NancyLostinLife

I tend to personify my mental illness although I’ve spent the last few years trying to think of it as a part of me that I can live with rather than an enemy personification can help put some distance between myself and mental illness. It can also give me something to aim my rage at for the lost years and experiences caused by mental illness.

I often call my “bad thoughts” irrational Nancy. She’s sort of an evil twin who is loud and mean. However, depression has its own form in my mind. It’s sort of a gremlin that clings to my back draining, claws digging into my skin viciously as it sucks the life from me. This evil fucking gremlin is also a thief, most of the time. Depression has stolen so much time from me that it hurts to think who I could have been had that time been used differently.

Anxiety is a beast of its own but often works with the depression gremlin. It’s a wasp. It zips through the air frantically. Most of the time it’s just a nuisance of buzzing and the feel of seeing something out of the corner of your eye. Occasionally, it attacks stinging with venom that courses through my body sending it into meltdown. Sometimes it keeps stinging repeatedly, unwilling to give me a moment to feel anything but on edge for the next hit.

The depression Gremlin is the worst of the thieves. It’s bigger, nastier and conserves its energy so it can mount an attack of a larger proportion than the anxiety wasp. Depression has taken months even years from me. It took my time, my years at University and the years afterwards. It took my late teens and early to mid-twenties. It’s taken away my memory, my career and my potential. It’s robbed me of years of income and relationships. Most importantly it has robbed me of the person I could have been without it.

I know it’s not smart to get stuck in the “what ifs” of life but when you feel like this outside force has robbed you of so much you can’t help but wonder what could have been in its absence.

The anxiety wasp has also stolen things from me but I’ve found it easier to defend against. Anxiety has stolen relationships, experiences and sleep. Time has been taken, stolen by obsessive overthinking and overanalysing. Yet the anxiety wasp doesn’t have claws in which to anchor itself to me. I can bat it away with one of the many coping mechanisms I’ve honed over the years. I can ignore its presence enough to say yes to a social event and know that I’ll be better off having gone than hiding away, letting the wasp win.

Overall, these illnesses have and continue to affect my life in ways that damage me. Time and enjoyment in the present will always be the hardest to accept. It’s painful to think of my teen years or my time as a student and know that I should have been enjoying myself more. It’s a shame that looking back I can see that there were times when I should have been the least anxious or depressed. When I was living those years it all felt so dire but I wistfully look back and wish I could tell myself that those times would be better than I wanted to come.

Looking to the future, it may be time to work on not regretting the past and staying in the present. After all, how do I move forward when I’m refusing to let go of the past?