Maybe I don’t have a soul

Depression and anxiety, what do they feel like to me?

I started with a strong piece about wanting to die, I think that it is time now to face my truth and explain how I feel.

Choosing where to start is hard, but I think that the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about how I feel is: hopeless. Why hopeless, because it feels like whatever I do, I can't get rid of my demons. There is always gonna be a voice inside my head telling me: “I am not good enough”; “I am worthless”; “The world would be a better place if I was gone”; “Nobody can understand me or love me”; “Why would someone love me, I can't even love myself, and why should I, I am rotten to the core, there is nothing left to save in me”. The rational part of me knows that these feelings are not the reality, therefore I have to constantly be in control of myself, because if I would let myself go and just feel whatever is happening, I would have nothing that fights those thoughts in me and I would probably not survive. My hope is gone in the sense that I don't think there will ever be a day where I will be able once again to just be, and where I won't need to be in control to survive. To make it more direct, I don't think I will ever be happy again, not fully, maybe in some specific moments of a day, but when happiness ever comes back to me it never lasts long.

It is hard enough having to deal with these thoughts on there own, but having anxiety I also tend to care a lot about my environment which means that I will get overly stressed thinking that people could have the same opinion of me that I have of myself. Whenever they change their behaviour the slightest towards me the first thought that comes to my mind is “what have I done wrong”. So then I start exhausting myself building up a thousand scenarios on what could have been the reason or what will happen when I'll end up disappointing someone in the future.

I read somewhere that we get depressed when we live in the past and we get anxious when we live in the future, and even though I think there is so much more to those two conditions, this statement has its validity. Having both at the same time is like getting stressed over the future and thinking the worst will happen because history repeats itself, and no matter how much we try to change things, the future doesn't hold better outcomes than the past has already shown us. It's like being stuck in an eternal loop of stress, sadness, hopelessness and anger.

The truth is though that I learned how to make the difference about what are my true wishes and what are my dark thoughts, which in some ways it helps not being actively suicidal or to voluntarily hurt myself, because most of the time I can still reason with my brain and not follow my “wishes”; but sometimes it feels like I am just living two lives: the one that everyone sees, where I am not suicidal and I act like everyone expects me to, and the one inside my head, that is in a constant battle.

Since I live these “two lives”, I feel so lonely. I feel like no-one can understand me, which is why I tend to not express how I feel, but also I don't feel justified to say it out loud. From an outward prospective, I have a great life: my parents are still together, I was born and raised in a stable country, I am doing the studies I want to do, I have friends, and so on, so technically there is nothing wrong with my life. It therefore feels like I shouldn't be allowed to say that I am not happy I shouldn't even be allowed to feel it. I am also so scared to talk about it because I am afraid that if someone sees all this darkness hidden inside of me they will leave me or they will get worried for me and I don't wanna worry anyone. So I feel so alone.

I know that I am suicidal, but I don't think that I actually want to die I just want a break. A break from having my mood constantly depending so much on the rest of the world, since it is my escape from my mind and I want to take care of it. A break from being a burden, from messing up, from disappointing everyone including myself, from the conviction that I will never become something good, and from the tiredness that comes from fighting all of these feelings. Therefore I don't think that I want to die, I just want an escape, and death looks like the solution.

My problem is that I can't commit suicide, because I don't want anyone to feel like it was their fault if I was not strong enough to live. So to enable myself to kill myself I would have to find a way that would be taken for an accident, and would never be suspected to be a suicide, but since I don't think that there is one I am stuck dealing with this situation everyday. Which is pretty hard because I am stuck with myself, and I hate myself, I am my own bully, a bully that I can't get rid off. And I constantly feel overwhelmed.

It's like I am a ticking bomb, and even if I don't know when I am going to explode, I am going to do it at some point. I am fighting a war that I can't win, because I am loosing even when I am winning since I am still alive.

