How to explain to your self that being crazy is ok
Just write and not care who reads it.
You can say that I have been a bit out of it lately. For the first time in my 28 years of life, I felt that life was empty. I was always busy with my life. It was either school, or work, or both. I always had something to look forward to. I always had something to do. Yet, for the past two months, I have been doing nothing. Absolutely nothing. I can’t even get my self to do anything useful. I try to come up with so many ideas and so many projects to jump start and work on, but I can’t. I have so much IT experience in so many little things, that I can turn water to software. However, I can’t get my self to do them. I keep asking my self, who would look at them? Who would care? I don’t care, so why would others?
Due to my uselessness, I don’t have the patience or care in the world to talk to anyone. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I ignore phone calls, and I ignore people’s messages. I just don’t want to talk to people. I have nothing against anyone, but I want to be left alone. I don’t want to hear anyone’s life stories, because I can’t talk about mine. Because I am empty. I have nothing to talk about.
How are you Mona?
Fine.
What have you been up to lately?
Nothing.
Where do you go?
No where.
That’s the only answers I got. All I want to do is hide and be left alone. The less people I talk to, the less envy I have of other people’s lives. I don’t want to envy people because that’s not who I am. I don’t want my depression and lack of mental logic to uncontrollably envy others. So I ignore them and refuse to talk to anyone. I don’t want to see them. I don’t want to have any fun. I don’t want to be fake and pretend to be happy for anyone’s sake.
I know. It is all wrong. Everything I do or think is wrong. Do you think I don’t know that? I do know that. I know that locking my self up will not help. I don’t know if I am as depressed now from doing absolutely nothing, or I was more depressed a year ago when I had a dead end job. Maybe over the years all that anger and depression finally caught up on me and clouded my thinking. It finally hit home base and this is what I have become.
I swear, if I didn’t have this blog I would have been in a mental hospital now. I have done so many crazy things that effected my well being and mental logic, that I can’t even write or talk about them. I know a blog is not the cure to my craziness, but it is the only solution I have to actually talk to someone. At least I don’t know who I am talking to. Never met the person who is reading. And I don’t have to worry about what they think of me, because I don’t know them.
However, as usual, people don’t understand. Why would anyone understand? If you have not gone through the same experiences as me, then you would never understand.
Every day, I get an email from someone who is baffled by a post I have written. And every day I tell them, are you blind? How can you judge a person you don’t know from one post? What if I was drunk that day? Or was suffering from a cold that effected my mental capacity to think? Do you know how many articles I have written over the past 3 years that were a result of something clouding my logic? Yah. You guessed it, far too many. However, I try to control it in real life. Probably the hardest thing I do every day is control it.
What surprises me is people’s illogical accusation or advice. The most famous ones are: Get a job! Go get married! Sure. I will make a call. I will make sure I get those two things done pronto!
Some people are just illogical inconsiderate fools.
Unfortunately, for the past 5 or 6 days, I have been loosing the control. That barrier is slowly deteriorating, and I hope to God that I don’t crack any minute. I am about to any day now. Crack. Crack.
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Hey Mona,
I liked your post, and I’m glad your blog lets you get some of this off your chest. I talk about being depressed, and it reminds me of this interesting story — I had this Persian roommate who felt sort of weird for a while. He didn’t seem depressed but he had trouble concentrating on his work and worried he had a brain tumor or something because his mind just wasn’t working the way it used to. He’s this brilliant guy but wasn’t at full capacity, you know?
Anyway, he went to hospitals, doctors, etc. and finally some doc diagnosed him with some chemical imbalance causing depression. He and I thought that was crazy, but he took some meds anyway, and he was back to normal in no time. It was really weird. Anyway, I’m not a fan of medicine or doctors, but after that experience I’d recommend it to my friends who feel funny. His experience is very unique and different than yours, but maybe something like that would help get you out of the funk?
Hey, I know you don’t want advice! So apologies if I annoyed you with my roommate’s story. But it’s not unique; he’s just one example, but I have another absolutely brilliant friend — she’s in an amazing job, has a great boyfriend, she has everything and more than she ever wanted in life, and still she had some of these same symptoms. She was baffled, like me, but again, after months and months of it, she ended up taking some depression-related meds and it knocked her back into a normal state. The brain is a wild, crazy, delicate thing!
I took your advice to have less contact with people then you envy them less. That’s been working for me so far.
Getting a job and getting married is really the solution because all married people with jobs are happy, right?
I enjoyed this post like most of them because I can relate to some of the writing, though, of course, none of us can truly 100% understand.
Life can be so hard sometimes.
I know I couldn’t survive it if it weren’t for faith in God.
Other people can’t fix problems,
most times they make things worse.
