Best Of

Hi everyone my name is Joshua and this is what caused my depression and everything in-between
In July of 2019 I moved to Cheshire from Northern Ireland for a better life

And we had so much fun and we all said 2020 was our year fast forward to May 2020 I caught covid for the first time and it left me bed bound for 3 months I would sleep about 21 hours a day everyday for 3 months and I finally got better but now everytime I get ill I get really ill and can't do anything since then I've had it 7 times and each time it's left me severely ill and in the hospital a few times

then in April 2021 I lost my uncle he was a funny old man and that hurt but I didn't know him well enough to greive over it then in February 2022 I lost my aunt she was a silly woman with so much knowledge I used to call her when I had a question about a plant and she'd know straight away

anyways that caused my cousin to go a bit mental and she thought I killed her mum and dad and threatened to kill me so that was scary and then on the 30th of January 2023 my whole life changed my dad collapsed on the kitchen floor and I was home alone with my siblings and I knew something wasn't right so I got the kids upstairs and just as I did my dad started bleeding from everywhere and he kept being sick blood and I stayed calm and called the ambulance and my mum who was out shopping and he needed to go to the toilet so I picked him up and he collapsed again in my arms and he didn't want me to leave because he thought he was going to die so I sat there for half an hour with my dad's head on my lap talking to him about what to do if he dies and it was horrible

then the ambulance finally got there and they helped him get cleaned up and everything then he went to hospital and I went with him in the ambulance and he really improved so I thought he was ok but he wasn't we got to the hospital and he was making everyone laugh like he does and my mum showed up so I felt safer and he did get bad again but not too bad and I went out to make a phone call to my brother who was in Ireland telling him to come home just incase

and as I went back in my dad was being wheeled off to resus and he'd started bleeding again and there was blood everywhere and he was having seizures and in that moment is when all my calmness went he had all his blood replaced and eventually they had to cut him open the whole way down his stomach he was in theatre for 8 hours and we didn't know if he was dead or alive and it was the scariest 8 hours of my life

and eventually the doctor came and told us he'd made it barely and he was on a ventilator and he'd only been given 6% chance of living but after a few hours he fought himself off the ventilator and woke up and he spent a week in hospital he came home and then until April I was so scared of something happening I was overthinking everything and

then on the 13th of April I met my ex she made me so happy i met her online and we started dating long distance and she said her mum had passed with cancer and stuff and she said she was autistic and stuff so that's alright then her brother "died" and made me feel like sh*t If I mentioned anything about her mum or brother was shouting at me if I didn't have My phone by me 24/

I bought her nice things and went to see her a few times which meant working in the rain while I was really ill just to pay to see her and she said she'd had a baby with this lad before she met me and it passed so anytime I said anything about it made me feel like the worst person in the world

and in the start of November I found out it was all lies her dead mum lies her dead brother lies the illnesses all lies made me think she had a hole in her heart and had seizures on call put fake blood in her mouth and everything all lies the baby lies and turns out for 7 months she was talking to other lads the whole time cheating on me and she keeps making new accounts messaging me haha I got a new bf you were a piece of s**t and stuff

and now I have nothing I couldn't do my gcses last year bcs of everything I have no friends really irl only online ones I've never met I have no job nothing to look forward to in life so what's the point

anyways thats my story thanks for reading I really needed to get that off of my chest

mod edit: added line breaks

Hello, I haven't posted on here for a little while. Sorry, it's gonna be long Maybe someone here can relate, but even if not it just helps a bit to get it out there.

I have two conflicting feelings today, one being 'inspired, hopeful, expansive, emotional, poignant' and the other 'confused, defeated, hopeless, frustrated, overwhelmed.' (I mean that's lots of feelings but they're kind of grouped into two in my head.)
The former feels like life is amazing, kind of TOO amazing as there's so much out there, and I want to do and understand so much, and the opportunities and potential seem infinite and exciting, but that drags me into the second feeling, cos I start to think I'll never get to do any of those things, it all feels too overwhelming, I'll forget the 'excited/inspired' feeling and go back to my usual, familiar dissociated and brain-fogged ways yet again within days, and waste my whole life. I want to withdraw and open out at the same time. I also don't want to let the positive feeling get out of control and turn into racing thoughts and anxiety like it has done sometimes in the past when I've felt this way, when all the thoughts get so complicated and confusing and I can't turn them off.
I feel like it's always all-or-nothing, I can't have an in-between. Whenever I make a breakthrough in understanding why I function the way I do and how I see the world, and that these are not the only options available to me, it's like it sets off this chain reaction where suddenly the shackles are gone and I feel more free than I ever have before, but then it's overwhelming cos I feel like I have to relearn and rewrite all the 'rules' I had already established a long time ago, and how do I go about that when I don't even know where to start, etc.
Plus there's this crushing anxiety that I'll forget this freer mindset and the 'route' to it, even if I write down all my observations now to remind me later, I may not understand them in the same way because I'll be reading them through the lens of my narrower-mindset. Like leaving a message for someone, and when they look at it it doesn't make any sense, or doesn't convey what you wanted it to... except the 'other person' is just me in a few hours/days/etc time.
I know this isn't a useful way to think, and I can't force myself into mindsets or feelings. It's just really hard when I have these glimpses of 'if I could see the world like this as a default, I think I could actually feel safe enough to move on with my life', and then it's just gone again and I feel as blank and worthless and repetitive as before. And then I think 'was that glimpse real, or was it some kind of delusion?'. My mind feels so chaotic, I feel like I'm searching for an object in a cluttered room full of things, and I'm not even sure what I'm looking for.

(GIF incoming)
Anyway, I was writing all this in my journal and I had a feeling I wanted to post it here. My main thought about it is 'too much thinking, you're stuck in your head', so I'm gonna try and get busy doing something practical and leave these thoughts alone for the rest of the day. It helps a bit to have written some of them down, especially as I usually can't keep hold of these thoughts long enough to translate them into words. I feel like my mind is so flicker-y, it darts from one place to another and I can't remember or understand where it's been, all in a matter of a few seconds Like a TV screen cycling through images so quickly, you can't comprehend any individual image, it's just a blur. Anyone else know what I mean?