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Every day on the job I talk to upwards of 20 to 30 people a day, I work the Box Office in a popular movie chain. I smile and greet them as they enter the door, I make polite conversation when I have time, and I deliver the best snarky service I can.
Deep inside I am screaming! I’ve developed a nervous tick that I only just noticed a month ago, I jolt my left arm back and forth like a person who has very mild Tourette’s syndrome. I sometimes don’t notice I’m shaking or twitching back and forth and my station. I mostly do it when there’s a long line of people or someone makes me nervous for whatever reason.
Sometimes when the line gets so very long, I get tunnel vision and start to have a mild panic attack. All I can see is the person in front of me and I try my best to go as fast as possible.
Read more: Different Types of Depression
I’m severely shy. Somehow, I’ve only done promotional marketing, sales or retail type jobs that require a lot of talking and use of personality.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe I have a great personality. Over the years I’ve developed more anti-social, dissociative and depressive person hidden under this “great personality” that I’ve built for myself. I’ve basically manufactured a professional me that isn’t real but gets me through the day. I feel like I’ve sacrificed pieces of my soul just to keep this lie alive. I suffer severely in love, relationships, friendships and spirituality because I can’t be really who I am.
Part of my secret self is that I easily have crushes and fall in love with people that are nice to me. I think it has to do with my need to make people like me. Man, woman, gay or straight, and lesbian or bisexual, married or unattached, I will flirt with anyone. I don’t know why I do this, I feel like I should be disgusted with myself but being the saleswoman that I have been since college, I never can stop.
I feel like a sociopath sometimes because I play with people’s emotions just to get my way or be safeguarded in this web of being loved. I can’t stand when people don’t like me. I make it about myself and a personal mission to make them like me. But I end up letting them down. I don’t show up and I don’t keep my promises. I’m the biggest of flakes. I want people to love me but I’m sometimes not willing to love them back. I’m afraid of getting hurt again.
Read more: I Knew Something Was Not Right…I Just Didn’t Know the Diagnosis
All my life, people have used me to their benefit or to some kind of means to an end. So I’ve been stuck in this endless cycle of abuse that I don’t know how to function without being used or take advantage of. My parents have yelled and forced me to be this person I don’t want to be so I’ve developed this psychotic nervous personality that I don’t know how to fix without therapy or medicine. I’ve tried to deal with it the natural way by just having very little human interaction on my days or nights off. I take melatonin to help me relax and sleep. I watch endless hours of television on streaming platforms. I’ve become more antisocial the more people I am forced to socialize with. None of my coworkers really know who I am deep inside and I’m stuck in committed relationships that are slowly rotting.
I’ve hit rock bottom again. I’ve become the lowest version of myself. I’m not a drunk. I’m not an addict. I’m not in an abusive romantic relationship anymore but in a relationship that has no room for growth. I feel dead sometimes like there’s no up for me. Life has become a kind of stasis or limbo again. I’m breathing and eating and existing but for what really?
I’m alive just to be alive and a servant and companion to others. My life is not going anywhere so sometimes I feel like, “What’s the point?” I need help now and I need help soon.
I’m a cocktail of Hypothyroid Disease, Severe Depression, Anxiety, Homosexuality, Sociopathy & Love Addiction. Who knows, maybe soon I will just explode or retreat to my cave of loneliness that I would very much prefer to real life.
I wish this could be my story of Depression turned into hope. I’m sorry to say, that’s what Depression and Anxiety are truly like, waiting and walking towards that light at the end of the tunnel but never really reaching it. I see it though. I have good days for sure. I’m not always this ball of unhappiness. I find joy in making people happy. I’m not always seeking attention by being the best version of myself. I’m not a bad person and I’m not a good person either. I’m the person in the grey that we all are. No one is ever truly good or bad, we all waver and we all have something that’s wrong with us. I am doing my best. That is all we can really do for those of us who struggle with mental and physiological illness. We must press on and fight!
Read more: All the Things My Depression Made Me Believe
Every day, I fight to be “normal.” I know I’m not normal and I will continuously have to keep my professional self-going in order to keep living. I will continue to struggle deep within myself but I know to take every day in stride and not give up on living. Yes, I need to seek help. Yes, medication would be beneficial too. But the key thing is, I need to deal with issues that are buried deep within me before medication will start to crack the surface. Modern medicine can only help what I’m willing to change. I just have to accept that I’m worth a damn and can become a better human being if I tried harder at breaking bad habits and clearing out the poison that I’ve brought into my life. Everyone wants to be the best version of themselves all the time.
“I just want that person to be real and I can’t do that unless I stop being fake and stop letting depression and anxiety rule my life.”
