Ahh. I can't even face hiding behind semi-amusing GIFs. If I said it’s taken me just over two months to write this, that’s because it has.
I’m on a long road to recovery and while you don’t come here to dwell in other people’s grim reality, I would like to share this with you to put things into perspective and also explain some things.
In May this year I was diagnosed with depression. And at one time if I was reading this about someone I’d be the first to admit to being all “I bet it’s not REALLY depression” or “Another one over-reacting”. So, to you all who have suffered mental health issues such as this, I doth my hat to you and am sorry for those who ever judge you.
Thankfully I felt myself spiralling into some state that I didn’t recognise. I didn’t feel like me – whatever the old me felt like – and I reached a point where I knew I had to challenge this or else god knows how much upset or damage I would bring. It was affecting my personal life, my family life, my work mood and even my writing here. I’d like to apologise to any and all of you here who noticed I wasn’t myself over the last few months before May. It was horrible, and I feel I was becoming someone else and probably acted like it too.
With the help of my doctor, tablets and a counsellor (just discharged for three months since yesterday following 2 months of work), I want to try and work things through for myself. I’m on the anti-depressants, and while I was in major denial at first and even tried to come off them myself – which made me worse – I’m admitting they help and I’ve delved into over 10 years of events in my life that may have led to this moment. I don’t need to go into them, but it shocked me when I tried to put the puzzle together and admitted how much has happened that probably bottled up due to me trying to gloss over things.
For the first time, I had to look back at myself and question everything.
Anyway.
It wasn’t nice or easy. I lost interest in so much that I used to do. I’ve struggled to even go to the cinema just 5mins away because I found excuses not to, and I bloody love the cinema. I even found excuses or just talked myself out of playing some Xbox now and then or reading. It was horrid, and a real struggle. Hence why I just vanished from here. My apologies to you who I left in the dark.
I withdrew from everything and I didn’t miss it for a few months. Maybe part of me still doesn’t miss it and sees how, in the wider scheme of things, you don’t need things as much as you think and you’re not as important or valued as you make yourself out to be. It’s all fiction. It’s all a hobby. It shouldn’t add to stresses, worries, fears and doubts to your already important real life. It was sobering and refreshing, but still hard. My decision to leave was drastic, urgent but crucial to do.
Yet four months later, going cold turkey for the first time in three years writing on the site near daily, the hardest part has been this, today. Coming back to a place I now feeling totally alien in, already seeing so much happening and so much new material and faces that I feel like the newbie once more. The anxiety is there. A hollow, stupid, daunting feeling that I won’t be able to find my muse and creativity once more and crash and burn to fade away.
But I have to try. I have to push myself, and cross this high hurdle to try and get better and back to some normality. I love Star Wars and I love creative writing; to lose that would be sad and a dark hole in my interests.
So, hello, again.
I’m slowly going to try come back to action. I hope a new burst of life will be seen via my attitude and writing, and I hope you can give me chances to become somebody I feel I want to be, rather than someone I felt I HAD to be. I can connect with old and new faces again for something special.
Thank you also to the ones who have reached out just to check in and say hello. My absence has been drastic, but I’ve replied when I could and I truly appreciate the messages. Thank you also to the Silver Jedi Order staff team who have been supportive and understanding in my absence, something that has not gone unnoticed and will be something I address with them all in good time.
I hope you’re all keeping well and are doing ok. I look forward to writing with you and getting back into the galaxy far, far away again soon for more adventures.
MTFBWY.
TL,DR: I’m fighting through depression. Feel stupid, but am back to try find normality!
