What If They're Already Doing the Work?

What if they're already doing the work? What if they were always doing the work? There is a myth with mental illness that if you just try hard enough then you'll get a good outcome. We are told that if you talk about your pain enough, take just the right drug combo (and you're expected to keep trying new ones no matter how horrific the side effects), and "work on yourself", that there will be some special moment when you are now happy and want to live. And if these things don't work for you, it's now your fault, your lack of effort, "if you weren't so negative...".
8 years since Anthony Bourdain committed suicide. Successful, adored, good looking....yet the darkness never left. "...he continued to struggle with his mental health. He often brought up death, wondering out loud how he would die and how he would kill himself if he decided to end his own life." I can't claim any special knowledge as to how our brains work, and can only speak to my own experience, but I wonder if for some of us there is a wire that just doesn't fire up correctly. I frequently hear an expected recovery arc where people think: - Hit rock bottom - Seek help - "Do the work" - Get better - Become grateful for the experience - Be hopeful, be inspirational, and tell us you learned a fucking lesson - Cue uplifting music and credits The recovery-arc mindset often has no place for the complexity that comes with a damaged and broken mind. It wants before-and-after photos. It wants transformation. It wants closure. People who are mentally and emotionally suffering, and have shared what is happening, are expected to perform progress. I realize while writing this, and feeling angry and punchy, that what I'm feeling is the surface. At the core is the terror that I never get "better". That I'll always that annoying and exasperating sad Eeoyre friend. (I know I'm a nightmare to be around. I hate people that whine and cry all the time. Yet that's me.) That the darkness will come back with a vengeance. That everyone will leave me. 
There it is; if I can't conquer my mental health then I'll be abandoned. I'll be unwanted. And shit...I don't want me. Yet that hasn't been what's happened. I have been shown so much kindness, love, and support that it overwhelms me to my core. It terrifies me as I don't know that I'll ever be able to pay it back (and I hate feeling I owe someone). I have to have drivers taking 3-4 hours of their day to haul my ketamine snorting ass around. I cry and whine and moan over the same things incessantly. I look at it all and think "Who would ever want you in any way at all?" I finally told my youngest brother today. We were estranged for a time and working to get our relationship back as we were very close. I feared telling him. He met me with kindness and understanding. After our call he sent me this text "Good luck! Having been single for the majority of my adult life, I know it can feel like you're all alone. You're not though and very loved." I think it's the first time he said he loved me. But I'm "doing the work". I feel so much shame when the sadness and dark thoughts come back, as they still do. I feel I should be farther along, and fear I just won't make it. I live in fear every day of my life as to what's going to happen to me. I'm trying though. I'm trying so hard to stay alive.