Depression, burnout, and the journey ahead

Depression is something I’ve had to fight against ever since my late teenage years. Sometimes it’s been bearable, but sometimes It’s been nearly suffocating. Suffice to say, the past years of my life were highly marked by it. Having failed so much at a personal level, having failed to save my mom, Venezuela, all those years of failures at trying to get my brother out, it all did a number on my mental health, and I’m still paying the price for it.

Its always been hard to me to deal with this because I don’t really have anyone to talk this with, not even with members of my family, who don’t even believe in such concepts — hell, I’ve touched the subject with my dad and he just tells me to “don’t be sad.”

But depression itself is not the problem, per se, but rather, my strained mental health is the coalesced result of a series of underlying and long unaddressed personal woes, such as my weight, my rather lonely life, not having really “lived” at all, and my lack of self worth and feelings of worthlessness after failing college, not quite feeling like I’ve done much with my life.

I’m still regrettably beating myself up for not having had the means of finding Pazopanib tablets, the one thing that could’ve saved my mom…had I studied and applied myself better in my youth I could’ve perhaps had a career, and the means to get her out of Venezuela before her cancer started and the over one year of misdiagnosis that didn’t helped either…

While I wasn’t able to defeat depression these past years, I was able to, in a way, contain it because no matter what, I have to function and take care of my brother. I have to get out of bed, work, cook, and make sure he is ok. That hasn’t changed, and God as my witness, I still try my best at that, I can still flawlessly do my job no matter how miserable I feel for some reason.

Another approach that I used to avail myself in order to stave off depression was to focus on helping others and making people happy, even with small things like dealing with internet connectivity issues, repairing stuff, or what have you. I’ve always ended up with some sense of fulfillment here and there from seeing others have a good day as a result of my actions, memes, or through my limited abilities and knowledge.

In recent days, however, I’ve had some very bad days, and I’ve been slingshotting in and out of depression without that “balance” that allowed me to forestall it.

I don’t particularly know why I’ve been feeling so bad lately, as things have finally started to reach a point of stability here in Italy — but perhaps that’s why, as I’m finally in a spot where I can “let my guard down” and well, the mind’s floodgates were inadvertently unleashed, leading to some very loud intrusive thoughts and heavy sense of regrets nurtured by nearly two decades of failures.

This sort of “slingshot” cycles of depression, which can last for days, began towards the end of 2023, and I thought they had been “gone,” but I now see that my mind has simply been biding its time for the right moment.

Even though the journey out of Venezuela is over, there is still much for me to do. I have to help my brother figure out what he wants to do in this life, be it studying or learning something or what have you. I have to finish my novel, find a way to work towards a better housing solution and ways for me to have more income so I can keep giving my brother a better life and support my cousin’s nursing studies, learn Italian, and find my own happiness, among other, no less important goals.

I know most people travel to Italy or Europe to visit its historic landmarks and cities, but I’m still not in a position where I can do that, even though my last vacation was back in 1999.

Every day that I don’t achieve something that puts me at least an inch closer to my goals feels like a failed day to me now for some reason, maybe it’s just the lingering sense of failure of the past six years, I don’t know.

Paradoxically, as things have become more stable in Italy, I’ve lost my focus and slingshotted to some mental rock bottoms in recent days. I tried my best to mask it all so my brother doesn’t worry, but I failed at that too I’m afraid.

He got upset at me at the fact I don’t tell him these things, and I tried my best to explain that it’s just my way to protect him — who, due to his mental condition, sports the innocent naivety of a child — from worrying. In a way, he understood it, and became more comprehensive, and even more talkative since then. His recent birthday was, at last, the first one he had outside of Venezuela, something I had been working so hard to achieve for the past six years.

This depression, which I’m trying to fight off once and for all, has left me with some severe burnout. I was always running with the assumption that these past years did a number on me, and that I’d be arriving in Italy at a diminished mental state — I just seem to have grossly underestimated how bad it was, and how much of a number everything, including my regrets and personal failures, has done to my well being — and how much just bottling things up has backfired on me.

In recent days I’ve found myself with like, no drive left, unable to focus on anything that’s not my work, taking care of my brother, and other inherent responsibilities. I know exactly what I want to do to finish my novel, but I have no fire in me right now. I haven’t been able to enjoy reading anything, playing anything, watching anything, no music, or any leisure activity. Afternoon walks don’t even feel enticing anymore.

I’ve found myself dreading to go to bed again, as every night I dream of things that make me feel bad once I realize I’m in a dream, making me wake up even more miserable, such as my mom being alive…

Hell, I even started to doubt if “doing the right thing” throughout my life was even worth it at all. In all honesty, it is rather disheartening that I know several cases of people who’ve consistently lied, cheated, stole public funds, abused others, left women pregnant and then deny the child, commit immigration fraud, etc and yet they all ended up with cozy jobs in the United States and other countries — like some sort of life reward for being a piece of shit throughout their lives.

I realized just how bad this depression and burnout was last week when there was a fair in the town and I just couldn’t find a way to enjoy anything, and I aimlessly drifted walking from stall to stall. I got my brother a nice chocolate sort of pie (forgot its name in Italian), but that’s about it.

After another bad day shortly after the fair, which made my brother feel bad as a result, I apologized to him and told him I’ll make a concerted effort to find a way to heal my mind, as without taking that step, I feel like I won’t be able to achieve any of my goals. So this past week I took an approach where I stopped caring about family drama, did my best to not feel bad if I didn’t achieve any of my goals throughout the day, and forced myself to try new video games.