Potential Triggers

I don’t really know what it is, that makes me read books about mental illness and people who suffer from it.
It’s like when your parents used to tell you not to play with matches – the more harm can be done with it, the more it fascinates you.
Books are like movies, or music….for me, they are potentially triggering and therefore dangerous.
And nevertheless, I find myself reading books, or watching movies, of which I know are not really good for my general state of mind.
Maybe it’s the subliminal urge to keep on holding onto something that’s been a part of you for such a long time, maybe it’s the need to know that you’re not alone with those struggles you gotta face on a daily basis…..or it’s just about being able to point your finger at people and say: “At least, someone’s worse off than me!”
I’m not ashamed to say that it gives me a certain morale boost to see people who are still struggling a lot harder than me. I look at them and tell myself: “This is where I used to be.” and then I just listen to my inner voice which tells me: “And all this, is where you are now. You are so much better already.”

I guess, a part of getting better is to learn how to deal with all kinds of triggers. A couple of months ago it was enough for me to listen to a song that reminded me of my time in hospital and I uncontrollably started hurting myself, or was falling into a deep black whole of depression again. And now, certain things….like this particular song, still remind me of that time, but not only of the bad things but also of the good stuff that happened and I can look at myself, proudly and with my head held high, knowing that I’ve been through a lot but that I’m still here….alive and willing to start all over again…even though it’s gonna be hard, like my constant struggle with those demons inside my head.
Hopefully this time, with a better outcome.

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Blurb (from Goodreads – click on the picture for the link):

“A harrowing story of breakdowns, suicide attempts, drug therapy, and an eventual journey back to living, this poignant & often hilarious book gives voice to the high incidence of depression among America’s youth. A collective cry for help from a generation who have come of age entrenched in the culture of divorce, economic instability, and AIDS, here is the intensely personal story of a young girl full of promise, whose mood swings have risen & fallen like the lines of a sad ballad.”

“Some catastrophic moments invite clarity, explode in split moments: You smash your hand through a windowpane and then there is blood and shattered glass stained with red all over the place; you fall out a window and break some bones and scrape some skin. Stitches and casts and bandages and antiseptic solve and salve the wounds. But depression is not a sudden disaster. It is more like a cancer: At first its tumorous mass is not even noticeable to the careful eye, and then one day — wham! — there is a huge, deadly seven-pound lump lodged in your brain or your stomach or your shoulder blade, and this thing that your own body has produced is actually trying to kill you. Depression is a lot like that: Slowly, over the years, the data will accumulate in your heart and mind, a computer program for total negativity will build into your system, making life feel more and more unbearable. But you won’t even notice it coming on, thinking that it is somehow normal, something about getting older, about turning eight or turning twelve or turning fifteen, and then one day you realize that your entire life is just awful, not worth living, a horror and a black blot on the white terrain of human existence. One morning you wake up afraid you are going to live.

In my case, I was not frightened in the least bit at the thought that I might live because I was certain, quite certain, that I was already dead. The actual dying part, the withering away of my physical body, was a mere formality. My spirit, my emotional being, whatever you want to call all that inner turmoil that has nothing to do with physical existence, were long gone, dead and gone, and only a mass of the most fucking god-awful excruciating pain like a pair of boiling hot tongs clamped tight around my spine and pressing on all my nerves was left in its wake.

That’s the thing I want to make clear about depression: It’s got nothing at all to do with life. In the course of life, there is sadness and pain and sorrow, all of which, in their right time and season, are normal — unpleasant, but normal. Depression is an altogether different zone because it involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature’s part (nature, after all, abhors a vacuum) to fill up the empty space. But for all intents and purposes, the deeply depressed are just the walking, waking dead.

And the scariest part is that if you ask anyone in the throes of depression how he got there, to pin down the turning point, he’ll never know. There is a classic moment in The Sun Also Rises when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt, and all he can say in response is, ‘Gradually and then suddenly.’ When someone asks how I love my mind, that is all I can say too”
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)