The inner torment I went through, in the months leading up to my diagnosis, and in the months and years since then. I am worthy of saying I survived a trauma, my trauma was simply self inflicted, and entirely mental.
The darkness in my soul and in my mind told me that no one would miss me anyways if I did step in front of that train, or forget to properly latch my window before leaning on it.
These are only a few of the reasons that I ended up in the emergency room of St. Joseph’s Hospital on that September day, and the reasons I have returned there dozens of times over the past four years are even more numerous. Just because I was lucky enough to ask for help just before I reached that ultimate point of desperation, does not mean that my story is not valid or deserving. And believe me, it has taken me years to realize this. For a long time, I didn’t even think I was “good” at having a mental illness—I couldn’t do anything right . . . not even that.
Whatever the reason, the day I was admitted to the inpatient program at the hospital’s Child & Adolescent Mental Health facility was the point on which my life turned. It took admitting that I needed help, and that this was my last chance to ask for it, to begin the long, long path that has been my recovery. Notice how I do not say “long path towards my recovery.” That phrasing would imply that recovery is something one can tangibly attain, that once you get there that’s it and your struggle is done. But I have learned that recovery is an ongoing process, that every day you must wake up and promise again to be good to yourself and work to live this life that can be simultaneously so beautiful and so cruel.
Thankfully, as a society, we have become moderately more open to fighting the stigma attached to mental illness, even in the four years since I was diagnosed. The media and popular culture have become less scared of representation. However, we are still in danger of myopic representations of these illnesses. Some examples that come to mind are the portrayals of mental illness as a sort of glamorous struggle of a martyr sent to show us that our society is flawed, or the depiction of those afflicted with mental illness (I speak most specifically of depression and anxiety because they are what my personal experience encompasses, and I can’t speak as well to illnesses I have not experienced) as trapped under the covers of their beds, unable to eat, unable to get up and meet their commitments, unable to even maintain personal hygiene. The first is simply untrue because there is NOTHING glamorous about depression or anxiety, and the second is problematic because while this is certainly the case with some, it is not always the case. And if we believe that everyone suffering from depression is unable to function in society, we are in danger of missing those suffering in plain sight—those who have learned what a smile can hide.