by Band Back Together | Aug 18, 2015 | Bullying, Depression, Loneliness, Sadness, Self Loathing, Shame |
Untreated depression leads to chronic depersonalization” would be a meaningful statement if you meant something, but you mean nothing.
You are not a hardy child of Appalachia; stop wasting your days listening to bluegrass playlists, pining for a time that will never exist. You are weak. People wade through hells far deeper than this one, the soles of their feet scorched but their ankles held intact. But your tendons are peeling like the stalk of a pineapple, the skin on your knee burnt off to display brittle bone, graham cracker bone, bone of yarn, bone of string cheese.
Stay inside where neighbors cannot see the grotesque state of your legs. Stay inside where you cannot chant for them: gooble-gobble, one of us.
Do you want to know what a real person looks like? Don’t skip class this week. Arrive late and sit in one of the satellite desks. Never learn what Marx said. Observe the others mid-digestion and covet their hairlines, their builds. Sketch a series of concentric circles and keep your head down, because you are not a scholar, you are a machine, you are an alarm clock, you are a Disney Channel original series, you are just a paideia, you are mendacity itself. Masturbate for me; you deserve the shame of an amputee juggler on a unicycle, you deserve the shame of a hapless fourteen-year-old YouTube celebrity. Look around you and tell me if any of the people you see had to order their bootstraps off the Silk Road. Every waste of Bitcoins is melancholy, o destitute child, they don’t weave bootstraps in your size.
What you are going to need is a course of Paxil. It is a medication that, by the miracle of contemporary science, will make it easier for you to be worthless. You will be glad to have taken it, as it will make you scream less and sleep more. It will take your ragged canyon and level it out into mesa, and then it will take your mesa and build a timeshare resort. Paxil is an electric fence between banality and suicidality. Paxil is the opposite of filthy, passionate fucking. The instructions on the back of the bottle tell you to stream amateur porn and look at the way they want each other, then take down two pills with a light snack. You are going to forget, but don’t forget: you have to be beautiful to be hired as a caricature artist at the renaissance fair. Don’t forget, you have to do your laundry more often than you do now.
by Band Back Together | Aug 15, 2015 | Anger, Anxiety, Family, Fear, Feelings, Loneliness, Prenatal (Antenatal) Depression, Sadness, Stress |
Maybe it’s not common, maybe it’s commonly forgotten, maybe I’ll feel too ashamed to even post this, but pregnancy isn’t what I expected.
Now don’t get me wrong, I KNEW what to expect, the nausea and fatigue, the moodiness and what not, but I wasn’t prepared.
I wasn’t prepared to shy away from my friends and family, to want nothing but my bed and books. I guess I’m still kinda me, but I am a me I haven’t been for a long time, a me I thought I grew out of. It’s not that I’m not happy, because I couldn’t feel more love for this child or for my husband that I do now, it’s just that I am also sad. I am tired and sick and rather than get better as I get closer to my second trimester it’s gotten worse.
Am I going to be like my mom? 40 weeks of throwing up just because the wind blew in my face? Dear God, I hope not.
The worst part is that I can’t see the end of this. I’m not miserable mentally, but physically I am and it’s draining the reserves I have in my brain to separate my logic and my emotions.
Part of it is that I am, frankly, a little tired of worrying about everyone’s opinions, preparing myself for arguments before they have the chance to arise. It’s to the point I don’t even want to talk to anyone about babies, birth, shots, slings, ANYTHING.
Unfortunately, I care what people think, and caring what they think but knowing that I am going to do what I think is best in the end, causes me to take things personally and feel a lot of unnecessary anger. Anger makes me tired.
It’ll pass and in a few weeks I’ll be laughing at this post, calling myself dramatic and eating 14 cinnamon rolls because that’s my new favorite pastime. At least, I fucking hope so.
