and BAM! with the heavy.
i've never thought of actually ending my own life, to be fair. i've been through the parts where i didn't give myself much value, i've been depressed & a bit lost, but to put an end to things is something which my brain refuses to process. i'm not sure why, perhaps because i've always had a little bit of curiosity about what tomorrow might bring, even if today, yesterday and the last 6 months has been a grey monotonous blur of 'ugh'. not suicidal by nature, me.
just because i would never do it myself doesn't mean i don't understand why someone would. i can only feel grateful that i don't suffer from depression to the extent where i honestly cannot see any other way out.
the worst of all of it for me was post-uni, pre-Canada. at the time, it wasn't so dramatic as all that; i just couldn't quite see the point of what i was doing with my life, but also frustrated because i'd made the decisions that had put me there. i lacked the motivation to change my situation up until the point where i took 2 weeks leave from work and had a bolt of lightning hit in the form of a 'i gotta get the hell out of here' realisation.
i'm not sure why i was so unhappy, and honestly it may not have been the situation so much as the repercussions of the past few years involving moving out of home, parents separating, ex-boyfriend with mental illness (very manipulative, very clever about it), going from being in the top percentiles of my highschool classes to just another essay in a pile at university of melbourne, being in a relationship with somebody who seemed to feel that artistic disillusionment equated with one's value as a person... i don't think all these feelings were necessary unique to the age i was, but i've found that not many people will come out with it and admit they're depressed. i certainly didn't- i couldn't call it that til i knew otherwise.
i'm so, so glad that i dragged myself out of melbourne and that awful mental state to the green green grasses of Canada - whistler, specifically. little by little, i began to enjoy my new life, once i moved past the sense of it being an extended holiday. people will call it that, but i was there for just shy of 3 years and it was not a holiday, it was my life. and it was good!
i realised that something huge had changed (very quietly) when i learned to snowboard and actually felt the adrenaline rush that goes with fearing for your life: at the top of my first blue run (for those playing at home, i refer to the Saddle on whistler) i thought i might die, and i didn't want to.
that's how i knew the worst of it was over.
the other thing i actually learned as i processed this realisation was the fact that being depressed is not equal to failure, or even failing. for someone like me, so capable of the insane happiness that a sunny day, a jug of beer and your bestest friends can bring, there must also be darker days as a balance. and that's what makes the sunny days so wonderful.
so no, there has not been a time when i thought about ending my own life. but there's definitely been a touch of darkness in some of my many days, and what i want to say to anyone pushing themselves through that same muddy puddle is it's ok to sit in a mud a while, but not forever. if i can push for anything in this post, it's to acknowledge that we all deal with depression at some point, and it's got to be easier to talk about this sort of thing than it currently is.
Visit Beyond Blue if you're depressed or think that a loved one might be- it's a place to start. I've also found this nice page by elephant journal to be helpful.
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