I have spent so much of my life hiding my struggles with mental illness. I’ve pulled away from so many people in my life over the years to hide what I have gone through. I have played down my feelings for fear of judgement from others. I have lived portraying myself as someone who is so far away from my authentic self. In doing these things I have only made myself unhappy. I have caused myself to suffer so much more than I should have.
In life I really have had so many opportunities to ask for help. The truth is that when those opportunities were presented to me I wasn’t ready to admit to myself that I was struggling. I have known for years that I suffer with low mood, anxiety and every other symptom I portray. I just didn’t want to admit it. I have always come across as someone who is strong and independent. Someone that doesn’t need others to support me. I thought that by admitting I was struggling and unwell that it meant I wasn’t those things. That I was weak in some way.
The thing is I am strong and independent, I don’t need others to support me and that is the truth. However, part of being those things is knowing that it is ok to ask for help. It’s knowing that I don’t need others to support me but my god it is so much easier to fight a war with other people in your corner.
I hid so much for so long because I didn’t want to be vulnerable – I didn’t want others to see my vulnerabilities as a weakness. The fact is the only person that saw them that way was me. I was the person who thought I was weak, nobody else. By judging myself and hiding such serious issues for so long I isolated myself from everybody around me – even those that cared and loved me so much. I convinced myself that no one in the world cared about me – they didn’t make me feel that way, I did.
I let my traumas, my worries, my dislike towards myself build up over so many years. Eventually I cracked. Nobody noticed because I didn’t let them. And I so very nearly was not here to realise that asking for help and needing the support of others doesn’t make me weak. It makes me human.
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