Kate Spade committed suicide this week and the overarching theme, other than global sadness, is that nobody knew that she had depression. Nobody knew she was struggling. Even her husband said she seemed completely fine the night before. Everybody is flabbergasted: look at this person with a great family, an amazing career, and all the money in the world. Gone because of the demons that secretly tortured her.
And this is what I’m talking about. Secretly. It’s fine to talk about physical ailments. We can talk about cancer and heart disease and near-fatal hospital visits. We can talk about these things openly and mourn their existence. But depression, anxiety, and the slew of other common mental disorders get pushed under the rug to hang out with shame and guilt.
So, I’m going to talk about it. I talked about it a bit last summer. If you read this article, then you know I struggle with the trifecta of PTSD, depression, and anxiety. They’re all in the category of “severe”.
And would you know it based off of what you see? The Instagram images of flowers and typewriters and books. The funny Twitter moments. The Facebook photo here and there of my son’s cute baby smiles. No, probably not. Not from anything you’d see on the Internet.
And, if I’m being really honest, you probably wouldn’t catch it in person either. My guard is always up. Fear creates this barrier. Fear tells me that if people see the crippling effects of these monsters, cities will crumble, people will run, and I’ll be left all alone.
I think that’s the fear we all struggle with. What if we show our broken pieces and then we get left behind? The irony is that we end up all alone anyway be isolating ourselves into our bubble of sickness.
I don’t want to chalk up mental illness to just “broken pieces” either. Cuts heal, but monsters haunt you. That’s what it feels like to live with depression and anxiety: like there’s a ghost that follows you. When it leaves, it leaves a shadow. When it comes back, it acts like it never left in the first place. You can’t swat it away. It just goes right through you.
These aren’t things that you can go to a therapist or psychiatrist and wish away. Healing is an ongoing process and it’s never finished. It’s as exhausting as it is rewarding. And, just because you get help doesn’t mean it’s helping. It takes time. Real time. Sometimes decades. And, even then, healing is not a guarantee.
I’m not saying that to discourage anyone from seeking help. But, often I feel like “seeking help” is hailed as the end all, be all, when in reality, we need so much more than that. We need the therapists and the psychiatrists. We also need the friends and the loved ones checking in on us. We need things we can rely on for comfort, like blankets and books and warm things, when we feel like our skin is being wretched off a body we do not belong to. We need a pat on the back and a “good job”, even if – especially if – all we accomplished that day was brushing our teeth and brushing our hair. We need to be surrounded by people like us: other warriors weathering the storm. More than we need a hand up when we fall, we need compassion. We need an outlet to be ourselves with our demons in tow.
Monsters don’t discriminate. Demons don’t care if you’re pretty or have a great family or a booming career or all the money and things you could hope for. They can come for anyone, any time. It doesn’t make you weak to struggle with mental illness. It makes you the opposite. It is brave and courageous to wake up knowing full well you’ll have monsters to battle and knowing full well that you may end up losing, but doing it anyway.
We need to talk about this. We need to stop holding it in. We need to stop putting people’s opinions that stem from ignorance over the health of our minds and souls. We need to have open, honest discussions about the things that haunt us. We need this. This is community. This compassion. This is knowledge. This is humanity. This is coming out of the shadows and standing in our light. We need this. We need this.
Right now, I want to speak directly into the hearts of people who are the battlegrounds of mental illness:
Joy will come. Relief will come. Peace will come. Everything is temporary, even your darkest moments. If it feels like you can’t take it anymore, if it feels overwhelming and like it’s all too much, then take this day 10 seconds at a time. You can survive 10 seconds of anything so count to 10 and start over. You can do this. It won’t be a straight lines of “win, win, win”. Most of the time, it’ll look like “struggle, struggle, trip, fail, struggle, little victory” and that’s okay. That’s what you need to do. That’s where you need to be. But more than anything, you will be okay. You will get there. You don’t need to have everything and be everything. You don’t have to be okay right now. But trust and keep the faith that what you’re feeling, what you’re struggling with, what you’re going through in this moment is temporary. You will be okay.