The other morning I was scrolling through Facebook as I ate my cereal. Nothing out of the ordinary for me, I had put on my makeup, got dressed, packed my backpack, and had a few minutes to kill before my class at eight. As I scrolled down my newsfeed something caught my eye; now I rarely read the memes on Facebook, but something told me to scroll back up, I wish I hadn’t. This was the post:
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I could feel the anger and disgust rising in my body. You see, I forgot to mention one crucial part of my routine-I had took my anxiety pill for the day. I have high-functioning anxiety, which basically means that on the outside I seem perfectly calm, but I’m anything but. My thoughts are constantly plagued with negative thoughts like “I’m a bad friend,” “I can’t do anything right, I’m a failure,” or my personal favorite “No one will ever love you.” I can’t stop it, so I try my best to stay busy, to keep my mind occupied. My tell is if you see my fingers moving as if they were playing an invisible piano, it’s a coping mechanism for me. I don’t know how to play piano, but it calms me down. This meme was shared by four different people on my friend's list, and I was appalled. I couldn’t focus on the Professor during my lab, all I kept thinking about was how shitty of a post it was.
Those ignorant individuals wouldn’t have shared that post if it featured a cancer drug, would they have? So why is it acceptable to treat my illness as nothing more than me being a little overwhelmed? If you suffer from an infliction to any other organ then people will be there for you, but if your brain is ill...people avoid you like the plague. Going for a walk in nature will not cure my anxiety, nor will it cure my friend’s depression. Thinking positive thoughts will not suddenly make her depression go away, just as wishing for a bone to heal will not make it magically heal. My invisible disease is more real than your WebMD degree, and I’m sorry if it makes you feel uncomfortable, but try having to live with it. There is not a single person who lives with a mental illness that enjoys having to take a pill to function.
Stop promoting this idea that those of us with a mental illness just suck at life, or that we just need to change our attitude. That is not the problem. There is a person in my life that I adore dearly, and without her medication, she cannot function. She cannot go to the mall, she cannot sit in an auditorium, she cannot function in her daily life. She cannot control her anxiety, she would give anything in the world to be your idea of normal. Yet, there are people who think she should just go outside. Now I am not implying that nature can’t help, it can. Studies have shown that Vitamin D can alleviate the symptoms of depression, but I am not writing for those people. I am writing for the soccer star that cries herself to sleep, I am writing for the A+ student who enjoys going outside, but deals with suicidal thoughts every morning. I am writing for the people who need more than a fresh breath of air to convince themselves that this life is worth living. The pill I take and the pills thousands of others take are not shit. No one chooses to be ill, that is just how our cards were dealt. So I ask of you to please stop buying into the false notion that I can be fixed with a happy quote, or a walk outside. I ask you to stop and think about what you post, and ask yourself this: Why is it that we ostracize people who suffer from an illness that affects the most crucial organ in their body?
