Her existence was a glitch,
Never meant to happen.
A stranger to everything,
A heart that never belonged.
How can everything feel so wrong?
How could everyone feel so unfamiliar?
There was no home.
There was no warmth.
It was cold and alone,
Everywhere she’d go.
I was never the person who enjoyed being sad, or alone. I enjoy nothing more than noise, laughter, crowds, lights, nights, pictures, everything that makes me feel alive.
My depression attacks are never welcomed. I mean, who would welcome depression, right?
But to me, it’s not just the hollow sadness that bothers me. Depression strips me off my entire identity. It pushes me into panic mode, because I really want to be me, but I can’t. My head won’t allow me. All I can think of is how much I want to laugh. My head becomes my own enemy, locking me up in an imaginary cage that I created for my own self.
For 18 years, depression has been the ugly, uninvited guest in my life. Walking in and out as it pleases, never knocking.
My lively soul shifts from wanting everything that’s loud and bright, to not wanting anything at all. To not wanting to wake up the next morning.
It kills me.
There’s nothing poetic about depression. There’s nothing romantic. It’s brutal. The pain is excruciating. The lack of control is unexplainable.
Depression is a real enemy. Except, there’s no easy way to defeat it because it’s a part of who you are. To fight yourself, is an excruciating battle, mixed with confusion and self-loathing.
Depression is life-threatening. Except, you’re the threat. You’re a threat and you can’t control it. The guilt trips are unbearable.
Depression is lonely. No one who hasn’t been through it can ever fully understand the struggle. You go back home, you hang up your phone, you go back to you room, and it’s you vs yourself one more time, behind a closed door.
But let me also tell you that, for 18 years, I’ve survived every single round. I’ve fought back. I got lucky. I won every single time, so far. I intend to keep doing so, for as long as life allows me to. I don’t want to lose.
My uninvited guest doesn’t visit me as much anymore. We’re finally breaking ties, slowly. I’ve never been more grateful for anything in my life.
Love carried me through it all. It still does. The people I love, the ones I’d die for, stand between me and every ugly decision I want to make so bad. They make me want to fight, so I can stick around, and be myself, for them, and for me.
I’ve been cursed with depression, and I’ve spent so many years thinking I was flawed, broken. But, I’m finally blessed with the clarity to recognize the unconditional love being offered to me, accept it, and allow it to save my life, over and over. Finding love in the darkest of times, seeing God in the dimmest of moments. Watching his grace save me, change me, and pull me out, time after time.
My on/off depression has taught me to count my blessings, and love everyone a little extra on their bad days. To appreciate the ups, and brace myself for the downs. While it’s forcing me to keep my guard up all the time, it’s also allowing me to try to make the best of every good moment. Always.
I never change.
I think I grew out of my fear,
I think I overcame my insecurities,
But I did not.
They’re all just hiding somewhere at the back of my mind,
Behind the very few people who love me.
But they’re there. Always.
I made the wrong choices.
I make the wrong choices.
I have no clue if that will ever change.
Maybe it’s inherently becoming a part of who I am.
I do not want to hurt myself again,
By expecting more than I will ever get.
But I can’t stop.
I can’t draw lines.
I wear my heart on my sleeve,
And I wander.
Forever.
Unable to hold myself back.
I wish I didn’t have to feel so much.
I really do.
Everything comes at a cost here.
Love, hate, truth, lies,
Everything.
It’s never easy to admit how dependent you are, how attached, how vulnerable in a bond.
You know why?
I’ll tell you.
Because: 1. It means you’re no longer in control. It means you just gave someone the power to shatter you.
2. It beats your ego to have a weakness. A liability.
3. It is so damn inconvenient to know that someone’s mere absence can eventually destroy you.
4. The fact that a person can bring so much warmness to your soul, means all this warmness can also go to hell if they choose to leave.
And why does any of this hurt sometimes, to the point of denial, maybe?
Because you’d rather believe you’re good on your own. Strong. Complete. That excessive emotions are not your thing. That attachment/dependency kills everything. That nothing and no one has the power to hurt you and that it should stay that way. That you’ve been hurt enough.
And you know what that also translates to?
Anything BUT human.
You can never admit, believe, trust, or embrace the fact that you’re so fucking fragile. A hell lot more fragile than you’d wish to be.
Running away from everything that’s human is a state of denial. It gets the best of you. It takes the best away from you, too.
This life is so tough. We’ve been broken over and over, some more than others. You are fragile, whether you accept it or not. Life will beat you down. There’s nothing you can do about it. Have a safe haven. Embrace it. Accept your fragility. Let your walls down.
The harder you fight it, the longer you waste. Your only escape, is to run into familiar arms every single time life takes its toll on you. It’s beautiful, and so divine.
I stare at the fan,
Spinning in an infinite loop.
Its rhythmic humming keeping me calm.
“Where have I gone wrong?”,
I wonder as I feel myself getting closer to a new breakdown,
The only thing holding me back is the consistent sound.
I feel my thoughts racing,
Slightly going out of control.
“Is this who I will have to be for the rest of my life?”,
The idea seemed terrifying.
