HEALTH
one wants to be, something
I unfortunately denied
myself the label of—
mentally ill.
to a paralyzing fear of being
alone. Completely unpredictable fits of hysteria. I felt
like the universe around me
robbed my lungs of all the air
and I could only steal it back
ILLNESS REPULSES
for brief, shallow gasps, and
The problem with me is
that mine is a hidden illness, I just kept thinking, Oh my
God I can’t fucking breathe.
an iceberg lurking beneath
It’s a completely debilithe surface. The world sees
tating and inescapable fear
to be terrorized by your
own mind.
When I was around people, I felt an obligation and a
duty to be normal, to be the
happy, funny, vivacious woman whom so many had come
to know. It was exhausting to
hide my emotions, like slipping for indefinite periods
into a happy person’s skin.
a nice girl with a snarky and
But in my darkest moments,
self-deprecating humor. Inside, I’m a time bomb waiting when I was sure I was completely alone and I could
to explode.
molt from my happy facade,
fter the first appearI let the Voices overtake me.
ance of the VoicI let the current consume me
es, I tried to hide
with no resistance. I would
it. I tried to tell myself it
lie on my side, facing the
wasn’t serious.
blank white wall in my bedBut over the course of
room, clutching a stale blue
the year the crushed-bypillow long stained by the
the-waves feeling evolved
“ an
It’s not
overwhelming
sadness; it’s
emptiness.
”
A
tears of a previous attack as
if it were the only thing keeping the waves from heaving
me away. And I would cry.
I would cry these desperate, terrified, trembling sobs
that I tried and failed to
hold in. When I failed, my
body shuddered with such
force that I thought I would
“
Mental illness
manifests
differently in
everyone.
Many people
don’t even know
they have it.
”
crumble into this mess of
a person I felt like. I wanted to go back to when I was
young, when I wasn’t afraid
of silence. I wanted to be the
ambiguous “normal.”