Category: always keep fighting

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Endure. Survive. Endure.

Endure. Survive. Endure.

I looked at the ground, my heart broke. It took a deep breath in and tried to retain all the pieces it seemed to be in now. It didn’t. It couldn’t but be damned it still tried. Sometimes in life you are sitting still as the world rushes by you. Others, you don’t have enough time for all the things you need and want to do. Sometimes you are in motion at a steady speed until something hits you like a boulder knocking your ass back to the start line. Similarly, I had been struck with a still force across my entire being. I mourn the loss of something dear to me and feel as though I always have and will again. So many times I have roared back to life and tried again and again to reach a goal I fear I will never achieve. In this, my illness wreck’s havoc on me as it is the only constant in my life. It is cruel and meticulous. The noise in my skull is chaotic most of the time, especially this moon phase. You fear the darkness but its deep within me and all around me and feels like, home.  Many don’t get it and I didn’t expect you too. Yet, I was hopeful. Something that has never, not one time, ever paid off. Time and time again, the girl who thought Westley and Buttercup’s story was what true love really was or could be, reminds who I am today of the possibility, it could. So incredibly cruel. Another cycle burns through the night and I play a game within myself of Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde. No matter who wins, this sliver of my heart in my hand cuts me, deeply. A reminder of what happened here as to never forget, as if I could. Another toke, another drink, another pill. Numb. Wanting numbness to take hold, to give ample time to heal before I feel. My will laid at the waste side, unable to help me now. Endure. Survive. Endure. Repeat. As I reach up and feel my wet cheeks I know what I feared all along was true. My soul is in love with the idea of true love and I am far too jaded to play along anymore. As I am now as alone as some days I feel, I have the ability to do as one does when this sort of thing happens. For now I will recoil to the darkness that stalks me as it is always the same, always safe no matter how bad it is for me. Never lost I glide through the darkness until I catch the corner of a dresser. I open the top drawer and slide the shard into it, gently. I close the door and let the darkness absorb me until I am no longer present in this moment.  Silence. Endure. Survive. Repeat.

Ramblings From an Unusual Mind

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Cinderella isn’t Dressed in Yellow, She’s Dressed in Black and She’s Depressed

© RussTurnerphotography
Cinderella isn’t dressed in yellow. She’s dressed in black. And she’s depressed, in pain, ill and exhausted but still getting the damn job done. She’s on mood stabilizers that don’t help nearly as much now that she quit smoking cigarettes. She doesn’t live with step relatives but blood and her dad isn’t dead but he’s not there. Her time doesn’t belong to her and if she attempts to steal any of it she is punished for being selfish. When she asks for help there’s always a price to be paid. Prince Charming brings her home (back to the house) at midnight when she can get a sitter. She sleeps a lot or not at all. She forgets to eat. She’s dying and she doesn’t even care anymore. All they think is, how selfish what about me?

© Andrea DiGiglio
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This is what depression looks like

This is what depression looks like:

© Andrea DiGiglio
© Drea DiGiglio
This is what depression feels like (to me anyway.)
It’s more than the really bad days of not being able to get out of bed. The idea of getting out of bed is exhausting. Not showering for days on end and not giving a rat’s ass about it. Not eating for days or perhaps the opposite and shoveling food mindlessly and probably guilt tripping yourself for it every step of the way. Its not just the days where you cannot muster the strength to get out of bed. It’s the days where you feel like that but you do get out of bed, too.
If you have kids, you still have to get them ready for school and take them to their appointments. Sure, maybe your in sweats instead of actual clothes but who cares. You clearly don’t. If you work, you work. You don’t socialize, you don’t count the minutes. You just work and you’re not entirely sure if you’re grateful it’s over because you hate working but now what the fuck are you going do with your time? Every activity takes effort. Every activity. The world looks as if it is tinted in a lower temperature color. Food doesn’t taste as good. You drink, whether it’s to be numb or shut the noise in your head up or just to feel, settled. Or perhaps some other alternative to cope.
Your body and you argue. You’re sore for no reason or just tired all of the time. Or both.
At first you say how you feel. Then you feel like a burden. Maybe you are. Maybe you aren’t. You take care of everyone except yourself because all you are trying to do at this point is survive. This is usually the point when people bring up the things you do (or don’t do) because you’re depressed, because you seem to always be depressed and yes you’re already aware of them. When people bring them up a feeling erupts, a cross between; feeling guilty and angry. Guilty for your behavior or lack there of and that they noticed and want you to know they noticed. Anger because you now feel as if your feelings are no longer valid and only their feelings are and why not just do it instead of making me feel bad about it because obviously on this day I am struggling?
People who love you try to understand and maybe they really do. But let’s be honest it’s annoying when a family member isn’t contributing or is grumpy, sad or angry all of the time.
So you stop saying how you feel. It’s too hard to continuously repeat yourself and it’s not going away, it just keeps coming back. So you smile. You laugh. You try to, fake it till you make it.
Then people like us see these smiling photos stream across social media. Smiling, happy. All the while suffering. Enduring. Fighting. They don’t know they aren’t alone.

