Questioning my (in)sanity

 The last year has been... all kinds of mental anguish and torture. 

I spiralled into a depression I genuinely didn't think I'd survive to see the other side of. 

What was going to help? I felt isolated and alone, and my parents suggestion of going to see them in India was a terrifying thought. I was barely eating, barely functioning, and it seemed like such a big jump to go from where I was, to getting on a plane and travelling to a foreign land. But with the help of a wonderful counsellor, and some dearly valued folk I felt comfortable reaching out to, I put one foot in front of the other, until I was sitting on an aeroplane. 

And despite the baggage, the dysfunction, the chaos, my family provide love and support. And I needed that, I needed familiarity, breathing space, to start to process, to start to let go, to start to break free.

The following is a reflection of the last year. 

There were a lot of stresses towards the end of 2020, and my mind broke.  There were emotional triggers, H.P's suicide, Troy's court case. Financial stress, working two stressful jobs and trying to finish off my studies, uncertainty with living arrangements, our housemate expressed wanting to live on his own. Relationship stress, I was trying really hard to make her happy, coz if she was happy I was happy, but it broke me.

Each stressor, each trigger, like hammers, slowly but surely making cracks in my sense of reality, until it all crumbled and totally fell apart.

But I didn't realise how much i was falling apart. Paranoid and delusional, was stacy abusive? To a degree,  but my state of mind over emphasised all of it.

I had what I thought was this break thru of understanding of my mental health. I've had problems with memory and dissociation for years, my memory has always been shite. And then it seemed these other alternate personalities were coming thru when I was dissociating- with different names and ages. Jason observed  and "met" most, if not all of these "alters", my whole demeanour changed, voice, body language. Did I have DID? It was a terrifying idea that seemed to make a lot of sense.

When I met Jason online and it was like he was the opposite of my last relationship, and he created this space where I felt safe existing and expressing myself in a way I'd never had with anyone. A safe space for these "alters" to introduce themselves.

And it was like gradually and suddenly reality started to come back into focus, it was like waking up from a nightmare. I was full of so much confusion, grief, shame, guilt and self loathing. And as the depression began to creep and seep in to my existence, like a fog creeping in, encompassing everything... my head went quiet. It was just me, alone with these awful feelings, wondering what the hell had happened over the last few months. What happened to those "alters"? DID doesn't go away on its own. Had I just temporarily fragmented myself to process some of the trauma I'd been through in my life? When I suddenly started to doubt all of it Jason was there, vouching for the fact that whatever it was, he'd met these alternate personas, and they were very different from "Jen".

I'd Totally lost  any  and all sense of purpose, self worth and identity. And I sunk into that heavy depression, and it consumed me for months. I'd withdrawn from everybody,  and convinced myself I was worthless and had nothing to live for. Those feelings of guilt and shame fuelled the spiral and the depth of depression, weighing it down with so much self hate. And I'm still there. I guess instead of being chin deep, it's waist deep, and it's not as consuming as it was. But I have no idea where to go from here, because underlying everything is still those feelings of grief, shame, guilt and self loathing.