Blog: Six Months Later

TW: Suicidal Themes, Depressing Themes

Remember back in August when I wrote this long piece about starting my mental health journey and all that. Yeah I remember that too and it was definitely the last thing I wrote on this blog. Mostly because my mental health honestly took a pretty bad turn after that. I would never show myself compassion, constantly be hard on myself, and down play any type of achievement that I would make. Whenever I would do something creative or think about something creative, I would always have a voice in my head that would tell me that I’m not good enough for anything. I would constantly be somewhat excited to start on a creative project and then end up shooting myself down within an hour of starting it. I mean, I later learned that it was probably caused, well not probably, most likely caused by the depression I knew I had been feeling but just didn’t know how to deal with.

So I spent some months after August feeling down, hating myself, hating the world that I created, feeling hopeless, and honestly fantasized about committing suicide. Like looking back, it felt like it was the only thing that could help the sadness and pain that I was going through, just sort of make all of it go away right. However, there was this part of me that also didn’t way to because I just didn’t want to see the people that I love go through something like that. Like, I’m not sure what really happens after death and I don’t know if you become like a ghost that can see everything happening on Earth after you die, but I was not taking the chance of having to watch the people I love go through grieving my death. So that kinda kept me from doing the bad things, but like still thought about it and came up with plans but just never really went through with them.

One of the plans I came up with was to go to Old Rag by myself and do the bad deeds up there and never come back, and that plan kinda stuck in my head for a while. It would like pop into my head constantly while I was working or hanging out with my friends and it would honestly bring me down a lot. Then one I made a pretty drastic, kinda unintelligent decision to climb Old Rag by myself at 5am in the dark. Like imagine a depressed kid with SI on his mind going to the place where he fantasized about committing suicide, isn’t that just interesting and messed up all at the same time. But yeah, I woke up at 4am picked up food and water and started my trip to Old Rag, slightly regretting my decision when I got there and realized it was almost pitch black on the mountain.

I did bring my cameras though, both my digital and my film, to distract me from the plan that kept running through my head as I climbed the mountain. I took pictures and video of my journey up that mountain, stopping to get some water in and take in the lonely yet beautiful sites. I spent a lot of time thinking about my emotions and feelings and all that good stuff while I was going up. Honestly it was like really good therapy to just be alone with my thoughts in the outdoors with my cameras taking photos to help calm me down.

Then I reached the summit and ate some hard boiled eggs while shooting a time-lapse of the sky and mountain range. Who would have thought that cold eggs could taste so good on the top of the mountain. I spent about an hour shooting photos, film, videos and helping others take pictures of their groups that also reached the summit. I actually met these two people that were pretty cool. I told them I came up the mountain to “fight my fear of heights,” with which they replied, “that’s a weird way to fight your fears.” I definitely agreed with them, but hey it was fun.

I really did learn a lot about myself on that journey, and how life can be beautiful even when it sucks, so that trip was what kinda convinced me to stick around I guess. A little later after that trip I started therapy to really work on helping myself which has been a great experience. Over the past couple of months I’ve had multiple sessions with my therapist about managing depression, anxiety, and showing myself compassion with the tools that she taught me. I even have this little graph showing like my results every week from when I started to where I am now.

But yeah, things are going better now. Some days are still hard, but I know how to work through those bad emotions a lot better now than I did before which is super awesome. Maybe I could share those tools with y’all one day but i’ve already written a lot and your boy’s wrists be hurting. Anyways y’all stay fresh, and thank you for reading. I hope to be more active and motivated to write in the future. Being real sad and depressed kinda put a damper on my ability to get myself to do the things I enjoyed doing but I feel like I am getting back into it. Okay, I am done now, byye. <3