Last week I posted an article similar to this one. It was 30 minutes inside of my head. I wrote the article to let others with mental illness (specifically, anxiety) know they were not alone on their journey of living with it. When I shared my article with my friends many of them expressed similar feelings of loneliness. I challenged these friends to spend 30 minutes of their time just writing whatever came to their head, in hopes of showing a sense of relatability to those suffering from similar mental illnesses. The following was written by a close friend of mine who prefers not to be named. This friend suffers from depression, and this is what she had to say:

It is 4:30 in the afternoon and I'm still in bed….I should do something with my life… but I'm still too tired to. I feel a too tired to do anything that requires me to think kind of tired, not an I need some sleep kind of tired. My friends are in the corner acting silly like always. They cheer me up, but I feel unimportant in my friend group a lot of times. I feel like if I wasn't apart of the group it wouldn't make any difference. Each one of them brings something in that is unique, but I'm kind of just here going through the motions. I don't even know why I'm thinking about stuff that gets me down when there is so much that could make me happy.

I should really get out of bed… but I don't look good enough. I don't feel good enough about a lot of stuff. I should take better care of myself, but I don't feel worth better. I don't feel like a good person deep down and only good people are worth better. I need to see someone and vent, but it's not fair to anyone to make them hear my problems.

I'm really contemplating about going back to bed and pretending that this day is already over. I feel too sad but I can't say how. It is like everything and nothing is wrong at the same time. I feel numb and in pain at the same time and that does not make sense, but nothing really makes sense. My heart is heavy about everything, but I don't know exactly what. I have some excuses in the back of my head, but they don't feel valid to me. Why am I still going on about how I feel? I used too many sentences on that…

I'm going to just get up. I have no reason to lay in bed…I wish I had an excuse to. I'll try and do what others say and fake it till I make it. I'll just look at myself and say I'm ok and put on a front. It works sometimes, I think.

My friends are still acting silly and even though I'm a bit sad that makes me happy, so I think I can go on another day.