Until then, this is me being honest, and begging you not to say “I told you so.”
by Band Back Together | Jul 24, 2015 | Abuse, Adult Bullying, Alcohol Addiction, Anxiety, Bullying, Child Abuse, Compulsive Eating Disorders, Depression, Infidelity, Loneliness, Self-Esteem, Stress, Suicide, Violence |
The name is Kat, and I’m a 29 year old college graduate. I feel bad about being so “big” and still being bullied. I thought it was something that just happens to kids and teens, but thanks to The Band, I’ve felt a little more comfortable admitting that yeah, I’m 29 and I’m still being bullied.
My parents have always had problems. When I was smaller, they would get into huge, violent fights that would end up in them beating each other (mostly my dad towards my mother) and cussing at each other. My two younger sisters and I grew up in a very violent atmosphere but were always close.
We also lived with our grandparents in the same house, and they would defend us a lot from my parents’ rage. My dad was an alcoholic and cheated on my mother. She would take it out on my sisters and me, mostly on me, since I was the one that always talked back to her, protecting my sisters.
Thanks to the constant abuses, I grew up insecure about myself. I was actually pretty creative, but also very violent. The slightest insult towards me, and I would attack other kids. Whenever my mom and I fought, I would feel the need to eat, so I was a little chubby. That got me bullied even more.
Back home, my mom used to beat my sisters and me with a wooden flat stick, saying that the Bible told her to “correct” her children like that. Aside from that, she would slap, choke, and punch me in the face, in many of our confrontations.
As a teen, I had a lot of trouble with authority and got into many fights with kids, claiming they only wanted to hurt me. My first boyfriend went to jail, and I changed universities a lot.
At 23, I had enough, and left the house. I got a great paying job and moved into an apartment, away from my mother. Once out, I got thin, got a new wonderful boyfriend and had a “perfect” life. But I still wanted to finish my career, which meant I had to quit my job, go back home, find another job that allowed me to study, and get into college once again.
Back home, I got chubby again. My mother constantly fights with me and tells me she doesn’t want me in her house. She values the pet more than me since she tells me that if her pet is sleeping on my bed, I’m not allowed to push her off. Sometimes I can’t sleep because of it. Her new husband shouts at me and loves getting me in trouble with her. I had to fight and struggle through college because of the stress at home.
I graduated three months ago, and I’m desperately looking for a job, so I can get out of this hell. My mom and I fight at least four times a week, and she always tells me to get the fuck out of her house. I have nowhere to go. I don’t want to involve my friends in this, and my father has another family. I’m desperate, I feel lonely, I lost my boyfriend, and she and her husband are constantly bullying me.
It may sound horrible and harsh, but its the truth. It took me 29 years to figure out why I eat compulsively. Just now, we had another fight. As soon as it ended, I raided the fridge, even though I wasn’t hungry at all. It’s not about filling “the void,” its about the desperation and anxiety I feel that make me want to eat like crazy.
However, I still remain strong. I wish for you gentle people who read my story to stay strong. I may be a little depressive, but I’m not suicidal. I love life and I want to move on. I know there are many amazing things waiting for me, and I just have to go ahead and do them.
Thanks for reading my story.
by Band Back Together | Jun 9, 2015 | Dermatillomania, Loneliness, Self-Esteem, Teen Depression, Teen Self Injury |
I am under 15, and I live with dermatillomania.
Because of my problem, I have trouble with self image and sometimes get very depressed. My parents don’t know. The Band has suggested that I confide in a friend who will help me. I have no such friend.
One of my friends is a science geek. I feel like a dork so I will never tell her.
My other friend is too girly. She doesn’t take anything seriously. Sometimes she asks about my scars, but I am too ashamed of them, so I say it is nothing. She forgets and continues to talk about herself. I don’t even want to be friends with her. I don’t want to tell her.
There is nowhere to go, no one to confide in. None of the school counselors would ever understand. I am alone. I feel so bad.
I purposely try to hurt my self so I can pick at the scabs later. A small 1 centimeter scratch turned into a half inch gouge just from continued picking and scratching. How do I dig myself out of this 1,000,000,000 foot hole without killing my self?
by Band Back Together | Dec 17, 2014 | Anxiety, Depression, Loneliness, Suicide |
A man I met on the internet is planning his suicide. I’ve never met him in person. He bought a rope tonight. He seems like a nice guy, has a dog and a job. He set the date to end his life. I don’t know what his hair smells like or which cigarettes he smokes. He told us he is taking some time beforehand to say his goodbyes. Tonight has been spinning.