So, apparently. This is what depression looks like. We put makeup on so we can feel normal, look normal and maybe to fake it. Maybe it’s so the people in our lives will stop asking if we are okay because no, we are not okay. Maybe we don’t wan’t the shame and guilt of feeling how we feel. Maybe we are just too damn depressed to have another conversation about it. Today I am not okay and that is okay. Just maybe, tomorrow I will be and that smile might be real. If it’s not? I suppose you might not really be able to tell because we live in a world where those who carry the burden of a mental illness feel like a burden. It’s not just the words people say it’s their actions time and time again. Actions which do not say, “I understand you are suffering.” Rather say, “When will this end this time so the ‘real you’ will be back” (For them.) The longer someones struggle is with their disorder, the longer they suffer. The less patient I find people to be. It’s a sad world I find us to be in. Where those who always have the kindest of hearts are often the most broken.

Much love to you all, be kind to one another. Keep fighting through the darkness and know you are worth fighting for, your life is worth fighting for. The good days are worth it. Don’t give up.

XO
-Andrea

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From my personal journal during a bipolar episode

I’m sharing this again because for me, it’s important to share my struggles. In hopes that other’s will see there is still reason for hope. I still have bad days. Hard days. Now, my good days are filled with so much love and joy and kindness, it truly makes these bad days easier to survive. I’m still that girl and I always will be. That’s the nature of my disorder, but I am so much more than that and now I can see that.

Here is an entry from my private journal. Honestly it’s on the lighter side, not sure what that says about my inner struggles.

October 2013:

I feel as if I’m floating through a sea of shadows. My mind is as tired as my body. I try to find the lighter side of things but the irritation of doing so is nauseating. I dream sometimes of a little house with an ocean view on a private beach where my mind can finally relax and I can enjoy my time here in this world. I dream of a body I feel comfortable in with no self loathing. Sadly, all of these things aren’t real and they leave me longing until I break down from the loss of something I never even had. As I cycle through waves of yet another bipolar episode I reach acceptance if only for a short period of time. Acceptance for who I am, baggage and all. For who I’m not and never will be. Allowing myself to dream even if it will never come to pass. I float between angry, depressed and a calmness I refer as the calm before the next storm. I wonder if I have the right to want more for myself. I try to be thankful for those moments of eerie calmness and quiet contemplation. It’s always so difficult to do so as I know if I wait a few hours, a day, days even I’ll be back to singing the blues and crying myself to sleep. My wonderland is a wasteland for broken souls. Once again the calmness before the storm settles on my skin like an itch I just can’t scratch. I will always continue to fight this nearing episode with what little strength I have. The air is crisp and inviting me to soak up the sun. As if the darkness wasn’t calling out to me. It’s moments like this I crave to be alone, yet a piece of me reaches out to those I love for comfort, for acceptance. The things I love to do hold less meaning in times like this. A hollowness erupts inside of me, taunting my rage and sadness. There’s no real rhyme or reason to feel this way. I know my life is far from horrible. Like a warm blanket the darkness comforts me as it usually does, inviting me to let go and cry about everything and nothing at all. The sad truth for me is, this battle is everlasting. Light may win today but as a new day dawns the fight starts over. I sit in shambles of a former version of myself. Oddly with hope that it will all be over soon and I will yet again bask in the light and enjoy a fragment of this life. How have I become such a jaded and cynical creature? I sigh deeply and prepare for another drop into sadness and utter grief. As if each time a piece of me dies I must mourn the loss. With shock plastered across me I can admit I am far better now with these modern poisons than many moons ago when I laid adrift in my depressing solitude. I accept this fate as much as I fight it. Always hiding this enormous side of myself from everyone. Knowing they couldn’t take it, knowing I couldn’t take that look upon their face or their response as heartfelt as they meant it to be. It feels as if I am living two lives all of the time. Except once in a while, like a full moon, where both sides of me collide and the true version of what I’ve become comes into full view. I don’t always hate her, the girl looking back at me. Though her voice is like poison in my mind. I would never wish this inner struggle on a single soul, it is far to cruel. Yet the calmness washes over me carrying a wicked grin. Even it sees what comes next. It feels pleasure with a nearing episode and yet it feels sorry for me too. I stare into the dark night’s sky wishing this episode would pass me by for once. So hopeful in my suffering. Now that is blind faith. Ridiculous as any other. I am but a shadow dancing through my life. And to be whole is but a dream.

Andrea
XO