What I want from life (and what I won’t settle without)
To finish my masters.
To watch people hear sound for the first time because of my work
To set up a clinic in Cambodia to help the 2 million deaf people in that country.
To travel the world.
To find true love.
To be true to myself and be who I am.
To replace hate with knowledge when I don’t understand something.
Compassion.
Depression is humiliating. It turns intelligent, kind people into zombies who can’t wash a dish or change their socks. It affects the ability to think clearly, to feel anything, to ascribe value to your children, your lifelong passions, your relative good fortune. It scoops out your normal healthy ability to cope with bad days and bad news, and replaces it with an unrecognizable sludge that finds no pleasure, no delight, no point in anything outside of bed. You alienate your friends because you can’t comport yourself socially, you risk your job because you can’t concentrate, you live in moderate squalor because you have no energy to stand up, let alone take out the garbage. You become pathetic and you know it. And you have no capacity to stop the downward plunge. You have no perspective, no emotional reserves, no faith that it will get better. So you feel guilty and ashamed of your inability to deal with life like a regular human, which exacerbates the depression and the isolation.
Depression is humiliating.
If you’ve never been depressed, thank your lucky stars and back off the folks who take a pill so they can make eye contact with the grocery store cashier. No one on earth would choose the nightmare of depression over an averagely turbulent normal life.
It’s not an incapacity to cope with day to day living in the modern world. It’s an incapacity to function. At all. If you and your loved ones have been spared, every blessing to you. If depression has taken root in you or your loved ones, every blessing to you, too.
Depression is humiliating.
No one chooses it. No one deserves it. It runs in families, it ruins families. You cannot imagine what it takes to feign normalcy, to show up to work, to make a dentist appointment, to pay bills, to walk your dog, to return library books on time, to keep enough toilet paper on hand, when you are exerting most of your capacity on trying not to kill yourself. Depression is real. Just because you’ve never had it doesn’t make it imaginary. Compassion is also real. And a depressed person may cling desperately to it until they are out of the woods and they may remember your compassion for the rest of their lives as a force greater than their depression. Have a heart. Judge not lest ye be judged.
(via adeptasororitas)
(Source: sherunsfromdarkness)
The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.
- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (via slekes
)
Love.
I really feel like I should be on my own for a while. I have just come out of a relationship where the love was so strong for me, that it seems it will take years for me to ever find anyone who makes me feel the same way. I have been on dates, I have had guys after me that are kind of cool, but just that chemistry, that humour, that understanding is just missing. I don’t know if that’s because I am comparing a few dates to the best relationship in my life so far, or if these men really are lacking that certain something.
I am not unhappy to be on my own either. Probably for the first time in my life. Even though I am at my heaviest. I still feel like I have so much to give in a relationship. I also feel like I am really getting over my last one. It just took those words - I don’t know if I love you anymore. It just pushed me out of that mindset that it was going to happen one day. He will never love me as I do him. And that is something I just won’t put up with.
I have so much I want to do in life. I have so many goals, both for the near future and for long term. To be honest I don’t have that much time for a relationship. And relationships are poison to my own ambitions. I know that is my own fault. Or maybe I have never been in one that really supported who I really am.
I have never been in such an ‘I don’t need anyone’ mood in my life. It feels strange. I am the neediest person that I know. I don’t know what has happened in my life to change me. I suspect that it was going to Cambodia. It really gave me something that I didn’t know I had in me. Perhaps my empathy has an outlet that doesn’t need to be a one-sided relationship or my friends needing help. The feeling that I could be completely at ease and not be with anyone is the most empowering thing I have ever felt. Instead of loving one person and putting my life and soul into a relationship, there is a whole world out there that is made for people like me. They need people like me. People who feel.
I have always hated how much I feel. But for the first time ever, I think that it is perhaps a gift. And I would be wrong to ignore it, or misuse it.
You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.
Jonathan Safran Foer (via nuaira
)
(Source: yummyhairydudes)
fuuuuuuck
(Source: forgottenships)
(Source: taycd)
……
(Source: mattybing1025)
(Source: adammuto)
Bayer, Heroin
