About three months ago I realised that I was profoundly unhappy.
Not just a little sad. Not a bit iffy. Profoundly sad. And this was not just a bad day or moment. I had felt that way for as long as I could remember. I just had never really noticed it. Well, that’s not true. I had noticed but I had thought it was normal. I had thought that that’s what the stress of life and school and work felt like. Like this big knot of heavy black sitting on your chest making every morning into a bad blur. Kicking each nervous moment into a chasm of despair. Quiet panic in public places. This was, of course, depression. But that’s not the important part of this equation. That is that I didn’t notice something was wrong for so long, because I just thought that’s how things were.
The most nefarious part of all our little neuroses and sadnesses is not their actual effects, but the fact that by their very nature—they are inside our heads, and only we can see them or feel them—they separate us when, really, they should unite us. Because it seems like these feelings or moments seem like they are just happening to us, it is so easy to assume either that a) it’s normal and nothing to bother anyone else about, or b) it’s something that only happens to you. We need to realise that it is okay not to be okay, and that it is equally okay to ask for help or even just share. Life doesn’t have to be as hard as we make it.
You are never as alone as you feel you are—which is an incredibly easy thing to type or say or think, but it is a hard thing to actually believe or understand. When you read that sentence, something like “Except for me, I really am that alone” popped straight into your head. That is wrong. We are training ourselves as a society to find ourselves unworthy, to think that we are undeservedly stealing every moment of our lives. Worse yet, we are training ourselves to think that that is okay—that it is acceptable and normal to hate ourselves.
Which is insane. And we have to stop. And, you know how we stop doing it?
We just stop. It’s hard but we can. We do deserve to be happy. We are worthy. All of us.
…or maybe it’s just me,
Uther Dean
(40mg of Citalopram every morning)
photo by Michelle Ny