Misti W.
Samia Shahnawaz
My experience with mental illness really started around my freshman year of high school around thirteen years old. I think that the depression was always there but it was just dormant. It became "active" when I moved away from literally almost everything and everyone I had known my entire life. I had to break up with my boyfriend (who was also my best friend so I lost my best friend as well) and I couldn't start high school with my friends. It was a very sudden move and I felt like my mom just said 'this is how it is, deal with it'. When we moved, the kids at school didn't like me because I had an accent and was new (it was a city environment and I was used to the country), the living situation wasn't the best (my moms friend said we could stay with her but you never really know someone until you live with them); I remember thinking at one point in time that my mom had more of a social life than me. She had a boyfriend and would go out to see him, yet I wasn't allowed to have friends over.
When things started getting bad I went to a doctor and in the part of the exam where they have everyone leave the room I told her I was depressed. She said it was "situational" depression and I would be fine. I didn't talk about it to anyone for awhile. I went to the doctor the next month or so and I saw a different doctor, this was probably 4 months after moving. This one said I had a lasting depression and prescribed me Prozac but it didn't help very much. I just remember feeling like I didn't fit in anywhere or that I didn't matter and if you hear something time and time again eventually you start to believe it. I felt like I was trapped in my own personal hell with no real way out. I would just lie in bed and cry myself to sleep praying to god or whoever, whatever that I didn't wake up. Now I see that the "not answering" was actually a really big blessing.
“I just remember feeling like I didn’t fit in anywhere or that I didn’t matter and if you hear something time and time again eventually you start to believe it. I felt like I was trapped in my own personal hell with no real way out. ”
Changing environments helped a lot I was in a toxic place and once I got away from the toxicity I was able to begin to focus on me, without worrying about all the negative people around me. Religion helped me, especially the people I met at church. I was around others who had gone through similar situations as me and I felt that if God loved them and they loved each other, then I could be loved too. I had found somewhere I belonged. At lot of the songs and activities oh Church helped me as well. I remember one time we did a "trash" activity based on a book ( I"Give It All to Him: A Story of New Beginnings" by Max Lucado); you literally gave all your "spiritual trash" and bad things to God, we made a list and burnt it at the end. It helped get out some things I didn't even realize it affected me.
Helping others also helped me overcome my dark days because I thought about all the people who told me they wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me and for all the people I can help in the future. But I can't help anyone if I'm gone so that was a motivational factor for me. I started off helping my friends and once I moved away from the toxicity I was doing better. I would give them advice and support and such (most of them did not have good home lives and my mother is my best friend) and then over some time my "personal instagram" turned into one where I try to support and help people with mental illness (especially depression/suicide) or problems of their own. It helps me get out of myself and realize that I'm not as alone as depression would have me believe, and it's always very self-affirming when someone says "if it wasn't for you I wouldn't be here" it's impossible not to feel a sense of purposefulness after that.
“I started off helping my friends and once I moved away from the toxicity I was doing better. ”
My advice to others would be to get your feelings out. Write, blog, text someone, talk to a friend. Getting it out there and expressing "this is what's going on this is how I feel" makes you feel better. Please don't listen if someone else (or even yourself) says you're less for having a mental illness, because mental illness is not who you are. You are amazing. You are talented. You are wonderful and loved. You are you, not you're disorder.