Hi,
I'm not sure if I'm doing this right (hoo boy, there's a sentence people around me get used to hearing pretty quickly), but I thought I would say hi and I need somewhere to say things and maybe get some support right now.
My name is Alex. I'm twenty years old. I've experienced depression, not constantly, but on and off in varying degrees since I was twelve. I have only been to two therapy sessions in my life; my family is very poor and I am currently not on insurance and can't afford therapy or medication. I have some minor physical illnesses that, while they don't majorly affect my daily life, do set off panic and depression on occasion. I have both been told by others and had suspicions myself that I may have some form of general anxiety disorder and/or OCD, but since I can't afford the time, energy or money that would go into getting properly diagnosed, that goes with a grain of salt. I can tell you for a fact that I'm generally bad with people, and that sometimes the thought of dealing with them makes me have to curl up with my back to something and try not to hyperventilate.
I moved in with my grandmother in August, after living with my girlfriend for a year. My girlfriend is very depressed, DOES have anxiety disorders and other mental and physical disorders, and is legally blind; she attempted to kill herself in February, and I was about 50% responsible for the aftercare and keeping an eye on her. After some family trouble in the summer, she tried again, and this is why we both had to return to our families. I have some serious issues with my grandmother (she's homophobic, for one, and tends to make comments that inflame my self-esteem issues, for another), so this has not been great for my depression, but it was this or live in a too-small apartment with my family, which would have been just as bad if not worse for my depression.
I hope to look at the modules on this and a couple of other
websites soon and see if they help, because lately this has been getting
worse and worse, but tonight I just can't focus on words for more than a
few minutes at a time.
Since the first time this happened, I have found myself going progressively further down a depressive spiral. I feel worthless. I feel guilty, because I have been searching for a job, and I cannot get hired due to a lack of experience; then I feel guilty because I know if it wasn't for the overwhelming guilt, sadness, twitchiness, and general discomfort I get most days, I could try harder. One day last week I could not get out of bed. Woke up and the thought of moving paralyzed me. Today should have been a good day -- it was a good weekend, a great weekend, and I thought between the last good bits from that and the fact that I am still very tired from it, I might manage to have a decent week -- but around 1, the bad mood started to set in and I cannot shake it. I cannot concentrate. I cannot think straight. I want to sleep, but I can't, because for over a month now I have not been able to sleep until four or five in the morning, no matter how much or little sleep I got the night before (the ONE exception to this was when I had slept two hours out of about sixty.) My mind is replaying a constant little movie stream that goes between "the greatest hits of all the times Alex has messed up in her life" and "every terrible thing that could happen to you or anyone you know, or that you could do to the people you know".
My usual coping mechanisms -- throwing myself into the internet until I can't think, trying to watch TV until I can't think, generally ignoring life -- aren't working, because I can't focus. The coping mechanism I generally don't admit I have -- slapping myself, o
