dysthemia

Notwithstanding my severe lows over last few months and battling extreme loneliness, I still have to maintain my normality. This, so that I can have folks fraternise with me and I continue to have some human contact in a life so cruelly isolating.

My depression and grief is what my shrink has diagnosed as persistent depressive disorder or prolonged grief i have been battling over many years now. Of course to expect all or even a single soul to have the energy, patience to indulge any one with such continuous angst ( angst is how people see grief) is plain unrealistic.

But i discover that most in my circle of kins and friends (which itself is rather small) have not commiserated even a little but right away position their vibes & demeanor that expects me to have moved on, getting on with the world and straight away position their conversational pitch to matters more transactional. The zeitgeist of positivity and its heavy overhang, to display one’s coolness quotient and plain indifference I repeatedly experience in the little i try to strike conversations. No point in reminding one of their loss and therefore better to engage with other matters - so it is always. My grief, my loss, my struggle, my jinxes never gets validated or legitimate. And just so, attempt to engage with folks to battle my loneliness and despair I find the onus is more on me to indulge others, massaging their egos and talk about their jobs, family or some political issues, cinema or music they fancy.

Not just my grief, I just don’t appear anything other than an apparition and therefore my work, engagements and pursuits too are barely seen worthy of queries and interest. I experienced this twice in less than 24 hours.

Grief indeed is so lonely and dealing with it in such a instrumental world makes your pain and loss all the more agonising. #ComplicatedGrief #Grief #prolongedgrief #Loss #dysthemia #Guilt #Loneliness

(Trigger warning)
been on medications for God knows how many years…life served me lemons, barbs, and cast all my pathways - personal, professional, social not just with thorns but with land mines - i got blown, mauled, broken to bits and reduced to rag-tag living. My depression, lows and anxiety were caused not because matters were not firing up in my brain but by repeated debilitating circumstances playing outside assaulting my sense of well being and dignity repeatedly and constantly over the years.

Till recently I did not realize it and always assumed that the lows and setbacks I faced through my life was only temporary and I will soon get over them and better days will ensue . How wrong I was! My entire life has been a litany of failures, missed chances and assaults. I only fear it getting worse and excruciatingly severe.

Though many keep assailing anti depressants for its suspect efficacy, it’s only the two-three tablets i take daily (plus sedatives) that has kept me functional. But nothing of my accursed circumstances have changed - nothing gives. I continue to be ignored, passed by, dismissed at best or subject to humiliation, ridicule, abuse and digs at worse. Then more direly any interface i have with people and world, where I bring myself into certain reckoning, bring my self to bear upon the world, everything jinxes, backfires and boomerangs leaving me bruised, prostrate and hollowed out. I therefore avoid socializing. I did somehow corralled my agitated self to attend a retreat but my isolation was only amplified even as i was in a group and pretending to be normal.

Those who know me here and have followed me would know my sense of embarrassment and guilt of being a miserable failure as a care giver. My extremely sick wife let me go. It wasn’t my decision, I love/d her - what a wonderful, resilient and endearing soul she is - but does that matter? I couldn’t do much for her and my presence was not helping her. I lost so much more…so much, so immense, so invaluable…a dream, a possibility, a life🤦🏽 The brutal shame of it all…that I endure every other moment & day.😢

The medicines coats my brain and kind of anesthesises it to my grief, agony and despair. However nothing has changed effectively but only becoming worse as I nurse my pain, loss, grief in splendid isolation with none of my kins and pals seeing much validity in my tumults & possibly seeing my suffering as my deserved comeuppance.

the urge to stop my medicines, and suicide is just so compelling…

My little canine- my soul and sole companion - wonder what will happen to it when gone…😢😔

if anyone here want to connect do leave a message…🙏🏽

#SuicidalThoughts #SuicidalIdeation #Grief #Shame #Guilt #Anxiety #dysthemia #ChronicDepression

What does one do when being repeatedly rammed with several setbacks, trauma and disappointments you come to a point when something seemingly ordinary and routine unnerves you? When you lose someone so wholesome and dear, the many wonderful moments and memories appear like a dream… such moments were so momentary and ephemeral seen in totality of my life…

i lived in hope as a youngster even as life served me many lemons. Yet i pushed myself, trying to make most of what i had and for sometime did think that it paid off but today i’m so worse off from where i started and 2/3 of my life is gone… my anxiety levels are pretty wayward…though maybe i manage to camouflage it…very stressed otherwise…the problem is at some levels interactions don’t make sense however seemingly well one carries it out…diversions, engagements all appear so hollow, meaningless…it’s like walking towards your pyre or grave and one is trying to make it casual by banter…😔 to trust someone, rendering my vulnerable self transparent without having to make a performance of my misery, my loneliness…all is a humongous deal.

A kind of bipolar self emerges…misleading not just others but misleading myself! It exhausts you! Want to just shut myself out, remain in silence and sleep and so desire i never get up…wanting this nightmare to end.

