04/09/2023
SO DARK & DEEP: A STORY OF MENTAL ILLNESS
It hits you all of a sudden. Itâs the middle of the day, youâre surrounded by friends and the sun is out. But something isnât right. There is this feeling, a very uncomfortable feeling in your mind, in the pit of your stomach. You want to leave and go somewhere that is quiet and dark. You are being consumed. Consumed by your own thoughts. So dark and so horrid, you are afraid. Itâs wrecking you from the inside out.
But what can you do? Suffer? Thatâs what many of us do and did. But sometimes the suffering gets too much. You canât handle the darkness thatâs pulling you into an eternal abyss and you decide that only way to stop the darkness is to join it. You take your own life. Su***de. Simple as that.
I lost a very close friend of mine to su***de. It sent us, their friends and family, all into a cage. We felt trapped, we felt deep inside us this horrible, disgusting feeling and all you wanted to do is cry. Thatâs how suffering feels. This constant feeling of being trapped and not being able to do anything to stop it. Thatâs how people with mental illnesses feel constantly. It devours us. Fear eats our insides away until we are nothing but bones. Fear controls us. Fear puts us on autopilot and does whatever it wants.
That feeling you have in the pit of your stomach when you are about to do something that makes you nervous? Thatâs how anxiety feels. Itâs how living with a mental illness feels. It runs our lives and we canât stop it. Admitting to someone that you have a problem is probably the hardest thing to do. Admitting to my best friend that I have anxiety, depression and OCD took me months.
Every night I would run it around in my head, what and how will I tell my friend that I am crazy and I canât control it? Will she be OK with it? Will she laugh? Is she going to stay being my friend? And thatâs the problem I am trying to write about. Admitting you have a mental illness. Itâs not easy to do and thatâs why more than two million people are struggling. They canât tell anyone.
Lucky for me, I have an amazing group of friends that understood, while some arenât so lucky. A lot of friends and family reject their siblings or children or friends because they donât know how to deal with a mental illness. Dealing with a mental illness, whether you have it or someone else does, is like a tripwire. You have to be so careful with your words or one bad move and it can devastate someone.
Do you remember the part where I mentioned a friend I lost to su***de? Well, her name was Abigail, but her friends and family called her Abby. Abby was obsessed-scratch that-dedicated to One Direction. They kept not only her happy, but everyone happy. Their music helps people, physically, mentally and spiritually. Abby also told me, before she passed, that One Direction was the only thing keeping her going.
Now, you might ask, where am I going with this? Well, what I am trying to do here is get One Direction to notice Abbyâs story, get them to talk about mental health and let people, especially young adults, to realize that they are not alone in this battle with mental illnesses. No matter what the illness, no one is ever alone, no matter how lonely it seems.
âAnd here you are living, despite it all.â - Rupi Kaur
A quote that that always inspired me, even through those dark days when I decided I couldnât do it anymore, couldnât carry on living.
To all those suffering deep inside, pushing those feelings to the back of your brain, the bottom of your heart, please keep on living. Please remember that no matter how distant your future may seem, no matter how distant love may seem, it will always be there. Never lose hope; I know itâs easy to. We are rocks in a sea of chaos; we cannot let every storm knock us around. We simply mustnât.
