Down The Rabbit Hole

Quote From Alice In Wonderland

Do you ever have those days where you feel so completely mental that you just feel hysterical? Like you cant stand to even be in your own skin? The only way I can think to describe it to those who havent been through it is just a complete feeling of restlessness or losing control.

Todays been one of those days for me. They happen every so often, where I feel like I cant even tell anyone i'm not ok because I dont even really know why I'm not ok. I was texting my best friend today, when I decided to walk somewhere (which, if you knew me, is totally out of character). I was telling her how I was feeling and she said "boy, you've really fallen down the rabbit hole havent you?"

I'd never heard it described like that before and it got me thinking. When Alice went down the rabbit hole, it was into a different world, one where nothing was quite as it seemed, full of riddles and difficulties the young Alice could never have imagined. In many ways, its one of the best ways I've ever heard of describing what depression feels like to me.

To me, the world wasnt always like this. It was once a massive place of endless possibilities, a place I could be happy, content and my own person, where I could do anything I put my heart to. Dont be fooled into thinking these were the thoughts of a child, the world looked like this to me only a couple of years ago. Now, its a different story. The world is dark, unfriendly and hard. So hard that sometimes the preferrable option is to give up. Take me right now, for example, I've said before I dont want to take my own life. Today, that still stands but its on days like this I wish I would just die. Quietly, So then I wouldnt have to go on for another second feeling this way. That being said, I have no desire to do anything horrific about it, Instead, I'm taking the super productive route (sense the sarcasm) and drinking a bottle of wine, by myself, on a Sunday afternoon. Not a brilliant way to deal with it, I'll give you that, but its the unhelpful way I've chosen right now.

Much like Alice, I've fallen down my own rabbit hole. Where once things made sense, they no longer do. Things are confusing, I'm never sure whether I'm making the right decision and I don't know where, if anywhere, I can turn to for help. Much like Alice, depression has meant that I've found myself trying to find my way through a world that is strange, different, scary and lonely. What I once thought I knew about the world and how it works and my place in it has changed since I've found myself falling down the rabbit hole, I've emerged a different person in a different world.

A lot of the time I feel completely lost. I struggle to understand the point of a lot of the things around me as well as what I'm meant to be doing. When I'm in the depths of it, whether it be anxiety or depression or both, it's like my mind just freezes, like it's saying nope, fuck this, I'm done and I just sit there staring into space. It's the cause of quite a lot of disagreements. It's not that I don't want to tell people my opinion or what I want to do, I'm not doing it to be difficult, it's just in that moment, I genuinely don't know what I want. The world around me has become too much for me and in that moment it genuinely doesn't matter to me what happens or what we do or what we buy or what we eat. It's just another decision that I can't bring myself to make.

It's a horrible thing when the world around you appears to change. Truth is, the world hasn't changed, it's my view of it that has. I want to get back to what I knew before, I want to see colours when now there's only gray. The big question is, when the world seems like a scary and different place, how can you get back to what you were before? It's something I struggle with daily and something I wish I had the answer to.

I want to find my way out of the rabbit hole. I don't want to be stuck here, in a world clouded by mental health issues in which I just don't feel like myself. Sometimes I can feel myself slipping further down that rabbit hole, like its out of my control. Reality is, I'm not sure it is out of my control.  Alice had an entire world of curious characters to deal with, in many ways we all do too. In my life, the most curious has to be myself. You'd think that by my age I'd have a good idea of who I am and what my priorities are. Well, I don't. Not anymore, I used to, but that person, that plan, that ideal, are getting further and further away from me. I'm rapidly losing myself and my dreams and to be quite frank I'm sick of it, I often wonder whether I'll ever be happy, if I'm just doomed to a life of never really living, never doing what I truly want, always living for other people. It's a sobering thought when I realise that this is my reality and I'm not sure how to escape from it.

Sometimes I think it would be better to just live inside my own little world, then I realise that this is what I have been doing for my whole life, until the last couple of years I've been happily living in a gigantic bubble. Now the bubble has popped and I don't like it, I don't like the harsh reality of life sometimes. I want to go back into the bubble. 

You can't though. Once it's popped that's it and the sooner I accept that, the better. I'm not saying accept everything's shit, I don't want to do that, I'm just saying accept that things are harder than they look. Which is ok. It's ok for it to be harder than it looks, maybe that's what makes it worth it, if you feel you've had to fight or work to get whatever you want whether it's material items or something altogether different. The issue comes when you've tried for so long that you're too exhausted to try anymore. 

I suppose I have to be hopeful. I have to hope that one day, like Alice, I'll emerge from the rabbit hole, stronger and more self assured than before. I have to hope that the walls won't collapse on me. I have to hope there's something else out there than the shit I'm existing within. There has to be hope, doesn't there? 

I know I'll probably never be the person I was before. I think there are certain things you go through that change you, for better or worse. Much like Alice "I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then". I just want to go forward. I just want to try to live my best life. I just need to figure out what has to be done to get there.

Does anyone know what I mean? After all, "we're all mad here"

TGWG X