tl;dr do not bottle depression for 20 years and leave it unaddressed cause it’ll bite you in the ass when you get older
Mental health-speaking, 2026 has so far been a 12-round boxing match between me and me, and I’m afraid that I’ve lost most of the first nine rounds. Round ten just started, and I’m still standing in the fight, somehow.
Leaving Venezuela with my brother in January 2024 marked the end of a six-year-long journey that began a long time ago. That was the “Main Quest” of my life, per se, ever since I made a promise to my mother hours before she passed away.
Our safe —albeit complicated — arrival in Italy marked the end of a journey, yes, but not the end of my own personal struggles with mental health and depression. This is a struggle I’ve fought on my own for over two decades now, and something I never fully addressed through (but should have) because of a myriad of reasons, such as life circumstances, social stigmas, and other shortcomings. I didn’t make it out of Venezuela all too mentally well, that’s for sure, and I’m 100 percent aware of that and very open about it.
Certain types of struggles, such as those related to mental health, were heavily looked down by members of my family — not my mother, I just never wished to bother her with it because she had so much to deal with ever since we moved to the apartment we lived all the way until we left the country. Despite that, the heavy void has been bearable throughout most of the time.
I know I sound like a scratch record, and that I said two years ago that overcoming depression was the next chapter of my story, but I am afraid that despite my best efforts, these past months were some of the most melancholic of my life. I said that my next goals would be to find my purpose in life, a sense of accomplishment, and perhaps, finally happiness, can’t say I’ve managed to attain any of that yet.
This even harder-hitting depression was not caused by a single isolated incident. I believe that carrying the weight of depression so long while dealing with a constant barrage of stress-including issues, family drama, and continued personal failures for so long make me stumble and fall. There’s also other things… like feeling that I’m just good at anything no matter how hard I try that added more gasoline to the fire.
Sword of Vaifen, the main product of years’ worth of loneliness that go all the way back to my childhood, my lifelong escapism, a passion project I deeply hold dear, given form through words? The fact that it seems to have a very mixed reaction from the handful of people that read the most-recent draft so far made me question if I’m even capable of getting published at this point. I’m not a studied man, or handsome, or skillful, so, throughout 2026, I just felt like an imposter that made it out these past years out of sheer cosmic luck.
And that is what happened a few months ago. Maybe all the stress mixed up with a depression already exacerbated by Hashimoto’s is what made me burn and crash down hard.
And then came the regret — the regret for all I missed in life, for all I screwed up like college, and for failing over and over again at attaining fulfillment these past two and a half years.
There was this particular mid-2026 morning. I woke up from the couch I had been sleeping in, went to the bathroom, and I couldn’t even stand to look at myself in the mirror — a 38 year-old man with nothing of worth attached to his name, with no connection or sense of local community, just waking up for the sake of having to work because if I don’t, my brother won’t have food not he table, and my cousin would not be able to afford her studies.
I’ve had to become a sort of father figure for them. They do deserve better, much better than what I can offer them in this regard. But life, in all its cruel twists and turns, left those two with one dead parent, and a deadbeat one. Even so, the fact that they’re stuck with me when I know they deserve better just makes me feel worse.
I was just functioning out of mere inertia and responsibility.
It got to bad that I thought myself incapable of accomplishing anything ever again. Food tasted all the same, I stopped reading, watching movies, and playing video games. I just woke up, did my job, closed my laptop, and got ready to repeat the cycle the next day. Music kinda kept me going, but I definitely saw myself listen to stuff less and less as I got worse.
Prayer, exercising, nothing really seemed to help push the void away. There were moments, very brief ones, where I would feel fine, and actually capable of looking forward to the next day, but then that rapidly vanished on its own hours later.
I hate that I’m stuck in this cycle of trying to escape the void of depression, only to stumble and stare into the abyss once more. I get on my feet, stand up, but then I eventually mess it up one way or the other.
I’ve been trying, believe me, to become more outgoing. I’ve attended local events, helped a little in local relief efforts for Venezuela earthquake victims, but no matter how many times I do it, or how hard I try, I always feel like a stranger and not part of any community. I speak a little more Italian with every passing day, but I lack proper connection to the culture, and I really don’t have anyone around here to speak with besides my brother, who doesn’t speak that much to begin with due to his mental condition. I live in a very small town, with no one really to talk or hang around with.
That too, in a way, feels like a double-edged sword, because the more I get closer to others, the more I realize that I missed and did not experience so much in life from 1999 onwards. This retroactively feeds back into the depression.
I am fully aware that it muse be tiresome to hear me (or read, in this case) sound all mopey every now and then, and honestly I have no right to complain. I don’t have much right now outside of some new material purchases that I got these past two years and which I don’t believe I deserve. Sure, I don’t have a bedroom, or even a proper closet to store my clothes in, but hey, I have a banger PC, I’m not hungry, and I have water 24/7, those are blessings in their own way.
I first brought the matter of depression to the attention of the town’s doctor exactly on January 2, 2026, because it was getting already bad by then. She said it was simply the “mood” and that it’d get better on its own. I tried again in my monthly thyroid checks on February, March, April, and May — by then, I just stopped trying because what was the point.
She finally took my complains about it seriously in mid-September, so we’re trying to tackle it. That’s why I’ve been feeling… I’m not gonna say good, just less worse — less worse enough to stop neglecting my own personal website, for instance. She also got me an order to request a psych visit, but, as of right now, there are no available slots in the nearby public healthcare facilities in the foreseeable future (literally no available dates at all).
Then again, I still don’t speak Italian good enough to maintain a fluid conversation. I’ve looked into private alternatives that can at least speak English (or even better, Spanish), no dice so far.
Right now, I’m trying so damn hard to not stumble and crash into depression as hard as I did this year because what I’ve been trying these past two weeks has sorta worked into helping me stand up, I’m just not quite there yet still. I wanna get back to a creative mindset, see if I can fix Sword, and try again. I also wanna explore other forms of content creation — in short, I wanna do fun stuff again. Streaming maybe? I don’t know, I just wanna hang with people and have fun. My brother, through no fault of his, lives in his own little world, and I can’t burden him every day.
I’ve also made a concerted effort to force myself into enjoying things that I used to enjoy, like reading, movies, and video games. I’ve been forcing myself into reading a book, watch a movie or series at least once per week, and play video games some more.
I know neither of this will fix me, or solve the things that I can’t seem to solve, or undo the depression and burnout that I’ve been carrying with me, but I gotta start somewhere, I guess. At least, as of this moment, the void of depression does not weight as much as it did a month ago.
I’d make up for an interestingly unique case study in mental health, for what it’s worth, if there’s a silver lining to over twenty years of unaddressed mental health woes.
Just don’t make the mistake I did, and bottle it up as you get older, that’s all I can say.
