Useless me

I really, really hate myself for how completely useless I am.

I have no idea where this low has come from, but anyone who says depression isn’t a weakness is wrong.

It is a weakness. It’s entirely a question of mind over matter and my mind isn’t strong enough.

My life, honestly, is a walk in the park. I have a loving husband, two gorgeous kids, a warm, clean, big-enough house, a job that I (mostly) love. I have God’s love and the promise of Heaven through Jesus.

There is nothing at all for me to be depressed about.

So why can’t I be stronger than it? Why can’t I fight back and squash it right back down?

It’s weakness, pure and simple.

Two afternoons in a row, now, I’ve spent lying on my bed, tying myself in mental knots. Hearing Ian entertaining the children and knowing I should be joining in but completely paralysed by my own hopelessness.

This evening, with Katie all wrapped up in a towel after her bath, I asked her if she’d still want me to bundle her when she was 15.

She asked, ‘Won’t you have died when I’m 15?’

The innocent question of a four-year-old who hasn’t grasped time concepts, yes. But my goodness, it made me feel awful. Has she picked up on the suicide attempts? If not the fact that I wanted to die, the fact that I was in hospital, where people go when they’re sick enough to die?

And I’m beating myself up over friendships again. Over being the weak, pathetic, needy, energy-sapping one who everyone dreads seeing.

I slipped up yesterday. Ian and the kids went out for the afternoon; they had left me in peace to have a bath after the four-hour ordeal that was tidying Tom’s room. I got in the bath and then got so possessed with the urge to hurt myself that I got out, dripping wet, and ransacked the house until I found something that would work.

There is something really, truly shitty about a 36-year-old mum disembowelling her child’s pencil sharpener and using the blade to self-harm.

I have come nowhere since I was a depressed 15-year-old doing exactly the same thing.

I feel so awful about myself, I can’t express it.

Lindsey says to keep praying and keep talking, but how can I keep talking when I know everyone thinks I’m a complete liability, a mess, a drain, a waste of time and energy?

It is SO HARD to resist what every instinct is telling me.