Warning: Minor mentions of self-injurious behavior.

Now, based on the title of this article you may have some misconceptions on what it's about. Typically, the closet is referred to as a “gay thing.” In everyday speech if someone were to say that “so and so came out of the closet,” one would assume that they’ve revealed that they were something else other than straight or cisgendered. The closet I’m talking about is the same one and also not. To me, the closet has a much deeper meaning--one that applies to everyone. The closet is something we struggle with in silence, something that we keep hidden, something that we’re ashamed of. We take that thing and we build a small dark room where we can hide away with it and make sure it never sees the light of day.

The closet can be anything. It could be wanting to tell your partner that you want to break up; it could be admitting to someone that you’re suffering from a mental illness; it could be body shame; it could even be as simple as telling someone that you love them. It doesn’t have to be inherently negative: it’s just something you struggle with. That being said, the closet isn’t necessarily always a terrible thing. What matters is how long you choose to stay in it compounded with just how much you struggle with what’s in it. If you want a divorce and you spend years in that closet, the damage will be greater than if you want to tell Becky from down the street that you like her and spend a few weeks inside. (Although one could argue that this could be just as bad; everyone is different.) Struggling isn’t bad, everyone does it. What’s bad is struggling alone.

When you let yourself struggle alone you only end up hurting yourself more. I get it though, there's a huge stigma around asking for help and sharing our feelings. Our society has placed such value in hard work and "having it together". Unfortunately, that has translated itself into a twisted sense of pride that makes us think that we need to be able to do it all, that it's not okay to not be okay. So we don't tell people when we're struggling. We keep it in our closet and try to deal with it on our own, and it builds up over time. The thing is, everyone has a breaking point, and they're bound to hit it eventually. Why should we have to hit that breaking point before we get help, though? It's time for us to start realizing that our well-being is worth more than our pride and begin to open up the door to others.

Now don't misunderstand me, I’m not writing this because I want to destroy the metaphorical closet. The closet will always be there because people will always have struggles, so that isn’t a very realistic goal. I'm writing this because I want to open the dialogue, to challenge the norms and beliefs that keep people in their closets. I write it in the hopes that someone out there who’s struggling reads it and realizes that they don’t have to do it alone. I write it to encourage people to come out of their closet: to let others know that they’re struggling with depression, that they’ve been cutting, that they want to separate, etc…I write because I see too many people struggling in silence when they don’t need to.

So finally, I’m going to ask this of you: Let at least one person in. Strip your armor and be raw and authentic and tell them your truth. And don’t you dare for one moment apologize for it because your struggles are valid, regardless of how big or small they may seem. I ask you to do this because I firmly believe that the closet is no place to live. It’s dark, scary, and lonely. By staying inside of it, you do yourself the disservice of denying yourself the company of others, the freedom of the open air and the brightness of the sun. You can’t spend every day peering through the slats of a closet door and truly call it a life. A truly good life is achieved by being your true and authentic self and living in the open air among others, sharing and loving life.

Your happiness and well-being are worth too much to stay locked away like that.