Archive for the ‘depression’ Tag
The Pain of Art and the Art of Pain
I struggle to shoot anymore.
The last few years have been hard, the more I close myself off from what’s happening around and inside me, the less I feel, the less I am.
I learned a very long time ago, for me to take a photo that has meaning … to me at least, I have to have a connection to the subject.
Mostly this comes at a price, the price of love, the payment is pain, the repayment plan… well… that i think, is eternal.
I’ve done two and a half photo shoots that have any meaning to me.
both the same subject
both human
both the same
And, I can’t get past it.
If i can’t connect with the darkness, i cant.
if i do connect with the darkness, the repayment plan is long.
I miss that particular connection, now, in this hollow void of darkness.
i sit.
24 hours on – New Zealand is now closed for business.
20th March 2020 – in about 10 minutes (as of the time of writing), it would will be the completion of the first 24 hours of New Zealand closing its borders to the world.
First time in New Zealand history that this has happened.
Covid-19 is partly to blame, idiots who can’t follow instructions like “self isolate” (these being mostly tourists and some dumbass locals) are mostly to blame.
As of this time, we now have 39 confirmed cases, up 11 from yesterday’s 28.
I don’t agree with the border closing, but, I do.
It was realistically the only option available to try and stem the stupidity.
However, this has a greater effect than just stopping people entering the country, it also effectively stops us leaving.
And guess what it’s done for my mental state of wellbeing, considering I now feel so totally powerless and helpless, that I can’t reach out and assist someone that is dear to me, who is stuck in Australia.
So close, so very very close, yet so fucking far now.
The internet, made the world smaller, distance wasn’t a issue, we have emails, VOIP, instant messaging, many ways of keeping in touch, and it was fairly easy (though somewhat costly) to buy a ticket and fly somewhere… but for now, and who knows how long, we are trapped again, imprisoned within this country, within our minds, within… these bones we exist around…
Trapped and broken.
Now what.
I went into town this evening (friday night)… and it’s quiet…. usually full of party-goers.. now, it’s quiet.
I think of my friend in Australia, and it’s still quiet, aside from the screams of frustration echoing eternally inside my bones..
I feel broken.
One of the stabilities I had in my life, a crutch, an emergency relief, was that I knew if things got too bad, I could just buy a plane ticket and fuck off for a while… escape the maddening screams that touch me every time I walk into my house, or sit in my car, or think about the time we spent together enjoying each others friendship and that soulmate style bond… the screams grow louder … and yes, I know I’m not really escaping, because this issue, these problems, this frustration and anxiety .. is all in my head, and it travels with me all the time.
Since yesterday, or even the few weeks I’ve had to manage again by myself, I’m restless, hardly getting any more than 3 or 4 hours sleep… cursed with lying awake in bed, no distractions other than my mind making things worse than they need to be, causing me to panic, and oh, that’s the other fun part, the panic attacks again… something I’ve not had for … well… over 20 years… are back… they welcome me every morning, accompany me through my day, and lay me to rest through sheer exhaustion each night. for 3 or 4 hours, then we start again.
We all carry our own personalised hell with in us. some of us get to sale through hardly noticing… some of us notice.
Broken.
And I don’t know what to do.
Broken.
Life has taken a darker turn for me of late. I pretend that I can see the dim illumination of hope, but, as I said, I pretend.
Broken.
I miss you my friend. You may never read this, maybe I hope you might, mostly I don’t think you ever will, but mostly, I don’t know if we will ever see each other again.
Thank you for everything. just in case.
Things are not ok sometimes
And it hurts. and there’s nothing you can do, you just suffer through it, keep pushing, hopefully come out the other end.
This blog .. uneasypills, i dunno, i made it thinking i could share my thoughts over the years.. hopefully help someone or something…. but i’ve just .. been to afraid to share anything really.. so its full of everything that it wasn’t intended for.
