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Why I Have Depression and What It Makes Me Feel Like

Why do we feel alone even when we're not?

By Nathan NicholsonPublished 7 years ago 9 min read
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I'm 26 years old. I'll be 27 in October. I've suffered with depression for most of my teenage years and all the way up to now, I'll have it for the rest of my life. It's not something that can be cured only managed with a daily dose of medication that some days doesn't feel like it works.

I was bullied all throughout secondary school from roughly the ages of 12 to 16. It was an unpleasant time in my life. There were a few people I hung around with and spoke to, but I still felt like I had no friends within school. My best friend went to a different school. He was the only real friend I had outside of it. I saw him nearly every day. But I still felt like an outsider within my group of friends and even my own family. I felt alone.

During school I was called names, slammed into lockers, tackled to the floor and pinned down, I even had a brick thrown at my head once by one of my oldest ''friends''. The sad part is even though I was angry and hurt by what happened, I couldn't bring myself to walk away from them because I didn't want to be alone.

I wasn't very smart. I did poorly in my GCSE's. After leaving school I took an ICT course in college because I had aspirations to become a video game developer, but I dropped out after a month because I knew it would take more than an active imagination to become a developer. It would take brains and I was severely lacking in that department.

So after dropping out I ended up living at home, jobless, playing my Xbox all day and doing very little else. I'd borrow money that I had no intention of paying back off my parents and grandparents. I feel guilty about that.

Honestly I was always quite lazy, I never really wanted to work, but a part of that came from lack of confidence and rejection. Because I was bullied in school I had very little confidence in myself. I was always doubting myself. I'm not smart, I'm not good-looking, I'll never amount to anything. And I didn't like being rejected. It made me feel worthless. Especially when I went to interviews and they said ''you don't have much experience do you?''. My reaction was always ''how am I supposed to get experience if no one will hire me?''. No one seemed to understand that.

I had a few small jobs that lasted a few days each, but I always ended up being a jobless bum. Then one day my grandad got me a job with him growing Christmas trees. Best job I ever had. I loved it. I worked there for maybe two years. I enjoyed the work, the money was great, but it was only a temp job and I knew that going in.

One day my grandad asked me to drive the tractor up and down the yard whilst our boss was on holiday, so I could get used to it. He wanted me to reverse it back up the yard. I did and almost crashed into the shed. He lost his temper and yelled at me. Basically called me useless. I felt so low that I sat in the truck for the rest of day and cried. He was right. I am useless.

In November 2015 I met my ex-fiancee, Amy. She was my first girlfriend because I never had the confidence to approach a girl and ask her out. I was a virgin until I was 24.

I felt so special when Amy agreed to go out with me. I felt even more special when she said yes to marrying me two months later. Life was great for a long time. Then in March 2016 my job growing Christmas trees came to an end and I was so scared that I wouldn't find another. Luckily Amy helped me and I had a cleaning job within the week. Life was great again.

And then something happened. I finally admitted that I had depression and that's when things went wrong. I started taking anti-depressants, but I foolishly stopped taking them because I felt like I was getting better and that's when I started treating Amy poorly. I was nasty to her. I hit her.

Eventually I lost my cleaning job and life went extremely downhill from that point onwards. I became more nasty and cruel. I was snapping at her more often. I hit her more often. She didn't know who she'd get next. Jekyll or Hyde.

Jekyll was the man she fell in love with. Sweet, kind, caring, loving. The man who helped her get out of debt that her ex-boyfriend left her in a week after we met. The man who bought her an Xbox One as her first Christmas present. The man who treat her like the princess she was.

Hyde was the man she scared of. Cruel, physically abusive, nasty. A man who didn't realise what he was doing until it was too late. Who didn't care about the damage he was causing. In short he was an asshole.

But that wasn't the real me. The real me was the man who would hold her as she cried herself to sleep. Who would sit on the sofa crying after trying to follow her when her mum upset her only to be told to leave her alone. Who made her laugh at his stupid jokes. Who would help her with money whenever she needed it. In short he was the man she fell for.

Two months ago she left because she'd had enough of the abuse and I can't really blame her for that. I'm angry at myself for letting it get this far and for being such a stubborn idiot. I never meant to hurt her. I never meant to cause her so much pain.

Now I'm alone again, I'm jobless again because I quit and I'm in so much pain myself because I'm my own worst enemy. All I ever wanted was to get married, have a family I can be proud of and have a job I like so I can provide for them. I wanted a son who grows up to be a better man than his father and a daughter who grows up to be exactly like her mother.

I have friends and family who say they care about me but I'm not entirely convinced they do. If they did my three best friends would have invited me to visit New York next year. If they did my family would invite me around for a meal one night. The little things.

Maybe I don't want them to care, so it would be easier for me to do what I feel I have to do in order to make this pain go away. I've tried to commit suicide three times in the past two months. I tried to overdose three times and failed each time. I've cut myself too.

During those times I tried to kill myself I was acting irrationally because she refused to talk to me. After a month of no contact she decided to contact me out of the blue and brought all these old feelings back, then she decided to ignore me, making me feel a hundred times worse because now I knew that she had been with other people since our breakup and she was out with her friends, whilst I was crying in my room.

So I was trying to kill myself because I was upset over being ignored and being let down by her. But now I feel that if I do commit suicide it'll be spontaneous, there'll be no plan, it'll just happen. I can already feel something or someone pushing me towards the edge. I know how I'm going to do it, but it won't be me doing it. I won't be in control and maybe that's exactly how I want it to be.

I love my family, I love my friends, I love Amy. I don't want to die, I want to live, there's so much I want to do. I want to play the next Splinter Cell and watch John Wick 3, but not when I feel like I'm in hell.

I feel numb. Lost. Adrift in an ocean of despair and loneliness. A man so broken by the events of his life that he'll never be whole again. And I want so desperately to make us both whole again. But as much as I don't want to admit it I believe that ship has sailed and it's never coming back.

Depression kills everything. Your mind, body, soul, heart, family, friends, love and hope. It's the hardest thing to endure because only you can endure it. People can try to help you through it, but they can't share the weight by carrying your burden with you. Only you can and that's what makes you feel alone. Because you're the only person who understands exactly what it is you're going through. It's hard to listen to people telling you to stay strong when you have no reason to stay strong. It's those people who make you feel weak. It's those people taking your hope away from you by the things they say or do.

I's not selfish for wanting to die when you're in pain. It's selfish to want someone to live in misery and permanent suffering just so you don't feel sad or upset over their passing. It takes true courage to make that jump knowing full well that you'll never go to the cinema again, eat your favourite food again or make love again.

The only thing that stops us from doing it is the knowledge of the void we'll be leaving behind, but unfortunately it will get to a stage where we can't quite comprehend that. That's the danger of mental illness. It blinds us to the world around us. In our heads we're totally alone, which means there's no one to hurt.

This isn't my note. This is a man who understands that life is a series of events that leads us down a path of darkness with occasional beams of light illuminating the way forward. It's not the destination that matters. It's how you get there and who you get there with. Unfortunately the person I wanted to get there with is no longer around.

depression
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About the Creator

Nathan Nicholson

Avid gamer, wannabe screenwriter, lover of films and music, airsofter

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