There is nothing quite like the plight of another to bring you out of your own mental suffering. My anxiety, my depression, my broken relationships, all of it can wait. This stranger needs me. I think he went to sleep. I wanted to talk to him, but he wasn’t there. I messaged him for an hour- just ramblings. Thoughts on the topic including my own attempt. I told him about the drugs I am on, the exercises my counselor has recommended. I told him about the song I use to get through the winter, and the blue light device my husband bought me to help. I don’t want to leave him alone- even if he hates me for it- because alone is the worst way to feel.
I don’t know this stranger friend. Yet I want to save his life. I want to hear his heartbeat more than ever now. I want to feel how he feels in a hug. He is kind. He’s funny and witty; he knows things that he teaches us. But he is broken. He is broken in a way we can all relate to. I don’t know any underlying cause for his depression. He doesn’t need one. He doesn’t need to explain himself to anyone. Everyone should try to help him. No one deserves to feel so low that their only escape is permanence.
I would like to meet my stranger friend one day. I just didn’t expect it to be so painful.
by Band Back Together | Dec 4, 2014 | Bipolar Disorder, Depression, Fear, Happiness, Loneliness, Seasonal Affective Disorder, Sibling Loss, Therapy |
I’m not a stranger to depression. I live in the frozen tundra and seasonal depression is a way of life up here. I went through previous bouts of depression after my sister died and after my first miscarriage.
It’s back. It’s been slowly building for months.
I hate it, but I have to deal with it now.
It’s not normal to sit on the couch and sob because my house is a mess and it seems like all my friends have older kids who don’t leave toy cars all over the floor. Everyone has problems. Everyone has issues. If my kids were older, there would be other messes, other problems. Wishing my children were in high school is not going to fix anything.
I feel like everyone around me has their life together while I’m falling apart. I have no interest in taking care of my house. I don’t want my pets anywhere near me. The puppy I didn’t even want, but has completely attached himself to me, needs training, but I can’t handle it. Our latest (surprise!) litter of kittens need to be litter-box trained. I can’t deal with that either. My children annoy me. Important paperwork that needs to be taken care of sits untouched because I can’t process the thoughts about how to even fill them out. My kitchen is a disaster. My living room looks like a tornado came through it. I have a load of laundry that is probably molding inside my washing machine right now.
I’ve never understood people who run away from their lives and start over. Until now. It’s really tempting. I used to go for drives by myself when I needed to blow off some steam. But now, I can’t trust myself to get behind the wheel because I don’t know if I would come back. I know my husband and my children need me. I stay because of a sense of duty, but my heart isn’t in it right now.
On Sunday, I had a really bad cold. With my husband home, I could go in the bedroom and rest. I took a good book, my laptop, my phone, my headphones, and stayed all by myself in bed for most of the day. It was the happiest I’ve been in weeks – being alone and able to do whatever I wanted. I read. I napped. I listened to some favorite music. I watched a movie that didn’t involve animated creatures. It was heavenly. When I finally had to leave the comfort of my room and my bed, I had to resist the urge to kick and scream and act like my 3-year-old when he’s overtired and I tell him he has to take a nap.
This morning, a family issue required my action, and I had what I’m guessing was an anxiety attack. I shut down. I could not do what was needed. I started shaking, and tears poured down my face. Thankfully, that action was able to be put off until tomorrow and I have time to prepare myself mentally for what I need to do.
This is scary.
My husband recognized last week that I’m not well and insisted that I get help. I met with my doctor yesterday, and she put me on an antidepressant. Unfortunately, I know all too well from all of my husband’s bipolar medications that mood and brain altering drugs can take weeks to take effect. I do no look forward to the wait.
I’ve made an appointment to meet with a therapist. I’ve let some family members and my closest friends know what’s going on with me and everyone has been really supportive.
But I still feel so very, very alone.
