Hi,

It's been a while, I suck, I know. 

I've had a tough time dealing with my depression the past few weeks. This was the longest spell I've gone without having a depressive episode, which meant that when the bad day hit, it hit hard. I had lulled myself into a false sense of security, it had been months since I'd had a really bad day, I was cured! It was a Christmas miracle. At least, I thought it was, until one day I woke up and felt the familiar painful ache in my bones, the weight in my stomach and the unending dread. There isn't really an easy way to describe the feeling of this kind of bad day. It's like waking up underwater and constantly having to tread water to keep your head above the level. It's exhausting, and there's a part of your brain that can't help wondering 'what if I just stopped?'. Being sad isn't the worst part about depression, it's the thoughts that sneak their way across your mind like lightening, without permission, that tease and taunt you. It's the single, pervasive thought of 'what if it all just stopped?'. That thought, out of all the bad thoughts I've ever had about myself, is the most frightening, because it's the most tempting. 

Kristian Nygård

When I have a bad day, I constantly ask myself; 'why are you sad?', and I'm really asking myself; 'what the hell is wrong with you?'. And it's this question that bothers me most. I don't know why I'm sad. Nothing terrible has happened to me recently. I'm healthier than ever, I can look in the mirror without wanting to cry most days, and I have wonderful friends and family, so what's with the never-ending urge to cry for 64 years? The answer is, there is no answer. There is no reason for my sadness, there is just sadness, and this is one of the shittiest parts of depression. When you're sad for a reason, you can indulge your grief, you can sit in your room and cry and let it all out and move forward. When there's no reason, you can sit and cry, but then all you're left with after is confusion. Why am I crying? Why can I not stop? That confusion in my case, more often than not, leads to anger, because I can't stand feeling that out of control with my emotions. Then after the anger comes the guilt, what right do I even have to be sad when there are people out there suffering so much more? These emotions play with your head, you feel like you have to hide them, because how would you even explain that to people when you can't even explain it to yourself?

Elysian-Dreams

Often depression is simplified to just being really fucking sad, but it's so much more than that, it's so much more overwhelming. There's the loneliness, the isolation, the fear, the confusion, the unending exhaustion, the fact that you don't even know how to function as a human being anymore, the utter emptiness, the not caring about the things you used to love, the just not caring in general. When you simplify depression to sadness, to take away all the other factors that change you from the person you used to be, into the shell that you become. 

Depression Comix

There is something incredibly narcissistic about depression, all you can think about is yourself and your feelings, and the worst thing is, when it comes to actually talking about those feelings, the words fail. You end up isolated in this bubble of horrible thoughts, and fears that eat you alive, but on the outside you carry on as though you don't feel like you're dying. It's a lonely experience. It feels like you're talking to people through a glass wall and you can't find a way through it. You want to get involved, you want to laugh and have fun, but all you can hear is the voice in your head saying they don't want you around. And it's so much easier to give into that voice, because fighting it is exhausting. So you stumble around the glass wall, lost in a state of confusion and disorientation, but looking like a 'normal' human being and hiding the storm that is killing you inside.
I'm, generally speaking, an incredibly sensitive person, I don't know if it's the depression, or me just being a delicate flower, but I take everything to heart. This becomes so much worse when I'm having a bad day. The worry that somebody doesn't like me anymore is one of my most pervasive fears. I wish I was one of those people who didn't care what people thought. I have wished that more than anything for as long as I can remember. I've always wanted to be that badass who stands up for themselves and tells everyone else to go fuck themselves, but the most I can muster up is an arched brow and a quick scuttle away from confrontation. Even when people hurt my feelings, or make me feel shit, I'll go out of my way to avoid confronting the problem because I'm too scared of them not liking me. It's pathetic, but it's just the way my mind works. If people don't invite me out, I'll automatically assume they don't like me anymore and I won't know how to act around them because I won't know what I've done wrong. Hell, if I'm not even included in a tagged post I'll assume that we aren't pals anymore. It's an incredibly exhausting train of thought that leaves you scared of everyone and makes me an emotional nightmare to deal with. I don't know how my friends and family have put up with it for so long. 

Sylvie Reuter

Sometimes I'll have these brief, glorious moments on the bad days where it feels like the clouds of parted, and I can smile without feeling like my face is tearing itself apart, but then the next second, that little insidious voice is back. With feelings as mercurial as that, it's very hard to grasp how you feel at any point of the day. When people say 'just tell someone', it's so much harder than that; how can you articulate something that you don't fully understand, how can I tell someone how I feel, when I'm not entirely sure how I feel? The anxiety makes it even harder, because as understanding as society is now, it's very hard for people to fully sympathise with someone who doesn't like answering the phone, going new places, or even talking to new people. It's incredibly frustrating being too scared to do the simplest things that are easy to everyone else, imagine having to talk to somebody about something that terrifies you. 

I don't know if I really have a concise point to this ramble, I think I just find it easier to type out my feelings than chat about them. I can find more words when I'm typing than when I speak, when I speak it feels like the words get lost on their way to my mouth and nothing I say makes sense. This, I guess, is my way of trying to make sense of my thoughts and my broken brain. I don't know why I'm sad, I wish I did, because at least then I could do something about it. I don't know why I feel so alone, or lost, or confused. I don't know why I feel like everyone hates me. I don't know why I'm so confused, disorientated or scared 75% of the time. I just don't know. If I knew, I wouldn't be spewing my thoughts all over the internet, I would be out having a life, I would be living the dream.   

