Chris M.

I haven’t really written about this in my diary entries yet, but it’s a big part of my life, so I thought I’d finally share it instead of randomly bringing it up in passing.

I have depression, anxiety, and (according to medical history papers I found in my kitchen) “eating disorder not otherwise specified.” I have a therapist whom I talk to about the first two things, and I’ve been to an eating disorder clinic a couple of times. I’ve had depression for as long as I can remember. I think it started around the beginning of middle school with bullying, living in a place I hated, and isolating myself. I’ve been depressed for so long that I often wonder if maybe it’s just my personality and there’s nothing that can be done about it—I’m just a cynical, sad person. But I see old pictures of myself and think back to a really long time ago, and I realize that I used to be mostly happy. Now I have occasional happy days, amid a sea of days where it’s actually hard for me to get out of bed.

I was going to write about this earlier. I wrote a diary about how stressed and angry I was about my life in general, back in May. I emailed it to Anaheed to edit, and a day or two later I had to ask her not to, because I found out my mom had passed away. She had left our house a few days earlier; I thought she would come back. Sometimes she would get really upset and have to leave for a while, but she always came back.

Since my mom died, I’ve worried constantly about everything. I have had dreams about my little brother going missing almost every night for months. Sometimes I save him. Sometimes I don’t, and then I can’t function for the rest of the day. People get mad at me for acting unfriendly and antisocial.

I often stay up until 1 AM, putting off my homework because I’m so scared of dealing with thoughts of failure. When I try to sit down and accomplish something, it’s so overwhelming that I physically cannot bring myself to do it. It’s not laziness. I really, really try, but I end up sitting at my desk for three hours staring at a textbook, too afraid of not absorbing the material to even read it.

If I hear my name, I jump. I pace around, I bite my nails constantly. Nothing makes me more upset than being talked down to or scolded, even about the tiniest things—it feels like affirmation that I’ve always done everything wrong. It’s really hard for me to take criticism—not because of my ego, but because I can’t communicate that I’m already trying as hard as I can.

I didn’t even know what anxiety is until recently. My therapist asked me to consider some medication for my depression and anxiety. When I talked to my dad about it, he said no without missing a beat. He was worried about the side effects, and how difficult medications like that are to get off of.

I never thought I would have an eating disorder; in fact, I don’t think what I have now is serious enough to be considered a “real” one. I’m at a weight that is considered “healthy” by doctors. But something made me get yelled at for years about my eating habits by my parents, and something made my therapist refer me to an ED clinic. I’m not ashamed of it or anything, but I don’t have much else to say about it. Food is just one more thing to get stressed about for me, one more thing to get yelled at for, one more thing to make me want to never see anyone again. I don’t have a good relationship with it. That’s really all there is to it.

That’s about it. My week was uneventful but I felt I needed to say this. This isn’t a sympathy-seeking entry or anything. My feelings and thought processes affect me and everything I do every day, and if I’m going to publicly display weekly snapshots from my life, I may as well include this stuff, too. ♦