I try not to hide who i am, or my battle with anxiety and depression (hence the blog name), but i also don’t talk about it, and i do end up hiding it, because every day we are judged .. by our friends, our family, those we work with, strangers….
and now, im so tired of it all, so tired that i never seem to get ahead… just beaten down all the time.
for me, what happens, when i panic, or get a good bout of anxiety etc… i kinda lose the plot a little, and i cope or at least i try to cope, by eating excessively and spending money on things i think will help., which dont. which has now left me with nothing. literally, nothing, no savings, no assets, nothing.
so as someone who’s well past the halfway mark in life, whos health is not great.. i have nothing… nothing. i rent a small room, .. its where i live… ive spent most all of the savings i had built… id be lucky if i can pay rent for a few months with what i have left. bills like medical are coming more frequently now as i try and find out whats wrong with me, could just be getting older… but its coming more frequently now.
i do have a full time job, so i literally live paycheck by paycheck. this country, has a good lifestyle, but it’s isolated… and its so very expensive.. its hard to live. i was never good at things like being smart enough to buy a house, or anything like that. so i have nothing for when the inevitable happens, and i cant work any more.
I know at that point, the only thing i have is communication with friends, and that costs money too.. smartphone mobile call plans .. etc.. when that stops… and i lose touch.. what then. what then..
my life, for the last 30 something years i guess, has been built around communication, and reaching out to people around the world.. thats how i met my friend that i’ll talk about below in a moment… so when i cant afford that anymore.. that will stop, no one will know whats happened to me, and i wont know whats happening to them… if they are ok .. if they are well, .. i need to look after my friends.. they are all i have.
the internet has been a blessing for me to have met some truly amazing and inspirational people who have blessed my little life with what little happiness i can gather.
its also, been a massively detrimental also, when you already have anxiety, and you care too much, and you want to care cause it makes you feel like your alive even though it kills you inside, you’d rather hurt and know you have feelings than not.
i use internet to stay in touch with special people in my life…. but that makes me panic also, because instant messaging now means, you can see when you’ve sent a message, when they have received it (its been delivered) and when they have read it.
when they read it, i sit there, and i stress and i panic, when they don’t respond.
i know, they have lives, they could be busy, i get that, but it still happens, i still panic, esp with those whom im very close to. be they live here in the same city as me, or in a different country across the other side of the world.
especially one particular friend, whom i miss so very very much.
I look at my life, and honestly, im well past the half-way mark, my health isnt great… i cant cope well with emotional issues any more, and i think.. that being alone, not having a partner, has really fed that emotional fire… to the point now, that it’s fairly easy for me to break down… could be anything from a movie to a song, a thought, .. anything… so in turn, i dont think im able to have a partner anymore, cause they probably wont understand how i am. so, alone i shall be.
i had the chance to spend a week with a friend, a very dear dear friend, we hardly get to see each other .. maybe every few years.. just how it happened… the friend lives and works over seas, and im stuck here…
in the beginning, the very first time we met, wasn’t under the best circumstances, we were both going through some struggles in our lives respectively.. and we met, and we bonded over a common greaf, a common ground built of loneliness, stress and various other things…. and umm.. we managed to be a support for each other cause we knew what each of us was going through… thats how the friendship began, and has grown from there.
there’s nothing wrong with that, its good, its amazing, it helps me live day by day, and i hope it helps my friend also.
it was one of the best weeks ever in my shitty life.. the last few years had been really hard , and i think, things improved alot in our friendship.. we had some incredibly honest talks, shared some parts of our lives we don’t normally talk about, found more commonalities that has brought us both closer … and hugs.. lots of hugs…. and i can’t tell you how important it is when you have anxiety and depression, to be able to connect with someone, and they know who you are and how hard it is, and the very simplest of things, like a hug, can mean so much, and give so much hope, desperately needed hope.
the problem is, when we have to part again, go back to our normal lives, me here, and my friend back over seas to their life. it honestly feels like going through a painful breakup over and over and over… yeah that might sound dumb, but for me, for me, when i feel for somoneone its just not at a manageable level, its extreme, i guess. and it kills me that i cant help them , especially when they are over seas, and suffering, having a hard time or whatever it might be.
now so, is such bad timing that this corona virus 19 has happened, cause now i have that worry on my mind aswell for my friends health and well being..
i know whatever will happen, will happen, but that doesnt stop me dying inside knowing that i cant do anything to help.
