— 9 Comments

Coping: This is Who We Are – Entry 7 “Surviving The Specter”

TRIGGER WARNING: This post is a transparent account of my life with clinical depression and suicide. If this is a trigger for you, please do not read it at this time.

This piece comes from my great friend, Chris, who I have made acquaintances through this website. This piece is one of the best submissions I’ve ever had. and is incredibly powerful and insightful. Lengthy, as many of the coping pieces are, but ultimately moving.

My History

My name is Chris and I’ve survived with severe depression for about 30 years.

Last year I hanged myself.

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I was diagnosed with clinical depression several years ago.

Not the kind that makes you feel sad after your girlfriend breaks up with you, or explains why you feel under the weather when the weather is under.

No, this is much blacker than that.

Coping: This Is Who We Are dear hope
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What If Depression Was Shown On The Outside?

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Would we still try to fight it alone?

These were the first shots done in May for my “Consumed” photo project that I’ll be picking up again in September. I’ll be branching out to show different illnesses with different body art in the form of 20 new photos.

What if mental illness was shown on the outside instead of the inside? Would we still try to fight it alone?

Copyright Paul M. Falcone

A Lens Into Our World Consumed dear hope
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Dark Night of The Soul

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“In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.”

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

Photo Submission by Dave Carlin. Apart from practicing photography he is also a musician. Follow his tumblr to keep up with his work and find his music here.

Want to submit to this site and share your story, art, or article related to mental health or mental illness? Email wemustbebroken@gmail.com

A Lens Into Our World dear hope
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How My Depression Made Me Who I Am: Coping Entry 1.5

Growing up my father used to ask me almost daily what my life story was. To make conversation sometimes on the phone or at the dinner table, in bouts of silence, he would shout “So son, tell me your life story!” which in turn would prompt me to say: “My life story? It’s nothing special.”

And now 21 years later I realize I never once honestly answered his question. Granted he knew most of my life, I never told him the story from my point of view.

I never answered the question for him, or myself, the one thing that truly matters;

Who am I?

To answer this I think I have to start as early as I can remember.

Coping: This Is Who We Are dear hope
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1 in 4: How I Learned To Be A Survivor (And Learned To Live Again)

This piece comes from an extremely talented writer and close friend and I urge everyone to check out her piece about tragedy, despair, and overcoming mental anguish.

Trigger Warning: Rape, Suicide.

I still think about the day that I was taking a walk with my dad in early spring, and we were talking about rape. I remember saying, “I would definitely kill myself if I was ever raped. I don’t think I would want to live through that. It’s probably the only reason I would ever actually commit suicide.”

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It was a heavy topic for a nice leisurely stroll, but we were talking about a recent story in the media and had veered off into personal examples of people we knew that were rape survivors. I knew people survived all kinds of sad, traumatic experiences – cancer, loss of loved ones, car crashes, physical violence, child abuse – and I’ve gone through a lot myself. I lost my mom unexpectedly when I was eleven, and I lost one of my best friends to a car accident when I was eighteen. I came out as bisexual in middle school and went through a long period of intense bullying. But for some reason, I couldn’t shake the idea of rape as being the most horrible thing for a person to have to live with.

This was a couple years before the night that changed my life. I attended a college party at UMass Dartmouth with a friend, where others drank but I didn’t, and where I knew a couple people but not everyone. It was my first experience spending significant time at the school. When I woke up the next day, I realized I had been drugged during the night. I woke up in the afternoon, groggy and confused, and I knew then that I had to make a decision.

I had been raped. But I didn’t know if I wanted to make good on that promise to myself: to end my life if I became a survivor. I only knew one thing. I didn’t want to survive.

Article dear hope
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Vacation Is Over: A Quick Update

Hello Everyone!

Sorry the site has gone dark the last few weeks.

I was recently on vacation in Europe visiting Dublin and Paris with my mother and a friend! I may write a separate post about it, as other cultures are always very eye opening and teach you so much.

