I feel so alone like everyone around me has literally abandoned me. 

I feel like I’m just feeling sorry for myself all the time, and basically I am.

I try to reach out to family and friends and I get responses like “oh I’m so sorry you are feeling bad” and that’s it. Not “ what is going on, tell me all about it”, or let’s talk.

I have tears on the edge of my eyelids constantly trying to hold back so I don’t just break out into crying in a random place or in a random moment.

I NEED HELP!

No one is coming to my rescue and I feel too weak to get it for myself.

I feel stranded and alone like if I disappeared off the face of the earth it would actually do everyone else some good.

Except maybe they would be like “oh that poor girl she was so sad all the time”

I’m so sick of hearing other people’s harsh judgments on other people with mental illness.

Don’t they understand it’s not what we chose?!!!

Don’t they understand they probably reached out begging, grasping for help year after year and never got what they really needed, which was to be healed?

Maybe they lashed out because of desperation, they were at the end of their rope and don’t know how to get the help they needed.

In our Stake conference last month so many people who spoke, spoke on Joseph smith suffering in the Liberty Jail and how horrible it was for him. Joseph prayed so intently for help. But God didn’t make the walls of the prison fall down.

He didn’t take the hardship away from him, but he did sustain him and promised not to leave him.

And Joseph’s life wasn’t easy after he got out he was persecuted until he was a martyr.

His relief from his pain didn’t come until after he was gone from this earth.

But he never threw in the towel and gave up either, he kept going when the pain and suffering was so much only Christ himself could relate to it.

He could relate to it because he had actually suffered in that exact way long before Joseph did. He suffered that, and way way more. 

Does knowing this about others suffering make mine any less or any easier to go through?

It doesn’t for me it’s so hard every day feeling like I have glue on the bottoms of my feet trying so hard to make them move and do the things I am supposed to.

It does give me hope and comfort knowing that even though I feel destitute I, in reality, am not. 

He is there he is always there for me.

He is my father and he loves me unconditionally. He created me.

So I’ll peel myself off the ground (sometimes literally} and keep pushing forward even while I feel I am holding the whole world on my shoulders.

With Christ I can do this, with him and the hope of eventual eternal relief from this pain, I can go on.

It’s not easy and from the outsider’s perspective, it might look like nothing,

like what am I complaining about,

like why can’t you have a better attitude and less self-pity?

Why don’t you change your habits to change your life?

I wish it were that easy because I have the willpower of a thousand men and if my brain would just work right I could and would do all those things so easily, or even if they weren’t easy I would still do them.

Looking back

It felt so good to write that out. Exactly how I was feeling.

I was at an extreme low in my depression.

All days aren’t like this some are more out of control than others. 

At this point, I really needed a good friend to talk to. Someone I could trust and listen.

My husband was working an insane amount of hours and I didn’t feel like I could burden him more with my depression. I should have talked to him anyway.

I expected people to read my mind while I was suffering and I was feeling judged by them when really I was the one judging assuming they should know how to help me when in reality they would have no possible way of knowing my struggles because I was alienating myself from them almost completely.

I needed to be seeing a therapist, but I was worried about spending and wasting the money on myself knowing I had gone that route before and it helped for a while but then I stopped and it stopped working.

My husband had an incredible job with a very good income and he supported me in getting help.

I was the one making myself feel guilty.  If I wouldn’t have had the money most therapists or counseling centers have payment options or reduced costs for families who can’t afford the therapy or care they need.

Sometimes during my really low time in depression, I understand in the back of my mind it’s going to get worse before it gets better. And through these times I just hold on and wait for the wave to pass.

Sometimes that’s all you can do.

I remember writing this and how much relief I felt immediately after I wrote it, nothing had changed with my situation but I had let it out and I desperately needed that.