So full disclosure time.
Earlier this semester I went to the hospital because I had an
unhealthy mental state. My friend was worried about me and called
security to prevent me from harming myself in someway. Now fun fact:
I hate hospitals, I don't trust them and never will, so being trapped
in one for a whole night basically against my will was not a good
time for me. So what happened after? Well I signed a behavioral
contract through the school basically saying I would not hurt myself
and I went to therapy. That was a little while back and now I feel
confident enough to speak my mind about some things. First off now
matter how this comes off I am not doing this for attention, I've
just always been the kind of person to be honest about my life. Good
and bad I try to be as open as I can because I think it is impossible
to connect to others if you aren't willing share your baggage. So
while some might see this as “brave” or “stupid” I just see
it as me being me, same as always.
So I guess you could
say that I have always been prone to some kind of depression or
profound sadness, I am an only child whose single mother has been
working a 9-5 job (most of the time more than that) even since I can
remember. As a result I was alone with my thoughts a lot, not to say
that my mother is anything less than my hero and one of my biggest
role models, but even for her it was impossible to be in two places
at once. Since it was me by my lonesome I developed a very harsh
cynical mentality of me against the world, save a few people I deemed
worthy to be on my side. I spent a big portion of my teen years
feeling like nothing I ever did was good enough and pushing myself to
be better in ways that was sometimes just not possible. I struggled a
lot with my racial identity, never feeling black enough to fit in or
white-washed enough to stand out. I worried whether or not I would
grow up to be manly enough, since there was no prominent male role
model living with me I always feared that I would end up leaving
whatever family I help make. All these tiny things stuck with me and
just when I thought I had a reign on them in college, they came back
in full force to trip me up again.
Freshman year was not so
bad, the excitement of being in a new place overwhelmed my
doubts...for a while. Soon after the feeling of new washed off there
was a feeling of loneliness that I could not pin down. I wasn't home
sick (I loved my school), I wasn't unpopular (I had my dance team and
close hall-mates), and I wasn't unhealthy (I was eating better than I
did at home). So what was this feeling of crushing loneliness? Well
as I would find out in my sophomore year, it was me still fighting
myself. No matter what I did I ALWAYS doubted myself. Dance, school
work, my relationships, etc. I always came down on myself harder than
anyone around me could, and I always felt like trash because of it.
This developed into ideas of “just die” that, while not
prominent, stuck in the back of my mind for longer than I would like
to admit. They say that you cannot love someone else until you love
yourself, but no one ever tells you how to love yourself, turns out
it is not easy.
I had to try and rebuild
myself from scratch it seemed like. Tell myself what seemed like
lies. “that dance looked okay, that grade was good, you look nice
today”, all the things things I once took for granted I now tried
to thank myself for. It is incredibly difficult to be an adult and
still be convincing yourself that you aren't a terrible dancer after
you have been dancing for years. It was necessary though. I was tired
of being my own worst enemy, and I'm still tired of it. So everyday
now I try to stay positive. I am still not sure if depression is
something that you can control, but I know that you can make it so it
does not control you.
Going into more details
could be pages and pages worth of boring things I know you don't want
to read, so I will leave you with this: you are wonderful. No matter
who you are, where you come from, and where you end up, if you are
struggling with any sort of situation like mine I can assure you it
gets better. I'm no doctor, but I have seen people do amazing things,
and live on to tell their stories. No matter who you are you need to
learn to live with yourself, because at the end of the day the only
one looking you back in the mirror is you. Find what you love whether
it is people, hobbies, or both and hang onto them. Life is too short
to hold yourself down, to tell yourself that you are not worth it.
Living with yourself is a learning process that never really stops,
but the more you try the easier it gets. I think the most beautiful
thing about life is that no matter dark things get, the sun always
comes up the next day. Know that there are people out there who care,
and never let your inner voice be crushed under the weight of life.
No such thing as “too screwed up”.
