2020 was a train wreck, a dumpster fire, the roller coaster we weren’t allowed to get off, and it doesn’t take much looking to realize everyone is fed up and burnout from the pandemic, over a year of condensed trauma (whether you or someone you knew got sick or not), incompetent people in power, social justice at the forefront of everywhere, up rooted and cancelled life plans, the world is a dart board with every inch covered in things that will decimate your ability to keep going. But 2021 seems to show that 2020 was just a prelude to what our everyday life will be like from here on out.

Content warning!! Candid mental health talk, sucide and suicidal ideation, and open talk about trauma responses (NO details will be given about the traumatic events).

I have been in therapy and intensive therapy since I was a kid, now into my adult life, I have a hard time seeing if there is any progress at all. Surely there has been progress, I am still here after all (albeit not because I truly want to be here). The issue is that when your baseline for mental health is on the floor, it can be hard to figure out if things are getting bad again. Due to how jumbled everything has been, I’m usually fairly distracted from my poor mental health throughout the day, but the lulls in everyday life mean that the glaring elephant in the room will stampede about, promptly putting me back in my place of “things are very VERY bad”.

I’ve receded into myself, the past couple of months (and arguably, year) I’ve become a human shaped shell, there is nothing inside. It’s gotten nearly impossible for me to exist, day to day my body goes about the life I have, but I am not there. I was apprehensive to think this way, but recently looking inward I would say things are just as bad, and maybe even worse than where I was seven years ago, when I sat in a hospital bed in the emergency room silently, because I was so tired of the every day I couldn’t fathom it. I’ve mostly stopped discussing my issues with my friends, the ship (my life) is sinking, how cruel would it be to drag those around me with me…? Having poor mental health has begun bleeding into my relationships, because of past abuse I find it difficult to find any worth in myself, but combined with the various happenings currently in my life, I don’t speak up when I’m in pain or hurt in relationships. The worry that I’ll upset the other person, that they’ll undermine what I’m feeling, they won’t understand because I’m not good at explaining things, or they’ll turn it against me deters me from ever speaking up, even over the smallest things. I know honesty is the best policy but what can I say when everything has been said? When I talk to people I can hear how tired they are, how little patience they have, I was always told things were my fault, so now even if it’s not my fault, it somehow still is. I’ve spent so long meticulously trying to unlearn my problem behavior and learn to trust people again, but this entire year and a half everything has just fallen apart. It’s devastating. My days are spent on the verge of breakdowns, I haven’t gotten sleep in so long, I’m having panic/anxiety attacks often, nights where I collapse in on myself and fear this is it, everyone says that life gets better, but this isn’t a life, it’s a bad joke.

This year I had my depression diagnosis updated to “persistent depressive disorder”, meaning you’re consistently low mood/depressed for over two years. For reference I’ve been in therapy for over 10 years, you’d think they would have figured out sooner that perhaps my depression was something that would be sticking around longer… I guess to wrap this tangent up to something any unfortunate reader can glean from this, mental health and “getting better” isn’t linear. You’re not alone if your mental health is really bad, it’s okay to be upset that you’re doing poorly. Having really difficult mental illness, made worse by the pandemic, is okay. I’m just a faceless person here, but if no one has told you today (or even anytime recently) it’s okay.