inside my mind, behind my mask.

What you see isn't always what you get. 

When people look at me, they'll see a happy, bubbly, chatty person. That couldn't be further from the truth. 

For the last 8 years I have been battling anorexia, bulimia, severe depression, body dysmorphia, crippling anxiety, panic attacks, self harm, mood swings amongst many other things. My official diagnosis is "Emotional Instability Disorder" also known as "Borderline Personality Disorder" 

Sometimes I feel like I'm living a double life. I wear a mask when I'm out in public, or at work. A mask that smiles and looks like nothing is wrong. But a mask is just a mask and eventually the mask comes off.

I have tried cocktails of different meds to try and stabilise my moods and to raise the seretonin levels in my brain.  Unfortunately, all of these have only been temporary.

I am currently facing the familiar feeling that I've faced before, where my current antidepressant begins to lose it's effectiveness and starts to plateau out, and when that happens, my moods begin to change rapidly again.

It gets harder and harder to keep up the facade of that "everything is okay" mask.

Sometimes my depression is so bad that I can't get out of bed, I can't move, I can't see anything beyond that moment. A black fog takes over my brain and I am either crippled with a.) feelings of intense self loathing and a hopelessness that I cannot even begin to describe, or then there's b.) I simply feel nothing at all.

To say depression is debilitating is no overstatement. You can't move, you can't feel anything, it's like a dementor has come along and taken your soul. (for lack of a better explanation, you can always rely on Harry Potter) it's bleak and it's constant and it's nothing you can "snap out of" no matter how much you try.

When I'm at my worst I don't even have the energy to sit up. My limbs feel heavy and the sense of fatigue is indescribable. In a bad spell, the usual insomnia that I've suffered from from for 16 years is diminished and I find myself sleeping for at least 14 hours minimum. I cannot feel any of the love that I know is out there for me, it's like I'm trapped inside a bubble where I can see things, but they don't penetrate through to me, I can't feel it. Everything and everyone is moving and I'm just lying there, waiting. 

There is a lack of any comprehension of being "better" you cannot see past that day, you cannot envision any kind of future and it just aids to your feelings of worthlessness. Time and time again I don't feel worthy of being here, of living. I don't feel good enough for anybody, let alone myself. I am filled with so much self loathing and disgust for myself and the way I look that I have smashed mirrors, covered them up, and lay on the bathroom floor sobbing because I cannot see anything but fat and ugly when I see my reflection.

It's selfish and consuming and it merges itself with you and you become one. It steals away the very essence of you and embeds itself further and further into you that you become the illness. And that's it, it's got you.  People perceive you as lazy or unmotivated but how do you explain that every little piece of you has been taken over by unrelenting darkness and that you have lost your identity to this force inside of you that is stronger than anything you can see or touch? 

"It's like drowning, except you can see everyone around you breathing" - Unknown

I wanted to write this post for a number of reasons. What spurred it on was a friend who experiences similar issues commented something along the lines of; because it's not physical, because people can't see it, it's almost deemed not as important as a physical ailment. 

And that's precisely it. 

You can't call in sick to work or school because your mood is so low that you can't move. You can't cancel plans because your anxiety is so severe that you have had numerous panic attacks. Whereas if you've got a migraine or a stomach ache, it's completely understandable. 

And that's where the problem lies; not enough people understand the seriousness of an illness of the mind that you can't see. 

I don't mean that in a patronising way at all. What I mean is that unless you have experienced it or seen somebody experience it, whatever "it" is, you can't possibly comprehend what it feels like for somebody when they are in that state. That isn't something to be ashamed of, I almost envy people who don't get it, who have never felt the severity of clinical depression or severe anxiety, who think an eating disorder is just somebody skipping a few meals or throwing up after they eat. It doesn't make you less of a human being, and it doesn't make you less caring. In my view it just means that you can hear it from someone's first hand point of view and gain a better insight into it, so that people can try to understand it. 

If this at least helps change one person's perception of what someone is struggling with then I won't feel so nervous and anxious about sharing the inner most ramblings of my mind with the internet. 

Although the stigma of mental illness has slowly worn off over the years, unfortunately, that stigma is still prevalent today. The only way we can help eradicate that is to talk about it more, share our experiences more and encourage people to understand that mental illness transcends class, age, gender, race, religion... It is not something to be ashamed of. It takes a lot of courage to admit that there is a problem, whatever form of problem that may be, and even if you have yet to share it, or seek help for it, or have even slipped back into it, I am so incredibly proud of each and every single one of you for acknowledging it. 

I know my mouse shall be hovering over the "publish" button for a very long time once I have finished writing this, but please leave any comments or questions below. 

(Please remember, I am by no means a professional, I am merely a girl with a laptop who doesn't want anybody out there to feel like they need to suffer alone)