How do you Explain depression, PTSD, and Borderline Personality Disorder to someone who has never experienced mental illness?  I feel as though people are starting to think “get over it, you’ve been sick for almost two months now”.  I am home now, barely hanging on.  It is now that I need the most from people, but I am getting the least.  Part of that is it being the holidays I’m sure, but I still feel unbelievably alone.

How do I explain to someone who does it all, with a smile, that I did not manage to get out of bed today, not even to pee.  That thinking of putting away the toys that are thrown about the Living Room is enough to cause me to break down in sobs. 

How do I explain to my Husband that after standing in front of a fully stocked full size freezer full of meet, a fridge full of veggies and a pantry full of staples that I could not come up with one single meal to serve my Family for dinner.

How do I explain to my children that playing with them, quite frankly is at the bottom of my list of things I want to be doing, cause everything is at the bottom of that list.  How do I explain to them why I break down in tears every time I look at them or they give me a hug.  How do I tell them that my brain is broken?

How do I stop wanting to die and start wanting to live?  How do I stop researching exactly how much of what I would need to get the job done or sometimes to just come close enough that I would be taken seriously and kept somewhere safe?

Life continues around me.  My husband goes to work,my children go to school and daycare, my friends have their own families and struggles to deal with.  Meanwhile I feel my life has stopped somewhere back in November.  The holidays seem like a cruel joke.  The snow is out of place because it is God damn November and not almost January.

The New Year, another cruel joke this year.  Half of my year I Spent off work and sick.  I have depleted any form of insurance payments long ago and I am now forcing our family to take out our retirement funds.  I spent more time in bed and less time being a mom and a wife.  I ha e spent 5 weeks in the hospital and I want to go back.  Not because it’s fun, but because I know I won’t commit suicide while I am there, and that my kids will continue to have a mom in 2016. 

I cringe while I read fb posts about what people accomplished in 2015.  I see picture of them and their kids.  They have reached goals, gone on trips, or just enjoyed family time for a change.  I shipped my daughter to her grandparents for Christmas vacation.  I sent both my kids to daycare/summer camps even though I was off all summer.  I loathe weekends because it scares me to have to care for these two beautiful human beings for a full two days with no intervention from the outside world. 

So as a sit here, in my messy living room, smelling the leftover hamburger helper that my husband threw together after work so our family would eat something, looking at the Christmas tree that I did not choose nor put up with my family, I can’t help but cry.  And I know I have some friends out there that just want me to stay positive, but positivity only gets you so damn far when you are so close to the edge that rocks are crumbling beneath your toes.

So yes, Happy New Year to everyone.  Tomorrow you will wake up with a renewed sense of who you are and what you want to accomplish and a hangover.  I don’t even get the hangover part because if I drink while I am on all the meds I am taking I’d probably become some ball of a crying mess, leaving my husband unsure of what to do.  So not to be a pessimist, but when I wake up tomorrow I will still have major depression, PTSD, and Borderline Personality disorder.  I will still be fighting with a system that the province calls Mental Health Services.  And I will still be fighting off that fuckin voice that continues to yell at me, telling me that going to sleep and never waking up is easier than all the bull shit I am dealing with.