I was 16, happy and actively participating in all co-curricular activities. Sort of a tom-boy, you may say! Ever since that age I’ve had an on and off relationship with anxiety and depression. I’m still not okay talking about in public though. In the past 4 years, people have told me all kinds of bullshit; “You’re too young for this” has to be on the top of that list.
Anxiety and depression are things that can never be expressed in words. It’s a throbbing pain. It’s when you are lying on the bed and half of your body is paralysed, you’re thinking about how you just want to listen, get out, breathe and let it go but you can’t because your body is not with you.
Depression is all about those sleepless nights you have spent wondering, why me? It is something when you want to scream and tell people that it’s not just in your head but it’s actually happening… how just thinking about your problems makes you sweat. I remember even my brothers telling me, “You are too young for anxiety and depression; it’s all in your head; try to be more productive. We never had anxiety when we were your age.”
So to all those people who have ever told me that it’s nothing, I’m just PMS-ing, I don’t even know what depression is, I must have just picked up this word on the internet and I’m trying to act cool, or that I am just a little worried and not anxious, I’m a moody bitch or that I’m making excuses — Dude, I know exactly what it is and I knew what this is when I skipped my three-course meal for a week straight up, when I learned how to smile, when there was a tear dropping down my cheek, when I did not leave my house for three months straight and did nothing but just lay on my bed and overslept because waking up for me was overthinking; days when all I wanted to do was finish my life, days on which I just wanted to kill my brains and how I asked them to STOP.
I survived.
