I'm a disaster

[TW for suicide ideation, self-harm, physical abuse, emotional abuse and psychiatric abuse]

Hi. I'm 18, and I have absolutely no happiness baseline. I've always been depressed, and it sucks. I've gone through countless therapists, psychiatrists and medications trying to treat my disorders [Major Depressive Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, probable DESNOS, dysthymia, and DID/DDNOS] to no avail. The main issue I find with therapists is that they are trying to get me 'back' to place I've never been. I've never truly felt content, so I enter this fantastical place called 'peace' that they're attempting to shepard me towards. I think I need to learn what positivity even is first and work from there. 18 years late.

Right now I feel especially hopeless. I have been trying so hard to help myself; to recover. I was hoping this would be the year that I'd finally figure things out. But as you can tell by my presence here, it wasn't. This has probably been one of the worst years of my life.

During the Summer I was put in my local hospital's acute psychiatric treatment ward. I was put there by my best friend because I had expressed to her that I was very suicidal for months. She got 'tired of it' and shared my private conversations with her to my mom in an attempt to 'fix' me so that she didn't have to 'carry the weight of [my] life' anymore. The thing that makes that truly awful is that my mother is highly abusive, both emotionally and physically, as is my father who I do not live with but still caught wind of my institutionalization. My friend was aware of this and she knew what my parents would do if they found out the extent of my depression, but she later admitted she didn't really care and that she just wanted me off her back. I didn't want my parents to know about the severity of my depression because I knew that they would both use it against me. So my best friend who I trusted more than anyone else violated my privacy, and got me placed in a hospital that was sickeningly abusive.

I know it seems like I'm overusing the word abusive, but please believe me on this one. The hospital got my dosages wrong, then when they finally got my antidepressants right they gave me an antihistamine which interacts severely with my antidepressants every single night before bed, resulting in a very sick me. I was not allowed to refuse to take it, otherwise I'd get scolded and threatened with extra time in Psych Hell. I also had a very manipulative and creepy social worker who believed that ADHD wasn't real, and repeatedly requested me to do strange things like smile for him or laugh at his jokes, otherwise I'd 'be in for an extra week'. He was genuine about these threats, and when I attempted to report this behavior to the ward's doctor she slammed the door in my face.

My ADHD is very, very severe, and so a lack of stimulation causes me physical pain. I was crying from the sheer pain I was in because they would not let me have any of my things. Not even a stuffed animal from home to help sooth my overwhelming anxiety. I was having panic attacks in front of RNs all the time, and they did absolutely nothing to help me. My siblings visited me once, but they just insulted me and said that suicide is pathetic and selfish.

That was around four months ago, and I still have nightmares about being in that place. I think about it all the time. I can't hear sirens anymore or see pictures of hospitals or even nurse uniforms without having overwhelming flashbacks.

This year was also the first year I started self-harming. I managed to somehow avoided harming myself because I knew I was/am prone to addiction because of my disorders and my family's history. But this year I went into a dissociative episode and got out of it holding a piece of shattered glass in my clenched fist with blood and wounds all across my thigh. Since then it's been a bad habit of mine. It's the only way I can feel anything other than this horrible emptiness inside my chest.

I feel like I just can't do this anymore. I try so hard to make things better, but nothing ever works. I've reached out to my bosses, co-workers and old friends to hang out despite my debilitating levels of avoidance and social anxiety, yet every time I do that things just get worse somehow. Some examples would be that two days ago I went to my boss' birthday party at Medieval Times. All of my other supervisors and co-workers were there, and we're a tight knit group so it should have been really fun. And it was. I mean, for them. But for me, even when we were inside the main hall and there were horses and lances abound I was lost inside my own head. I kept thinking about things that don't even matter anymore; my mom trying to rip open my door with a knife just to get to me when I was 16 and having to jump out my window to get away from her, my dad kicking me out of his apartment on Halloween night some years back for being 'such a ****ing failure'... And even though I was around people I love, I remember looking at the crowd around me and thinking ''I should just kill myself''.

Another example would be yesterday. I met up with a person I met from my place of volunteer work over the Summer. She's a really sweet and funny girl who I've kept in contact with since she stopped volunteering in August. We talk almost every day, so we planned to meet up and see the Supermoon Eclipse together at a park by her house. I was so, so excited for this. I sincerely love astronomy, and this was a very special event. So I spent the whole week getting ready for this one thing. When we got to the park, though, and I finally got to see this girl who I'd been dying to hang out with again, I was completely lost in flashbacks. The park happened to be one that I used to frequent as a child, and then again as a young teenager. It was a place that had too many memories attached to it, and the whole thing just threw me into a state of mourning for my lost adolescence. In between flashbacks I was pretty much fully dissociated, and when the moon entered totality I couldn't even see it. Not even a glimpse. I brought my binoculars and we looked for a full hour, but the clouds were too dense.