The dependency,
The constant fears that never leave my side,
Always scared,
Always holding back,
Always thinking of the moment I will be abandoned,
Cold,
Stranded,
And alone.
I hate how it gets the best of me,
Every single time.
There’s no remedy for that,
There’s no running away.
It’s like all these fears,
Can eat up every beautiful thing you touch.
No love in the world has ever managed to save me,
And I instantly knew,
It’ll take more than the sweet humming of this overlying fan,
To avoid this one breakdown.
You can blame society,
You can blame your parents,
You can blame God,
But you need to understand that who you decide to be,
Who you are today,
Is merely your responsibility.
..
There’s no justification to hurting others,
To ruining them,
To ruining yourself.
Not God,
Not society,
Not your parents.
It’s all on you.
..
Contributing factors?
Yes.
Hardships?
Definitely.
Destructive?
100%.
But never justifications.
..
The minute you wake up and decide to do nothing about it,
Decide to throw blames and stand still,
Decide to never take full responsibility for your actions,
It’s all on you.
..
You think it’s predetermined,
You want to believe that the injustices that happened to you,
Define who you are,
Because it’s easier to be the victim,
The one who demands sympathy,
Who thinks they’ve earned it, somehow,
Than to be the survivor,
Who demands respect,
Who, despite everything,
Has turned out to be so full of love,
So full of love that it overflows to fill all the cups on their table.
..
It’s easier to be the victim,
And maybe, somehow, you are one.
But is this, really, who you want to be for the rest of your life?
Passive, pitied, unaccountable?
Because I know, for sure,
That my answer is no.
..
What will yours be?
I know you want to stay.
I know that you want to believe that the pain will stop.
I know that all the voices in your head are convincing you that staying is the safer option.
I also know that love is blind,
And so very stupid sometimes.
Your gut feeling is right.
It was right all along.
Nothing is going to change.
You will still cry yourself to sleep.
You will still live bearing the threat of being abandoned if you do not follow the rules.
You will still wake up every morning next to someone who’s constantly reminding you that you’re not enough,
Like choosing you is a favor.
I know you want to believe they’ll change,
See your worth,
Suddenly realize you’re the best thing they’ve ever had,
Finally give you the love that you deserve.
It. Will. Not. Happen.
People change, yes.
But never into a whole different person.
Toxicity is in the blood.
It will mutate and change its face,
It will manipulate you into believing your judgement was wrong,
Unfair,
But it will still be there.
Growing,
Evolving,
Engulfing you until you become a shadow of the person you’ve always wanted to be.
Is this what you deserve?
Is this your actual worth?
Why are you selling yourself cheap?
Aren’t all the people who love you and respect you enough to let you know how precious you are?
Why are you lowering the bar,
So low,
That literally anyone can step over it?
It’s time to finally understand that what you’re in,
What you’re holding on to,
Is not love.
It’s the idea of it.
You’re so consumed and blinded by the idea of finding love that you’ve forgotten to try and figure out what it should be like.
And THIS is where you went wrong.
The rush to find your soulmate,
The paralyzing fear of ending up alone,
The peer pressure,
Believing you had a task with a deadline to finish,
All of this has led you to accept whatever came your way.
You lost yourself in the process.
But is that what you really want?
Is this who you really want to be?
Isn’t it, finally,
The right time to leave?
‘Was I good enough?’
Is there a greater sin than wasting your time in things that degrade you and pull you down?
Because I don’t think there is.
We procrastinate a lot.
Delay taking decisions that we know we will have to take one day.
We’d rather stay the same than change.
Because change is scary.
We keep spiralling down because we’re too afraid to claw at the walls and start climbing back up.
And time passes. Bitter, irreplaceable time.
Time is the only thing you can never reverse or fix. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.
When you finally open your eyes, you realise that you lost precious moments that you can never bring back.
You were so consumed in yourself that you missed all the things that were happening around you, eventually losing yourself too.
And now, you’re a stranger.
Yet, one question will always remain: Is it too late now?
We survive.
We fall, we break, then we get up and heal.
Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday we will.
Sometimes we need a strong blow, an electrifying shock to dislodge us from the illusions we live in.
We tend to believe, a lot and unconditionally.
But life lies.
The world tells you what you want to hear, what it takes to keep you sane.
Then it lies.
Then you mourn and mourn until you snap out of it.
And see everything from a different perspective.
You go back and relive all the signs you’ve missed.
All the things you believed when everything around you screamed that they were not true.
Day by day, you wake up a little more.
You feel sorry for yourself a little more.
You become confused a little more.
Can life be so unfair? Or is it saving you from yourself, somehow?
All the things you’ve lost, did they define you? Or was it you who added something to their definition?
Were you so foolish to keep hurting yourself the way you did? Or were you very smart to keep going until the end?
Is there a moral for all the pain you put yourself through? Or was it all in vain?
Questions you’ll never understand.
Answers you’ll never find.
A soul that you’ll forever try to heal.
And the journey of life keeps going, even when you stop midway.
Alya Omran’s Blog 