*Disclaimer* This is not meant to turn anyone away from seeking helping if they need it or to make anyone feel ashamed for their own mental health issues. It's only meant to reveal social stigmas.
So for those who don’t read all of my articles, I have diagnosed depression, rather severe social anxiety, and OCD. I’ve been going to therapy since June of 2015, and have been on medication since November of 2015. I have scars from cutting up my entire right forearm and the occasional scar on my left wrist (I’m left handed). I also have scars on my thighs that I am in the process of getting covered up by tattoos, but the ones on my forearms are most likely going to be there my entire life. To other people, they’re most likely not noticeable, but to me, sometimes they’re all I see. I started cutting when I was in middle school, but I have not even picked up a blade since February of 2016, which to those who have never self-harmed or had any addictions, might not seem like a long time, but for me is practically a lifetime. It is the longest I’ve ever stayed clean.
Now to the part where I wish I never opened up. I started getting depressed when I was in 4th grade, and didn’t start seeking treatment until after I graduated high school. I went 8 years hurting silently, letting it build up over the years, hiding my cuts, until late junior year when I started taking as many pills as I could to just barely OD every couple months. Enough for me to feel it, to give me the jitters right before it knocks me out; knowing I’ll wake up in several hours puking, but knowing I’ll have those couple hours without pain; never enough to actually kill me though. No one knew. Not my parents, siblings, my closest friends knew a bit but I don’t think they knew how bad it really was until later.
It took an old boyfriend of mine telling my mom for me to get help. And now I wish I could go back, erase all the progress I have made to go back to the way things were. I would rather go back to that state of barely living, of hurting, just to go back to the way people looked at me. I have only been in therapy for a year and a half and my therapist is so proud of my progress that we’re in the process of completing my treatment plan, spacing out how often I see her further and further, unless something happens that I really need to see her. It’s been almost a year since I last self-harmed, and lord knows how long since my last mental breakdown. (I had an episode of very deep sadness earlier in the semester, but nowhere near close to a breakdown). It is a very real disease that I am fighting and beating, but it doesn’t seem to matter.
I still get treated and looked at like I did when I was at my lowest point. I’m still seen by many people as being “crazy” (news flash, clinical depression does not make someone crazy. I don’t hear voices, I don’t ever want to hurt anyone, quite the opposite, I just feel rather extreme medley of sadness, loneliness, and emptiness, to the point where I question where there is beauty and joy is living. Once you lose that you’ll soon find that you question what the point of living at all is). My pseudosuicide attempts were never these great emotional things, fighting the sadness was. Trying to convince myself of the wonderful aspects of life when I just couldn’t see them, trying to force myself to believe all of these things my heart could feel.
That was when I broke down, wondering what was wrong with me; why others could always be so seemingly comfortable and happy all the time and I was constantly nervous around people, never knowing how to act, what to say, swaying between sadness and emptiness (though let’s be honest, I’m still a nervous wreck even around fairly good friends, which does seem to make other people rather uncomfortable around me, which only makes the cycle worse. Social anxiety is a b*tch, and not one I know how to or if I even can get over).
But no matter how healthy I become mentally and emotionally there is no congratulations, no being treated as if I’m getting better, just continued judgement. And sure everyone seems to be a fighter against stigmas against mental health, until they actually meet someone with a mental health problem worse than minor general anxiety. It is something romanticized until people see how ugly and abnormal it is. Those same people fighting in the name of mental health I find are some of the ones throwing the first stones at people with illnesses severe enough to be hospitalized, the first ones to blame someone for not getting help the “right way” and being all fixed up fast enough, and the last ones to see/recognize that someone has an illness they can’t really help, only learn how to manage and cope in healthier ways. It is the double standard that hurts worse than anything.
Sharing a cutesy Facebook post about depression isn’t helping anyone, and you’re most likely just perpetuating this romanticism of mental illness leading to more stigmas. And sure, I’m supposed to be getting help for my sake, but it is honestly more for my loved ones. If I end up killing myself, there is no more pain for me; it may keep things from getting better, but it sure as hell prevents it from getting any worse. No, I get help so that I don’t pass that same pain I feel onto my family and close friends; but when there is no recognition of my process it honestly feels like I’m doing the work for nothing even if I know that’s not true (and by recognition I just mean someone acknowledging the fact that I seem healthier or happier or anything along those lines).
Now I do it more for my writing and other works. I’ve posted videos about my mental health and I wrote for the Odyssey last year about mental health and I was contacted by so many different people from so many different places and organizations. One of my articles reached a girl in Alaska (I’m located in New York) who decided to find me on Facebook and thanked me for my article. I’ve gotten asked if some of my projects could be used in presentations for mental health associations, included in books, even asked by teachers if they can be shown in their classrooms. As much as I would like to go back to a time before I opened up about my depression, I can’t, so I might as well do what I can to make sure other people don’t feel alone in their mental illnesses, to rech as many people as I can, and create a world in which people don’t have to regret opening up about mental illness. You wouldn’t feel ashamed or have a deep regret for telling people if you had asthma or allergies, so why do we treat physical illnesses of the brain any different? You can’t control your allergies any more than I can control my neurotransmitters, all we can do is take medication if something goes wrong and avoid what causes us harm. I promise I won’t make fun of your pet dander allergy if you stop perpetuating stigmas against my neurotransmitter (dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrin, etc) levels.
