Living with depression and anxiety.

I've been debating for a while whether or not to write about this, because it's very personal and gets me emotional to the point I'm crying alone in my room.
But today I opened Word and wrote over 1400 words about me and my condition, kind of as an open letter. That's a lot of text, so I'll put t under a cut.

If you feel that you would like to read about it, don't be scared to click the 'read more'.

Hi, my name is Stina, and I am a Sagittarius. I was born in Helsinki, Finland, but study in England at the moment, which also used to be one of my dreams when I was younger.
But enough about me, actually, wait. No, NOT enough about me.  Let me just get to the serious part I wanted to write about.

Let me tell you something about myself.
Outside I seem to be a happy person most of the time, who barely cares what other people say or do to me. But I have to admit now, that’s all bullshit.
I have depression and anxiety. No, I am not saying this because apparently mental illnesses and needing therapy and medication is cool. I am saying this because it is something that has followed me from my childhood, and is finally pushing onto the surface, trying to take over me.

I don’t usually tell people this, because I don’t trust people. It takes me ages to actually start trusting people, because I’ve been let down so many times. If I told something I wanted to keep private, someone usually went and told it to another person. I always tried to be there for others and listened to their problems. The second I tried to tell them my problems, most ignored me or told me I was trying to make everything about myself. So I stopped telling people about my feelings. I didn’t tell teachers, school nurses or anyone else. I completely stopped asking for help. And if I had been indifferent about things before, well... I just got worse. I couldn’t care less if I hurt someone. In my secondary school people had called me whore, stupid, idiot etc. behind my back. I didn’t care. They didn’t know me, and honestly I had more things to worry about than some stupid words by teenagers. But to tell the truth, it all dug its way deep under my skin, and it’s still there. When I got into upper secondary school (high school), all I had to protect myself was my words and my indifference. Sure, people were welcome to insult me, but I usually paid back with something ten times worse. Of course people didn’t know that whatever they said actually had a bad inflict on me. Sometimes I cried in front of them, sometimes I waited until I was alone and just let the tears just fall accompanied by slight hyperventilation.

My childhood was not easy. My dad died when I was one (also something I rarely tell people until it comes up in a conversation), and my mother took it really hard. I am not going to go into details, but let’s say she went down and took me with her. This lasted till I was 17, when I ran from home. She never called after me to see what had happened. When she did after a very long time, I didn’t want to talk to her. I can’t blame myself because I remember so many bad things she said to me, and I still haven’t been able to really forgive her. I was forced to grow up faster than I should’ve, and I thought the only way to survive was to be independent, to ignore every bad thing, to seem stronger than everyone else. I was jealous of my friends who complained how their parents were making them be home at 21.00 or how their parents never let them do anything fun after 22.00. The way I saw it, and still see it, is that their parents care.

Care. Caring. That is something not many kids in my family have experienced. From my mother’s side that is. There is this thing in my family where parents/women don’t really express their love. And I think that’s a shame. Nothing’s worse for the kid than them going to extremes to get that attention from the parent. Nothing’s worse than a parent who doesn’t seem to care. Except one who does that AND tells you that you will die before her. But that’s another story.

I tried to get help for mental problems in Finland, but apparently I was okay, because I was not cutting myself or “going to kill myself”. Yes, that is mental health for you in Finland. You seem to have depression? Good for you, here, take medication that will most probably give you an eating disorder (I had an eating disorder, I still have remains of that). Oh you want to get into therapy/counselling? Well, I’m sorry, come back when you’ve tried to kill yourself at least once.
My first year in University in England was amazing. I seemed to be making new friends (although I still couldn’t trust most of them completely), and I had motivation for school. I still had that nagging in the back of my head telling me that everything was NOT okay, and it was right.
After summer everything seemed to collapse. All my thoughts about “Hey, I’m doing okay” were taken away from me and I saw the truth. I was not okay. I was depressed as fuck, didn’t want to talk to anyone, my suicidal thoughts were almost coming back, and my anxiety got worse than ever before. I had my first big anxiety attack last November. And I just kept getting them after that. Suddenly, out of nowhere this terrible, terrible thing would just come and take over me, make me cry, make me unable to breathe properly, make me think that everyone hated me, make me think I was a complete failure and that I wasn’t able to do anything well. Small things triggered these attacks. If I saw someone whispering something to another person, and if they even looked at me, I immediately thought they hated me. Someone commented something to me sarcastically, and again I thought “They must hate me.”
Whoever says that’s completely normal... I say, FUCK YOU. It is not. Starting to hyperventilate, cry and think that you’re a bad person who can’t do anything and that people probably hate you just because they looked at you or said “you’re weird”? No. It’s not normal. So shut up and stop telling people with anxiety that it’s okay and that it’s normal. You are lying to them. You are lying to yourself.
My first semester of second year I was very down and anxious about everything. First I thought it was stress related, but I soon realised that it wasn’t. It was something I had been suppressing for years that finally needed to come out and be taken care of.

Let me skip to what life is like for me nowadays.
Soon enough after all that I decided to see if I can get help in England. I went to see a mental health advisor in Uni, and also went to see NHS’ doctors. Before I knew it, I was on a medication for depression and anxiety (which btw, in Finland is a medication listed under ‘Difficult psychosis and other severe mental health disorders’). I take one pill every day, and it helps my body produce serotonin, which in turn helps to keep the depression and anxiety away.
Now, this does NOT mean, that I take the pill and I’m magically okay. No, it does NOT take my thoughts away. It does NOT take my problems away. It does NOT make me forget my past and every single bad thing. That’s why I applied to counselling. Which I’ve been to a few times now, and have some more to go. Thing is, I don’t believe that all what I’ve experienced can be covered in six sessions or more, and this will be something I’ll have to do for quite a while.

I am not sure why I wrote this. I guess I’m finally learning to be okay with myself and my situation. I can’t live in a state where I’m scared of people finding about me, and me being embarrassed about it. You know what? There are people in worse shape than me. At least I’ve managed to survive this long with “ONLY” suicidal thoughts, instead of actions. I am working hard to get better every day and I have couple of people who are helping and who I trust. If this makes people who know me think that I’m crazy, a bad person, terrible or whatever and make them pity me or unwilling to be my friends anymore, or worse, think that I can’t act like a human being, then fine. At least I know who I am, and I am not writing this to make people pity me. I have a condition, but it shouldn’t make me less of a person than you. Or you. Or anyone else.