Mental health has become quite the hot topic over the past couple of years. Society is slowly learning to treat mental illness in the same way it does physical illness. Although it may take a week to heal a broken arm, a week with depression might look a bit different. And since I have been battling depression for a few years now, I thought I’d share what that week might look like.
Sunday: You have no energy. You don’t want to shower, you don’t want to go to work, you don’t want to move, you barely want to exist. However you are mentally prepping for the week ahead that you have to work and smile and interact with everyone you see.
Monday: Work isn’t bad, you’re able to laugh and make jokes with your co-workers but when you get home you get mad at your little brother for being on his iPad and create an argument when he really isn’t doing anything wrong. And then you get mad at yourself for being mad at him – it’s a vicious cycle of anger and you don’t even know where it started.
Tuesday: You tell yourself that you’ll clean your room when you’re driving home, but when you get home you can’t bring yourself to do more than change and crawl into bed. Although you did manage to be attentive through a work meeting when inside your head you were just counting down until you could go back to bed.
Wednesday: You eat everything in sight and have no control over stopping. This is after you spent 20 minutes looking at all the success stories on Kayla Itsines’ Instagram.
Thursday: You make plans with one of your friends you haven’t seen in months, then cancel because the idea of smiling, talking, and leaving your house again just sounds dreadful.
Friday: Your stop caring about why some people who were so close to you suddenly seem so distant – and you don’t have the mental energy to even try to fix it.
Saturday: You are exhausted, waking up with puffy eyes, yet choose to stay up to watch TV anyway. You ignore your parents who you love so immensely. You feel like you are losing control of your life.
Battling depression is not easy, and going about your daily life where most people (if not everyone) thinks you have it all together doesn’t make it any easier. But what DOES make it easier is acknowledging that you’re having a bad day and then doing what you can to change it. I’m not saying that you can simply flick a switch and things can change, but you can do your best to try. In every aspect. Do your best to love yourself, do your best to shower everyday, do your best to make conversation and keep in touch with people. Trying is half the battle. And that doesn’t mean that there won’t be days where you are going to want to crawl into bed and stay there until the next day; it is 110% okay to not always be okay.
Featured image via Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash
