That Voice

I wrote this to show what it's like to be mentally ill and have a negative voice in the back of your head. I hope this helps both people who want to know more about the topic as well as those with it.

I’m not writing this to beg for help. I’m not writing this to show how sad my life is or to tell everyone that I want to die. I’m writing this to show what it’s like to live with mental illness. My goal is both to provide people a better understanding of the topic as well as to reach people who also live with this every day of their lives. As such, it contains heavy themes. For some people, these topics may be uncomfortable. Read with caution as it may also be triggering for those with mental illness, though that is not the intention.

The italicized text represents what the voice in your head is telling you.

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Today is Monday. Your friends are returning to school today. Monday is often complained about. Most people feel they’re too tired after the weekend to get out of bed and go to school. But for you, this description is an every day problem. You will stay home as you do every day, as your mental illness has proven to be crippling and forced you to drop out of high school. The opportunity to see your friends and learn in a classroom is lost to you, and you are now too old to return and finish your education with your peers. You desperately search for something to fill this void. For weeks you have tried to get a job so that you can help out your mother and have a purpose in life. But no one has responded to your applications. You have ruined your chances of a good life. You keep trying. It has to pay off eventually. Even though you haven’t done anything productive today, you are exhausted when night time hits. You reach for your medicine bottles. You can’t even function right without medicine. You are weak. You turn the lights off and get into bed. Instead of falling asleep, you are overtaken by negative feeling. You are alone. This feeling keeps you awake until 4 in the morning. In an hour, your friends will start to wake up and get ready for the day.

It is now Tuesday. By the time you wake up, school is over. You pick up your phone and check the time to see you have slept until nearly 5 PM. Shame washes over you. Pathetic. You fear that you have once again disappointed your family by sleeping so late. Though they don’t say it, you feel it. They are ashamed of you. Trying to ignore it, you pick up your phone and begin texting your girlfriend. She is very happy to hear from you. You feel that you are extremely lucky to have someone like her; she is never upset about how you are. She knows it is hard for you. The two of you smile and laugh together, but a lingering fear sits in the back of your mind. You are not good enough for her. There will always be someone better who may take her from you. Afraid, you ask her for reassurance. She happily gives it to you and you feel a little better. But that is a worry that will stick with you for perhaps the rest of your life. The time quickly passes and it is soon nearly 9 at night. She will have to leave soon, as she must sleep and get ready for the next day of school. Though you are used to it, it still saddens you once she departs for the night. You are once more completely alone. After a night of distracting yourself and wasting time, you crawl into your bed. Intrusive thoughts begin to fill your head. You will lose her. She’s going to leave you. Everyone will leave you. Panicked, your heart beats faster and faster. You send your girlfriend a message. Though she is not currently there, it makes you feel better. Hours later you fall asleep.

Wednesday, you wake up late again and make your way to the bathroom. Looking in the mirror, you see nothing but disappointment. Once again you have wasted the day. You pick up your toothbrush and brush your teeth, meanwhile inspecting them in the mirror. Your teeth are crooked and ugly. You have an overbite. Even your mouth is problematic. You wish for nothing more than to go to the dentist and get work done. But you do not have the money. Further examining yourself in the mirror, all you see are flaws. Your face is covered in acne. Your hair isn’t how you want it. Your eyebrows are too thick. You have gained weight. Your have no muscle. You are ugly. Leaving the bathroom, you go to the living room and start to watch TV. The thoughts from before continue as you see celebrities on the television. You’ll never be anywhere near as good as them. You are average and boring, For probably the third time this week you ask your girlfriend if she feels you’re good enough. She answers yes, of course. You smile, but deep in your mind you wish you were better. Today, like all days, is wasted.

On Thursday, you manage to wake up earlier. But earlier for you is only around noon. Still, you are proud of this. However, a few hours later and you are too tired to do anything. Your eyes feel heavy and your mind feels like it has come to a halt. You give in and take a nap. You failed at that too. It doesn’t matter when you wake up, you’ll never be normal. No matter how much sleep you get, you are constantly exhausted. A couple hours later and your nap ends. You wake up and notice the time. 6 PM. At least everyone is now home from school. You and your girlfriend make plans to see each other this weekend. You are excited and happy when the plans seem to work in your favor. But in your head you fear. Something will get in the way and ruin your plans. It always does. You go to bed that night using your upcoming plans as motivation to push through the remaining days.

Early on Friday, your mom wakes you up and asks if you want to go with her to run some errands. You agree, happy to get out of the house for once. At least when you have plans you are able to get out of bed. On the car ride, you listen to music and look out the window. Deep in thought, you accidentally ignore something your mother said to you. She seems to be irritated. You are a bad son. During the day, several more things happen that put you down. You hear a very loud noise. You flinch. Your father was emotionally abusive to you and your sibling, and abusive to your mother. He would often yell and make loud noises like that. A yellow car goes by, and your stomach drops. Your father now drives a very similar car. At times, you are even intimidated by men simply because they’re men, and your father is a man. You can’t go anywhere without the fear of seeing him. You’re a coward. When you get home, you are very tired. As soon as you go to your room and settle down, the familiar feelings of sadness grip you. Even now you struggle to fall asleep.

You alarm clock beeps to wake you up at 10 AM on Saturday. Today is the day your girlfriend will be coming over. You feel excited and anxious. When you are with her, you feel great. The lingering negativity in your mind seems to be repressed by her presence, and you truly enjoy the day. She gives you comfort and love that you have never recieved from anyone else. It makes you feel at home. When the sun goes down and the day draws to a close, you know she will soon have to go home. This fills you with fear. Fear that all your typical feelings of sorrow will return once you are alone. And they always do. You spend the entire night missing her. and you don’t even try to sleep until very late.

