I had a mental breakdown

[Iroscato]

Rob, I don't really 'know' you per se as we've never met in real life, but I go by the evidence - and the evidence tells me you're a bloody lovely person, and this...bullshit of the mind could not happen to a less deserving sort, not that anyone deserves it. Despite everything you've been through, what emerged is an intelligent, kind and funny human being - and they're my favourite sort
So stay strong, keep being excellent, and please kindly do not off yourself. It would greatly upset every single person here, including me.

[Iroscato]

Oh yeah, and get that cunt of a nurse fired.

[Longhorn]

Oh yeah, and get that cunt of a nurse fired.

OFF WITH HER HEAD

[robvalue]

Thank you all very much

Iros: I appreciate your kind words very much, they lift my spirits I've made so many great friends here, and each one of you is one more reason for me to stick around. That's the only time in my life I think I was in actual danger of harming myself. The rest of the time I have always hulked up and battled through

You all help me keep on battling, so thank you!

[Longhorn]

Well if you do something to yourself I'm going to cry. So don't :c

[Iroscato]

See, this shit is exactly why depression should be recognised as being potentially as harmful as epilepsy or shcizophrenia. We've gone from grouping them all together as the result of demonic possession to treating depression as the mental illness equivalent of man-flu.

"Oh, just cheer up, it's not all bad!"

Well fuck you, try going a week with all the colour in the world being sucked out and everything is shit and awful and hopeless and you fall deeper and deeper into the horrible, twisted spiral of your every failure and regret and fear and bad memory. Now extrapolate to a lifetime, never sure when it's going to sneak up behind you and bite you on the bum, then latch on like some kind of hope-draining lamprey that exists only to make your existence as unbearable as physically possible. And every time you fight it, you're just fighting yourself, so even if you beat it back you've just made it harder for yourself to fend it off the next time it comes a-nibbling.

We truly are our own worst enemies. And that is why you must never, EVER stop talking to people. A ream of cliches spring to mind - together we're stronger, etc etc. But cliches are cliches for a reason. Humans are social animals for a reason - we need each other, and indulging in that most basic of evolutionary components can drag us out of places we never knew had an exit.

[Exian]

Fuck man, that's bullshit. You're one of the good ones and it kills me that you have to go through this. I always think of the opportunity cost in situations like this. I have nothing on your level, but I have some mild aches and pains that are enough to throw my whole mood off. And then I have days where everything is just clicking, I feel great, and I'm a much better person to be around. I could only imagine if you didn't have all this bullshit holding you down. You might literally glow yellow.

Love ya rob. I hope you have longer stretches of good health.

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

<3 I'm so sorry Rob <3

I hope you get so much better man.You're a really nice person and it sucks that you have to go through all of this shit.I hope you get so much better man.I don't know what to say except that i totally love you man.Hang in there!

*hug*

[Kingpin]

Man Rob, not sure what to say, but I'm sorry you had to go through that torment. I'm thankful you have people around you that obviously love and care for you that can be there for you at a moments notice. Though we are thousands of miles apart, we are here for you too!

[Ben Davis]

---

I've had a terrible last couple of days, and I thought it would be therapeutic to share it with you all.

I have ME (also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) which leaves me very short of physical and mental energy. I've had it for some 8 years now. I've spent a good deal of that time wanting to die. It's only been my promise to my wife that I won't hurt myself that has stopped me from killing myself.

I also have Chron's Disease which has been screwing up my life in lots of different ways for the last 25 years. Dealing with just one of these conditions would be bearable, but both at once is really horrible.

Thanks to an excellent specialist I've recently started seeing, my Chrons has been reasonably under control for the last 3 years or so. But it's now making a comeback. I've developed a very narrow part in my intestine, which seems to slowly get blocked up over time. Once it gets almost completely blocked, my guts go into spasm. After about 8 hours of pain, it normally resolves itself either by forcing itself through or by me being violently sick for an hour or so. Obviously, that is bad enough.

Two days ago, I got the spasms starting again. But this time, they didn't stop after 8 hours. Or 16. They were still going over 24 hours later. I got absolutely no sleep and I felt I was beginning to lose my mind. In the end we decided to get me to A&E, because we've been told these blockages can be potentially life threatening (they can cause a rupture). As it happens, it appeared that after wretching in the car on the way there, the blockage finally passed. But I couldn't be sure, so I continued in to A&E.

Even though the pain was abating, I felt ridiculously uncomfortable waiting there for a doctor to see me. Not just irritable, but actually feeling unstable. I didn't know why. As time passed, the feeling got worse and worse. Eventually, I had what I can only assume is a mental breakdown. I felt like I lost control of myself. I was in extreme mental torment like I'd never felt before. I usually want to die, but now I was begging to die. I begged them to sedate me. The nurse I had at the time was really nasty and treated me like I was "being naughty". She kept telling me to calm down and smile in a condescending way. My wife was trying to calm me down any way she could.

It got worse and worse, and if there had been a cliff for me to jump off, they would have had to restrain me to stop me going over it, even after my promise to my wife. I would have begged her to let me jump off the cliff. I started making incoherent wailing noises, moving around randomly, grabbing onto things... I honestly thought that this is it, I've cracked. I've lost my mind. I'm not coming back. I'm going to spend the rest of my life in a psychiatric ward.

My poor wife went through hell seeing me like this and tried everything she could think of, showing me pictures on her phone of our happy times, and even phoning my mental health support team. This all helped in a small way, but it couldn't bring me back.

After what seemed like hours but my wife tells me was not actually that long, it passed. I got control of myself again. After everyone in the ward who watched must have thought I was insane, I had a perfectly normal, relaxed conversation with the doctor about the condition of my blockage. We agreed it had passed, and I could go home.

This scared the shit out of me. It's hard to say what caused my breakdown. A combination of relentless pain, no sleep, years of suicidal thoughts ready to pounce on any opportunity, being cooped up in a noisy ward and the nurse treating me like a petulant child... It shows how strong my depression is. My therapy has been going great recently, and I appear to have the depression "in check". But this is a clear warning of how strong it is, and how eager it is to jump on any opportunity to take me down. It nearly succeeded. I wanted to run from the hospital, and I probably would have run into a road to try and get run over.

I hope with all my heart this never happens again. It was the worst experience of my life. It feels like a horrid nightmare now, but also shockingly real. I appear to have regained control since then, and haven't come close to losing it.

Thank you very much for reading

---

Mate, that's shocking. My thoughts are with you and your missus. If there were such a thing as 'vibes', I'd be transmitting them your way.
I'm glad you've realised that it's just a blip, albeit a nasty one. It sounds like you've been making real progress recently so don't let this set you back. At risk of anthropomorphising your depression, maybe it's a last ditch attempt by the bastard to bring you down; the final twitch of a dying animal is often the strongest!