Mental Health
Social Justice, Anxiety, Depression, and PTSD
The mental toll and emotional exhaustion of amplifying voices for change.
A lot of people focus on others as competition, but for me, my biggest challenger has always been myself. I might get flashes of envy, but at the end of the day, I know that the only real person stopping me is me. I suffer from anxiety, depression, PTSD, and recovering from trauma bonding. I’m a survivor of domestic abuse, sexual assault, racist assault, patriarchal abuse. There’s a whole list and it never really fully goes away. You just learn to manage and work through the moments.
In some ways, it is the crucial component to why I’m empathetic, but sometimes, it works against me too. It keeps me locked in place and it can take days or weeks to talk myself out of it. Every time I write something especially personal, it literally drains me and can take several days to bounce back.
Sometimes, the depression and anxiety feels like a room with no doors. I feel trapped, frustrated, unable to move. And while there’s no door, it also feels like the water is rising beneath me, so then there’s this desperation to escape before I drown in my own head. I still feel small and locked up even if my voice and writing has amplification. I’m saddened and terrified at the helplessness and the turn my life has taken even when I know that to get out, I need to dig deep and do the work to pull myself back out.
Some of us are just born more attuned to the suffering around us. It’s both a gift and a curse. It’s said that you’re put in places where you’re needed most, and that there is a reason for every aspect of your life. If you’re spiritual, you’ll believe it to be true. But if you’re not, then all of this is just random chance. Maybe it’s a combination of both.
For all the good the internet can do, it is also a place of supreme toxicity, of trolls and aggression, of hidden manipulations and polarization, the truths mixed in with fabrications to sell a narrative. I have a pretty healthy thick skin, but it does get to be too much to have to constantly ban people. Fake profiles are so easy to open.
Depression and anxiety and PTSD, it’s all a mind game. It’s all in your head, yet it’s so real and heavy and can literally kill you. It’s been creeping up a lot lately. There’s a lot of personal things happening off-line that is contributing, but the way of the world right now isn’t helping either. And then there’s always the delegitimizing of people who have mental health issues, as though those issues somehow make us unable to be logical or intelligent. As though it makes us “too emotional” and is weaponized to discredit anything we have to say.
Social stigmas are so heavy and it keeps people from speaking out. You’d be surprised that most of the geniuses who have altered human history were depressives and had mental health issues. Some of the greatest thinkers and writers in the world who changed the way you see things were heavily depressed. It’s why they could reach so deep and could relate. It’s why you love them, and yet if you knew of their real monsters, most would judge them and discount them.
First things first though. I made a list of all the things I need to finish up so that I can focus and concentrate and ease some of the pressure. I’ve reengaged therapy and will be looking for professional help and then I need to put real physical action to my plans and thoughts.
I’m okay but I’m not. I’m vulnerable but I’m also brave enough to share because keeping it all bottled up is lonely work. Mostly, I’m just trying to figure my way out of life, taking things as they come and doing my best to stop sinking into the quicksand of dark thoughts. I keep counting the days, weeks, months I’ve been trying to dig myself out, every little step of progress, all of the sliding backwards, trying to remember to look up at the stars sometimes instead of just feeling the mud around my legs.
I know it’s a mental game, and I know attitude has a lot to do with it, but some times are harder than others. Now is one of those times. I’m remembering to just breathe, stay calm, keep cool. Ignore the trolls, focus on what needs to get done. Calm the tingling in my fingertips. Slow down my heart. I’m a constant dreamer and I’m dreaming of far away places; green fields; cool, soft breezes rustling through the trees; a place where I can be free to open my heart back up, where I can trust and smile and be happy without the burdens of society.
As much as I know I’m needed on the front lines of the social justice movement, it also takes a huge toll on my emotional reserves and my mental health. Life is indeed much easier if you turn a blind eye, but then nothing changes and nothing will ever become clean without social janitors to come in and scoop out the gunk. I know all of this is a choice, and maybe it sounds full of myself to think I have to stay here and do this work, but I also literally don’t know anyone else who will pick up this mantle. It’s a moral dilemma to be selfish and self-preserve.
Giving up my lucrative corporate career to take on independent writing is a poverty I haven’t felt since I was in my late teens trying to figure adulthood out. In some ways, it’s been worth it; in others, it’s been hellish. Not being beholden to someone else’s agenda and being able to bring awareness and giving an authentic voice to the suffering of others has been the most fulfilling part of my life; but I’m not gonna lie, it is virtually impossible to live this way because all of my work is practically free. Marginalized people are marginalized because they’re poor and under-represented. They don’t have deep pockets to sponsor your efforts.
Somewhere in the universe is balance. It’s what I’m still searching for. It’s what I’m desperate to find. Balance. A place of peace. A way to maintain happiness and safety and love for oneself, one’s community, and the world. I don’t know if I’ll find it. I don’t know if I can keep fighting for the long run. I’m just doing what I can in the here and now and putting amplification where I can for things people fear talking about. It’s perhaps not the mission I originally set out on, but it’s the mission I find myself in. In the end, I just want to be okay again.