The reason I can't stop

Sometimes I remember that this happy facade I put up for everyone else is fake. I convince myself that I'm doing it for them, because it would make them sad to know how often I think about ending it all. However, I know that its really for me. I know that the real reason I do it is because I can't face it. That endless abyss that feels like thousands of chains piercing my heart pulling me down with each step making me question why I continue to fight it. At least when I'm faking the happiness for a little while I can believe it's real. I've began to wonder if this is why I cant sustain relationships or even begin them anymore. Is there some sort of intuition people have that tells them how broken I am on the inside and warns them to stay away? The more I think about it the deeper the abyss feels. I've always known about my struggle with depression, even as I push it away with a smile and a joke. Like my shadow it clings to me rearing its ugly head at every moment my mind wanders. It sucks me in, suffocating, weighing down my chest with short breaths. People often ask how I'm able to have such a hectic schedule, why I'm constantly filling my days with things to do. I tell them its because I'm working hard for my future. In a sense that's true, but even that is smoke and mirrors. The truth is I cant allow myself time to stop and think. I have to keep my mind occupied or else the depression will sink its teeth into me like a bloodthirsty shark tearing apart my will to live. I feel like a hamster running on treadmill that suspended above an abyss. The second I stop running, falling no longer having the will to rise back out. My previous suicide attempts fresh in my mind wondering if I made the right decision putting the knife away or unwrapping the belt from my neck. The thought of the blood running down the drain and an all enveloping darkness is almost comforting. Would I still be suffering this agony if I just had the courage back then? By now my family and friends would have moved on. Would there lives be better now? I've always thought that when I find someone to love who loves me back that these chains weighing me down would be broken, freeing my mind from teetering on the edge of this precipice. I'm not so sure anymore. It seems I'm too broken. Who would want to love someone whose soul is like a shattered mirror, even if you put the pieces back together it would on reflect a fractured world. A fractured soul constantly running in an effort to escape an abyss that feels never ending. So futile.

thanks for support @done

I struggled with depression since I was 16, I always feared medical help because my writting would go away. I used to harm myself, and imagine all sorts of scenarios of me dying or killing myself. Falling down could go on for months after little things had put me down for some reason, I also missed someone I loved and kept living in the past, blaming myself that no one would want me. I had to give in, in regards to medical help, my anxiety got so bad I could not live with it anymore, I couldn't do anything on my own, neither could I do things I liked such as listening to music because it exhacerbated the anxiety. Lexapro made the feeling of going down a spiral go away, but I had to give a lot of my writting inspiration in exchange. Things have changed in my life, I got the oportunity to be in a different culture and I learnt that there is many people who would love you, not only one whom you got attached to in the past. Of course I still get depressed from time to time, but I still want to see many things. :)