the internet made the world small, brought people together, and now this, this is making the world big again, and putting barriers back in place, driving wedges between us.
even though we are in touch often, be it an email, or sms, or somethings we share short little video or pictures, … they feel so far away… and i panic and stress because they are out of reach and if somethig happens.. there’s nothing i can do to help them… there’s no way for me to help them… and i feel so very alone and empty again.
yeah i have some very dear friends here, who i get to see often, and thats incredible, it really is… but they are here, i can help them if they are in need…they are within reach.
one of my biggest fears is how fast time is going. i wake up, and a week has gone… half a year has gone, a year has gone, and i panic… and i get stressed, cause i cant remember what happened, why it went so fast..
with my friend who just left, it was about 16 months i guess since we last saw each other… even though we have kept in touch… it felt like we were worlds apart from each other and it feels like forever.. and i missed them so much.. and then they came back for a week, then gone again, and just like that…. there’s this massive empty space again where we would sit and talk, or walk, or watch tv, theres this big empty space again, a reminder of how empty my life feels.
it’s important to have friends, especially those that understand or even maybe suffer the same as you do.
its important to reach out, its important to not stigmatise things like anxiety and depression.
its important to be there, even if all you can do is offer a hug… that hug could save a life, take the edge of a pain, give hope.
I miss you my friend… i miss you and wish you all the very best and safe and healthy life with your family.. and i look forward to when we can hopefully sit down together again, share stories, talk deeply, and hug…. just one more time. before this life takes its ultimate conclusion.
Thank you internet, for listening, sorry i’ve rambled on a lot here… its been a really hard week, and there’s going to be many more following this as i try and cope, and get though each day.
clarity
as death approaches me,
with its uneasy terms
its purely selfish and private timing…
i dwell upon the depths of my remorse
for those i have not helped
and those i have sinned against
arching backwards casting mesmeric visions
of what greatness’s i have amassed in my time
as the glass lay upon its side, empty, void of the reality
i had imagined it to contain
my life but a sliver of your remembered distance close by
stands the time keepers watch
ticking not unlike falling bricks
laid to create that perfect future
of what lacked though years of regressed hope
no one sees what is happening here
in this little space of contemplation
as death approaches me
with its uneasy pills
its purely selfish and private timing
i cast farewells into the air
disproportionate to requirements
holding hands out for penance
not seeing before me what stands
still in the cold river of winter
she bleeds slower than normal
not tasted upon the tongue
senses dimming
as death approaches me
with its uneasy hand
its purely selfish and private timing
All material copyright: Yanni Migias
Not for stock or unlicensed use.
My Blog at: http://www.uneasypills.com
My Web at: http://www.asylumimages.com
My Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Z3bra
My dA Site: http://z3branz.deviantart.com
Taking a break
Sometimes,
Life gets too complicated, too confusing, and we lose track of ourselves, who we were.
Sometimes it’s good to change, sometimes we can’t change, or change others around us.
Sometimes, we need to learn to accept people for who they are.
I’ve made some mistakes in my personal life over the last few weeks, mistakes that I regret so badly now, but ones I think can not be corrected 100% anymore, although I can hope it’s possible.
I’m not the only one who made mistakes, and I am sure the others are pondering similar things as I am now.
This blog site was originally set up and called UneasyPills because, I wanted it to reflect a part of me that people don’t generally like to talk about.
I suffer from depression.
I always have, and I will likely always do so until the day I die.
This is just a fact, a part of my life I have had to accept.
Depression is very real, it’s not made up.
There’s generally two core types, mental and chemical, of which mental can be triggered by chemical. To define the two as I understand it, mental is where, say, similar to teenage angst .. and chemical is the actual lack of or imbalance of the happy-chemicals in the brain.
I have mostly the chemical one, which means I can function normally most of the time, as long as I am careful about my environment, and what I do. Being aware of triggers is a big thing. but I seem to fail at noticing them sometimes.
Some people around me, still don’t understand, don’t want too, or maybe just can not understand.
I’m not asking for sympathy, just an attempt at understanding.
Depression is a funny thing, it hits people in different, but similar ways. For me, its a cycle of “Anxiety Stress Depression”.
