Image courtesy of Stockvault.
I’ve been obsessed about this off and on for the past couple of years. Sometimes I write about it, complaining about how I can’t read minds or write in a way that is healthy for people. It’s difficult for me to tell if this is part of a healthy mindset or an unhealthy one. There’s evidence for both, and it wouldn’t be the first time a depressive episode used my conscience against me.
The sad thing is that going over my previous posts, I still don’t know what the hell healthy even means. Part of me needs to know because of depression and anxiety. Another part needs to know so I can recover from what I learned in church. These aren’t categories that many people associate with each other. I run a risk of writing something that might not help other people.
But I keep coming back to the fact that I can’t help anyone if I can’t help myself. My actions over the past several years have borne this out. I distance myself from communities because I worry about the people I meet sometimes. It’s not the best feeling in the world when you meet someone else with suicidal depression and then that person disappears entirely. Eventually one learns the lesson that everyone goes away in the end.
My guesses as to what healthy looks like.
Just kidding; I don’t have a clue. In my mind, I have this list of nice things that would be great if I could just do them. Some of them involve not reacting poorly to attempts at converting me to some special branch of my old religion. Some involve going through a day without a suicidal answer to a mundane problem. Lately, I’ve been trying to come up with ways of not feeling like I’m getting taken advantage of – all while I’m at the mercy of people who can take advantage of me.
What most of these things have in common is that they involve the inside of my mind. I really do not have healthy ways of dealing with stimuli. My coping strategies don’t help with this. It just happens.
The thing I keep forgetting.
This blog is supposed to be a place where I can say whatever the fuck I want. Self-preservation demands that I polish everything I type and hide my thoughts from everyone. But that kind of self-preservation also allowed me to develop an unhealthy sense of myself. That is, it allowed me to think that ending my life was a legitimate response to problems.
The short answer for inquisitive minds is that it’s not. If I was censoring myself and obsessing over healthy statements for people, I wouldn’t even be writing this. Instead, I’d be going on about something boring. Sadly, such simple, relevant honesty is something I’m lacking these days.
Amusing Nonsense 