Life is freakin' hard, I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that much. Whether it's the fact that the lady in front of you at Fred Meyer took the last pomegranate or that you just discovered that someone close to you has died, we all can think of something that has happened to remind us of just how difficult running around on this space rock can be. What I want to tell you all about this week is how much harder things can be when a complicating variable is introduced into the equation of life, specifically, the variable of mental illness. For those of us who live life with a mental illness or some other form of neurodiversity, figuring out how to survive each day can be nothing short of excruciating at times, times that come much more often than we'd like, and certainly much more often than those of you who are privileged enough to be neurotypical.

Before I continue, I would like to give an important disclaimer: I will be speaking from my unique experience as a person with pretty severe anxiety, and as someone who does require medication to combat her mental illness. I do not claim to be able to speak on behalf of anyone else's unique experiences with mental illness. I do not believe that everyone must fight their illness in the same way, that would be ridiculous, because everyone is very different. My point is, while I do believe and hope that this article will be relatable to many different people with many different mental illnesses or other forms of neurodiversity, I would never try to tell you all how to feel or how to act. All I want is to share my story and my thoughts in the hopes that for those of you who share my struggle I can inspire and encourage, and for anyone else that I can instill just the tiniest bit of empathy in your hearts for those of us in the struggle.

I think of my mental illness as a suit, like the terrifying furry one that the guy who dresses up as Chuck-E-Cheese wears. It's a separate entity that can envelop the wearer and make them appear to be someone else entirely. My anxiety is a Carolyn-shaped person suit I refer to as Anxiety!Carolyn in my head. When I finally sought out help for my mental health and got on medication, I felt like I had transformed into my true self. I felt like before medication I had not been myself, merely the scary Chuck-E-Cheese-like manifestation of my illness, Anxiety!Carolyn.

I thought of Anxiety!Carolyn as a sort of evil alter ego, right up until today, a couple of hours before I started writing this. Today, I had what you might call a relapse. I became more Anxiety!Carolyn than Carolyn. After the episode was over, I couldn't stop crying. Not because it was traumatic, which it was, but because I finally realized something: I am Anxiety!Carolyn and she is me. The person-suit is made of the same atoms and DNA as my true body. I drag it around behind me all the time, even when I feel like my medication is working so flawlessly that I have transformed into a new, healthy Carolyn. The anxiety never leaves, because mental illnesses are, for the most part, chronic illnesses. You can't take an antibiotic for a few weeks and wake up to find yourself rid of your ailment. You just can't.

Living with a mental illness, even one that you might have as under control as possible, means dragging around the person-suit of your illness. It means relapsing and having episodes after months of feeling "great." It means having to confront the reality every day that you are not and will probably never will be 100 percent okay in the way that you want to be or the way that you think is "normal." It is devastating.

I want to be able to tell you that I peeled away the Anxiety!Carolyn and threw her to the bottom of the Puget Sound. I want to be able to tell you that she was never me, that a strong, healthy, confident Carolyn has been waiting to spread her wings and fly. I want to be able to tell you those things so badly. But I can't, because they aren't true. I can't peel away Anxiety!Carolyn all the way, because she's attached to me, maybe she always has been. That fantasy of a strong, healthy, confident Carolyn is just that -- a fantasy.

But here's the thing. People with mental illnesses are not weak. We are not less. We are not incapable. We can't just "get better," nor can we merely think happy thoughts or whisper affirmations in the mirror and be miraculously cured. But that doesn't mean we are broken. It means that every day we fight for what we need, whether that is a minute of peace from our invasive thoughts, or the courage to leave our dorm room. We fight, and with the support of our doctors and pills and communities and friends, we win.

I know I am still coming to terms with the reality that I am a person with anxiety, and I probably always will be. That's what it means to live with a mental illness -- it's a constant journey toward self-acceptance and personal growth despite having a mind that fights you at every turn. It truly is an uphill battle. So yeah, life is freakin' hard. And life with a mental illness or another complicating variable, well it's just about as far from a walk in the park as you can get. I tell you all this because we need to be kind to ourselves and our sisters and brothers on this Earth. Be kind to yourself, because you are doing so awesome just by getting out of bed. Be kind to your brothers and sisters, because who knows what kind of person-suit they might be wearing or dragging behind them. Most importantly, keep fighting. It is worth it, I promise.