One minute I’m fine. This happy go lucky girl; nothing can stand in my way. One minute, I'm writing an article about what I’ve learned from many years of hating myself. Then, the depression kicks in and my anxiety flares up and I’m sitting in my living room trying not to cry when I don’t even know what’s wrong. One minute I’m doing my job, the next I want to go hide somewhere and cry. Sometimes I know what triggers these sudden changes, but most of the time I’m just severely confused as to why I feel this way all of a sudden. Of course, that confusion just makes everything worse. I think to myself “Why...why do you do this to yourself?”or “Seriously? What is it this time?”

It is quite possibly the most frustrating feeling in the world. It’s like a toddler who gets upset over small things and the more frustrated you get trying to figure out what is wrong the more upset and inconsolable they get. Except, it’s not a toddler - you’re not the parent. You are both. You can’t control it or yourself any more than you can a toddler in the midst of a tantrum. Another way to put it is you have two voices in your mind, the rational one, who knows you should not be upset or anxious or both, and the mental illness. The one who says, "OH LOOK, a trigger"! and you sit there thinking but that's a cloud (or whatever it may be) and the irrational voice says “BUT it could be a storm cloud! You’re scared of storms aren’t you?” That’s when you realize all bets are off; that irrational voice is going to win yet another round.

You can fight it all you want, but in the end, it will probably be a moot point. So you struggle to keep your head above water and act like nothing is really happening - that all that emotional turmoil inside is nothing. You start to lash out at those you love; you get short with them and snippy. Your friends and family get confused because five minutes ago you were so happy and now you’re straining not to yell at them, straining not to tell them what is really going on, because what’s the point? They won’t understand anyways.

Then when you lock yourself in your room at night, or even in the middle of the day your break down. You were strong for so long that you need that moment of weakness to balance things out. You need that time alone because that’s when you can truly be yourself. You don’t have to worry about someone asking if you’re okay or what’s wrong? You can let it out and just be free of the false, happy-go-lucky exterior that everyone has come to expect of you. You no longer have to numb yourself to those unwanted feelings; you don’t have to be shut down anymore and, if you’re lucky, the voice in your head isn’t as empty anymore.

Then, slowly but surely, you come back to the land of the living. The land where you are happy, and your smile isn’t fake anymore and you are you again. You are not just a shell of a person; you feel like you did before this illness took your identity and tried to replace it with its own. It’s still in the back of your mind, lingering, waiting to come out from hiding like a cold, always there but sometimes dormant. You finally accept that it’s part of your life and that grants you some peace of mind.