When I was 13 years old, I experienced my first panic attack. I remember my chest closing up, head spinning, heart pounding so fast it surely would bust out of my chest any minute. I thought I was going crazy. Schizophrenia? Paranoia? I didn't know what to do. “I can't tell anyone about this,” I thought. Who would listen? Who would understand? Who would care?
I was deep into my depression at this point. My father’s alcoholism consuming me, brainwashing me. It was all my fault, why didn't he love me? Now all of a sudden I was dealing with this crippling anxiety. I felt dead and alive all at once. I wanted to do absolutely nothing but also everything. I was in a rush to do just about anything while putting off life until the last minute. Then it happened again. My dad and I got in a fight, he was drunk, of course. I closed my bedroom door and -there it was- those same feelings. I wanted it to stop, for time to just freeze and let me breathe, even for just a moment.
I grabbed my scissors, lifted up my shirt and started cutting. “If I cut enough, the pain will go away,” my mind screaming as if someone could really hear me. No one could hear me. I was screaming from the inside and couldn't find a way out.
In the next three years, I learned that my depression had nothing to do with anyone else. I had my own demons to deal with. I stopped putting my happiness in everyone else's hands and I learned that it was up to me. In those three years, I also learned quickly about the stigma attached to mental illness. People had a lot of harsh opinions to give me about the fact that I took many different medications and that there were certain things I couldn’t do due to my anxiety. I still had a lot to learn.
Recently, I've watched mental illness become some sort of label people decide to attach to themselves. All too often I see the tumblr pages or Instagram feeds of girls who take half naked photos in lingerie from Victoria’s Secret. They smoke cigarettes and show the scars on their wrists and thighs from where a blade has met their skin one too many times. They post daily “artsy” captions like, “Sweet little baby in a world full of pain.” The comments on their posts consist of support from thousands of total strangers. Suddenly it's glamorous to be in constant mental agony.
It's okay if we make it look beautiful, right?
