Someone once told me that having a mental illness was “the cool thing now”. They said that everyone blamed their issues on mental illness, and it seemed like a scapegoat. Because I have always found my inability to go into a Walmart without feeling like my lungs are going to collapse really cool. Even though mental illness is more present in societal discussion these days, that doesn’t mean it’s being discussed in the right way.

I have mild depression and generalized anxiety disorder. It’s really awful, sometimes painful, and inconvenient always. Some days my anxiety eats and eats at me until my whole body itches and I have to dig my nails into my palm to feel anything other than the need to crawl out of my own skin.

There are days when I cannot go through a drive through to order food. I once stuttered through an order at Taco Bell and I couldn’t breathe the entire trip home. I wasn’t able to go through a drive through again for two months. Some days I can’t stop and get household essentials because my brain won’t click off enough for me to go into a busy store and grab a thing of milk. I rely so much on my fiancé to take care of the things my brain won’t allow me to do – and it’s ridiculous.

The state of my house is a constant battle between my anxiety not being able to take the mess and my depression saying “yeah you’re not cleaning today”. This eventually turns into me staying up until 3 or 4 in the morning cleaning because I won’t be able to sleep if my house is a mess and depression really doesn’t care about the amount of sleep you’re getting, whether it be too much or too little. Having a kid makes everything better and worse at the same time.

I have a reason to get out of bed every morning – and that’s amazing – because even when leaving my bed is the last thing I want to do I have to force myself to get up. But still, there are days when I pray that my daughter just wants to watch cartoons because it’ll take everything inside of me if she wants to play monsters or pretend.

I have to divvy up parts of myself to last her the week. This doesn’t just apply to her. I constantly feel like I have to shell out parts of myself to my friends, my fiancé, my family, and my coworkers. Sometimes I feel like there’s not enough of myself left to do anything with.

My anxiety tells me I’m not doing enough and my depression tells me I’m doing too much and somewhere in the middle is where I should probably be. My mental illnesses do not make my life miserable. This is a stereotype of the disease. We equate depression with sadness and that’s not accurate. Even on my happy days I still have depression.

So mental illness is not a cool thing, it’s not fun; it’s not something we want to deal with. But it’s real and it affects more people than we probably realize. Mental illness is being talked about more because the stigmas surrounding it are being broken down and honestly that process needs to happen faster. I thought I had something seriously wrong with me until I found out there were others like me.

Representation and familiarity is important in understanding and diagnosing mental illness. So I hope more than anything that discussing mental illness becomes the cool thing. I hope we stop thinking people with mental illnesses are only seeking attention. We want attention brought to the issue of mental illness not to ourselves.