I don't know if what I'm going to write about belongs in this thread but I guess I'll go ahead anyway, opinions or thoughts might help me out.
I've always been sort of cynical in my thoughts and future outlooks, but I don't think I've experienced actual depression until now. Warning, incoming block of text.
Recently, I was hospital bound, and was told I might have Multiple Sclerosis. An autoimmune disease that affects your central nervous system aka the brain and spine. In case I do have it, there can be mild symptoms from sensory ones to complete full body paralysis in it's worst case. I'm told I have an 80% chance of developing this, since I've had a first attack of it. But for an official diagnosis, doctors need two separate attacks. Now this supposed second attack can happen at any point in the rest of my life, maybe tomorrow, next week, next month, in a year, 5 years, 10? or it might not even happen at all. I do suffer from anxiety since before this, and this just made it way worse. I'm that type of person who likes to plan things or at least have an idea of what I'm going to be doing when.
This diagnosis also developed a horde of feelings I never knew were stirring up inside until this event opened my eyes. For the last 2-3 years, I slowly started giving up on a normal life. During 2015 I struggled with my college, and ultimately failed, I was suspended and was miserable. I lost interest in life, felt like I was a complete failure, that I didn't deserve anything because it was entirely my fault. I was very upset, wish I died in a car accident everytime I drove. I also stared to develop a long list of medical issues. Barely able to eat anything, lost lots of weight, constant heartburn, stomach aches, random body pains, facial pain etc A year passed, and I started college again with a super serious attitude to finish properly this time around, I had laser focus despite of minor bouts of illness. Then came 2016, my father suffered a spinal stroke and I thought I was going to lose him. My father is a pediatrician, and he suffers from COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder). He has other issues as well like he's had a couple of heartattacks, asthma, muscle wasting etc. But this stroke was by far the worst thing he has ever suffered, since then, he lost his ability to walk, and that's where it all went downhill for me. I never trust other doctors, therefore I started to read anything and everything I can to help diagnose dad at the time, since no one was sure it was a stroke. I tried to make sense of things that weren't my job to make sense of, but I guess stress makes you do desperate things.
Once he was home, I started to feel bad for him. He was in a bad emotional state at that time since he has lots of pride and preferred death over getting paralyzed waist down. I sort of felt like it was my responsibility to get him through it. I tried to do anything and everything for him, whether it was emotional, mental, or physical help. I slowly realized all I did was go to college, then get back and take care of him, I had no life. Despite the fact that our government provides home-care nurses around the clock for free, and my mom looked after him all the time too. Whenever I would go out for fun or do things for myself, I felt a bit guilty, knowing he's suffering and that I should go and try to cheer him up instead. I would spend hours of my free time talking to him trying to make him forget his new reality. It got worse slowly, when I would go out, he'd start calling me asking me where I am or to get him certain medications. It got worse after and he'd expect me to not go out and instead spend hours talking to him so he could feel better. He would constantly say that he doesn't have much time to live so might as well talk to him as much as i could. I don't think he realized how much his words affected me because I would listen to stuff like that and not sleep, constantly thinking about it. He started to guilt me into spending every waking hour of my life with him, doing errands for him, getting meds for him, taking him to his appointments, be his source of happiness. It drained me mentally, but I entered a trance like state, of agreeing to whatever he said out of my own feelings of guilt, stopped going out because nothing was interesting or worth going out for. My mom suffered the same situation and told me that if we don't suffer for him who will, that's what family is for.
Dad would sometimes be very sick and tell me to be around in case he needs to go to the ER, or to stay outside his room just in case he needs anything. This became almost daily, and when I tried to resist it, I was told you can't even stick around and do that much for a parent? I started to get terrible anxiety when I'd go out, thinking I should probably go home because something will go wrong. I was unable to have fun or even stay out for more than 2-3 hours on a weekend. All I did was college, house errands and being around just in case. Whenever my mind fought my own trance like behavior, my guilt of "not doing enough" would eat me up and I didn't stop. I cut off friends, I shutdown emotionally, and dad's constant hospitalizations made me feel like this is it he's going to die this time around. My family also expects each other to adjust their schedules to handle dad being in the hospital, aka someone should be with him at all times. Since me and me younger sister were in college, my older siblings worked. We'd spend the majority of our time in the hospital room. That in itself was depressing, it would be upto 9 hours a day at a time, stuck in a room.
I slowly became the go to option for my family to dump errands and responsibilities on. I never said no, I never said it's too much stress for me to handle everything, that my college hours+internship wasn't easy. I was always told "If you won't do it then who will, no one has the time, but you do". I started believing that and guilted myself into everything. Until two months ago, half my face went numb, and even then I was like no this is nothing, others are in a much worse condition. Then I was hospitalized myself and told stress triggered this autoimmune reaction and formed a lesion in my brain. That to me wasn't the worst thing in the world, the worst feeling was when I came home from the hospital after two weeks, and realized what was I soo eager to come back to. I have no life to come back to. All I did was be a student, care-taker and driver for my own family. Nothing of my own, I had recently graduated and yet felt no happiness, had no aims, no goals, no excitement for the future. That's when I started getting intense feelings of giving up. The fact that MS will eventually make me end up in a wheelchair very soon, that I won't be normal, that I won't be able to do alot of physical activities soo early on in life. I had no reason to live besides the fact that my religion forbids me to commit suicide.
I've been struggling to accept what my life has become, and that others around me cannot get the feelings that I'm going through. To them if I'm not crying, fighting, visibly depressed and look fine, I'm fine, which is far from the truth. I've been trying to find good therapists, but have heard most of them are super expensive here and don't help much. But yeah, I thought sharing here might help me understand these issues better.