So the other day I was on YouTube, on a crowded peak hour train back home from work when I saw something that distracted me from the treacherous underarm odor radiating from the guy next to me.
Lily Singh AKA IISuperwomanII was taking a break from YouTube to address her mental health.
The reason why this hit me as hard as it did, was for three reasons:
- She was the first YouTuber whose channel I actually subscribed to;
- She talked about topics that I could always relate to;
- I’ve read her autobiography ‘How to Be a Bawse: A Guide to Conquering Life’ and loved how brutally honest she was about her battle with depression, as well as her play on words around how to conquer life.
In short I always wondered how she managed to stay so upbeat because it always reflected in her videos. At no point did her struggle with mental health reflect in her videos or vlogs, so you can imagine my surprise when she announced that she’d go MIA for a while to focus on healing mentally, spiritually and creatively.
As shook as I was after that announcement, my respect for her shot through the roof because the truth about mental illnesses like depression and anxiety is that you can’t always see it. Unlike a physical injury. You can’t walk around with a cast around your arm for a few months and have the world visually understand your battle. Instead its concealed within the confinements of your mind and you’re in charge of changing the cast frequently to ensure recovery.
Sometimes you may have a doctor or a nurse help you with it but that’s only if you let them know that you’re hurting in the first place and not a lot of us do that, because we are afraid of admitting it to ourselves let alone the wider world. Especially in a day and age where the Internet is saturated with pictures that almost always seem to have a permanent filter on them. You end up with jaded vision.
So the only way to eradicate the squirmy feeling associated with depression and anxiety is to talk about it, with no filter.
As someone who struggled with depression (on and off) for the past few years I can personally confirm that it can be tough. In some instances it feels like it’s an uphill battle and no matter how much I try to convey what it feels like to my loved ones, the words never quite come out right. And as someone who relies on words as a blogger this is pure agony.
How am I supposed to explain the heaviness that floats around my mind like a rain cloud, for days on end to people who are unable to understand that mental illness is real. Very real.
However, while it is real, it is also not the end. In the past my therapist helped me understand that in the medical field depression and anxiety are like common colds. They can be treated but they tend to come back (for some people) like seasonal colds. So the best way to deal with this type of ‘seasonal cold’ is to acknowledge that you have it in the first place and then take the appropriate steps to address it. For some it may involve hitting the gym, knitting or adopting a hamster to look after.
Either way acknowledgement is key. It doesn’t make you weak. It makes you human in a time where sex robots are soon going to become a ‘thing’. We live in a very kinky time period. Everyone is a low key freak I tell ya.
But real talk, that’s the reason why I started blogging. To help combat depression and because I realized that if I can make at least another person laugh as hard as I do then I’ve contributed in making the world a better place (I’m shitty at recycling I’m sorry).
So grab your favorite glass of red or your ridiculously expensive flat white and let’s get comfortable with the uncomfortable.
Strategic Chaos 