Sunday is the last day before a new week begins. But that means almost nothing to you. Again, everyone will return to work and school while you do not. You will once again be alone. Everyone prepares for the busy week, while you simply prepare for the struggle you face every day. You spend the day as you would any, and then you get into bed for the night.

The voice will not leave. It may not leave. But you will learn to resist it. Even though your first thought when anything goes wrong will be that voice in your head telling you to just die, you won’t listen to it. It is tormenting and it is annoying, but it is wrong. The voice is there simply to bring you down. It is nothing but an evil presence, its only wish is to stop you from surviving. But you won’t let it win. You fight it every day of your life. Yes, it is exhausting. Yes, it hurts. But yes, it will be worth it in the end. 

Reviews

[Cyndy Robinson]

You know it is interesting. I am a parent of a child with mental illness. He is now grown and productive but I went through Hell all through his school years. It was made worse because my parents were Christian Scientists, and did not do doctors. I had no medical background knowledge to share with psychiatrists. I was left with some rather out of the box opinions. They say doctors "practice" medicine. You see that clearly when you enter a mental health environment. Not much is known and it is all trial and error. In my mind I was taking my son there, he was going to get a pill that would make him normal. Those pills almost killed him. After that, if your going to experiment, I am part of this team. Medical degree or not, I needed to be part of that team. I would just like to offer you a few suggestions. School districts are very picky and only teach to the 75% that are the norm. They are over crowded. If you have never graduated and are still young, go online and finish high school. You will never get anywhere if you don't. The wonderful thing about online is you can do it when your energy is up. At whatever time of day you want to. I watched an episode of 60 minutes over 10 years ago. In it, paraphrasing, it stated that the average population had a rosier hue on life and what people thought of them than actually existed. Depressed people were right on the money as far as that. I think you will find in life for every negative there is a positive. Read a book called "Touched by Fire". I think that is the name of it. It has been years. I think you will like it. I wish I could remember the names of books that dealt with when the special education system was designed. It would be enlightening to you as well. The other thing I learned about my son, and I see it here in your writing, hence those other books on the special education system that I cannot remember the titles of, is that you are not that different than us. The voices you hear, are the same things that run through all of our minds. The difference here is the amount of times it runs through our minds. I found that true when my son was growing up as well. It wasn't so much his behavior was not age appropriate, it was more that it never stopped. Also, and this is me being opinionated, all anyone ever tried to do was make that child be like everyone else. The medication they gave him masked symptoms, so other people weren't on edge with an over abundance of energy. They "eye contact" training they gave him, allowed him to look you dead in the eye and lie with no tell. And interfered with his ability to retain information. My son was distracted by movement. When people talked to him he looked at the floor so he would retain what they said. They interfered with that. A baby naturally looks away when he is overstimulated. Wouldn't it have been twice as easy to just tell everyone he was distracted by movement and looked away when you were talking so he could retain what was said? No he has to be like everyone else. Just so you know, my son now does not take medication. By his psychiatrist recommendation. He functions, is regarded as a little eccentric, but is brilliant in what he chooses to do. A lot of, certainly not all of, I have friends with children much worse then mine, but a lot of what is now regarded as mental illness because the DSM has been altered so many times, is simply to get through school. And like most of life, that is about money. They get money from the federal government to educate you if you have a disability. As a parent, I felt compelled to write this. Your story moved me because from the opposite side of the coin, I have been there. I do not know how old you are, and if you are still at this stage, but yes, it will be worth it when your out of school. It is different. It isn't about the 75% anymore. I am going to critique the story in a separate edit.

[Nick Tuskan]

I appreciate the concern and the advice, but I really could do without you telling me I'm not going to get anywhere in life. That just makes me feel horrible about myself even more. I already have plans to finish my education later this year, as soon as possible. Thanks for the critique, I was debating on doing it as dialogue.

[Cyndy Robinson]

Sorry, didn't mean to say you weren't going anywhere, just meant to say you need to finish it for others. Not yourself, it is what they expect. And when you go to get a job, you need to have something on the table. It is a piece of paper. That much do their way. Anything else do your own.

[Cyndy Robinson]

open mouth insert foot, good at it I fear.

[ANTO]

dont be so hard on yourself Cyndy. Your intentions were pure - that's obvious

[Nick Tuskan]

That's alright, I'm sorry for my reaction I just often hear that kind of thing from my family putting me down. I do appreciate that you took the time to write all of that out, so thank you very much.

[Cyndy Robinson]

I am not putting you down, lol. The reverse. Everyone has a right to be appreciated for who they are. Be who you are. But respect in life does command a certain amount of playing it someone else's way.

[ANTO]

The 201 views and only 3 reviews statistics tells me exactly what you are trying to combat - that the stigma is very very much alive. I haven't see such a bad view to review ratio (except for the unread).

I was tortured by such a voice my whole life (30-odd years) and CBT helped me to combat it.
I think you're doing a good thing here.
Good luck Nick.

[Cyndy Robinson]

I like the story. But the voices in the head? I think they should be dialogue and broke out like dialogue. The one recommendation I have.

[Alexandra Hounschell]

Oh.. Yes this really does show what it's like to have a mental illness. This is well writ, and very informative.. Wonderful job

[Nick Tuskan]

Thank you very much! I wrote this from my own personal experience, I'm glad it conveys the message well.