One of my favorite pass times is scrolling through Facebook. This week while I was scrolling through my friends' posts I came across a picture that was very unsettling. The picture read, "My OCD is so bad I rearranged my bookshelf three times." Under the picture was a comment from someone who was actually diagnosed with OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) explaining that what the author of the picture was experiencing was not, in fact, OCD. Her anger was understandable to me, and I on occasion have experienced it myself.

During my freshman year of college I was diagnosed with extreme depression and anxiety. On a day to day basis I hear things from people such as, "I'm so embarrassed I could commit suicide," or, "I'm so nervous for this test I have anxiety about it." Now let me explain why these two statements are so infuriating to me. The first one is poking fun at something that is very serious, and a reality to a lot of people. More people than you know are affected by suicide, in fact according to SAVE.org suicide is the second leading cause of death of people aged fifteen to twenty-four. Think about it, those people had family and friends, people who cared about their existence. The leading cause of suicide, wouldn't you know it, is depression. When you say that you are so embarrassed that you could kill yourself you are shrinking their very real problems down to your ten seconds of embarrassment that no one will remember in 2 weeks. Depression is an illness just like any other. You wouldn't go up to a blind person and say, "oh my god, I saw the most disgusting thing today, it made me wish I was blind." Why wouldn't you say that? Because it is rude, disrespectful, and shows the person with this disability that you don't care about something very hard that they are going through.

Now let's take a look at the second statement, "I'm so nervous for this test I have anxiety about it." While you may be very nervous for this test, I can assure you that you do not have anxiety. You may be anxious, but anxiety and anxiousness are not the same thing. When you have anxiety, you experience something that doesn't go away as soon as you find out that you passed your test. Anxiety comes with the inevitable anxiety attacks, which I can assure you are extremely difficult to endure. Granted anxiety attacks are different for everyone, most come with shortness of breath, a rapid pulse, hot flashes, and vomiting. When you say that you have anxiety due to a test you are saying that the thought of this test is so overwhelming that you go through that. Again, this is shrinking my disease to fit your hour or two of nervousness.

This isn't fair. It is not fair to you or to me. You are free to live your life happily and freely. Unless you are diagnosed with a disease that keeps you from doing so you can go out and do anything you want. So why would you want this? Why would you want my disease? Depression and anxiety keep people from doing things that they love because the chance that it could go wrong is very high. Depression makes the things you love lose their luster, while anxiety makes them a risk to an attack. Why would you want to say that you have that? So please, stop shrinking my illness down to fit your standards. The next time you are about to use my illness as the butt of your joke, think about those that have lost their lives fighting these diseases.