Living with depression

Every single day, I wake up and wish that I hadn't.  

The times in my life where I could say I have been happy have been few and far between. I've never found dealing with my problems easy. I don't think anyone would deny they'd find the life I've lived quite traumatic, but it is my inability to move forwards and rebuild my life that frustrates me so much. Yet depression is a part of my life that most people did not know about until recently. Instead I'd assume people would think of me as the life and soul of the party.      

After spending much of my life feeling lost and sad, 2015 was the year things changed. I left my abusive boyfriend of 6 years, moved back to Basingstoke to be with my friends and family and graduated university, despite my mental health threatening my ability to complete the course constantly. Then I went for a drink with a friend one day and ended up falling in love with him. Even in this year of happiness, I was not cured. I'd still spend nights alone crying in bed for no reason but it was rare and it was bearable. I could still find joy in my friends and my new boyfriend. At midnight on 1st January he text me "love you" and I cried because I was so happy.

Despite being in this happy bubble, January 2016 also brought with it my old friend anxiety. Anxiety is shit. It turns me from a confident, outgoing girl in to a woman who would rather not eat for a day than go to the supermarket.  

My boyfriend and I broke up a few months later and I have no problem with admitting I was completely heartbroken. The things that he said during that break up hurt so badly. I can't even put it in to words. He said I was never anything serious, that he couldn't love me and that I wasn't wife or mother material.   I feel stupid for falling so deeply in love with someone who could have taken or leaven me for the entire time we were together. The things he said paired with the loneliness of losing him and my already fragile emotional state tipped me over the edge.   

Since then my depression has been dehabilitating. My mind now has even more memories to taunt me with and more hurtful conversations to repeat on loop.   

I see a lot in the news about people who have recovered from depression but not how it feels to try to keep living when it is weighing you down, so here goes...
I am on anti depressants, I have lost my job, I have been signed off work indefinitely, I sleep for days on end, I alienate people who love me, I don't look after myself, I constantly feel like I'm letting everyone down, I feel like people are my friends out of pity, I feel guilty for not going out when I've been invited, I feel guilty for going and then being an anxious mess and ruining everyone's night, I cry for no reason, I cry because I hate myself, I cry because I'm stuck here, I regularly think about suicide, I have used up all the counselling available to me on the NHS, I don't get excited about anything, and the list goes on.   

The hardest thing in all this is hurting the people I love. They desperately want me to get better and I can't do it for them. They will say "just try a bit harder" but what does that even mean? Where do I even start? I've fucked up my life so monumentously that I don't think there is any coming back, I just have to endure it.  

Gradually, the number or people who love me will become smaller and smaller. I'm torn between never wanting to lose these people and wanting them to be free of me and the added pressure I put on their lives.  

Essentially, if I live I make them sad and if I die I make them sad. And all the while I know I will be sad forever. I will exist but not live and maybe that's just the curse that falls on some people.