Something Different - Mental Difficulties.

So this is a quick blog post, that for once is not an amateur game review.

As my friends know, I suffer from 3 distinct mental 'issues'; Depression, Anger and Anxiety.

Depression I got inherently from my mother, it is something I will never get better from, simply learn to control. It's triggered by traumatic events but has been showing slightly my whole life. As a child I was branded 'moody' due to the fact it only took one comment, or telling no, for me to become very quiet and withdrawn. I don't remember much of my childhood, not due to abuse or anything, but simply due to a bad memory, however I am aware I hurt myself on occasion. This of course was put down to attention seeking. Unfortunately, as a result of this lack of diagnosis and treatment, my depression got worse and eventually my Anxiety and Anger developed. By anger I don't mean I have a bit of a short temper, I mean something as small as someone in the street saying "Look at the ginger" or something similarly pathetic and unnecessary can send me into a furious rage. Again, I will never be made 'normal' from this, it's part of me for good, but I have learnt to control it. My anxiety was last to develop, as a result of my anger. I came to a point in life where I would leave the house as little as possible simply because I knew that I would likely over hear someone make a comment about my hair, my height, my clothes, or something similar, which would make me so angry, to the point where I just wanted to tear their throat out, I would push this emotion down, and once on my own, slip into depression, becoming and emotional wreck because I felt so stupid for letting such a trivial thing make me angry, at one time this would even lead to self harm as a form of punishment for letting myself get angry. This circle of events lead to me rarely leaving the house so as to avoid it, which lead to my anxiety. 2 years of never meeting new people, going to new places, and hardly speaking to the people I do know, lead me to be very scared of these thing happening. It wasn't easy but I've finally broken the anxiety. I still have the odd panic attack, can't deal with crowds or too much noise, but it's rare and much easier to avoid large groups of people than to avoid all people entirely. My Depression anger will unfortunately always be bad, although I have enough control that they no longer show around others. I haven't got in a fight for 3 years and haven't self harmed for 2. However, I know it's always going to be difficult, and what makes it harder is knowing people don't understand. Some people say with my problems, I should be allowed to hit someone if he's making offensive comments about me, and while I'd love that to be true, I can't live a life like that, I'd have no friends, no chance of a job, or anything really. But if people could just understand that not only is Depression a serious problem, but anger problems can be too, and both together is hell. I guess I just want people to understand, I don't want sympathy, sympathy will make me lazy about my control. Just read, understand and pass this along, please? :)

~Rusty