The Guy Who Once Lost the Ability to Love and Care

Well, looks like it’s time to share my recovery from depression and a suicide attempt.

My depression and anxiety followed me from around the age of six until I was about twenty. During those years, I experienced physical, verbal and emotional abuse, as well as sexual abuse by other boys, and I carried the trauma and scars from those experiences with me for a very long time. I was made to feel worthless and was constantly told things that made me question who I was and whether anyone would ever want me. I was bullied, humiliated and made to feel like I would never achieve anything.

Most of my teachers thought I would achieve nothing in life if I continued struggling at school, and when I reached out to people I thought I could trust, I was often left feeling even more alone. I was Christian, but some of the people who abused me were also involved in church groups and spoke about their faith, which made it incredibly difficult for me to understand how someone could claim to believe in God while treating another person so badly.

I never wanted my family to find out about what was happening, and I was threatened and intimidated so many times that I eventually became afraid to speak up at all. When I did try to report the abuse, I was made to feel as though I was the problem. I was called into the head teacher's office and confronted with people I had accused, and what I had experienced was dismissed as "just boys being boys." I remember hearing people say that high school was supposed to be the best time of your life, and honestly, I couldn't understand how that could possibly be true.

For a couple of years after finishing school, I thought I was getting better, but really, I had just withdrawn from life and pushed everything down. Eventually, all of that pain began to catch up with me. I cried a lot when I was younger, particularly when I was being abused, but I was repeatedly told that it wasn't "manly" to cry. Eventually, I found myself unable to cry at all.

I felt like I had nobody to turn to. My mum would tell me that God was there, but I couldn't feel Him. My family tried to show concern, but whenever I attempted to talk about what I was going through, I often came away feeling like I wasn't doing enough to help myself. I developed unhealthy ways of coping with the loneliness and pain, including becoming dependent on things that temporarily helped me escape from how I was feeling.

I was eventually diagnosed with clinical depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Finding the right treatment took a long time. There were different medications, different dosages, different people to talk to and plenty of moments where I wondered whether anything was ever going to change.

In 2008, after a particularly difficult period, I attempted suicide. I remember feeling like I had failed even more when I survived and woke up in hospital. I spent time receiving medical treatment before being transferred to a mental health unit, where I stayed for a couple of weeks. At the time, I felt ashamed and completely defeated.

But something changed during those years.

I finally started receiving the help I needed. It didn't happen overnight, and recovery certainly wasn't simple, but little by little, I began to understand myself and my experiences differently. I began finding reasons to keep going. My faith became an important part of that journey, and I started to believe that perhaps there really was a future for me beyond everything I had experienced.

The light is there. It's bloody hard to find sometimes, but it is there nonetheless. The feeling of victory can be found if you keep looking for even the smallest glimpse of it. Seek it out with whatever strength you have left. Rise when you fall and keep going.

Don't go down the road I went down if you don't have to. It was a painful road, and although I survived it, the things I experienced left scars that I still carry. But those scars also remind me of where I have been, and they remind me that I made it through.

My recovery didn't erase what happened to me. It didn't suddenly make everything easy. But it gave me the chance to become someone I never thought I could be.

My soul and spirit had felt completely broken for a long time, but eventually I became an entirely different person. I spent years believing that I had lost the ability to feel, to care and even to love. Now, when I hear other people talking about their own pain, I sometimes cry because I genuinely want them to experience the same thing I eventually found: hope.

I want you to know that I care because I know what it feels like to believe nobody understands.

I want you to know that recovery is possible because I once believed it wasn't.

And I want to be living proof that even when there is only a tiny bit of fight left inside you, sometimes that tiny bit is enough to get you through to another day.

I have recovered, but I don't want to forget the person I was. Not because I want to live in those memories, but because I want to remember how far I've come.

Life can be incredibly difficult, but it can also be incredibly sweet.

Keep looking for your light.

Love,
The guy who once lost the ability to love and care