It’s mostly starts because I always choose to put people I care about first, and in that way, I get to feel some happiness from seeing them be happy.
This of course, works to my detriment in the end.. but it is who I am.
The first time I had a full breakdown, was about 15-17 years ago. It was my first proper face to face with how devastating depression can be, and I didn’t know very much about it back then.
I know it lasted about 10 months, I was “lights on, no one home” for that time, so I really don’t recall very much at all, and have to rely on what others around me tell me. I know that my GF at the time, was amazing, she looked after me for that time and I owe her a lot. She was the only one that understood. I guess it helped that she was a nurse. well.. anyway.
In those 10 months, things I know I can recall is just driving with family to my cousins wedding, cant remember the wedding or anything else around it..
that’s it.
When the breakdown happened, it sort of took me by surprise, I remember beforehand, people at my job always asking “hey are you ok, you seem different” but I recall feeling normal.. this is how it worked for me, it hit all in one go.
I remember, waking up in the morning… sitting up in bed.. looking at my work uniform and I just started shaking… and could not bring myself to get dressed.
I remember calling work, and speaking to the shift supervisor , in fact I remember what I said.. “Im not coming in any more… I quit”…. and that was it. I sort of recall crying a lot after that, and for the following 10 or so months, I really cant remember anything else, other than some very fragmented things.
My gf then, tells me, I spent most of my time either in bed, or wrapped in a blanket in a corner of our apartment. I don’t remember really.
I know I had the odd visitor, my cousin, and two of my dear friends MJ and JM ( I kid you not, those are their initials)
I remember the very last stages of my recovery, when I started going outside in small amounts… it was like.. a new world…. I basically fell apart, wasn’t able to look after myself, etc. your life ends as you knew it.
I had to rebuild everything I knew, start again. That was freaky and interesting.
I learnt who my real friends were very quickly after that.
that was, for the most part, my first actual proper breakdown.
I’ve had numerous ones after that, and hell, I’m having one now, although not anywhere near as bad, but still bad enough that it has damaged relations with someone I care greatly and deeply about… but only time will tell if those bridges can be repaired. I hope they can.
My second breakdown happened, maybe 2 or 3 years after the first one, and it was quite a doozey. It’s the first time I ever took medication for it. (never took any medication for the fist one).
I took a very strong series of Arrowpax.
That was likely, one of the worst things I could ever have done.
That drug changed me. changed my personality. and I hated it.
I still hate what I have become, even today.
I used to be very introverted, mild mannered, easy going…. it fairly much turned me into the opposite.
I very clearly recall becoming a very loud annoying bossy and “take no shit from anyone” type of person.
That took years to tame down afterwards.
My Third notable breakdown was only about 3 years ago, when, due to life, my (now) Ex and I broke up after 4 years, and the stress of trying to buy a house and growing apart.
My Forth notable one is right now.
This one is not so unique, it bares similarities to the others, and in cause and effect also.
At the moment, as I write this, I am fairly calm, its almost 2am, and I’m going to attempt to go to work at 8am, i wasn’t able to go to work this morning.
I’m currently on medication, it’s shelf name is: EFEXOR-XR, Venlafaxine as the hydrochloride. It’s fucking horrible.
But it is working, well, starting to work… though sadly too late for me to have done anything about saving the damaged friendship.
I’m not going to go into detail now, about stuff, regards to say that if you are reading this and you suffer from depression also, you’ll fully understand what I’m talking about , as brief as it is.
For those of you that don’t understand…. GO READ.
Your ignorance makes our lives extremely hard.
Anyway, I’ll end with this.
uneasy pills..
as I lay alone, sometimes shaking, rocking, in my own little world… drawing the blanket closer, hiding away from the world…… i feel.. so.. very.. alone.
sometimes, i step outside that blanket-world i built, seeking a hand, a single word, a simple smile…. i.. get.. nothing…
and that blanket returns…
there are only small things in this world that matter.
i am not one of them.
you are.
think about it.
10 months.
15 years.
a life time.
recovery isn’t.
understanding is.
don’t be afraid to lend a hand.