I’m sick all the time. I don’t have the flu, I don’t have a cold. My allergies aren’t even acting up. But I am sick; very sick.
But my illness does not manifest in the ways you would think. I have no outward symptoms, at least none that people actually notice. There is no cough, no sniffles, no throwing up my attempt to eat chicken noodle soup. No, my illness is invisible because it thrives inside my head. But unlike the flu or a cold, or heart wrenching diseases like cancer, people do not apologize when I fall ill to my own disease, because people do not take it seriously.
I have been diagnosed with severe depression and suffer from awful anxiety and yet, when people find this out they so often tell me to ‘suck it up.’ There have been countless times when I express to people that even though I do not know why myself, I am struggling and they simply instruct me to toughen up. Or exercise more. And while I understand dietary and lifestyle can be used to help counter depression, that does not change the fact that there is a chemical imbalance in my brain that makes my mind work differently.
When someone gets sick, even with just a cold, people send warm wishes and hope they get better. When you walk into work with a cough and a fever your boss might send you home and tell you not to return until you’re well. Someone might bring you soup and watch your favorite movie with you to help get your mind of how cruddy you’re feeling. When it comes to physical illness, people want you to take care of yourself and properly recover before leaping back into your daily life. But that’s not the case with mental illness. And on the days where my mind is fighting itself so hard that I physically cannot bring myself to get out of bed, no one tells me to stay home and take care of myself. They say that’s life and you have to deal with it.
But this is not a life I chose. No one wakes up one morning and decides they want to be horribly depressed and anxious. No one chooses to wrestle with their own mind, constantly doubting themselves and others around them because deep down you know you’re overthinking or overanalyzing- but there’s a little voice in the back of your head saying maybe you’re not thinking enough. No one wants to have such a fear of failing that they simply don’t try, only to have their anxiety come back and haunt them for not being more outgoing, more normal. Nobody wants to feel like the small task of brushing your hair and putting on clothes is a sentence to spend your day in a zombie like state, trying to act as if you’re okay when on the inside you can’t even fathom why you’re still on this planet. Just like no one wakes up one morning excited to have pneumonia, no one wakes up thrilled to spend another day at war with their mind.
For people who do not suffer from mental illness, it sometimes seems difficult to understand how your brain can mess with you so much. But instead of trying to delve deeper, ask questions and sympathize, people brush it off and assume you’re just being weak. They think you’ll never be able to handle the real world if you get so worked up over the small things. But as someone who has heard that time and time again, I just want to scream. Obviously I hate that things other people consider normal and simple seem so daunting and huge to me. But if you have not lived day in and out fighting the only person you should have complete control over (yourself), then do not speak down to those who struggle with their own mind being poisoned.
On average there are 117 suicides per day and over 42,000 per year. Let’s start treating mental and physical illness the same way. Let’s get people the help they need a deserve, because there are so many lovely people out there who should not feel guilty for their brains chemical flaws.
Please remember to be kind to one another. It’s cliche but you never know what someone is going through and any opportunity to be a light in this increasingly dark world is always worth taking.
