In My Skin

Image.

Hello there lovelies,

I've talked before about what a battle it has been to start feeling at home in my own skin. For most of my life I've felt out of step. Not quite right. However, body image has only ever been part of the struggle. The bigger enemy has always been depression. It is hard to feel at home within yourself when it feels like there is something hiding inside you, and it doesn't want you to be happy - in fact, it kind of wants to hurt you. This thing twists, and changes shape, and you can never quite get a handle on it. It preys on your worst fears, and convinces you that they are true. That you are ugly, worthless, unlovable. It makes you feel defective. Broken. Alien, in your own body. This thing makes it almost impossible for you to do the simple, everyday things that other people take for granted. It makes forming relationships hard, and keeping them harder - it makes you unreliable, because you don't know when you will be you, or when you will be it.

The thing that lives inside me is coming out fairly often at the moment, but I'm slowly getting it under control again. I hate that I'm quite obnoxious to be around at the moment. I change my mind far too frequently, often dissolve into hysterical crying fits, and can't see the bright side of any situation. I don't feel much like myself at all, but more like an Xbox-generation version of Gollum. It's hard to blog when I feel this way, because I have always intended for this blog to make people feel better, not worse. The worst thing about depression is how alienated it makes me feel. It is hard for a lot of people to understand the very real physical effect of this psychological weight bearing down on your shoulders. It is even harder to try and explain it with any degree of accuracy.

But, I kind of think that if all of us came out and talked about depression - our depression, friends, family, acquaintances depressions, fleeting depressions, chronic depression - that it might make all of us affected feel a little less alien. A little more at home within ourselves. So, even though I'm doing it very ineptly, here I am. Talking about my depression. So that anyone else out there reading this, and going through the same things that I am will know they're not alone. They're not broken, or defective, or aliens, or monsters. They are not their depression. Just like me, they just need a some help, and some time to feel at home in their own skin.

Until next time, xo.