I feel like a failure. In so many ways.
People say I am doing well because I am still here etc, but to me it feels like I am failing. I don't want to be alive, and I am, therefore I am failing. I know we live in a society where suicide is seen as a bad thing (well actually, that probably applies to most societies to be fair, but that is besides the point) and selfish, and that it is therefore a good thing to stay alive even if you feel like shit etc, but it doesn't feel like a good thing to me.
I feel like people think I am an attention seeker, or crying wolf, because I talk about feeling suicidal and how I am going to kill myself, and then don't act on it. But when I say it it is because that is how I am really feeling at the time - I am not saying it for effect or anything. I have never said I am planning to kill myself unless I genuinely am. I feel like people now assume that I am not actually going to go through with it when I say I am feeling suicidal, and when I feeling this bad it is hard to feel that. I don't want to say I don't feel like I am being taken seriously, because it isn't that as such, for instance I know that L does know how bad I feel. But when I am feeling really terrible and really feel like I am going to act on these thoughts I find it hard to think that everyone just kind of thinks I will be ok and get through it. Because sometimes I can't.
I feel like a failure for my weight. For having let myself gain so much. For not having the will power to lose it.
I feel like a failure for not achieving anything in my life. When I speak to people I haven't spoken to for a long time I feel ashamed of myself when they ask me what I have been doing. I have accomplished nothing since my A levels, and that was quite a few years ago now. People I haven't been in touch with for a long time expect me to have been to drama school. I haven't. Because I can't even cope with getting out of bed every day, let alone doing 50+ hours a week at drama school.
I feel like a failure for not being a better friend. For not being able to support my friends better when they are struggling. I try, I really do, but sometimes when I am doing badly I just can't cope with it.
I feel like a failure as a daughter. For having done nothing to make my parents proud of me. For seeming ungrateful and lazy and uncaring. I'm not really. I try, but it is so difficult living with feeling like this all the time. I love them very much. But part of me wants to push them away so they will be less hurt when I kill myself.
I feel like a failure for having been unable to do so many things I have planned or intended to do. For having dropped out of things I have started because I haven't been able to cope.
I feel completely and utterly worthless.
And that is why I shouldn't be here. Why I should kill myself. And why I am a failure for not having done so already.
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I've heard some people use the stratagy of dealing with their suicidal urges by setting a date, sometime out in the future, maybe months or years out, when they'll follow through with it if their life hasn't become more tolerable.
ReplyDeleteAt this point is sounds like you spend so much of your time thinking about suicide that there really truely isn't any time left to see anything beautiful or point your life in a better direction.
I'm not saying you have to swear off of suicide. I'm just saying that why not just set it aside for a bit and give yourself a chance to regroup.
Just a thought. I know how it is to go through times like this. I hope you'll hang in there because I'll need to feed me back this stuff when I'm down. :)
Oh hun, I know saying the words "you're not a failure" will probably ring on deaf ears whilst you are feeling so low but I for one truly believe you are not. You have an illness which makes it very difficult to look for the positives in your life, even the teeny tiny ones, and very often I find myself of the opinion that it's more cruel to live with the unpredictability and uncertainty that a mental illness brings than to just end my life and be at peace.
ReplyDeleteIt's so hard to see the point in anything at all when you feel so low, it's so hard when you feel as though you are only here to spare others pain, especially when you are in so much pain yourself. Sometimes I find myself thinking that it's now been 7 years I have battled this and it wears me down, I don't know when I will, if I ever will, have a long period of stability again. But 7 years is only a quarter of my life so far, I've had lots of good years as well.
If you really search hard in your head for memories of a happier time in your life try not to let go of those memories, they aren't impossible to achieve again, you still have enough years ahead of you to live your dreams, just for now you are in a horrible place where the depression has really gripped you. It will pass one day though, it's just finding the strength meantime to battle through it.
All of the things that make you feel like a failure just now can be changed in the future. One day when you are better you will be able to go back to doing the things that make you happy. I know it's so so so hard to find anything good when your head is so low, just try and find one teeny tiny thing and hang onto the hope of doing it again to get you through this. xx
That reads like something I could have written. Being a perfectionist is hard because anything less amounts to failure. Remember, nobody in the whole world achieves everything all of the time and hopefully you have time left to make up for some of these lack of achievements, be they real or not. ((Hugs))
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if this is going to be much help but I have the following on a card on my fridge door right in front of me when I sit at the kitchen table for hours pondering and stressing about how my life is turning out :
ReplyDeleteWhat WILL happen if I DO it?
What WON'T happen if I DO it?
What WILL happen if I DON'T do it?
What WON'T happen if I DON'T do it?
I try to look at it each time I'm struggling to make a decision, or am stressing about doing or not doing something. It seems to help me weigh up the options and makes me realise that sometimes I am generating my own anxieties without any real reason, and that there is no real evidence for taking a negative viewpoint all the time.
