Depression Dealings & Feelings 11/24/15

Breathe in... breathe out... Count to ten... begin again...

There's a lot of ways to deal with anxiety and depression, but not all of them work for everyone. If it's mild enough, I can do the whole 'inhale, exhale' thing, but it doesn't always work. Like, let's take today for instance.
I woke up in a fairly good mood, regardless of waking up so early and dreading babysitting for most of my morning, but all in all, I was in a good mood... keyword: "WAS". As the day progressed, my mind became my worst enemy, and my oldest foe decided to surface and show itself once again, a.k.a. My Depression. I've been struggling with it since I was young, but have always been so good at hiding it and faking that smile and acting like everything was a-okay! But then there are times that I cannot hide it, and I confide in some people, only those who will understand. Very few people understand it... and it's so hard to explain it to them. The best way I can describe depression is the way I described it this morning, when I had shared a picture on my personal Facebook profile. I said the following, and attached this picture to it: "For those who just don't get it. Depression IS a monster. It may not start off that way, but it feeds off of all your insecurities and takes your sadness and twists it, making you feel helpless and weak. Depression is all-consuming and soul-breaking... and it can and will destroy you. To those who tell others who suffer with depression that it's "all in their head" or that they can change the way they feel, shame on you... in doing that... you are only feeding the Monster more..."

And it's true. Depression is a monster, and it WILL consume you if you let it. Unfortunately, sometimes we're just not strong enough and it wins. Like for me... today. I'm stressed about money as I recently lost pay for one of my writing jobs (I'm making $600 less per month now... money that helped pay my rent. Fun fact: I'm still working this job WITHOUT pay in hopes that I can rebuild it and bring traffic back to the website... which in turn led me into doing triple the work I was...), I'm about to start a new job (which gives me hella anxiety as I'll be just a staff writer and I'm used to being an editing manager), I'm dieting, and not seeing results like I think I should, on top of all that, I babysit a TON of kids on top of my two to help make ends meet. I am stressed, and I brought it onto myself... but I do what I have to to pay my bills and keep my family's head above water. 

Bottom line...

Depression is an all-consuming monster, and even though everybody is hard on themselves from time to time, those with depression DESTROY themselves. It's a hard life to cope with, and for years I've kept this to myself, suffering in silence - well no more. If anything, I hope this blog helps others to know they aren't alone, even when they feel they are. There are others who suffer silently, afraid to tell people what's REALLY on their minds. And if your depression is so bad, that you feel like ending your life is the answer... please don't. Just know that suicide hurts those around you that love you, and in the end, you're punishing them. 

There's always bad before the good... just remember that <3

Till next time~

10/26/15: Anxiety & Depression at its Finest

I tend to make blogs, then be really bad about keeping up with them. And it's not so much that I don't have the time, but due to other factors, it just seems so hard to do. The point of this blog in particular was to talk about the daily struggles we all deal with as people who suffer from various mental handicaps, such as anxiety and depression, and many others. I have severe anxiety with depression, and those two things right there is what keeps me from writing daily in my blogs. My anxiety affects it in the way of "what if"... "What if I word things wrong?", "What if I ramble and don't get my point across?", "What if people think I'm weird for my way of thinking?"... stuff like that. And as for how my depression affects it is the fact that when you're depressed, you have a severe lack of motivation and feel like it all just isn't worth it. Any one reading this with depression knows what I mean. Be it writing, artwork, cleaning, work, etc., some of us just can't bring ourselves to do certain tasks because of our anxiety and depression. People who have never dealt with any of this will have a hard time understanding why we act the way we do or do the things we do. I've been with my husband for 10 years, and he's still learning to understand my many quirks and qualms.
To those who know how I feel, and are the same as me... just know you're not alone, and we all have harder times than others.
Let's use a recent event in my life to illustrate how my depression is affecting me...
For about the past year or so, I've been the managing editor for a video game website. The job opportunity came at a time when money was needed, so it was not only very welcomed, but a necessity. Well, this past Friday I was informed I would no longer be receiving any income from the website as traffic is next to nothing on the website. Granted, I was only getting paid $600 per month, but that paid a nice chunk of my rent and water.And now that's gone. I'm still the managing editor title, and can still do my gaming journalism as I've always wanted, but now upon my shoulders I have that stress of being down on $600 per month. In my head, I think, "I can't give this up now...I've wanted to make my living as a journalist in the video game industry... I can write more, work harder, and the site will regain its traffic and I'll receive some sort of income again!", but in reality the stress of that monthly lack of money is crushing me, consuming me. It's all I can think of... and it's causing my depression to spiral downwards so much more than normal, and making my anxiety pretty out of hand. Hence, I am hitting a writing-block on my site... I have zero motivation at this point. Even though I'm trying to be positive in thinking that I can still make this website succeed, I feel sad and worthless, and like its failure is my fault (I tend to blame myself whenever anything goes wrong in my life, even if it's out of my hands).
At this point I really don't know what to do with myself, other than take this opportunity to write in this blog and give some insight into the anxiety and depression I am facing right now. I feel hopeless, but deep down I know better. I know I can do this... it'll just take me some time to get back into my groove of feeling like I can accomplish anything... I just need to process through this sludge called 'depression' first...
If you take anything from this, take away the fact that no matter how low you feel and how hopeless life seems... there is always light at the end of the tunnel and a silver lining to that dark cloud. No matter the situation, everything gets better in time. I always stick to the line "Everything happens for a reason", I'm just struggling to figure out why this happened... maybe to light a fire under me to reach out and seek more freelance jobs? Maybe I'll get a better opportunity elsewhere because of it? It's hard to say right now... so I'll just sit in solace and wait for that calm that is promised after the storm.