But I CAN'T make it ANOTHER DAY ! Help- what do I do ?

But how do I face TODAY ?

(I just can’t do it another day )

Listen friends - no one knows what a day in our life is like unless you’ve lived it. All the fears and agonizing it takes just to get up out and face the day. 

Well - I have been there. I have walked a million miles in your shoes. I have been twisted and tormented with depression and ripped to shreds with heart wrenching anxiety. 

The sweats, the tremors, the heart palpitations, struggling to get my breathing right. The numbness and tingling in my feet and arms and hands. The locking of my arms, always thinking im dying of some new sickness. Then hoping I had a sickness, maybe even cancer. Imagine wanting cancer so I had an excuse for my depression.  Looking in the mirror and wondering who I am and how much longer can I live in this torment. Wondering if I will end up in some institution or strung out in the streets- alone, broken and destroyed. I have spent those days and nights tossing and turning in bed with suicidal thoughts and ideas consuming my very being. Thinking of a million ways I could take my life. I have stayed in bed so long that the filth from my body filled the room and permeated the sheets. Then my bed became my only friend; so much so that I lived there. I remember watching the clock tick and waiting for night to come - “Oh night my only friend for with night came another excuse to sleep- sleep and escape, but then I couldn’t even sleep and the cycle would go on and on. Then morning would come and again I would watch that clock move, knowing that soon I would have to get up and face the world, but knowing also that I could not. Oh just another hour, another few minutes. Oh the reminder of my pain the minute the clock woke me up and I remembered that its another day of hell. Another day of fighting crawling , pleading with God to please heal me or kill me. Please God I would say - I can not do another day like this- not another minute or second. 

Oh and to make matters worse- my visitors. Those who would say: come on get up you can do this. You have so much going for you. Just have faith in God, just believe you can do it. Then they would get mad and their patients would grow thin. I remember trying to explain to people what this hell is like but no one understood. Some would say its just a cop out, a faze just and excuse not to go to work. Oh that would burn me up and an anger over this ugly mess I never asked for or ever dreamed would consume  me.

TO ME !! How could this be me ? Anxiety to Depression from Depression to Anxiety. That deep hollow feeling deep in my heart. That sadness and gloom that fear of everything. The wondering that: even if I were better what would happens if it comes back ? What if I’m somewhere and IT happens again ? In time all I would think of was ME- what am I feeling , what am I thinking? I even remember saying to myself - “What is it to feel normal “ ? I forgot what a mind normally thinks like. What is normal thinking, what do normal people think about all day. 

Oh and the thought that haunted me day after day - WHAT IF I never get better, what IF this is the new me ? 

Then the shame and embarrassment of being such a mess, of crying and balling all the time. The agony of people always asking me how I was feeling and doing. That they were praying for me and I would reply in massive lies - Oh hanging in there when I really wanted to hang myself. Watching people walk their dogs and saying - oh how I long to simply do that. Do go out shopping to be around people to simply enjoy a nice day. 

And when I saw people being happy it would stab me through the chest, a constant reminder of what I am and don’t have. 

Friends - I share my deepest thoughts with you so you know that- I have been there ! I know what other people just don’t. I understand what facing a day is like.

The loosing weight till my clothes didn’t fit to gaining weight till my clothes didn’t fit. 

The questions from people- of what’s wrong ? Why don’t you snap out of it-as if I had a switch that I forgot to switch. 

But friends - 

I know and I also know that I am no longer that person which means you don’t have to be that person either.

I didn’t end up dead but am living now and more alive then I ever dreamed. Friends I am here as an example of the hope that is real. 

My story and healing are in my books.

No I don’t say all this to sell books but because I know what hell it was and how an answer was all I wanted.

I have the answer !

You can be whole, new, alive, living, breathing and even more

Helping others get through this mess.

Please hear my call out to you.

S.R. Kraniak  (not just another counselor or author but one who knows) 

I have the “right” to give you advice because I have used it and seen its glory.