Depression/Anxiety

I was looking for a good reason to write my 50th blog (Yup, it is the 50th post that's ever been published on here, kinda came as a shock to me too), and then I realised that today was Mental Health Day. I don't know what's going to follow, but I'm going to try and give you some insight into what it's like to have problems with depression and anxiety.

My most recent episode was earlier this week, I'd overslept my alarm, bearing in mind it was only 7:50 still, but it meant that I wouldn't have time for a shower before uni. Because of this, I had a panic attack. Now, if you've never had a panic attack before, it's indescribable. The world collapses in on you and you feel like its all weighing on you at once, you're suffocating under the weight of it, struggling to breathe. But the worst part is knowing that your worry is completely irrational, knowing that you're just being stupid, wanting to shake it off but just being absolutely powerless to.. It crushes you and knocks you back for the rest of the day.

That stems from anxiety, complete irrationality, thinking that anything and everything you do can be misconstrued and taken the wrong way. Accidentally showing up late to a lesson could be super embarrassing, but then you know nobody would actually care, so why are you worrying so much?

Then you meet depression, which just saps you of your urge to do.. Well, anything. You want to make the effort to go out and see your friends, but it becomes too much for you. You need to be in uni to get good grades, but what is the point if you're just going to fail anyway? Those thoughts going round and round your head, never shutting the fuck up, not for a second, leaving you incapable of hearing your own voice and drowning out any hope of actually being good today. It's full on terrifying.

Then a good day comes along, like a dream, something happens that makes today silent. The planets have arrived and everything seems right with the world, you stride confidently out of the house, feeling like an actual human being again. Then comes the pang. That one shred of doubt. Something so simple as you see a friend talking to someone else, and the voice comes back. You've been replaced. Your mental health has won and your friends are leaving you, one by one. People disappear because they don't understand, because they won't wait for you to climb the insurmountable wall that they can't even begin to comprehend. So you sit, battered and alone, waiting for anything to happen to change it. But it never does. The cycle never ends.

It's easy enough to bring blame to a person or circumstance as the cause of depression, but the simple fact is that it's a chemical imbalance, and completely beyond your control. So many people think the best advice is "You're just not trying hard enough," "You need to just snap out of it," or my personal favorite "But you're not really ill though." I cannot even begin to state how unhelpful this is. Do you honestly think I want to sit here like this? Do you think this is preferred to actually going out and doing something? No, I'm not just being lazy, no, I'm not putting a negative spin on everything. I have an illness, and so do 25% of other people out there and if you can't appreciate that then please keep your comments to yourself.

I want to be better, I want to just delete this part of me, and I have tried to do so for a very long time. That much inner conflict only opens the door for more problems. The hardest part for me, is with people. I want so much to make friends and connections, but it's hard. I don't know where the line is, I don't want to annoy you or come off as clingy, so I push away and become distant and aloof, but that doesn't work either, and it all just ends up failing, every single time.

But I don't want to be defined by my mental health. I want to show the world that I am more that the chemical imbalance in my brain, and just recently, I have begun to feel better about myself. I've come to accept it as a part of who I am. Without all that inner conflict to resolve, things get easier to explain, and as I can explain it better, I feel people are starting to understand my plight.

We, as the human race are moving into the age of acceptance. People are so much more free and liberal than they were 100, or even 50 years ago. So why is the stigma still on mental health? You wouldn't ask someone with a broken leg to try running, so don't ask someone with anxiety to come out of their comfort zone. If you don't understand, then educate yourself. If you're unwilling to understand, then shut up and stand back. End the stigma on mental health, and mental health issues will be reduced, I guarantee it.

I am not my mental health problem. I am not a freak, unnatural or in any way not normal. I am not alone.

Thanks for reading.

Kexys