To Anyone Who Thinks They Have to Fight Mental Illness Alone

There is a liar.

I know, kind of an awkward way to start, but there is. It, very unfortunately, lives in your head.

See, our heads are really good at latching onto whatever lie we feel the most. It grabs it and yells it again and again and again. This is what we feel.

You are worthless. You only hurt people. You’re ugly. You’re stupid. The world would be better off without you.

And so we fight. We push back with our own thoughts and truths and things we know. And sometimes, we win. Sometimes, the truth prevails:

You matter. You have infinite worth. You are a beautiful light. The world needs you, needs your story and your life.

But sometimes, we lose. We lose and we sink into our heads and maybe we even start telling ourselves the lies and we believe them and see them and feel them in every inch of us.

This, this is why community matters. This is why vulnerability matters. Both of these are so commonly used these days that maybe they lose some meaning and become part of the language we wrap things in to make them sound nice.

But community matters because you need to be surrounded by people who speak the truth when your feelings tell you otherwise. Finding a group of people who love you really well, even (especially) in the mess, matters because they fight alongside you, they hold your hand and scream truth into the darkness until the lies give way to light and you come to believe truth, see truth, feel truth.

You are alive. You are alive and you are loved beyond your wildest dreams. You are loved and you matter and no one could possibly be more loved than you in this moment and the next.

And vulnerability matters because people can’t help you fight if they don’t know. Speaking your pain matters because being surrounded by the best people in the world doesn’t matter if you don’t, people can’t fight your lies with truth if they don’t know what lies you’re fighting.

There’s a reason that two-thirds of people with mental illnesses don’t seek treatment, and that untreated depression is the number one cause of suicide. People can’t help you if they don’t know you’re hurting, and friends: we all need help.

We aren’t created to fight alone. We were created to fight alongside each other, to cry alongside each other, to celebrate alongside each other. Let people fight your lies with truth, and fight their lies with them. Receive love, give love. Carry each others’ burdens.

Fight alongside each other.