Giving Up - August 2003

The days grow longer as I sit in my chair watching time slip slowly by. I have given up!

Motivation has become almost non existent. I wait for illness to come and visit me. I can feel my body slowly deteriorating, my chest becoming congested, my limbs becoming useless, my muscles wasting away. The truth is I can find no reason to get up and do anything. Even writing these words takes a massive effort.

I don't know how this situation has come about and I don't know how the hell to get my motivation back. In fact I don't see the point of anything any more. Just sit around and wait for the grim reaper to come and take me I suppose. As a smoker I can expect any one of several diseases to hit me. Emphysema, cancer, you name it. Or perhaps my arteries will clog up and I have to have a limb removed before gangrene takes my life.

It's funny though how my conscience still keeps nagging me. I read the words that I have just written and I feel guilty. Guilty because people are still doing things around me. I should get off my bottom and help, contribute, earn my keep. But I can't do it because, to me, there is no point. Humdrum days.
My counsellor has suggested that I think of the end result and not what I have to go through to achieve that result. For example I have the opportunity to join a fitness club and I have had an offer from a friend to go with me and show me the ropes. But I am afraid of going to a new place filled with new people. It frightens the living daylight out of me! And then there is the feeling that everyone will be looking at me, pointing me out, saying things about me. Paranoia!

I don't like me very much. I am not proud of my physical or mental self - they have both deteriorated into deep decay. I even disgust myself by whining on in this journal. DO SOMETHING PETE! I can't. Why not? I don't know. Isn't that the easy way out? I guess so. Well why don't you take the hard way out? Because I follow the path of least resistance. Is that not cowardly? No, it saves me from more pain.
And so the arguments go on in my mind.

I have recently attended group therapy sessions where other members of the group seemed to have their own conditions sussed. This has caused me to feel uncomfortable for a couple of reasons. Primarily, if these people can work out what is wrong with themselves and why, why do they still attend group therapy sessions? The other point is that I envy them their insight. I would love to be able to work out what is wrong with me and do something about it.

When I think about the treatments I have had for my illness I despair because, despite all the pills, potions and therapy sessions, I have slipped slowly further down into the depths. What hope is there for the future if the treatments don't work today? I wish I could tell the medical experts that help look after me that my quality of life is so poor that thoughts of ending it all are never very far from the front of my mind. But I won't succumb to them will I?

It's ok me being able to sit here and write all this crap but what does it do for me? Actually, on reflection, this diary of depression has helped put me in touch with some lovely people who either suffer the same illness or who knows a fellow sufferer. Even one small ray of sunshine on a grey day helps me to tolerate my existence.