Shannon Sophia

I'll leave it there, I hope you're all having a better day than I am. If you want to chat, you can leave a comment below, or find me on any of my social media links on the side. Thanks for reading my ramble, if you made it all the way down here.

EDIT: Alright, I feel like I ended this on a really negative note, so I'll just add; I won't give up, I'll never give up and I live in perpetual hope that tomorrow will be a better day than today. I am the eternal dreamer haha. 

Hi!

First of all, I'd apologise for the title, but part of me thinks it might be the best thing I've ever written. So instead, I'm gonna go ahead and give myself a pat on the back for being hilarious.

Second of all, hello. It's been a while since I did the blogging thing, I hope I haven't forgotten how this thing works. I don't have any excuse really, other than I was focusing on getting myself happy and healthy, so I'm happy enough with the time out. I am back now, I can't promise a post every week, but I'll try my best! In terms of life achievements, all you've really missed is me losing 3 stone (GO ME) and I saw Star Wars and The Martian, both of which were most excellent. I mean, I did other things, but those felt like the main things. I'm not sure what that says about my life, but I don't really care, so there's that. 

The new love of my life.

With that all out of the way, let's chat about selfies. I get made fun of on a fairly regular basis for the amount of selfies I take, and that's fair enough, I do take an alarming amount of selfies. There's a lot of chat about people who take selfies, none of it particularly heartwarming. The majority of the opinions I've read about them generally follow the whole 'could you be any more in love with yourself?' (I hope you said that in a Chandler Bing voice) train of thought. It's not good. There seems to be a resounding belief that selfies are a sign of a vain, vapid generation who care only about themselves. Allow me to offer an alternative view because, after all, what's wrong with loving yourself?


I used to hate having my photo taken, even now I get a bit antsy if I'm not the one holding the camera. I'd look at every photo of me that was taken and pick out every single flaw. My face was too fat, my eyes were too small, my nose was too weird, what the hell face am I making? Everything. Everything was wrong with those photos, even if someone said it was a nice photo, they were lying. When I was in the height of my depression, I couldn't even stand looking at pictures of myself. I would actively avoid the three thousand pictures my Mum has hanging up around the house, because to me, they were just a reminder of my failure. All I wanted was to be able to look at a picture of myself and be happy with what I saw. 
After a while I learned how to manage my mental health and take better care of myself, and I taught myself to not automatically doubt everything I did, and that burgeoning sense of confidence and security was just awesome. Suddenly I didn't feel like shit 24/7, there were brief moments when I actually thought 'y'know, I'm not too bad!', and soon those moments happened more frequently. Then I fell in love with makeup and it was like a whole new world (I, 100%, started singing the song from Aladdin there, I hope you did too) opened up to me. It was like magic! This was something that allowed me to control how I saw my face, how others saw my face, I could hide what I wanted and enhance what I liked. I was finally in charge, and after years of feeling like I wasn't, it was a glorious feeling. 

With the makeup, came the selfies. Every time I liked what I'd manage to do with makeup, I'd take a photo of it, and instead of hating everything that I saw, I'd see something that I liked, which felt like a life achievement to me. Being able to compliment yourself when you've gone for so long only able to put yourself down, is just the best feeling in the world. When I hear someone complaining about people taking selfies and hear them say 'they are so in love with themselves!', a large part of me thinks 'good. I hope they are'. Because when did it become a problem to love yourself? I'm not saying that posting selfies is going to cure the great issues of the world, and sure, like everything there is a limit, but if that photo made that person feel good for even just a moment, then what's the problem? 
I don't post pictures of myself to gain anyone's approval, the only person's approval I need is my own. I couldn't care less if someone doesn't like a photo of me, because if I've posted it, it means I like that photo and that's all that matters. Sure, when I post my 389th selfie to Instagram and get a few likes, I'll not deny that it feels nice, it feels like a little internet compliment, even if it is just someone double tapping picture. I challenge you to find anyone who doesn't like a compliment, and if they say they don't, they're lying. And you should probably compliment them because they sound very sad.

I don't post selfies because I think I'm the best looking person in the world, I post them because I do think I have a nice face, I do like what I can do with makeup and I do feel pretty, and I don't think any of that is a problem. Those pictures might be 'vain', 'vapid' and 'ridiculous' (thank you social media for all your opinions, as always) but they made me feel good about myself in a time when I didn't think I could, and my opinion of myself is far more important than anyone else's. 

The next time somebody tries to make fun of you for taking selfies, ask yourself; how do you feel about that photo? If the answer is that you think you look bomb as hell, then post that picture to every piece of social media in existence because the world deserves to see a moment of you being happy in your own skin. It's a bizarre turn of events when we're trying to teach everyone to love themselves, but the second they show a sign of doing it, there's someone right there telling them to reign that shit in. Don't reign it in, love yourself proudly and publicly because you deserve to. 
If you're the person who makes fun of people who take selfies, try it for yourself. Take a photo of yourself that you like and point out five things that you like about it, and if you don't feel marginally good about yourself after, you're probably a robot. 

I'll leave it there because I've already lost this blog post once and I won't risk it again. I hope you all had a magical Christmas and a wonderful New Year! I can't wait for 2016 because I feel like it might be a great year, and maybe I'll actually post some blog posts! We'll not place money on that though. I will chat to you all soon(ish),

Be happy and be kind,
Becca xo