You could use it as an exercise for any decision whether big or small. For a big decision, or one which you battle with regularly, it might help to write out the questions and your answers on a piece of paper and to keep it with you to check back at when times are tough.
I hope it helps. Be kind to yourself - I'm beginning to realise that realistically alot of the people I know who I think are judging me negatively, are actually far too busy with their own personal problems and their own lives to give much thought to what a terrible person I am. But I have spent years and years convinced that the whole wide world sees me as a bad and useless person and no-one could tell me otherwise.
The other thing I have found is that I do have to be realistic too and so have had to accept my limitations and not expect too much of myself. Not easy to do at all, but I'm starting by just setting myself really small targets, and accepting that it might take 10 small steps to get to achieving something which for someone else (or me when I'm not depressed and anxious and mentally screwed up) would only take them a couple of biggish steps to achieve. And every time I do achieve something (even just getting dressed or getting to my support group or making a phone call) I do try to give myself a pat on the back and remind myself that although it is a small step, it is a step in the right direction. And small steps are easier than big ones.
I'm not sure if I am helping or just burbling on aimlessly.
I completely, utterly and totally understand every word you've written. Like Anickdaler, I could have penned them myself.
ReplyDeleteI so get the feelings of failure, of wanting (needing?) to die, to feel that everything you do turns or will turn to shit.
All I can say is that I don't think you are a failure. You've been a great friend to me when I've been really low and you're a great writer. Look at those mentions in TWIM for example :)
Again, I get the idea of not perhaps having realised potential, but what we both need to remember is that it is not us that have prevented that - it is this vile, insidious illness with which we are afflicted.
Thinking of you, and hoping things will become less shit as soon as possible. You know where I am. xxx
I've been through all these thoughts and much more, the whole failure as a daughter is very close to home for not turning out like the people I grew up with and proving to my parents I could succeed in life and be something better than I am. I was far from the perfect daughter growing up, I did some not so good things in my teens which my parents’ esp. my mum always forgave me for... I’ve often felt like I’ve failed at so much, but I’m getting the chance to change that around now and despite how hard going it is I’m proving it can be done...
ReplyDeleteYou have to ask yourself, what is stopping yourself from making changes? What is stopping YOU from proving you are not a failure?
Write down on paper things you think you could achieve in the next 12 months, realistic things... and then set about seeing if it would be possible to put them into practice.
As for the suicidal thoughts, despite how far I have come in 12 months, I still get suicidal thoughts, only a matter of weeks ago I thought about ending it all but somehow you have to resist the urge because you know tomorrow will be another day and things may well be different, it’s often the fluctuations in our moods that cause us to feel like this, yes others do not understand. Those not DX with BPD, will never understand and it extremely hard to get them too...
Remember most of all, you are not a failure, most of all you are you, Take care of yourself x
Be gentle with yourself. It's a process. Sometimes are harder than others. Trust me, I know. I hope you read my entry from last night and maybe it will help. I don't want to reiterate myself here ;)
ReplyDeleteI put up little things to remind me of the nature of life.
Two quotes I always find encouraging and movitating are:
"It's never too late to be what you might have been."
"Just when the caterpillar thought it was going to die, it turned into a butterfly."
Thank you all so much for the replies. They really are appreciated, as always.
ReplyDeleteStacy - I have tried the approach you suggested. In fact when I am feeling suicidal I do always try to at least set myself days to get to, even if they aren't far away - I find thinking in weeks/months can be a bit overwhelming. I just feel like I have been doing it for years though, and it never does get better.
mycrazybipolarlife - The unpredictability is definitely tough. I try to think of good memories, but they seem few and far between, and they never seem to outweigh the bad feelings if that makes sense?
anickdaler - Perfectionism is a bitch isn't it?! I wouldn't wish it on anybody.
mentalhealthserviceuser - I definitely think you are right about small targets. It is really easy to dismiss things that take a big effort from me, like getting dressed or having a shower etc, as things that everyone can do so they don't mean anything, but I need to try and see things like that as achievements I suppose, because realisically they are for me, even if they wouldn't be for other people. I just find it really difficult to lower my expectations of myself - back to the perfectionist thing!
Pandora - Thank you for all your support. You are always there, and I appreciate it enormously.
Alison - I don't know what stops me making changes really. I know that I think too big - I have these ambitious plans, and then get overwhelmed and can't cope, and so end up back where I started, and that pattern just repeats itself. I need to learn to think smaller, but most small things don't interest me! I will miss your blog very much by the way - I am never able to comment as it tells me I have to log in and I can't, but I do read all the time, and often attempt to comment before remembering I can't! I really hope everything goes well for you when you start your course.
Z - I have read your entry, yes. I can relate to a lot of what you have talked about in it, and I think it is great you are managing to view your hospital admission in such a positive way. People tend to think of hospital as a real last resort to be avoided at all costs, but sometimes it just is what you need.
Thank you all xXx