Okay, so. It’s World Mental Health Day. And I’m here to talk to you in detail about why I’m so obnoxiously open about my issues on this, the world wide web, the widest of the webs.
I didn’t address any of my mental health problems until a couple of years out of undergrad. I’ve had anxiety for as long as I can remember. I started dealing with suicidal ideation when I was twelve.
Ignoring problems like that does a number on your brain. It damages it. And after more than a decade of digging my way into the ground, even though I’m getting help and I’m fighting, it sometimes feels like I’ll never completely make it to the surface.
I didn’t do anything about it because I grew up surrounded by the idea that symptoms of mental illness were something to get over. It wasn’t a problem you were having, it was a problem you were causing. If you’d just get out of bed, if you’d just be less lazy, if you’d just stop crying and get over it, it wouldn’t be an issue.
I absolutely believed that it wasn’t something I could get help for or something I could change. It’s just who I was. It’s something fundamentally wrong with me. On top of that, I spent several years trying to convince myself that I could just pretend I wasn’t gay because, god, I didn’t know how I could be happy like that. I didn’t even know what happy felt like to begin with.
I finally saw a therapist after going through a major depressive period that put me in a place where I knew I was going to do something dangerous if I didn’t stop myself. I think it was the hardest thing I’ve done. A phone call to make an appointment and an hour long conversation with a nice therapist is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It sounds ridiculous.
Learning how to talk about my problems was a struggle but it opened up the possibility that I wouldn’t feel like shit for the rest of my life. That I could have a life, that I could make something out of the static I heard when I thought about the future because I spent a long time when I was younger convinced I wouldn’t make it past the age of twenty.
Therapy along with medication, including lithium which legitimately saved my life by pulling me out of a bad manic episode, has put me in a place where I’m beginning to understand and trust myself, where I’m starting to function like a person who doesn’t hurt herself or let herself be hurt, where I…might know what happy feels like? I might.
If I’d gotten help back when I was a kid, things could have been really different for me. I don’t like to think about that a lot, but I know I’ve missed out on things that I shouldn’t and I know all of the repression and the shame has had lasting effects. It’s important to know that. It’s important to know exactly how deep the hole is if I’m going to climb out.
And that’s why I flagrantly throw my mental health problems around on the internet. I didn’t have anyone to tell me I could be okay. The stigma is bullshit and people need to know that they don’t have to pretend it isn’t happening and that it isn’t their fault before things go too far.
I’ve had a few people tell me that they decided to go to therapy after reading my posts, which is amazing, and I’ll keep doing it if it might reach a few more.
Anyway, thanks for coming to my TEDTalk.
oh my god, they were roommates 