Since we’re doing this cycle for mental health I thought it
fitting to write this post about my personal experience with mental health
challenges.
In my early twenties I suffered from depression for about 2
years. It was rotten. Every morning straight after the blissful haze
of awakening, I would feel a kind of hollowness, that nothing was right. However,
I was lucky. Breda, my mum, was amazing. She understood that what I was feeling was
complex, and that it needed to be addressed by a person who understood that
particular type of complexity. She
understood that I needed to be helped by someone who was qualified to help. But beyond her understanding of the need for
that help, she also held no stigma about mental health issues or about opening up
and accepting that sometimes getting help is necessary.
My problems were relatively minor in the scheme of things,
and some of it had to do with the social anxiety associated with the processes
of discovering my own identity. But that
is not to belittle how I was feeling. The difference between the angst of
identity development and the continuous deadening feeling from depression are now clear and discernible in my mind.
