By Vivien Y. //
I had lost a visible amount of weight in a short amount of time and people said that I looked great.
The truth was that at 22 and living through the tribulations of the final semester of university, I was incredibly depressed. I wasn’t eating, I couldn’t sleep, I was running at least 5 kilometres a day.
I spent so many nights awake, wanting to die because I couldn’t see a way out of these uncontrollable waves of desolation. I didn’t understand it.
Plus, life was pretty good; things were kind of working out for me.
I was a fresh face in the music scene, part of something I had always wanted to be involved in. I was meeting like-minded people, having my idols become mentors. Finally, after years of writing songs in my bedroom, I was getting noticed.
I was supposed to be excited, but attention and validation didn’t medicate whatever I was feeling inside.
I was also in love! A feeling I had thrown away because of previous misadventures was back, and in full blossom. I was mostly happy in the short periods of time I had with him and convinced myself that perhaps this was what was missing.
Oh, I was so wrong. Things soured and became another driving force of jealousy and inadequacy—and I sank further.
I didn’t know why any of this was happening. I was scared, and the more hopeless I felt, the more vocal I got on social media. I was constantly garbling about how awful I felt. Maybe I was looking for someone to validate my feelings. Maybe I was just fishing for a reply from someone whose concern would make my heart flutter.
It was this vicious cycle of drowning then waking up and wondering how I was going to word it, or if it was even worth confronting. It lasted for months, until a friend reached out.
The decision for change didn’t come in a sweeping, dramatic epiphany. It came sliding into my DMs (Direct Messages). The distant possibility of maybe admitting myself into the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) became very real because I was suddenly made aware that I wasn’t alone.
It’s not pretty, but the first step towards recovery is very much like opening a can of worms.
Telling those closest to me and watching their reactions made me feel ashamed of being this way. Going for therapy and talking for an hour for felt like a lost cause. How was just talking going to ever make me better?
Today, it’s been six formal months of Psychotherapy and I still struggle every day. What’s changed is that I have conceded that this is a struggle towards better days. I am learning, after every session, that I am not prisoner to this strange, unexplainable sickness. I am only human, and feelings are messy, but real.
Being honest, open and kind has, quite literally, saved me.
I am eternally grateful to that friend that cared to reach out and I will always pass this on in kind be it through emotional or informational support. Things happen and there’s no shame in needing some help.
Vivien is a fresh graduate, writer and musician. She started writing at a young age to cope with the tribulations of growing up and now writes to stop the crazy in her head. She is one of the shortlisted finalists in the National Poetry Competition (2018) and was a mentee in the Noise Music Mentorship program (2017).
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