Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
I feel like mental health is so important to all people's lives
whether you have a diagnosis or not
because if your mental health is not well, nothing else is well.
Your mental health translates to all other areas of the mind, body, and spirit to me,
so I feel like whether you have a diagnosis or not,
your mental health is very important to your overall well-being.
It's really hard to describe what it feels like to deal with mental health challenges
when that is your reality and you don't know any other way.
For example, when I was a younger youth, like in middle school and high school,
I just didn't understand.
I didn't understand what was wrong with me.
Why couldn't I be social like everybody else?
Why didn't I have -- ok, I'll stop.
Why didn't I have a bunch of friends?
Why when I went to a party I couldn't dance?
Why wasn't that even fun for me to be at a party like everybody else?
Why couldn't I get a boyfriend?
It was just a lot of why. I didn't understand why I was so unrelatable to my peers.
Once I educated myself around it –
once I came to terms with the fact that I had a mental health challenge
and that there was nothing wrong with that
because it was a health challenge just like any other health challenge –
it became much easier.