Before reading this, this is a warning that this may be triggering to people who have depression or thoughts of suicide.
People always tell me that I'm a fighter. People say that I'm the strongest person they know. People tell me that I have a bubbly personality. People always say that I'm a ball of sunshine. And people say that I have always been a mom figure to them.
But I have been tired, exhausted, and fatigued.
Over the past years, I had to hide who I am for the purpose of the stigmatism within the Korean community. I was afraid of the look of disappointment from my mom-- the disappointment when she blames herself for raising me the wrong way. The self-blame that I can see while her eyes swell with water is the most painful sight to see, and if I had to see it one more time, it would break my heart.
However, there has been a chunk of time in my life that I have been suffering with depression, and the thoughts of suicide has been this comfort thought process that cycles, no matter how much I want it to stop, and no matter how much I want to live. I never spoke about it to anyone until a couple years ago because the lowest of lows in my life finally hit me. I finally had enough energy and enough effort to attempt, and I never wanted to go down that path again.
When I told my mom, she blamed herself. The pain in her eyes made me want to cry, I felt so much fault and blame because it wasn't something she could fix. She didn't raise a crazy child. She was a wonderful mother, that single handedly raised my brothers and I. And the pain is still in her eyes because of the cultural stigma.
People in Korea do not believe in mental health as a illness; Koreans view mental illness as a thought process from the mind and heart, and that it can be fixed with a new mindset. Therapy and counseling isn't a way of helping, but a way of not getting hired because Koreans' first thought is that it will be on your record, so it can create a disturbance to people.
The cultural stigma hurt me, and my family in a lot of ways, and I wish that it didn't exist because otherwise, I am known as the "crazy child" that was raised wrong by her mother.
