“I think suicidal people are just lost angels trying to go home”
In this day and age having a Mental Illness has become much less of a taboo subject. Although people are still struggling to seek help, others are talking these problems and glorifying them. Through social media platforms such as Tumblr, Instagram, and Facebook it has become very easy to share your thoughts or opinions to millions of people. The damage of speaking about mental illness in a positive light comes in when an innocent person stumbles across it and becomes fascinated with its “beauty”.
People with Depression being described as “tortured misunderstood souls seeking comfort in the beauty of darkness”. Poems about self-harm being beautiful. “A canvas of flesh being painted with crimson red strokes of a metal brush”. Being taught that Anxiety makes you shy and mysteriously beautiful for distancing yourself. cute for being afraid” Eating Disorders like Bulimia being pictured with “a beautiful long haired girl with a ponytail. soft curls framing her face. tortured to be thin and misunderstood. she seeks help in cigarettes. beautiful ribbons of smoke leave her mouth like the food she just purged.” Anorexia being a lifestyle. A trend even. “Proana” diets helping you slim down quick. friends helping each other die. OCD being a “cute little quirk that makes people want to be tidy”.
It is poems, posts, blogs, websites like this that are putting people in danger. The romanticization of suffering teens. The idea that boys or girls will see you as some beautiful tortured soul and want to kiss your scars and tell you how perfect and strong you are for battling this. In reality, Mental Illness is nothing like that. A lot of times people will try to get others to stop glorifying these things but don’t know how to approach it because they themselves have not lived through them. I’m choosing now to speak up because I have lived with Depression. I’ve lived with all sorts of Anxiety on top of Bulimia and Anorexia. I know people struggling with their own mental illness. I’ve even felt drawn to some of these posts in the past because I wanted to be that dark and mysterious girl. I realize now that it put a stunt in my recovery and I don’t want that for other people.
I never see posts on the internet on what it’s really like to suffer through these things. And because of that, I meet people who genuinely believe the softened posts about these harsh topics. For that reason, people have made trigger warnings (something once used to warn people against something that might seriously affect them in a harmful manner) into jokes. People say they’re “so OCD” for being tidy. They’re Anorexic because they skipped lunch. It really is shocking that people will make light of these conditions.
Bulimia isn’t pretty. It isn’t fun. Bulimic people don’t enjoy throwing up. Instead of that pretty girl, it’s a red-faced girl with vomit on her face and dark mascara tears streaking her cheeks. It’s a boy completely unphased by the toilet water hitting him. blood shot eyes because they purge so hard. Shaking while your hand is covered in bile, snot running down your face, and your throat burns. It’s you hating how this feels and knowing its wrong. But you still do it because you think you ate too much. you think you’re fat and you can’t control your eating. you think this will reverse your eating but it won’t. you’re destroying yourself but you don’t care. Anorexia isn’t skipping a few meals and getting thin. It’s planning out each and every calorie that you eat. limiting yourself to almost nothing but still switching the intake up so your body doesn’t go into starvation mode. Not eating for days even though you feel light headed and can barely move. chugging water to fill yourself. furiously working out to burn off the calories that you do eat. suffering until your organs start to shut down.
OCD is not a quirk that you have. You picture a boy or a girl organizing their desk or fixing up their house. You picture them being clean and wanting things a certain way. It isn’t like that. Instead, that person has constant thoughts and fears of disasters or horrible situations that they believe will happen. A girl convinced her mom will die. The only relief being found through rituals and compulsions. being embarrassed because they know it’s irrational but they have to do it. Anxiety isn’t a cute girl tapping her fingers because she’s a little nervous. there are multiple types of anxiety. It’s fearing that the worst will happen. playing every bad situation in your head. it’s constant fear. social anxiety is needing to go to the bathroom but not being able to get up because people will look at you. it’s assuming that every laugh is because they’re laughing at you. separation anxiety is thinking that everyone will leave you. everyone hates you and you’ll end up alone. believing that something horrible will happen to your loved ones when they leave. crying at night because they forgot to call and mention they’re staying out late and you think they’ve died. Anxiety is getting panic attacks and feeling like there’s a huge weight on your chest. feeling like you can’t remember how to breathe and all the air is leaving your lungs while you hyperventilate. feeling like you’re dying. shaking and in a cold sweat. Anxiety is fearing that you’ll mess up every time you try to do something. it’s not cute nerves.
Depression isn’t feeling sad sometimes because you had a bad day. It’s laying in bed not being able to find the motivation to do anything. It’s not showering for 5 days because you can’t get up. It’s wondering why you’re alive. You might not even feel sad. Some days you might feel empty. Depression is watching everyone appear happy and wondering why you have to suffer. It’s like you’re drowning in a see full of people who can swim. you give up on life and you want to die but it won’t happen. you just sink. Depression is crying at 4 in the morning on your 7th day of not sleeping because there are too many thoughts and everything too overwhelming. It’s finally crashing and doing nothing but try to sleep. It’s sleeping for days trying to get rid of this exhaustion you feel but it’s not something to be cured by sleep.
Having a Mental Illness is going to the hospital for having a breakdown. It’s sitting in the ER feeling guilty because there’s a man who’s in pain and has no cell service to call his wife. You’re next to a little girl with pneumonia and you feel horrible because you’re there for something that you did on purpose. It’s going through trial and error runs with different types of medicine praying that you’ve finally found one that works. Asking yourself why you have to live this way when it doesn’t. It’s not a club for sad people. It isn’t cute. Mental Illness often becomes unbearable. Suicidal people aren’t angels who wanted to go home. They’re people who got so overwhelmed with everything they were dealing with that they decided death would be better. They gave their lives to end suffering that could have been fixed. They are not characters in your story of beautiful people suffering in the void.
The glorification has to stop for the sake of others. The truth needs to emerge. Instead of teaching people that their mental illness is fine a beautiful, teach them how to put it behind them and walk away.
IF YOU OR A LOVED ONE HAS THOUGHTS OF HURTING THEMSELVES, PLEASE SEEK HELP.