I said what was hard in my condition, I wanna say though that I am still able to feel the positive emotions so when I can't find a reason to live, I focus on the one thing of the day that made me smile, and that is what I would advice you to do if you guys feel like me.

Lots of love,

Maybe I don't have a soul

Clown therapy

I spent this weekend doing a course about clown therapy: how to do it and how this could help me be a better physician later on (spoiler alert: I am a med student). How you could have guessed from my last blog, it’s been a tough moment for me lately and how one of our coordinators has said “this course comes to you in the best moments”, and for me it really did. It was the first time in months where I felt good.

The weekend was so interesting, we talked about empathy and sympathy and how there was a difference between them, we talked about ethics and so much more subjects. From that, I felt like I grew as a person in just 48 hours. It’s impressive how in just few hours I have the impression of having changed and became better because of the subjects that were brought up, but moreover because of the discussions that emerged from those subjects and the opinions of 26 other people. I realized the real importance of sharing from this experience, it gives you a different prospective and helps you get to an improved view of a certain subject way quicker, it’s truly fascinating.

But moreover, what i truly loved about this weekend is that we created a group, where, for the first time of my life, I felt like I belonged and there was no judgement; we were all at the same level and we were all moving together. It was just mind blowing. I had forgotten, or I am not even sure I ever knew, that this kind of spaces existed. Which says a lot about the world we live in.

We live in a world where competition and exclusion feeling are so present that we are impressed and chocked when we see compassion, kindness and inclusion. People are so focused on being the best, that to fulfill this desire, they focus on the character traits that are obviously “powerful” to the world, like intelligence, strength or beauty and lack to nourish the ones that may not lead you to this feeling of power like the ones stated above. But this weekend we saw how being empathic, gentle and humble makes you be a way better person in every way. There is wisdom and a bravery in being able to see the world from someone else’s prospective, taking actions with respect for other’s boundaries, interacting with others without comparing yourself to them and creating so a competition, and facing your own limits; this doesn’t make you in any way weaker, it just adds to your character. We have to fight this stereotype that feelings are weakness, they are so powerful and they make us who we are, we should learn to accept them better also to learn how to deal with them better.

This experience also made me think a lot and I still have to answer a lot of questions that were brought up by it, this is just a rant of my first feelings and reflection about it, can’t wait to go on with this project and learn more about the world and myself.

Hope you are gonna find this interesting,

Lots of love,

Maybe I don’t have a soul

Live, why?

People say live a little, enjoy life, but why should I want to live in a world where all I do is give: give my energy; give my kindness; give my advices; give my care; give all of me; and all i seem to get is a fight inside head that even when i am winning, since I am still alive, it feels like I am loosing it. So live?! Tell me why would I want that?

Why is everyone so excited about life and i am here contemplating death everyday?

They say life is beautiful because it’s full of freedom, but there is no real freedom in this world: the social rules, the law, the popularity races, the standards, the categorizing of groups, the opinions of other; all i see is rules and limitations, while in death there is nothing and this sounds like freedom to me.

They say life is full of opportunity, which is true but is it worth the price of all opportunity coming with judgement and consequences which often trouble our inner peace? While death offers better opportunity no matter what you think there is after. If you think there is something after death, they say there is peace, which means that you will still have opportunities no matter whether they are talking with a loved one or jumping from an airplane, there will be no inner battles. And if you think death is the ending, it also is the ending of those inner battles, which seems like a huge opportunity to me.

They say life is full of hope and hope is the last to die, but death is my hope and i want my hope to be the first to live. So can someone tell me why? Why should i want to live?

PS: I wrote this text and I am publishing it for two reason: I needed to express my feelings and tell them to the world staying anonymous while saying them, and in the hope to help someone that feels the same way to see that they are not alone, so if you feel like this know that you are not! It’s okay to feel like this, and you are one of the strongest people in the world if you are still holding on.

Lots of love,

Maybe I don’t have a soul