How I felt at my lowest

Apologies in advance guys, this isn't really a happy post. Please don't read this if you're likely to get triggered. That being said,  I guess if you want to put a positive spin on it I've been able to come out of the other side of feeling this low?

A lot of people struggle to understand depression if they've not experienced it themselves. I don't want to play into the usual stereotypes of people seeing it as abject misery or sadness, but from speaking to people that's the impression I get regarding how they view it. To me, depression is the absence of all emotions other than terror and dejection. I become incredibly nihilistic and apathetic as I can't see the value in my participation in anything. People who know me well in person will know that I have a tendency to be very all or nothing, and since I didn't feel I could put everything into anything, I started to become withdrawn and distant. I struggled to enjoy anything. I had worked stupidly hard through school to reach university and then I was unable to enjoy my course. Horses have been my passion since I was 8 but all I was able to focus on when I rode was how I would never be good enough. Exercise helped with the depression but at the time I was quite overweight and I couldn't stop comparing my body to other peoples'. Whenever I tried to do anything to make myself feel better, my anxiety got in the way (sometimes leading to panic attacks) and I just ended up spiralling further and further into despair. I felt like my body would never be perfect anyway, so what was so bad about destroying it through bulimia? I'd never be pretty enough anyway, so what did it matter if SH led to scars? What's the point in eating if I can't enjoy my food? 

Despite feeling so low, my general tendency to be a little bit neurotic never left. I was practically unable to get out of bed but I felt so guilty for not achieving goals and so on. I was never satisfied with how much work or exercising or socialising I'd done in a day and would lie awake at night obsessing over what I could have done better. I felt like I was losing control over my life because I was so overwhelmed by depression, so my anxious brain was desperately trying to control academic success and my body. This lead to complete burnout and all I could think about was how much I didn't want to wake up the next morning because I would never be good enough. 

I remember visiting a friend in Edinburgh (the day after I'd had an NHS mental health assessment that was incredibly draining) and she said that you could physically see how unwell I was. I could hardly sleep as I was plagued with intrusive thoughts at night, so I looked grey and exhausted because of that and I had lost a lot of weight in a short period and my hair and skin had suffered as a result. It was like I was there physically, but my mental self had given up. I desperately wanted to enjoy my time there and be good company, but I just couldn't escape from feeling physically heavy because of mental illness. 

The only thing that I felt I was really able to look forward to was death, at least in the infinite nothingness beyond the grave I would not be holding myself to unobtainable standards. If I was dead, I couldn't be a failure. I saw it as the only way out of my situation and started to believe that if I didn't take action on my own life, I would be stuck in a miserable state until my life ended naturally. 

I am so incredibly fortunate that I have friends who encouraged me to seek help. I will eventually write a post about this in more detail but I felt like my days were numbered at that point and I was planning to dispatch of myself in a way that would inconvenience as few people as possible. Charlotte, I know it's unlikely but if you happen to be reading this I can't thank you enough! I took too long to acknowledge how bad I felt and I should have gotten help earlier, please learn from my mistakes. I'm sorry if this didn't make much sense but I had to articulate and process it somehow.