This is a bit of a more personal post, but I need to express some of these feelings. Besides, nobody's actually subscribed to this feed, anyways.
To me, the best way of describing my mind, my mental health, is to describe it as an elaborately complex machine. Many different modules working together, like an enormous piece of clockwork, make up my soul. This is about what happens when those pieces stop working.
I can't remember exactly when it started. My first attempt to take my own life was a long time ago, longer than I can remember; I was maybe nine or ten, maybe younger, I'm not sure. It wasn't really the beginning, but probably the first concrete sign that something was wrong. About that time, the first grain of disease gained hold of my mind.
There has only ever been one attempt that resulted in serious physical harm to myself, landing me in hospital for a few days. Obviously, I physically survived that event, but in my mind, that was the day my soul died. It was the moment all that elaborate clockwork came grinding to a halt. I might have survived physically, but I died that day.
Of course, that wasn't the end. Life continued, but without my soul, without my emotions. I felt like I was tied to the back of a moving truck, face down, dragging against the pavement. I couldn't tolerate it, I needed to stop, but life doesn't stop. Or at least, I wasn't allowed to make my life stop.
I don't really know what the cause was, maybe it was the antidepressants, maybe it was my transition, or maybe it was just random chance, but sometime in the past year my feeling started to return. Deep within the core of my mind, in amongst the dark and frozen clockwork that had halted so many years ago, some tiny piece stirred back to life. I was better; not completely better, but at least I had hope again.
Or so I thought. It turned out that in spite of that tiny spark, the rest of my soul was still dead. I had my emotions back, I had hope, I even had the occasional glimpse of happiness, but things were still not right. I felt like a zombie; part of me was alive, but the rest was still dead. I had no concentration, no perseverance; what was left of my life fell apart as a result.
That brings me back to the present. Now I'm scared. I'm terrified. That tiny spark, the one thing keeping me alive, is wavering; my life has completely fallen apart, my future is bleak, and my hope is disappearing. I know what it's like to have one's soul grind to a halt, I know what it's like to be truly dead inside, and there is nothing in this world I fear more than going back to that. I know what it's like to be alone, because I am already; it's been a long time since I had someone who I could truly and completely trust. I don't know if there was ever a time when I was truly and completely loved.
I don't want to go back to how things were, how things have been for the majority of my life so far; I can't do it all over again. I'm afraid.