Date: 29th Jan 2020
Ok, this may be triggering to some people and contains themes that may be painful to some people. So please only read if you feel able :)
This is a bit of a rant, educational rant (kinda) but it's something that is really important to me and links in heavily with my own experience of bullying and social isolation.
As you will know by now, I live with depression. And have done for roughly the last year - though I was only diagnosed with depression about 6 months ago. The reason I know I've been living with this mental health condition longer than 6 months, is because, looking back, the way I was feeling and acting a year ago is almost identical to how I felt - and still feel today.
The reason I've decided to write more about my experience living with depression is because of one of my most inspirational musical artist, who like me, lives with a version of depression - in the form of Bi-Polar - has in the past tried to take her own life and back in July last year, Demi Lovato was found in her home with what was a suspected overdose from her relapse back into using drugs. She has just released a song called "Anyone" which I have just managed to stop crying about long enough to write this.
For me, Anyone perfectly sums up how I felt when - also back in July - I was seriously considering taking my own life. That feeling of isolation and fear and lack of understanding and feeling so utterly alone and exhausted comes across in this song and it breaks my heart to have to hear that someone I admire so much for her honesty about living with a mental illness, for her incredible strength and beautiful ability to write incredible, raw, emotional songs - and who is changing my world as I know it by making me feel less alone - felt like she had nobody. Like she had nothing worth living for anymore. And being Demi Lovato, she speaks about it in interviews, she's honest about it... And instead of people being understanding about it, she gets trashed, with people hating on her, saying she "did it for attention", that she should have died, she should die. That she's worthless, talentless and on and on and on.
And this makes my blood boil. Living with any mental illness is a DAILY struggle. There are genuinely times where I have to force myself to leave my bed because otherwise I wouldn't leave the house and would sleep through the day and miss lessons. There are times where I have to force myself to eat because otherwise I will slip back into bad habits again. And there are days when I have fleeting thoughts of hurting myself again, of falling in front of a tube train and not having to keep fighting every day. And this is WITHOUT people posting horrible comments full of the things I am running from.
Mental illness IS NOT A JOKE! Comments saying "you should die" or "you're worthless" or "you're doing this for attention" etc, only increase the isolation someone living with a mental illness already has. Comments and words are SO powerful.
Demi Lovato is still relearning how to love herself, how to be who she is, how to be confident. And much like me, I can imagine comments of the above nature, are so hurtful and add to her struggle against falling back into the habits that could literally kill her. To act fine doesn't mean that anyone is. I acted fine for 6 months, never told anyone how close I was to slitting my wrists or jumping in front of a train that ran a few minutes walk outside of my college. To the outsider I was "fine", the comments I got chucked at me in college "weren't hurting her" because I wasn't crying? One doesn't have to show outward emotions to prove that a comment or being targeted as a joke, hurts. It does, we just become amazing at hiding the fact that peoples insensitivity towards what we are living with, makes us feel even less like members of society.
If the only way you can feel better about yourself is to tell someone they deserve to die or they should slit their own wrists or they're worthless, what does that day about you and your confidence? Why can we not all just be nice and understanding about the fact we're not all neurotypical?
So please - for the sake of anyone else out there who is living with a mental illness - stop BULLYING PEOPLE!! Be nice, or if you can't DON'T SAY ANYTHING! Spread positivity, hope, love, care and kindness. Being nice could be the difference between someone like me (or Demi Lovato) taking their life or not. Nobody, NOBODY deserves to be told they should die when they are trying to help people by being honest and spreading awareness about a taboo subject.
We are only human, we all do stupid things we regret and isn't the fact we regret those things enough punishment? Isn't the knowledge that we live with these regrets and these wishes to be normal, proof that we too are human? That people living with mental health conditions deserve RESPECT, LOVE, HOPE and SUPPORT too? We are human and no matter how many people keep telling us we're horrors and freaks, we will keep speaking out because we might save someone's life by telling they're not alone :)
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