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0 By J
I’ve spent half my life wondering why I seemed so different to others. I wasn’t always happy or up for going out and experiencing life like everyone else. When I was 13 I was told by a counsellor that I was the most depressed child she’d ever come across. And that all this was due to my dad leaving and it sinking me into a deep depression.
Struggle
It carried on throughout my teenage years, moments of happiness and hope for life followed by a constant struggle to maintain that persona when I didn’t feel it. I kept lying to everyone around me about how happy I was. This only got worse at university where the stress amplified and nearly destroyed me.
How I made it through without medication I’ll never know. It was probably the heavy drinking and substance abuse, which in the end only exacerbated the issue. It took a visit to the hospital after a particularly heavy night of self-medication where I was convinced this was the end to finally make me see this wasn’t the path for me. And I haven’t touched anything since.
Wildly creative
Eventually I finished and started looking for jobs. I’ve always been wildly creative, from design to illustration and studying animation at uni. And therein lies my dilemma.
Animation is an art form in which you express emotions from something that originally has none. How can you express emotion when either you feel none, or an intense self-hatred and sadness?
I think I’d learned to fake these emotions well enough that I can portray them accurately through my chosen medium, to lie and say everything is fine when it wasn’t at all.
It took a severe break up for me to realise the way I process things was really truly off, that there was something mentally not quite right for me. And for the first time I took my parents’ and my friends’ advice and I sought help.
Diagnosed and treated
I was diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety and put straight onto Prozac. The first few weeks were a living hell. I suffered panic attacks, suicidal thoughts and honestly just wanted to end it all. Eventually however, it came back around and I felt a little bit of what I remember happiness feeling like. I started to want to be with friends more, to go out and just experience life.
That’s when I found my current job. I’d been employed by them for a little while beforehand but really truly found myself lost in art and animation again and it felt incredible. I was conveying real emotion and my work improved substantially. I made close friends that I wouldn’t trade for the world and felt what I can only describe as an intense sense of self.
We’re more than an illness
After a few years on Prozac I found it wasn’t working as effectively anymore and could feel myself spiralling downwards. I went to my doctor and I’ve recently been put on Sertraline and six weeks of therapy. I’m not in a good place but I know it can and will get better. I’m never going to stop fighting for that person this illness has tried to take away from me.
It doesn’t matter what you do, what you’re passionate about, this illness does not define you as a person. Mental illness will always be just that, an illness, you are so much more than that.
Re-animate yourself
Remember what it felt like to be yourself, to be happy, and fight for that person, because they’re still in there. They want to create beautiful art, they want to run and shout and experience life with the people that love them, fight and keep on fighting.
It gets better, it gets worse and it gets better again. Re-animate yourself and keep fighting, I believe in you.
UNITED STATES
UNITED KINGDOM