I was absolutely heartbroken. I didn't say a thing, but I guess my expression said it all, because said friend profusely apologized for the cloud cover and seemed to feel genuinely sorry for me. But all I could do was look up at the sky and feel absolutely hopeless.

I was looking for a single sign that I was meant to keep going. A single sign that'd say, 'hey, this world is amazing, and you should keep living in it'. But even the moon wasn't there for me when I needed it, and I completely ruined the one meeting I was eagerly looking forward to.

I dropped out of school two years ago, and I've done nothing but rot since then. I'm stuck in an abusive household with no friends and a mind that likes to remind me of all the terrible things that have ever happened to me. It hurts, and I hate it. I can't hold a job or even study for my GED because my executive functioning is so poor, yet my whole life all I've wanted to do is become a veterinarian. I distinctly remember saying when I was 14 that if I didn't become a veterinarian I would kill myself, and every single day that promise rings in my head. Because at this rate, I'm going to be nothing. I'm going to do nothing. I'm just going to cry and bleed and hear shouts echo through the house and ring in my ears, ruining every single friendship I try to develop and isolating myself from everyone I've ever known. Everything feels so hopeless, and it has for as long as I can remember. Hell, one of my earliest memories is writing 'I want to die' repeatedly in a marble notebook when I was 8 years old.

I've never been happy, and so, logically, I never will be happy. It's like the laws of gravity. Sure, it's theoretically possible that the law of gravity will cease to apply to our universe as of tomorrow, but because its presence has been consistent for all of written history, we can safely assume that it will continue tomorrow. The same goes for my relentless depression. Its presence has been consistent for as long as I can remember, so the thought of it going away feels impossible to me.

I don't know what I was hoping to accomplish with this thread. I simply couldn't sleep, so instead of crying to cutting myself I did this. Because, y'know, as if all of this happening wasn't enough I had to go and write an essay about how bad it sucks. Logic.

Thanks for reading.

Hi Ascella,
You truly have been having a difficult life. I do understand the psychiatric hospital trauma a bit, had some I could say was traumatic more than a few times. You do sound depressed. Several times you mentioned "I ruined things".... that is blaming yourself for things not under your control which is the depression talking.

You write and express your feelings well. This could become a good place to express yourself and you actually get some feedback here and support. If that was an essay, I'd say it wasn't a hard one to read.

I won't give you a bs statement about how young you are and that things can change. They might, you might struggle for years. But there is help out there and starting here was good. I'm not the best and responses but thought I'd try.

Is there anything local for counseling in your area? Do you take medication for the add?
It is good that you volunteered this summer and met a friend, maybe you can let that friend know a little about how you struggle.

Depression can be a life long battle I won't argue with that, but it is also often treatable and can improve and change. Maybe your love for astronomy will spark the desire to start studying, or even to find some more delight researching about it.

Welcome to the site and make yourself at home.

I believe you Ascella. I have heard similar horror stories in the past. I hope that most hospitals are better than that.

I don't know if you're looking for advice, but if you are, it sounds to me like nothing you have done so far has worked. If so, I would start fresh, with an M.D. you trust and start by looking very carefully for physical or nutritional problems that might be underlying what's going on with you. A lot of people don't know this, but there are many purely physical medical problems that can cause severe mental problems. This plan might give you some ideas:

http://forums.psychcentral.com/4262681-post105.html

Hang in there and keep in touch.

- vital

That's a lot of diagnoses for 18 years old.

My niece was just diagnosed with ADHD so I am just learning about it, but it sounds like something that really needs medication, even if you don't take anything for the depression (and many antidepressants increase suicidal thinking in teens and young adults, so age really does matter).

So, I hope you are still getting some treatment.

Hi Ascella. My heart goes out to you because it sounds like you have had so much suffering. Sometimes writing this stuff down helps some. Have you seen a therapist or counselor lately? You are not a bad person, not a failure. You don't screw things up. The depression will make you think that but it is not true. Having suffered in an abusive family I can understand the depression and anxiety.

Is there a way to study and get your GED? Then perhaps you could go to school to study astronomy, be a vetinarian, or a vet tech. Knowing things you would like to do is half the battle.

Welcome to pc. I will keep you in my thoughts and prayers.

hello and welcome to PC

hope you stick around and get support here.

it's a good site- with a good forum and useful artickles