I Need Everyone To Stop Pretending Mental Illness Is A Trend

Mental illness is not beautiful, it’s not glamorous, and your anxious relationship with food won’t make you prettier if you listen to the voice that tells you not to eat. You won’t be able to tire yourself out when your mania is at an all-time high; when you crash it will bruise you and you’ll find yourself unable to leave your bed for days in a row.

I’m angry at the world for glorifying mental illnesses and for self-diagnosing, using the names out of context to label themselves on a bad day.

For the longest time, I wouldn’t tell anyone that sometimes it was hard to breathe while driving for no reason, or that I could sometimes hear my heart beat in my ears when everything around me was calm and quiet. I wouldn’t tell anyone that I had the most irrational fights with my boyfriend for things that came up in my head. I wouldn’t let anyone hear my stomach growl when I’d skip dinner after burning off my five hundred calories worth of food at the gym. I won’t tell you that this past summer, I’d hit my low and didn’t feel like I had a reason to keep living anymore.

Nobody talks about these moments because they aren’t pretty and they don’t fit in with our lives that we want to paint beautifully for those around us.

And if we do talk, then consider yourself lucky to be the person that’s trusted, because it takes courage to admit these things. I consider anyone reading this to be lucky that I’m finally putting it out there for you. I want you to know that if you know me and have ever thought that I wasn’t approachable, or that I was “a bitch” I’m sorry, because I never meant for my anxiety to eat me the way it did, without any remorse or warning.

This year has been a struggle for me because nobody mentions that you can lose your mind at some point after trying to pretend you’re fine for so long, and you can ruin your life.

But this isn’t to make you feel bad for me or to get attention – it’s me yelling to the world to stop ignoring mental illness because it’s uncomfortable, to stop using the term bipolar for yourself when you’re indecisive about something, to stop talking and just listen to people when they confide in you, to just…stop.

It’s a scary time when you’re learning about yourself still at almost 25 years old, because you’d think by then you’d have everything figured out. Instead, in a short time, you manage to tear yourself apart and turn into someone nobody knows.

It’s okay though. I’m here to tell you that everything turns out okay eventually. You will be okay no matter what it is. Eventually, everything stops spinning and you find your footing again. And the best part is that everything is a little brighter after being in the dark for so long. I don’t want to say everything is perfect after, but it’s pretty close, and you’ll find that you love the “close enough” moments again.