Part Fourteen – Undue Pressure (Explicit Content)

Obviously, I’m still among the living.  If there’s a silver lining to where I was at, it did finally force me to consider being on medication again.  I’ll admit that in many instances I am staunchly against medication as a treatment for mental health issues.  It is my strict opinion that anti-depressants and similar meds are over-prescribed and over-used.

However, in spite of this my stance has changed, especially given that I am on medication again.  I do now accept that some people who have severe mental health issues realistically should be on medication.  The proof of this is that ultimately, even though I did improve after writing on this blog, or seeing my counsellor, it didn’t gain the long-term traction that I needed it to.

I need to be on medication.

End of story.

Boiling things down, I’m on medication because I’m not capable enough to be able to cope with the pressures that the outside world places on me, and the pressures that I also place upon myself.

The irony is that in spite of kicking virtually everyone out of my life is that the pressures are still there.  The reason for this is that I’m so accustomed to outside pressures that if they aren’t there then I pick up the slack.  Even though I kicked everyone out of my life, I am still putting myself under undue pressure, even though I do not benefit in any way what-so-ever by doing so.

Being back on meds aside, I have improved in the past few months.  And while it has been a difficult road up to this point, and I still have a difficult road ahead, at least the meds do some of the heavy lifting, which is what I do need.

For the most part, I no longer have friends.  Which is not only how I want it to be, but more importantly, how I need it to be.  People whom I used to consider to be friends, while they might have genuinely cared about me, were in the way of my mental health actually improving long-term.

It is for that reason, that I walked away.

To reinforce this point, the proof is in how much worse I got after I did so.  Some would argue that it is because I isolated myself.  It would be a valid argument if I was like virtually everyone else.  But, for those of you who have been tuning in that haven’t worked it out yet….

I’m not.

Never have been.

Never will be.

Being brutally honest, those friendships were nothing more than a crutch, not only for myself, but also for the people I was friends with at the time.  The simple and irrefutable facts about this whole situation was that my mental health was never going to improve while I was first and foremost helping others with what was on their mind at the time, at the expense of myself.  Secondly, when my friends did try to help me, it was usually for their own selfish reasons, after all I can be really useful when I’m not climbing the walls because I’m trapped in my own skull.  And finally, when I needed to do what needed to be done, they would try and stop me; or undermine me with more trivial things that made me happy at the time.

Realistically, I am so much better off without all that fucking bullshit in my life anymore.  More importantly now that crutch is gone, I finally got to see how bad my mental health actually was.  The frustrating thing about it all is that for the most part; ignoring the fact that I’m my own worst enemy; I haven’t had to deal with the traumas of sexual or physical abuse.  I haven’t had to flee a war-torn country with no clue as to whether or not I can over go back home.  I haven’t had to endure any of the appalling things that too many people have been subjected to over the years.

That hasn’t happened to me.

My story is about being undermined.

My story is a story about erosion.

That is why I’m at where I’m at.

What a lot of people do not understand is that my experiences have been cumulative.  That is where the damage was done, and more importantly that is what I am trying to repair.

I admire people who can rise above what they have been through, and be better because of it.  In many ways I’m jealous of people who have done that.

I haven’t even picked myself up out of the dirt yet.  In fact, in many ways I didn’t even know that I was figuratively lying face-down in the dirt, slowly bleeding out on an emotional level.  I guess that’s where the meds come in – they’ve helped me at least sit up and take stock of where things are at.  What happens next remains to be seen.

Hopefully if I can take stock on where things are at, and reflect on that so I can move in a direction that I actually want to go – I think it is incredibly important that I phrase it that way.

Moving forward has nothing to do with social norms or expectations, and it never will.  It is actually about moving in the direction you want to go in, in spite of norms and expectations.

That is what moving forward is.

Ask yourself this – would you do something, or be involved in an activity if you didn’t benefit from it?  You wouldn’t, would you?

You would only do so under duress, wouldn’t you.

My point exactly.

Don’t get me wrong, there are times that you need to be practical about it, I’m not that naive to pretend that isn’t the case.  There are times where your choices are limited or virtually non-existent, but there are also times when I would like to think that your choices are limitless, and it is on those occasions it is vital that you exercise your inalienable right to choose for yourself.

No-one has the right to choose for you, or enforce that on you.

I’ve experienced that first-hand.  That is the erosion that I spoke of earlier.

That is the undue pressure I’ve been under for far too long.

With that in mind, I’m going to write a letter to society.

“Dear Society….”