"I'm fine. It's fine."
This has been my mantra, and I have hoped that if I say enough to you, to myself, to the world, that it would be true. That I would really be okay. Mind over matter. A placebo pill, if you will. But fact is, the words don't work, and I'm not okay.
I have debated whether or not to share this, but I am finished being afraid to talk about the bad stuff. I'm sick of being ashamed of something I can't control. I'm done with people thinking a person has the power to just stop being sad. Have you ever told a chemo patient to just stop having cancer. Nothing is that simple, especially this.
For as long as I have memory, I have battled with depression and anxiety. But, Lauren, you're so happy! You're always smiling! Your glass is always half full! Believe me, I have wanted to deny it, and a lot of the time, I am truly happy, but with light, there comes darkness, and sometimes, mine is more powerful than anything else. I have hidden from it, pretending there hasn't always been this big, black box full of darkness beneath my bed. I have tried cutting it to bits, locking it away, boarding it up, wrapping it in plastic, suffocating it, but the darkness does not die. It always seeps out, always consumes, weighs me down, heavy bricks upon my chest, slowly crushing my ribs. The sadness isn't constant. It ebbs and flows like the tides. Sometimes the darkness is bone-dry, nothing but soft, wet sands, filled with ripples and seashells. I can sink the soles of my feet into it and peace is all I know. But then as the summer sea breeze flows through my hair, one second warming me, bringing me light and love, but suddenly the waves rush in. The rip currents pull me into the deep, drag me under, and I can't move. I can't feel anything, not even the wet. Water fills my lungs. All I can do is sink deeper, watching the world overhead through the clear brink. Unable to scream for help. Unable to breathe. And always, right before drowning for good, the waves subsided and I can gulp in air once again. I can go on living, a little damp, a little exhausted, a little less alive, but I am still here.
But the thing about my depression is I've always been able to keep it in check. I've always been able to wrestle that blackness back into its box, but this year the darkness has done me in. It has overwhelmed me, depleted me, threatened to block out the sun forever. I have let only a few people know what's really going on behind my bright, brown eyes. And this last week, I have scared them. I terrified myself, too. Last week, something within me slipped. The resolve to hold it all together, my last ounce of sanity--it all left me. I went numb, the world blurred as the blackness slipped through the cracks of its box, and filled the spaces in the hollows of my heart, leaked into my brain.
There is such a stigma with mental health. I, myself, have cracked too many jokes about how long and thick the crazy branches are on my family tree. I have always thought I was stronger than this. That I could will the sadness away. But if I had cancer or a broken leg, there would be nothing holding me back from going to the doctor. All of our brains are made differently, and my brain makes me overreact, or go paralyzed, or hate myself with such intensity that everything but that antipathy is all I can feel. How can someone so pretty and healthy and smart and funny, so seemingly perfect, wish she was someone else? I know this doesn't make sense to you. I don't understand it myself, but it's my reality. And there is a way to fix this, to make my brain better.
This is all supposed to come full circle to my New Year's Resolutions for 2018. I will be kinder to myself. This is something I have always, always struggled with and it has caused me to suffer. How do you deal with an enemy when it's you? How do you love yourself when everything about you is wrong? This is what I need to figure out. This is what I must reconcile in 2018. Get right with myself and get to a happier, healthier place. My mental health is my top priority. Most importantly, I'm going to the doctor to get on medication for anxiety and depression. I'm also going to stop eating cookies for dinner. And love more freely. Oh, and run a marathon, maybe? Nah. I'll just keep going to the gym.
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