Someone with Type I diabetes needs medication and cannot be cured of their disease. Cancer patients seek important medical treatments to hopefully rid their bodies of the disease. Both of these afflictions, among many others, can kill you. These people are not blamed for their afflictions or chastised for needing treatments, so why are those with mental diseases? I have suffered from bipolar treatment-resistant depression, with bouts of anxiety, for more than half of my life. I have been hospitalized and undergone many types of treatments. There are fantastic times of remission, but it is my 'cancer' that continues to recur.
I am continually judging myself, an action that only helps to promote the feedback loop of depression. It is difficult for me to understand that when others look at me they cannot see into my mind and feel the hole of existence that I feel. Why am I like this? Did I do something wrong? Was there a latent genetic predisposition in my ancestry? Or is it something else? Not knowing can be difficult. That others do not have the feelings I do seems foreign to me. After a year of ECT treatments, I started to not feel that dying would be the best option. I got up and had less pervasive thoughts and felt like living for living's sake. This will sound odd, but it was an incredibly bizarre and almost uncomfortable feeling. I know that survival is an important and innate feature to any species, so where did my desire flee to?
This year, particularly the last few months, has been difficult and stressful. The reserve of emotional and mental stability I felt that I had accrued has been depleted. I am working with a new doctor and therapist, to hopefully reinforce the dam before it breaks. For the first time in nearly a year I am considering getting ECT booster treatments. I hate the side effects that I have experienced, primarily memory effects, but it may be worth it.
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