Trying to explain

I hope that all of you who know me will forgive me for setting this out in a blog post. In an ideal world I would speak to you all about this individually.

I feel under more pressure than I can possibly cope with at the moment. Thankfully the therapy has meant that I have turned a corner and don't actively want to hurt myself anymore. But last night I was crying and wishing that I could have a heart attack to make everything stop.

I still have depression. Just because I haven't been writing doesn't mean it has gone away. It is going to take more than 9 months to deal with something that has been going on for a very long time and has affected me for my whole adult life.

I don't know how long it will take. And that scares me. I also have no idea what I am doing. And that scares me too.

No one provides a manual for how to cope with depression. Which makes it hard on the person who is suffering as well as the people who are trying to offer support. But what I am finding hardest of all at the moment is that I feel like I am having to support the people supporting me. I find it very difficult to speak openly about how I feel because of the hurt it causes to other people and how sad it can make them. I feel under pressure not to put anyone else through any more misery.

I also have people repeatedly asking what they should do, or what do I want them to do? Most of the time I simply don't know. I have people asking me if I'm going about this the right way. I have people getting cross with me when I can't think straight and do things the wrong way. I'm not sure if there even is a right or wrong way to do any of this. All I know is that whenever I make a mistake it feels like someone has a go at me. And I am trying my very best all the time, but I don't know what I am doing and so I am making mistakes. And then having to live with the consequences.

Most of this means that I don't want to involve other people. I don't want to upset other people. I don't want other people pointing out to me that I don't know what I am doing and criticising me every step of the way. It feels that because I am so capable usually everyone has a higher level of expectation when it comes to handling the depression. But this isn't like anything else. And so I feel under pressure.

It feels like everyone wants me to tell them how this is supposed to work. As if I am the person with all the answers. This time I don't have any answers. I don't know what I am doing. I don't know whether things I am doing help or hurt. And the pressure to organise everyone else, and support everyone else supporting me, and to ask for help, and to be told off when I get it wrong, and to deal with this in a way that makes sense to everyone. I can't take that pressure any more.

I am poorly. I know I need looking after. But I can't be the person who has the responsibility of looking after me.

I'm sorry to anyone who reads this who is sad, or upset, or angry, or any other of however many emotions people might feel when reading this. I promise you all I am doing the very best that I can.. I'm sorry that I can't do any better. And please remember that I am writing about how I feel - I am not criticising anyone else, just telling you how it feels to be me right now.