"I would tell you I needed to matter; I needed to feel as though I was worth something, anything.
Our society would tell you I was looking for attention.
I would try to explain my struggles with depression and anxiety.
Our society would invalidate it with a few simple words: “Someone else has it worse.”
I would tell you that sometimes it was easier to deal with self-inflicted pain than to acknowledge the hurt that runs marathons in my brain.
Our society would say, “Get out of your own head. Get over it!”
I've followed TWLOHA now for a solid 4 years now. I always get really excited when a new blog is posted because I'm so interested in what the interns (or whoever is writing the blog) has to say. Everyone has their own perspective of what their experience with mental illness is like. And for me, it's always encouraging to see that people can make it out of the dark. It gives me hope that maybe one day I'll be there too, smiling on the other side of this never-ending darkness. But until that time, I guess I'll just keep fighting it off a little bit more each day.