Honest Self-Pity in a Cliché Breakdown

by marmaladescreams

I don’t know where I’m going…

I started working in a retail store after battling with my depression for three years. I’ve called in sick for a week. It’s hard working again – both physically and mentally straining. But most of all: it feels so incredibly meaningless.

So how’s my social life? I feel lost and I no longer know how to act around anybody. Every time I’ve been with another person, I am left with a feeling of melancholy, disheartenment and most of all relinquished superficiality. Nobody really knows what I’ve experienced and so I feel like I’m dancing the practiced steps of a masquerade when I’m with friends. Really, I just feel like screaming into all their faces: “I’ve been hospitalized six times in two different countries! I’ve been on 18 different medications and had fucking electroshock therapy! I want to commit suicide at least once a week!”

I wrote to an old friend in America whom I met in group therapy. He told me he was healthy and I replied how happy I was on his behalf and that I wished him happiness in life – because he deserved it. He asked about me and I told him that times were tough. In the states he had once said to me, that he cared for me like he cared for his own daughter. I didn’t take it literally, of course, but I was touched by his words. As an answer to my letter, he wrote to me about his work and ignored everything I had written to him. His letter consisted only of two sentences.
I wasn’t angry or disappointed. Instead, I grew immensely tired.

“Wow. It is always nice to find out who you no longer need waste your time on. One thing I learned in US was that people who have experienced pain and hardship are as stupid as people without these experiences.” This is what I wanted to write to him. I mean.. Did he really have nothing else to say to me? Did I once again overestimate a person and opened my heart in vain?
I didn’t send this message. But I want to. Why do I let people tread all over me? Why do I always keep my mouth shut? Why don’t I tell people when they are acting like selfish idiots? Why can’t I express my discontent in stead of eternally letting go? What if this is what has ruined me through the years? My inability to care enough about me to stand up for myself.

Finally, there’s my confusion. What will I do with my life? Will it help to tell people what I’ve been through? Will it help to tell people that they’ve hurt you? I’m tired of fighting, tired of falling down and picking myself up again – and again, and again. I’m tired of trying. I’m tired of living because other people tell me to and living how they want me to. I’m so tired of helping myself because no one else can. Tired of trying to be a good person, doing the right thing and then hating myself for it. Tired of being disappointed in everyone; of distracting myself; of pretending to be alright. So, so tired of waiting!!

I’m tired of being tired of everything and everyone! If this is self-pity then WHY can’t I just drown in it? Why do I have to stay strong? Why am I not allowed to be worse off than others?