t believe a word of it, but I know others do, and I know it’s what I need to hear and hold on to. I’ve got through nearly 10 years of depression, I can get through another few years of anxiety disorders too, I just have to keep fighting, keep going and keep strong!
In The Midst Of Madness 