Running Away from Myself
We live in a society where we are more educated, more advanced, and more aware of ourselves and the world we live in, yet we are still oblivious to so much that we should know. My story today is regarding mental health, more specifically depression and my battle to survive it. I don't think I have met one person who hasn't felt that cold, hopeless despair at some point in their lives. I cannot express the envy I feel towards those who seem perpetually cheerful. They are the type that have the ability to see the positive in every situation, people gravitate towards them because of their bubbly personality and enthusiasm for life. While individuals like this often suffer from depression themselves, their ability to keep optimistic is something I have tried to achieve for many years. I have only just begun to achieve it on my good days but I still have a long way to go. I first remember feeling depressed at around six years old. At that age I couldn't understand my feelings or how to express them, I used to cry to my mother that I should never have been born, I didn't know proper social etiquette around my peers so I was always the odd one out, my classmates labelled me as "weird," a lot of my teachers took me as lazy and unwilling to learn, unaware that I was struggling so deeply within myself that I was contemplating suicide at 6yo. I planned to eat some berries that I knew were poisonous but in the end I chickened out. It felt like I was tainted by an invisible darkness that nobody else could see and I was unable to put into words. I was drowning and nobody was noticing.
