I’ve spent my entire life dealing with mental issues. It started with anxiety when I was younger, and as I got older, symptoms of bipolar disorder started to arise. Although my issues should be well-managed through medication and CBT, there are still too many days that are just not good. My experience with mental illness has been similar to Kaya’s. I’ve spent way too much time being holed up in my bedroom, panicking at the very thought of even leaving my house.

This is my life. My entire life revolves around whether or not I feel ready to take on a day. A lot  of the time, I do. But some days, like today, I would rather die.

I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t even get out of my bed. I live in a cycle of self-destruction. I go to therapy, I take my medication, but I don’t allow myself to get better. And it seeps into other parts of my life. I quit three jobs and got fired from a fourth because I was too depressed to go to work. I nearly lost my apartment and my boyfriend. At one point, I nearly lost my life. I keep saying I’m tired of feeling like this, but I don’t allow myself to get better. 

Today, I wouldn’t say I am suicidal. Just destructive. Depression turns into over-exercising, which turns into binging and purging, which turns into chain smoking, which turns into abusing prescription drugs. It’s like once I start, I can’t stop until I end up in the emergency room drinking liquid charcoal. I’m not doing any of this to bring death upon myself. Rather, I’m doing it so I can feel something—fear—because depression just makes me feel so empty.

This cycle of destruction has been going on for as long as I can remember. Even as a kid, I would do things that could potentially kill me, just to feel a rush of something. I would climb up trees to branches I knew couldn’t hold me for very long. I would ride my bike with no hands down a steep hill that ends on a major roadway. When I got my license, that turned into flying around corners on a wet roadway. Driving like I had a deathwish. Maybe I did. Maybe I still do.

Death doesn’t scare me. I mean, it does to an extent. But I’m more afraid of spiders than I am of dying. It doesn’t make any sense, but nothing does when I am depressed. Logic goes out the window. I’ve convinced myself that it’s everyone else’s fault that I have no friends, when in reality, I haven’t given myself an opportunity to make friends. I’ll tell myself I’m undeserving of food, of nourishment, because I’m doing this to myself. But somehow I’m deserving of alcohol and drugs. I don’t understand it so I certainly don’t expect you to.

I feel like my head is broken. That’s the only way I can describe it. I don’t know how to live my life in a healthy way because I never have. With all the time I’ve spent in psychiatric hospitals, you would think that I would learn healthy behaviors. All I learned was how to be more sneaky with my destructive ways.

This is the first time I’ve actually admitted any of this. It’s been running through my head for years but I’ve always denied that I’m letting my mental illness take over. I don’t know if I do it because I’m too weak to really deal with it or because I just don’t give a shit about myself. I haven’t gotten to that point yet. All I really know, as a 20-something walking disaster, is that I am completely unable to stop myself from continuing on.

I wish I knew if this story had a happy ending. I wish I had some inspirational piece of advice to give you. But as I sit here, right now, with my cigarette almost burned to the filter, I can’t even give myself advice. I don’t know how this story ends. It ends differently for everyone and I can only take my journey day by day. Am I going to be okay? I might be. I might not be. I certainly hope I will be. And I hope everyone else will be, too.

Submitted by an anonymous reader