Depression and Anxiety have been a huge part of my life for a few years now. I know to some of you a few years isn't very long but in that time it has destroyed my life. Now I can see a lot of you rolling your eyes at that, probably accompanied by a sigh that just screams 'Who let this dramatic teenager write a Take?' But let me explain first. For the past seven or eight years I've been dealing with both verbal and physical abuse from my parents. Despite how much I tried to not let it get to me a person can only take that for so long and each time my mum hit me or my father told me that I was the reason everyone in my family was so miserable and that I need counselling I slowly spiraled into depression. I can't count the amount of nights I cried myself to sleep because I felt so revolting and alone. I've experienced so many horrible things from the people who are meant to love me most and it keeps me up at night, tormenting me, making me wonder what I did wrong. When I got into year 11 the stress from all the work plus the pressure at home completely broke me. I was bedridden for a few months and I was having anxiety attacks multiple times a week and crying so hard when no one was around that my body would become numb, my head dizzy and I'd wake up the next day so exhausted that my whole body would ache. I was trapped in a hell called my own body.
A common thing I hear from people is that I don't have it that bad. That I have a roof over my head and food in my belly and so many people have it so much worse but that's not what depression is. It isn't governed by how much you have. It's when you have a hormone imbalance. Telling me that I could have it worse isn't going to make me go 'oh hey you're so right! Why didn't I see that before? You have cured me!' Instead it's going to make me doubt everything I have ever felt because now I spend my time worrying about how I'm just overreacting and questioning everything I've ever experienced, I mean it could have been worse right? If someone tells you that they're depressed and having a hard time in life don't ever question them. If they say they are in pain and upset don't tell them that they shouldn't be because you can't judge that, whatever they feel is something only they know and it's a very real thing to them even if you don't think it should be.
It's one of the most difficult things to be experiencing a pain that no one else can see. With a broken bone you can see that in an X-Ray. You see the runny nose and hear the cough with a flu. People acknowledged those things because you can see it. Mental illnesses are different though because sometimes you can't see them at all. It doesn't make them any less real though. I remember when I told my father that I thought I was depressed and he laughed at me and told me that I wasn't. It was such a blow to everything I felt. As my depression got worse I started getting desperate. I hated that no one could see this pain I felt so I made it physical. I cut myself. It was such a relief to finally be able to see all my hurt instead of having all that pain inside of me. It's one of my biggest regrets that I let myself fall that far but it still tempts me even though I've been clean for months now. Those cuts aren't cries for attention. They're what happens when our mental pain becomes a horrifying physical display.
Anxiety is equally debilitating. After I took the few months off in year 11 I had to drop out due to lack of attendance. I decided that it would be best for me to try to find some work, experience life a bit and decide what to do study wise later when I got a better handle of my depression and anxiety. I probably could have finished year 11 if I left my father but after experiencing the pain of my mother telling me that she didn't want me to live with her anymore I could never inflict that pain on anyone. I thought leaving school would be a relief on me but it just made my anxiety worse. People get this look when they hear that you dropped our of school. There's an immediate judgement. Words get thrown around like 'drop kick' and 'failure' even by my own friends and family. I can't deny it but I can't just explain to them exactly why I left either. I feared that look so much that once I got the motivation to get out of bed I was still too terrified to leave the house. It was four whole months before I managed to drag myself out of the house and finally got a job.
Going for being someone who was looking at at going to university to now being a drop out and working at McDonald's full time it's one of the most degrading things I've every experienced and it's all because of a mental disease. I hate thinking that if the time I had taken off school was because of cancer I wouldn't be in the same position as I am now. I doubt people would tell me that I should just get over it and that I was a failure for leaving school because of that. The main thing that I want to get across is that with depression is sometimes you just need someone to tell you that what you feel is real. I can't stress how important it is just to have supporting people around you. When you're in that headspace often the most amazing thing a person can do for you is just to hold you and tell you that everything is going to be okay, even if it isn't.
This information obviously isn't going to be true for everyone, this is just my opinion as someone who has experienced and is experience Depression and Anxiety. Thank you for taking the time to read this :)
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