Depression surely but slowly eats into your vitals, your soul, wrinkling it to rot, shrivel and then break in pieces…
#Depression #dysthemia #Anxiety #Loneliness #Fear #failure #Shame #SuicidalThoughts

does a depressed person have to constantly iterate his state of despair & agony and make a performance of it? Do I have to resort to a constant play of solipsism and tautology to evoke any empathy, care & support? Aren’t ones abject conditions - of loss of spouse, home, pets, garden, memories of blissful togetherness and the complete eclipse of hope devastating enough ? Matters which have pushed me to the edge and not surprisingly the urge to end it all and jump over the precipice would at several levels be so logical, constant & not needing any trigger as such but yet should it be so surprising? Isn’t all this pain and anguish so embodied into my being so evident to the few close to me? or am i so mistaken and presumptuous in assuming such folks as being close and known ? I know I failed as a caregiver and even as a person & professional and maybe it’s my karmic payback to be so isolated and so shamed where i have to scrounge for even the mechanical cognizance from people whom i considered to be closest. Let me not even talk or expect anything more sympathetic and indulgent to my totally crushed self today let alone some validation of my worth and value from times past which supposedly were my productive & useful. The sense of shame, guilt and embarrassment of it all 😢
#SuicidalThoughts #Loneliness #dysthemia #Depression

Don't know why and how...nothing i mean nothingseems to go right for me. And the misery,troubles that i'm subject to seems to be happening merely because I'm alive and i just about bring to bear my presence in this world. Over the years, right from my childhood in fact I cannot but help
recognizing a pattern - a method (not just me but even my ailing and aging mother) drawing ire & jinx and jinx which is so intense and deep leading to acute despair. I have been a failure notwithstanding the many risks i took, not being easily discouraged, who sought to move forward ...but today with 2/3 of life gone and completely prostrate, I cannot but see how life itself has been nothing more than a sadistic conspiracy. Like my very corporeal presence in the world without even doing anything­, talking or acting i
precipitate causality, being subjected to overwhelming crisis, anxieties, pain, & anguish. It seems crisis and calamities are rather entwined into my very being... something like an inherited genetic flaw in my stars, a karmic curse that plagues me &
my mother every moment of our breath and action. And all this when i'm alone, no spouse, kids, barely have a social life and mostly confined indoors. And even when i go out for a drive or coffee i'm on my own.
I'm so scared of socializing lest i draw the fury of my accursed fate to play out its sadistic machinations on me. It seems i'm sinning by merely bringing my presence to reckon and then be subjected to further humiliation, disgust and agony. I just don't want to get up in the morning...wish i would just die...bringing such torturous misery to an end…#Misery #misfortune #corporeal #suicidalldeation #Depression

I read something recently in a book called Daughter Detox and she pointed out most women do not even recognize that they have been emotionally abused until in their adulthood. By then the psychological damage is so conditioned and pervasive that it seems impossible to untangle. I feel like I’m working backwards and my emotional state is on the wildest rollercoaster ride imaginable. My added problem is I hate rollercoaster rides including real ones much less emotional twisters!

2 weeks ago I’m on the phone with my mother, trying desperately to just listen and not engage. Until she started complaining and critisizing my 16yr old niece, her youngest granddaughter. She cannot understand how “that girl” only 2 weeks into the school year is already complaining that she is overwhelmed and so stressed. My mother then clearly accuses that my niece is using her anxiety as an excuse. This conversation was 2 days before my nieces mother’s birthday. Her mother that had taken her own life 5 years ago. Don’t know about you but I think a 16yr navigating the regular angst experienced in the teenage years in addition to her already horrific lived experience does not need to make up her anxiety!

After failing to stay neutral, I got upset, attempted to defend my niece. Needless to say that phone call did not end well. I was again accused for getting upset/emotional for no reason, and of twisting my mother’s words. I was also asked why I do this to her all the time, get angry and take it out on her. She stated she can’t handle all this in addition to dealing with my father issues. Oh yeah, somehow I did not do my part to listen to her rant on about how hard it’s for her and l do not visit enough to help her out more.

While this may not seem like much. It took me a few days after that call to sort out my feelings and emotions. I realized that aside from seeing my mother treat her granddaughter’s emotional state with no empathy and compassion it just highlights and is almost a direct parallel to how my mother treated me and my emotions from day one. The memories of being told constantly to stop crying. Getting anger, disappointment, criticism and judgement to my emotional reactions was pretty effective conditioning and warped my whole sense of being. I stopped crying, stopped sharing my true feelings, determined to show how strong I was. I was no longer going to be that sensitive, naive kid that was going to be judged, criticized and ridiculed. The problem with that is at age 50 that little kid “inner child” is still there and has only been suffering in silence for a very very long time. This is at the core of emotional abuse and trauma. Unfortunately to most it’s made out to be not a big deal, to not have too much significance to its impact to my life as a whole. So other then well trained professionals supports my issues were constantly being minimized and dismissed. After a few breakdowns, multiple mental health diagnoses & medications. It’s not nothing #Depression #PersistentDepressiveDisorder #dysthemia #Anxiety #Bipolar1Disorder #BipolarDisorder #ComplexPosttraumaticStressDisorder #CPTSD