#worldmentalhealthday
- Dan Silas
- Oct 10, 2018
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 6, 2019
Some thoughts on an important topic.
Some people are just sad, right?
When I was younger, I believed that depression was just my own selfishness, plain and simple - a few bad thoughts, at first, which in turn grew into a morbid self-preoccupation because I wasn't strong enough to pull myself out of my own head or my own misery.
Is it selfishness? No, I don't think so - not anymore.
Yet, with a greater sense of self compassion than I've felt in a long time, I am sitting here, tearfully wondering how I could have been so misguidedly cruel to myself for believing such a thing.
I thought that at 12, when I was naive enough to not truly know, let alone comprehend what depression was. Some people are just sad, right?
I was 16 when I overdosed. I waited until the weekend, until everyone had left. The next couple of days were a haze - but come Monday morning, there I was, sat on the bus, on my way to school. No one knew any difference. It was never that I wanted to die, I just didn't want to live - or at least, not like that. No one knew, nor could tell - and I strongly believe that unless someone were to explicitly tell you that they were struggling, there's a good chance you never would have known.
18 - guilt. Why was I so depressed? Everything in my life was seemingly perfect. I had no reason to be depressed, surely? Yet I was. I felt so guilty - as if I was a fraud, why was I feeling like this when I had so many reasons to love my life. That guilt is something which stopped me from seeking help for the longest time. I wanted to get better but I didn't think anyone would take me, nor this 'feeling' seriously.
The first GP I spoke to insisted that I was just feeling overwhelmed - that I was just feeling the way I was because I was in a new environment, because I had just moved to university - that maybe I was just homesick or stressed?
I knew it wasn't 'just stress' and I'm thankful everyday that I had enough conviction in myself to fight for my wellbeing and find another GP and finally get the support and help I needed.
That's the thing though - depression doesn't just affect one certain type of person, despite the image we all have in our mind and the same descriptions we've been told over and over, depression is a global affliction - age, gender, race, status, wealth - all of it, irrelevant. No matter how great your life may be, no matter the number of people who love you, how amazing your past and how bright your future may be, it all becomes mundane.
Mental health is something we all take for granted - I felt so alone, yet when I finally did speak out about it, I found that there were so many people also struggling, so many people who also felt so alone and isolated by their minds.
I guess to conclude, here's a little reminder to take the time to prioritise your mental wellbeing, just like you would with your physical wellbeing. Be kind to yourself.
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