It’s that girl that sits in the back of the classroom that you never knew was there all semester, that girl that raises her hand in class and turns beat red and flustered after answering the simple question prompted by the professor, the girl you never knew was there that is constantly fighting a battle with her own self. You’re probably thinking to yourself, “Well, I raise my hand all of the time, she raised her hand and got the right answer so why is she embarrassed?” You do not know the amount of effort it took for her to slowly raise that hand. Prior to completing that simple gesture of a hand raise, her mind was stuck on the simple fact to gather the beaten courage to do so, resulting in her missing the entire first portion of the lecture. That constant build up before the simple gesture of a hand raise was an endless battle throughout her mind, constantly talking herself into not doing so.
She sat there all night, through the rise and fall of the dull sun, pondering on the constant workload she had ahead of her, fighting the constant urge to steer her mind in a thousand, shimmering directions. Focused and overwhelmed at endless, inhumane amounts of work, it took her hours to build up the confidence to open the first cover of her textbook. “Hey, did you study at all for the quiz today?” her friends asked her. Well, let’s see. She studied for eight hours the night before and six the night before that but did she really study? It took two hours of her staring at the front cover of her textbook, waiting for it to open itself.
“I heard you called out yesterday, rumor has it that you called out because you had to study. What the hell is wrong with you man, why did you waste your precious sick hours on something so lame?” he sat there in silence as he got bashed for what seemed like something so simple but if they only knew, yesterday I was sick, sicker than they have ever known. I don’t have the sniffles, my nose isn’t running and I’m not coughing up yellow-tinted mucus from my lungs. I did not have a doctors note, I did not get prescribed medication and I didn’t develop a high-grade fever. I was still sick, but not their definition of sick.
From the simplest task to the hardest challenge, The Monster never seems to fail by haunting your existence and lingering behind a constant ache in your frail bones. No matter how much effort is applied to fight the urge of The Monster, he will always be there, lingering over your shoulder and causing you to consciously contemplate every single decision and move you make. Just because you have a monster over your shoulder watching your every move does not mean that they are not your friend. At the end of each draining day, the only friend that has seemed to stay by your side was The Monster because all of the others don’t get it, they do not understand and you can not explain.
We all have Monsters, some come out to play more often than others, that turn to us to help challenge our faults at our lowest moments, causing us to slip further down into a deep depressing state of mind but it’s our job to turn these reoccurring faces into something beautiful; moreover, these monsters are not monsters, they are simply blessings in disguise. They appear at our lowest and drag us down even further but it’s our job to prove them wrong. The beautiful creatures, these sicknesses, become everlasting constant obstacles that we have to plow through every second of our lives, causing major distress. Take time out of your day to talk to your sickness, tell them that you will remain strong no matter how hard they try to pull you down. Conquer the unconquered and do not let your constant fog of being mentally ill get you down, rise above to the best of your ability. Pick up the shattered pieces of glass that your Monster stomped on and piece together an elegant, cracked picture, your future. Not all of the pieces may be there, some may be more brittle and broken than others, but they still create a beautiful picture, a masterpiece of its own. An ill mind is beautiful, but not all minds are ill. Do not prove to them that they are ill, do not reveal your Monster, just make them understand by being better. Being ill, I will, I will, I will get better.
