"I'm just tired," my friends say all too often even when I know they've had enough sleep. I didn't realize "tired" is code for depression until I too began waking up incredibly tired. Suddenly, sleeping until one in the afternoon became common and my will to make plans with friends waned into oblivion. Every time I was asked, "what's wrong?" the only word I could conjure to describe my feeling of utter uselessness was being "tired." Many college students echo the same words with weary, red eyes, too afraid to say the real words: anxiety, stress, and depression because society has cultivated a stigma against such words and instead has encouraged fake reassurances of "I'm just tired."

I remember the first time I experienced an anxiety attack: junior year of high school, in the cafeteria bathroom. I remember feeling the control slip from my body starting in my fingertips and slipping down to my feet until it felt as if all control oozed onto the floor, so I did as well. I remember the panic and the intense feeling of helplessness. I remember whispering help because I couldn't speak louder than a whisper. I remember the room getting darker, and then I remember nothing until I walked outside of the bathroom, many of my peers huddled by the door whispering, but one whisper resounded the loudest in my ears: "How over-dramatic." I learned that day something every person who struggles with anxiety learns-- no one cares. Hiding my anxiety became my master trade for the remainder of high school until I found myself close enough to someone who I couldn't hide my anxiety from, mostly because he refused to let me hide it in the shadows of my mind in silence. He made me talk about it, and most importantly he acknowledged I struggled intensely with an invisible enemy. Since I met him, my anxiety attacks have dwindled and all but disappeared, although the road to this state of being was long and exhausting at times.

So many young adults carry to their universities not just their lamps and new rugs but also their anxiety and depression they've been lugging around since early high school, even middle school years, and the sad reality is we have taught young people that anxiety and depression is not legitimate if one is a "kid," however, by the time "kids" set foot on college campuses they are now expected to be adults who already have a hand on "over-dramatic" behaviors like anxiety; unfortunately, this leaves no appropriate age for a legitimized anxiety, but that's just it, there is no magic age when depression and anxiety suddenly become real. By inadvertently teaching young adults their mental health is taboo, we end up teaching them masking words such as, "I'm just tired."

I've decided now to start waking up before one in the afternoon, I've made plans with a friend to go to lunch because I've decided I am in fact, tired. I'm tired of people living in the shadows with their anxiety attacks. I'm tired of parents and friends making loved ones feel belittled. I'm tired of people who struggle with depression feeling weak because of society's unfair stigma. I'm tired of parents, schools, and universities being silent on the importance of mental health. But most of all, I'm tired of people feeling the need to say, "I'm just tired."