October 10th was World Mental Health Day.

Normally, this would be a holiday I silently celebrate by reading the stories of inspiring and courageous people from around the world. This year, though, I decided to shake things up a little bit. Now let's not get confused, I am the least inspirational person I know. I do, however, like to think I have a solid ounce of courage running through my blood. That courage - that bravery that I have only recently discovered within myself - is what has driven me to do what I am about to do today: share MY story.

My story is not special or groundbreaking or inspiring. But it's who I am, and I have been taught to hide this part of myself from the world for my entire life. I refuse to continue to be silent and complicit in a society that teaches people to carry their mental illness on their shoulders like a sin, like something to be ashamed of, like a scarlet letter identifying them as an example of disgrace.

I've struggled with mental illness for most of my teenage years. It's impacted my life in some awful ways that I was blind to until this past summer.

During the past few years, I always knew something was wrong with me. I knew it wasn't normal to think or do the things I did, but Society compromised my ability to recognize these behaviors as destructive. Society told me I was being dramatic. Society told me it was “just a phase," I mean those teenage hormones are just wild, right? Society told me that I had a roof over my head, food to eat, clothes on my back, a good education and there could not possibly be anything to complain about when a starving child in Africa has it so much worse.

Society told me to suppress and stay silent. And I listened.

Flash forward to this previous summer. I had finished my freshman year of college and started to reflect on everything I had learned in the past year. I learned that I definitely do NOT want to be a business major, I learned how to wake up at 7:05 and still make it to a 7:10 class, and I learned that the Freshman 15 is a completely unavoidable reality of college that you absolutely cannot escape no matter how hard you try.

But most importantly, I learned that even after a year of living a new life and having a fresh start, I was not evolving as a person. I was going backward. I spent almost all of my time alone and wanted to collapse in on myself anytime I went out in public. The destructive thoughts and behaviors I'd struggled with for years before only got worse.

And eventually, I started to see flaws in the thinking Society had instilled in me: this was not “just a phase." If what I was feeling was supposedly “what every teen goes through," why was I finding it so much harder to cope? If I had a million things to be grateful for, why did I feel so hopeless, empty, insecure, irritable, disconnected, alone, and anxious all the time?

The answer? There is literally sh*t wrong with my brain!

This realization was more like a surfacing of what I had already known. For so many years, I did what we are taught to do with our pain: hide it. When I finally began to reflect on who I had become from doing that, from denying and invalidating my pain instead of healing it, I realized that I didn't like what I saw. Who I saw wasn't healthy, and nothing was going to get better the longer I waited to get help.

So finally, after years...

I got help.

The day I told my parents I needed to see someone to talk about my mental health was the first time in that year when I felt myself move forward. It was a small step, but it has led to some of the biggest changes I have ever experienced, changes that have saved my life.

I always thought that asking for help made you weak, and I'm sure most of you think that way as well. If you can't do something on your own — cook, fill out tax forms, build a piece of IKEA furniture, take care of yourself when you're sick — you'll never be able to survive, right? Society teaches us survival of the fittest, that it's a “dog eat dog world" and if you can't keep up you're going to be someone's meal.

Society tells us all of these things to divide and separate us. It tells us to look and act a certain way because if you don't, you are weak, you are different, and you don't belong with the people who know how to be normal.

According to what I've learned in these past few months, Society is a f*cking liar. Asking for help is the bravest thing I have ever done. I am not weak, because when I have the support of my family, friends, teachers, mentors, doctor, and therapist, I am stronger than I ever could have been on my own.

I recently finished watching "Supergirl" and there's an episode called “Stronger Together" that really resonated with me. Kara Danvers, Supergirl's alias, tells her friend James, “Part of being your own man is knowing when to ask for help." What intrigues me so much about Supergirl is her immediate instinct to accept the help of others. She is an alien but has the most human qualities of compassion, understanding, and humility. Asking for help is not weakness, it is not cowardly, it is not something to be ashamed of. Being able to swallow your pride and invite in the assistance of someone else is one of the noblest things you can do.

No single person can do all of the world's work alone, not even Supergirl. We need each other to support one another and to work towards a better life for ourselves and the people around us. We are stronger together and we are better together.

I am not “fixed." My story is not complete. My mental illness is something I carry with me every day. Most days I still feel incredibly alone and as though no one will ever be able to understand what I feel, because no one ever will. But looking back, I know the weight of what I carry inside me has gotten lighter recently. Asking for help didn't “cure" me, but it's allowed me to be open to my pain, to really feel it rather than run away from it.

That pain can be pretty ugly when it's let out. Mental illnesses aren't pretty, they aren't the godawful romanticized versions of depression that Tumblr likes to create for aesthetic purposes. They are ugly, they are destructive, and they are impossible to understand. They drive people away.

That is why we need World Mental Health Day. Mental illnesses are complicated and messy but the people who suffer from them are still worth loving. We need your unconditional support. We need your support at our lowest moments, not just when it's convenient for you. It's a long and exhausting battle, but it's one we need to fight together because that is when we are our strongest.

So talk about mental health. Support those who need it, whenever they need it. Break the silence, break the stigma.