I’ve been staring at a blank document for what feels like forever.
Every minute feels like an hour, and every hour feels like a day. I could sit here and tell you that I’m actually doing fine, that I’m happily married and have a kid on the way, but I’d be lying. I’d be cheating you of how those (fictitious) events came to be.
Every minute feels like an hour, and every hour feels like a day. I could sit here and tell you that I’m actually doing fine, that I’m happily married and have a kid on the way, but I’d be lying. I’d be cheating you of how those (fictitious) events came to be.
I’d be depriving you of something that’s supposed to make any normal person jump with excitement, and straight up taking away the happiness from that.
In reality, I’ve just been dealing with a lot of internal battles, and half of them, I’ve lost.
I’ve briefly touched on the topic of depression before, but this post will be a little bit different, as it will be more in-depth, and will be discussing how exactly all of this came about.
In the twenty years I’ve been alive, a lot has happened. So much hurt, pain, and heartbreak. But in saying that, there has also been such happiness, joy, and love that has come into my life. For that, I don’t think people will understand how grateful I am.
The story starts when my first semester of my second year of my Media Arts degree is coming to an end…
(That sentence was very confusing to type; I hope I haven’t lost anyone yet. If so, apologies. If not, then that is great. Please feel free to keep reading, or stop if that’s what you want to do).
In the last week of my semester, I came down with a cold. As if I wasn’t feeling crappy enough about that, I also had a lot of assignments to finish, and presentations and pieces of writing to hand in. Judging by the amount of stuff I had to do, you can (hopefully) see just how stressed and tense I would’ve been.
Anyway, I was not having a good time dealing with all of that, and I was feeling really exhausted because it was the last week of my semester.
You’re probably reading this and thinking “Tessa, everyone gets so stressed, why are you making such a big deal about what you went through, when there are so many other people who have it worse than you?”
Well, I’ll tell you why I’m making such a big deal about it.
I’m bringing it to your attention that I might have a problem, damnit! And this
A lot of little things happened after that week ended (things that I won’t get into), that left me feeling like I had no choice but to face my problems and start the long process of dealing with them. It was a snowball effect if you will, where all the little things that were bothering me collected over time, and then proceeded to knock me down.
The first few days of my five week holiday were fine. I caught up on chores I had been avoiding, I had caught up on sleep that I missed over the semester, and I was talking to friends I had (unintentionally) neglected as well.
But I still felt like there was something missing. Among the bustling and chaos I was immersing myself in, I still felt like there was a hole inside of me. I still feel like there is one inside, and to be honest, it feels bigger with each passing day.
I still felt like I could’ve done more, or I could’ve done it better. I was walking around in a foreign time and place, and I felt like I didn’t belong there. I felt like I was living someone else’s life, and that I wasn’t supposed to be wherever I was at the time.
I guess this explains my “absence” in my blog postings, and my distant persona in most social settings in the past few weeks, months even.
I could fill the rest of this with a long list of apologies, and clichés about how someday this will all be better, and that I will never feel like this again, but of course, I am not one for using clichés.
I will, however, say that I don’t think I would’ve had the courage to write this if it wasn’t for watching countless YouTube videos of people going through the same things I have. Seeing them talk about their issues on such a public forum has given me the strength to join them, and shed light on my own issues.
Our society has created this mindset that mental health issues are a taboo topic, and don’t need to be brought to people’s attention. We actually need to be bringing these issues to our attention, and we all need to help remove the stigma that we have all created.
There’s a lot more I feel I should share, but that will have to be in another blog post and at a point in time where it feels most appropriate. For now, this is all you’re getting.
Until next time, stay safe.
Tessa.
