The Fall

The Fall

By Sophia Bishop

I've been touching base, from my own mind for the last couple weeks. Talking about the things I feel as someone who suffers with Manic Depressive Disorder(MDD)

To help others not only understand what its like inside the mind of someone with this illness, but to help those I know understand what's going on inside my mind half the time. Not because I want attention, I think others who suffer with MDD can tell you the last thing that we actually want is attention.

I would love nothing more than to crawl inside a hole and stay there, hide away from the world in my own little pit of darkness, but at the same time I also want to be seen. More than anything its all I have ever dreamed off, being seen and actually seen, for someone to see past the face I put on and the mask that I wear.

No I dont write this blog for attention, I write it for understanding, most of all...I like to think I write it hoping someone who is at their worst, in a place I once was, in the place someone I loved very much once was and that maybe reading my few words they will see that someone out there does in fact understand because they feel the same way and that instead of doing what I do and shelling up, hiding how I feel until eventually like a grand explosion it blows from me and I am left in a pit of depression that can last weeks, months even. And that they wont ever do what that person I loved did and give up on life.

Have you ever fallen in love, so hard with another person that it was terrifying. Loved someone so much that it hurt you to your very core.

I’ve felt that in my life.

Its funny really, when your young and you see this one person who is simply, magic to you. Nothing they could do, could even begin to change how you see them. To you they might as well be an angel. Nothing they could do would be wrong and you think that person is the all time love of your life, even at a young age you can look at them and see forever and sometimes that forever can seem like the longest time, but you do not fear it.

Once upon a time, I loved a boy. I was just a young girl, looking back on it I probably didnt even really know what love was but at the time he was the be all end all of my life, even when I didnt see him for a long period of time he was always on my mind. I looked at him and I thought I saw forever. He made me laugh, he listened to me and most of all he cared. 

Little did I know that all the love I had to give him, all the love I felt inside and the love he felt in return, it wasnt enough to urge that darkness away that consumed him and at the age of 15, he took his own life.

I can remember the day I found out as clear as day. The day before I had spoken to him, I remember that day clearly as well because I realize now he had been trying to spare me the pain, he had been trying to say good bye. I remember crying when he told me goodbye. I remember the tears on his cheeks as I told him I loved him. Most of all I remember the look in his eyes when he told me it wasnt enough.

I can remember clearly the feeling when I found out he was gone for ever.

It was like time froze around me and I was trapped in that moment. I was lost in that pain. I succumbed to it. I gave into that pain for a long time. Years of my life was lost and the person I used to be before he died, she died with him. It took me a long time to realize that fact. And even longer to realize that I was mad at him. I hated him.

It makes me feel selfish to say that to this day. I shouldn't have hated him because he was in so much pain. But I did. To this day part of me will always hate him because I would have gone to hell for him and fought to give him a better life. But I also understand now, what I didnt at the time and that was, that his pain was too great. His agony suffocated him and his darkness in the end it consumed him.

After that I was convinced I would never feel any degree of love again. I bounced from relationship to relationship. One of them with a man who hurt me in a very bad way. But I never loved anyone to the depths of which I loved that boy. I never felt that overwhelming feeling.

My skin never tingled from a touch. My cheeks never pinked from hearing anyone whisper my name. And for a long time I was unable to tell anyone I loved them. I found an amazing person, who helped me find a new me and realize I had to put that person before to rest. I found someone who was able to make me smile again and someone who loved me enough to accept my darkness. But still..I never felt that overwhelming love that surrounded me like a cloud leaving me in a state of delirium. 

Until I met him.

I met a man who was actually a lot like myself. Scarred from pain he would likely never want to talk about just as I never wanted to talk about mine. Someone who understood all my pain and the baggage I would always carry with me and wasn't afraid of it, or put off by it. Instead he wanted to help me carry it.

But I couldn't do that, I still cant.

I can't seem to give him my bags to carry and it breaks my heart because it means I cant show him the depth of which he touches me.

I read an article once about a woman who said that she knew her husband was a her soul mate. I scoffed at it. Damaged and left alone I didn't believe in soul mates. She had known it because she said that the first time she ever heard his voice it made her soul ache. And the first time she felt his touch her soul leaped with the rest of her. And nothing he did would ever change the level of which she loved him. I remembered thinking that I wished I could find that again.

And I did.

But that simple fact, terrified me beyond belief. Because I convinced myself that this, beautiful man who made my very battered and bruised soul leap into the air would one day tell me the love I had wasn't enough and once again I would be left on my knees in the rain crying as what was left of my heart broke.

Even now I still wait for it because the truth of the matter is that I...cant even compare. To him. In my eyes he is imperfect perfection. Nothing he does makes me love him any less. Each day I love him more. The long distance kills me and time apart from him makes me ache but every time he comes back I only love him more despite convincing myself every time he will come back and not love me anymore.

Its no fault of his. I know he loves me, he tells me often. Its simply me and my scarred sense of self. I look into his eyes and see beauty. I know he will be an amazing father. I know he will be an outstanding husband and I can see forever when I look at him. And that's what scares me the most, because when I look into my own eyes all I see is darkness and despair.

 People who see through my mask tell me to speak to him of the truth of how I feel. That he should know my fears but most of all he should know how loved he is.

I hope on some level he does know how much I love him. I would die for him. I would give him the world wrapped up in a bow. I would do pretty much anything for him, there is no one on this earth I love more than I love him.

But I don't compare and I never will.

In the mind of someone with MDD that is common, the lack of belief in ones self, the lack of faith and the lack of self esteem. You can be told you are beautiful. You can be given thousands of compliments but none of them sink in because in your own mind you will never be good enough for someone who can love you. Someone who can adore you despite all your flaws. Because you see yourself as this...thing that is just...disgusting and the person your able to love is something so beautiful. Its not because they don't want to be loved. They just don't feel worthy of it.

"Your love is my turning page."

"Nobody loves anybody as much as I love you."