But now it’s time to get back to work in the community. I have a few people I’m in contact with about pieces for the blog that I’m very excited about. If you been thinking about maybe contributing, send an email to wemustbebroken@gmail.com and we’ll chat! No harm done if we can’t work something out!

I plan on getting a few articles out myself. I recently saw the new pixar movie Inside Out and want to comment on it’s take on sadness/depression and the importance of them in relation to the emotional spectrum. I’m also in the beginning stages of working on a piece about depression and relationships. Be on the lookout for those. Maybe a creative piece too. It’s been a while since I wrote anything, so send some creative juices my way.

In other news the blog has passed 7500 views and has over 650 followers. 

This is incredible. Thanks to everyone who has joined our community and shares these posts. All the insight that has been added and all the people I have met has been heart-warming. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Lets get things going again!

Paul

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Fin.

It affects me in waves.

Steady shore line, I focus.

Still sick.
 Still alone, still incomplete.

My morals, my mind.

The great divide.


Hopefully content with the decline

As the rush of blood enters my head.

Caught between the leaves

In a treeless forest.

A heart without a mind,

The universe without its space.

Utterly silent as I stumble through

Connect me to the sound


Pitch black comfort

End Scene.

Submitted by Thomas Finne. Find some more of his thoughts and poetry over at his tumblr page. Also check out his music project here.

Always remember you are not alone.

You are loved.

Want to submit to this site and share your story, art, or article related to mental health or mental illness? Email wemustbebroken@gmail.com

Creative Pieces dear hope
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No Last Time

There’s never going to be a last time.

There is no cure.

There is only the finite space

Of not-so-bad

Of kind of okay

The discrete moments of joy.

And they’re so hard to remember

Especially when the sadness

Is so overwhelming,

When the melancholy floats to the surface

Like poisonous cream,

When I’m already so tired

And the reality is that the best

I can hope for is respite

Rather than true relief.

It’s like having a terminal illness

That never terminates,

And there’s no palliative care,

No hospice,

And so often, no real understanding,

Just empty platitudes.

–

Submitted by Hanna Lange who runs a blog that you can find and check out here.

Always remember you are not alone.

You are loved.

PF

Want to submit to this site and share your story, art, or article related to mental health or mental illness? Email wemustbebroken@gmail.com

Creative Pieces dear hope
— 10 Comments

The Unpredictability of Anxiety

What is Anxiety?

How can it best be described? In my view, it is simply a fear of the future. Fear of the unknown, whether days or minutes in advance. Whether it’s a job interview, a family gathering, a doctor’s appointment, we all get anxious from time to time. But when it interferes with our everyday existence to the extent that we don’t want to even go out of the front door, to meet our friends or simply to go to the shops, that is the time to seek professional help.

I suffer from crippling bouts of anxiety. To start with, I’ve had clinical depression since 2007. The anxiety has got worse in the last two to three years. I can go months without anxiety rearing its ugly head, but on other occasions it can strike without warning, sending me into a spiral of isolation and despair.

dear hope Uncategorized
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Coping: This is Who We Are – Entry 5: “We Are All Continuous and Beautiful Works In Progress”

This submission comes from Rebecca, the creator of this wonderful piece of art that was published last week on the website. Her story details the intensity of anxiety and the panic that can accompany it. As with most Coping entries, it’s lengthy, but I promise you it’s worth the read.

Here’s Rebecca’s story.

How do you explain to your daughter in fourth grade that you can’t continue to pick her up  early from school day after day, even when she is sobbing on the phone in the nurse’s office? How do you come home to see that same girl two years later, white as a ghost, talking to herself in between hyperventilation gasps?

I couldn’t really tell you because I was that girl.

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I don’t know where my anxiety stemmed from then, but I guess that is why I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder. It’s an odd experience to be twelve years old, having already seen three different therapists and now taking medicine every day because of something called “anxiety and depression”. It is also an odd experience to be in high school and to begin to realize that the same medicine that has been “fixing” you for four years is now not working as well and that the anxiety and depression can come back way worse than it had ever been. And now they have a new friend.

Suicidal thoughts.

Coping: This Is Who We Are dear hope