YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

I am a person who has been through years of the dark depths of depression. The following is what I felt for those years. Maybe some of you can relate. I know this is dark, but this is what came to me today. Though I am much better now, sometimes something startles me with a haunting of the dark (I wonder if this is PTSD). This is that struggle in more than a sentence:

The Dark Side of the Moon

Pure Emotion.
The depths. The heights. The pure, unadulterated emotion. The darkness. The light. The perfect ability to see to the trueness of a situation.
There is a moment when life seems to pause, where what is in front of you fades into the background, and you feel your breath as it passes your lips and travels down your windpipe and into your lungs. Your chest rises and before you breathe out there is a pause...What is that pause? A nothing? A something? If you close your eyes the world is not there. The only thing is the one emotion. What is the emotion?
Is it fear? The uncertainty that if when you breathe out you will be forever crushed or ripped to pieces. There is pounding in your ears and a hand that grabs any light around and starts to enclose it all into nothing. Each muscle tightens in readiness for the hovering presence to strike. No certainty, only fear.
Is it sadness? Slowly the sparks die out one by one as your body lay sinking, sinking into the quicksand, one grain at a time. Staring up is a grey nothing.
Is it depression? The eternal breathing out. Watching while one by one things go away and they cannot be breathed back in. No more joy. No more smiles. No more lightness, just the giant weight pressing, pressing. The seconds tick, tick. Why won't they stop? A glaze goes over your eyes. You cannot hear the sounds around you, but as a garbled haunting whisper.
Is it death? The blade. The life blood trickling out drop by drop. You watch and are mesmerized by the moment. You feel a spark of hope for the end of the pure pain that's as sharp as the tip of an arrow in your very soul to go away. This is your bravery...you are taking a step. You will be out of it soon... then No (They have stopped you.)
Is it hopelessness? Closing your eyes as tight as possible so not a ray of life can get in. Curling into a ball, arms pressed up and covering your face. Trying to close off all sound with the mantra, "No, no, no, no ... Go away, go away, go away." Rocking back and forth, racked with sobs so hard you choke. Endless pain. You cannot continue, but it will not stop.

Everything that I wrote above has been a part of my soul and my story. Though I am not usually on the dark side of the moon anymore, like PTSD, it can all flood me in an instant. Today I watched a movie in which a girl's tormented soul caused her to go off the edge. It was not just a story to me. In a second, I was brought back to being in the moments of the feelings above. It is a soul wrenching trauma, yet in a way it was a beautifully pure dark moment of emotion to me, trying to draw me in. It was not caused by something done to me, but self injuring and life threatening things that I did to myself. I wonder if there is anyone else who experiences PTSD like symptoms from dark things that they have done to themselves like I have. It can be very scary, and I am afraid that one day I may indulge those feelings and do something to myself again. I am not there now, but being transported to those dark places again today stirs the buried fear in the deepest recesses of my soul. Any thoughts or similar experiences?

Yes. i do. I feel depressed to the core sometimes.

No, not at all. I despise my emotions. My emotions cause nothing but damage and that mostly to the people around me.

I'd be quite pleased to never feel another one in my life.

Can't say I enjoy them, but I do go through phases where I get to a place where I don't feel a thing - or at least at this point in my life, I've learned to shut things away so well that I feel like I don't feel anything. But these times feel very strange and quiet and sometimes it does feel good to feel a little bit. Never a lot because I get overwhelmed easily, but a little is ok.

I hate the feelings but oddly I wouldn't give them up for anything. They're a part of who I am. They fuel my creativity. They allow me to go places no one else can, experience emotional depths that no one else can imagine. I wouldn't give any of that up.

Moon cynders,
First off, thank you so much for writing what you did with such epic detail.

The correct answer to your question is, of course, yes. To exist only in the grey is not an existence. If I can be "that guy", I wonder if the real question here is if the abyss sized hole of the lows is worth it for a break from the grey. To that I still say yes. It's just extremely scary. When do you get to the point where you can't crawl back out of the hole? The attack is going to come again so even if you do survive an episode, you know there will be more. This is where my mind is these days. Not great at all to say the least. I do wonder what it would be like to not feel taken over by my own brain. It's exhausting.
I don't really know who "that guy" is but if I'm being honest, I KNOW that what I said isn't rude or out of place, but my mind is still telling me to apologize for being a dick. I'm in a low cycle and am reaching out I guess.

Anyways, cheers to you all.

When I was young, late teens, early twenties, I lived for pure elation. That is nothing for me anymore. No matter how good I feel I know its bullshit, not reality. But these days, when everything is dark and there is no bottom to the hole, what I could sink into so deep that there is nothing but that one true truth is rage. Not just anger, anger can be messed up by all sorts of things like frustration and fear of letting it out. No, just pure rage, the kind where you are literally seeing red. Your breath feels like fire coming and going. It feels like there is absolutely nothing that can stand in your path. No force in the universe can make you deviate an iota from the straight line path between your rage and your object. There is nothing but that one truth.

I mean, I know its totally screwed up to feel this way and only despair and tears can come of it, but... Yeah, but sometimes, when I feel frustrated and impendent, sometimes, sometimes I think I would sell my soul for that power.