Blogging for a Cause: I'm Coming Out!

Macbeth: “How does your patient, doctor?

Doctor: Not so sick, my lord, as she is troubled with thick-coming fancies that keep her from rest.

Macbeth: Cure her of that! Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain, and with some sweet oblivious antidote cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon her heart.

Doctor: Therein the patient must minister to himself."

~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth

May is National Mental Health Awareness Month.  Join me in blogging to erase the stigma of mental illness so our loved ones can seek the help they need.

I

should win an Oscar.

I’ve kept a deep, dark secret from my closest friends for years and no one has ever suspected.

Only two of them know the truth, and that’s because I chose to tell them.

But only one of those two understands and empathizes. Because he carries the same secret.

A secret that about 58 million Americans hide.

I’m Coming Out…of the Cave

I suffer from depression.

It is not clinical. 

It is not chemical.

It is not an Axis I disorder.

It is painful.

It negatively affects my relationships.

It negatively affects my physical health.

And until today, I was ashamed to talk about it.

I’m one of the luckier ones, I suppose.  My depression doesn’t keep me from working, although at times it makes it more difficult to be productive.

All those days I didn’t blog? Yeah.

My depression hasn’t led to any suicide attempts.  But I have thought about it.  And it has prompted me to wish I’d never been born.  Or that the doctors and nurses hadn’t been successful in bringing me back from the beyond in 2013.

All those times I didn't call you back?  Yeah.

It makes me avoid social events and friends because “no one wants a Sally Sad-Eyes around to bring the party down.”  This is especially true for those of us with a reputation as the "life of the party."

It stops me from getting out of bed some weekends because I'm too exhausted from all the mental and emotional gymnastics my mind and my heart pull non-stop.

And it stops me from reaching out to others who might also be carrying a similar burden. 

Until today.

Blogging for a Cause

Today, I want to end the stigma surrounding mental illness.

Today, I want to encourage you to seek therapy.

Today, I want to make mental health a priority.

Today, I want you to join me in embracing the darkness inside, and shining a light on it.

I hope you join me for the next twenty-two days (blogging five days a week).  I’m sure either you are suffering, or have a loved one who is suffering from some form of mental illness.  And that’s not something you should ignore or think will just go away.

It is nothing to be ashamed of.

Will you sit with me?  We can curl up in a corner and share our stories.  Or we can just sit in comfortable silence…together.

Because today…we stop suffering alone.  

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor and I don’t have a degree is psychology.  Everything I post this month comes out of my own experience as someone who suffers.