In 2013, over 2.6 million adolescents ages 12-17 in the U.S. were estimated to have had at least one major depressive episode (National Institute of Mental Health). That is nearly 11% of the youth in this country. Blinded by my own depression, I never realized the myriad of people experiencing the same thing. Everywhere we look there is a person going through hardship. When faced with challenges in life you have to find your own way out and though depression is a debilitating disease that often goes overlooked, I found my way out.
Depression has such a vast array of ways in which it is able to manifest that to only recognize it in people who fit the stereotype of not getting out of bed and being “really sad” is a problem and can actually be …show more content…
I often just thought it was in my head and that I was making it up. While yes, it was most certainly was my head because it a mental illness, I was not making it up. That is how I felt, though, crazy and melodramatic for sheltering this horrible thing inside my chest and my chest was not its only home, either. It was the weight dragging down my legs with each step, the numbness in my hands that got in the way of doing the things I loved, it was the heaviness of my eyelids that made it impossible to focus. Depression is a murderer of all things happy that labels itself blameless and you guilty. How was I supposed to explain all of that and have someone understand? The thing is, nobody can understand it. It is something that I went through and I …show more content…
Suddenly I had to be okay for my family and my friends and everyone else in my life. Everyone’s good intentions in order to fix me were blanketed in fear and controlling behaviors and it was suffocating me. Suddenly it had gone from being my own little secret to something that belonged to everybody else, something that I had no control over. The one thing that kept me going was the thing I lost when came out and along with it went friends and other bits of my life that I loved.
There is this stigma around acknowledging that children can have depression. So I never thought it was even possible for me to have it. I had a roof over my head and food in my stomach. If I had been able to tell someone early on I would have lost so much, but there is nobody there to wave a red flag when you have crossed over the line from a healthy amount of stress and sadness into an unhealthy amount. When you want to change something something you want to change, you have to be the one to get up and go change
Depression has such a vast array of ways in which it is able to manifest that to only recognize it in people who fit the stereotype of not getting out of bed and being “really sad” is a problem and can actually be …show more content…
I often just thought it was in my head and that I was making it up. While yes, it was most certainly was my head because it a mental illness, I was not making it up. That is how I felt, though, crazy and melodramatic for sheltering this horrible thing inside my chest and my chest was not its only home, either. It was the weight dragging down my legs with each step, the numbness in my hands that got in the way of doing the things I loved, it was the heaviness of my eyelids that made it impossible to focus. Depression is a murderer of all things happy that labels itself blameless and you guilty. How was I supposed to explain all of that and have someone understand? The thing is, nobody can understand it. It is something that I went through and I …show more content…
Suddenly I had to be okay for my family and my friends and everyone else in my life. Everyone’s good intentions in order to fix me were blanketed in fear and controlling behaviors and it was suffocating me. Suddenly it had gone from being my own little secret to something that belonged to everybody else, something that I had no control over. The one thing that kept me going was the thing I lost when came out and along with it went friends and other bits of my life that I loved.
There is this stigma around acknowledging that children can have depression. So I never thought it was even possible for me to have it. I had a roof over my head and food in my stomach. If I had been able to tell someone early on I would have lost so much, but there is nobody there to wave a red flag when you have crossed over the line from a healthy amount of stress and sadness into an unhealthy amount. When you want to change something something you want to change, you have to be the one to get up and go change