Mona I understand most of what you are going through. I am in a dead end contract job I hate and I have been unemployed and depressed and bored out of my skull. I am not married nor do I have any children either. I don’t like talking to many people about myself because as you said there isn’t much to say. I find myself envying other people’s full lives. Most of the people I know are married and having kids. I feel left out just like you do. I am adrift in this world with no goals in life. It seems everything I have planned doesn’t work out at all. I have been disappointed so many times in my life it isn’t even funny anymore. I pretty much given up on having any goals because I work my ass off to achieve them and it still doesn’t work out so yes I do have pretty good idea of what you are going through. All I can say is hang in there.
I am older than you are by a few years and I still bitch and complain and I probably will till I am 100. I won’t say life will get easier as you get older but you will learn over time to accept the things you can’t change and learn a few life lessons along the way. I would look upon this point in your life as a learning experience. Hardship builds character someone once said. When you get another job and (you will) you will appreciate it more and be thankful that you are getting a decent regular paycheck. In the mean time all I can suggest you do is keep looking for work, network and treat yourself to a trip somewhere once a week even if it is just to see a movie. The worst thing you can do is stay in the house several days in a row. That is a recipe for insanity.
What Eric said might work with most, but anti-depressants have a huge social stigma in some cultures. I thought about them, but then thought what would happen if my parents found out.
And what Amanda said was recommended to me by many; it’s the cultural equal of anti-depressants. Well, I have faith in god, but that didn’t help either.
I tried smoking heavily (cigarettes) but thought about that road, besides I had bronchitis.
So I finally diagnosed myself with SAD. So my next goal is to live in a sunny moderate-year round cliamte, that gave me some comfort. Not sure how to fool myself after that.
It’s called going 30
Soon welcome to the age of reason insha Allah
you know.. when the things you were doing in your life become insignificant
Cancer Moon. Relax. You just percieve too much and, yes, most others can’t understand that. Your intimate emotional trend may be then to enclose yourself between four walls before this magic cristal ball of the damn computer, which is as you say a relief.
How do I know because as I read your post I recalled what I have done myself since more or less your age (I’m 40 now and I also have that hypersensible Cancer Moon – that has many virtues anyhow, don’t worry). At around the age of 27 or 28 I got pushed to think: I have done more or less everything I wanted to and now what? Friends are often too shallow, too selfish or we just do not understand each other. For some years tried to get focused on work but that didn’t help nor really worked well either. So I did refuge myself more and more in my own little universe.
Now I just accept it more or less: haven’t solved anything but I believe I accept who I am better than before and I don’t care so much about what others may think.
Your path and your personal solutions may be different, what do I know?, but basically you probably just need to accept that your sensibility and perception is wider than that of the majority. Does that mean you’re “crazy”? Not at all, rather that you have a freer spirit that cannot fit so easily in pre-made templates. It’s probably something to be fond of, not scared of.
So yea, just get yourself a tea and relax: accept yourself as you actually are and not as others want you to be.
Hope this helps.
Okay okay – I’ve spent almost 2 years in and out of mental hospitals. If there’s anyway to avoid it do – otherwise you have to eat whatever slop they serve you or they force feed you, plus the drugs suck, they don’t get you high they just make you feel numb and dumb, which sounds better than depression for the first few days, but once you’ve decided you want to move, talk, walk, make a single cogent decision you realise you can’t. Beyond that there’s life, and yes you know life does suck, it really is crap, I don’t care what people say, usually they bring religion into it – but it’s all just people reassuring themselves rather than you. The truth is depression is catching, and people are scared of it. My gf’s mum died a few years back and she was a wise old soul, she knew you had to come down to climb up again, life is a crappy old slow boring roller coaster with a few brief glimpses at the big picture before you find yourself shooting down again. No one can tell you what you need, if you treat it like a game, perhaps you can find it yourself, but I know one thing, it’s inside you, no one else can possibly give you the same quality of experience of life as you can, because everyone else’s including mine is second hand. I never climbed back to life’s ecstasy as a kid/teen/early 20’s, but I’ve got more skills, I know who I love now and who loves me, I know exactly why I hate tons of stuff, and even though that doesn’t sound great, even crappy old life is heaven compared to my time in a mental home. Whilst I was there a friend hung herself, we were talking normally as we tried to do everyday and then one morning the place was filled with police and paramedics, I still miss her, and I still remember the smell in her room, kinda salty and stale for weeks. But what I most remember was a choice I made, and that was to live because unlike religious types I’m honest, I really don’t know what comes next, this might be it, there may be nothing more than the brief time we have on this planet – so stick with it kid – if you can – it may all make sense in the end – and even if it doesn’t it’s a free ride through a lifetime of experience and better than staring at blank walls and hospital sheets.