My Mind is Falling Apart Again

The reality of life with a mental illness

I have good days and bad days. Sometimes I have terrible days, like today. I am at a place in my journey through mental illness where I can usually work and get done what needs doing, but today, nothing I have been trying will help me get my shit together.

It used to be that my moods and the voices in my head made my life a living hell. All I could manage to do was stay in bed under the covers and hope the daylight would fade soon. The voices in my head, along with the depression and anxiety that they caused, made it so there was nothing I thought I could do to have any kind of fulfilling life.

I’ve come a long way, and while I always hear voices, most of the time they do their own thing and let me focus on what I need to do for the day.

It is almost a truce.

But today, the voices are so horrible that all I have managed to do is cry all morning. I’m severely depressed and cannot seem to focus on anything. Their voices are feeding me so much negative shit that I feel lost and confused. They are close to convincing me that I will never make anything of myself and I will never succeed at the things I am trying to do in my life and career.

How would it feel to have people in your mind screaming at you, telling you that you are worthless and will never amount to anything? All the time, nonstop? Everything you are trying to do will end in failure because you are a loser, and losers never win.

I destroy everyone and everything I touch and have never been able to make anyone happy. People always leave because I let them down and end up being a burden to them. How long will it be before my wife gets tired of my bullshit like everyone else and leaves me for someone who can fulfill her needs? How long before I disappoint all my kids enough that they want nothing to do with me?

For years I have been trying to build something within the constraints of my illness that will allow me to support my family how they should taken care of, but I haven’t managed to even make enough to replace my Social Security Disability. If it wasn’t for that, we would starve, because everything I try ends in failure.

Everything I try doesn’t work, and like dominoes, all my carefully laid plans fall and I am left with nothing to show for it.

I have been working my fingers to the bone, ignoring my family, not taking care of myself, and pushing myself so far beyond the brink that I almost feel like sometimes I will never come back. Project after project fails, yet I somehow keep starting businesses and feel hope that THIS TIME I will finally succeed.

I’m done…