All around the world, there are people who are living their lives with two constant companions: depression and anxiety. For some people, these companions are joined by friends like addiction, an eating disorder, or learning disabilities. Just some quick statistics to put things into perspective for you:
44% of college students report having symptoms of depression.
25% of college students are diagnosed with some form of mental illness.
18% of the adult population in the US suffers from an anxiety disorder.
20.1% of American people aged 18-25 are diagnosed with some sort of mental illness.
Even with the increasing amount of mental illness throughout the country, it continues to be disregarded and invalidated. It is not a visible illness, and therefore is not “real.” But this article is not about my passion for increased mental illness awareness. This is just a letter to anyone who may find themselves included in those statistics above.
We feel like we always have to be strong. We feel like showing just the slightest amount of weakness or vulnerability will automatically allow every single ounce of our pain and suffering to crash through and be released to the rest of the world.
So on those bad days, we use every last bit of energy to pull ourselves out of bed and put on a happy face and get on with our lives. Is this showing strength? Yes, definitely. But it also cannot last forever. We eventually learn that it is impossible to keep up that happy face and strong demeanor 24/7, and the repercussions are much worse than the result of just being honest.
There is nothing wrong with taking those days to just be in your bed. Sometimes you just need to curl up into a ball and cry, or put in your headphones and spend hours immersed in Netflix. Almost every single person around the world has either done this or has deeply wanted to do this at some point in their life, so allow yourself to take the time for yourself. Tell your friends that it’s going to be an anti-social day. Turn off all of your phone notifications and just unplug from whatever the rest of the world is trying to throw at you.
But maybe you need to be on that phone. Maybe you need to call your therapist or your best friend. I text with my mom constantly on my bad days, and my boyfriend has definitely witnessed me spend a full thirty minutes just crying over FaceTime.
If there is anyone out there who thinks that I am weak for needing these days to recuperate, then I envy you. I envy that you have never found yourself in a position of feeling overwhelming pain, and I pray that you never have to experience this. But I also urge you to open your eyes a bit wider and be a little more aware about everything around you. There is a very high chance that someone in your life is included in those statistics above, and I promise you that they would give anything for you to reach out and help them through their pain.
And if you’re reading this and find yourself included in those statistics, I hope they prove to you that you are not alone. If you are a “freak” for wanting to randomly burst into tears, or “sick” for having to take medication, or “messed up” for needing professional help, then there is an unbelievable amount of people that also wear those labels. But none of us deserve these labels. We deserve to be seen as strong, for pulling ourselves out of bed every day. We deserve to be seen as optimistic, for believing that medicine and therapy can help. And we deserve to be seen as equal, for there is nothing that makes us any less worthy than anybody else.
