A friend fell into a state of depression during high school, but she learned how to get back up in a vulnerable way.
Transcript
Emily Mena (EM): So, I have a friend that I’ve known like the back of my hand since the fourth grade. She was a year younger than me, but I knew that she was the smartest girl at my high school. But what I didn’t know, was that she was in a deep state of depression during her junior year.
Girl: Before junior year, I didn’t really care that much about mental health. That’s when a bunch of stuff in my life, went going downhill, it went downhill. Not only did I have, like, 4 APs that year, I also had, like, a bunch of clubs to look after and be a leader for.
EM: I remember sitting in class one day and not seeing her at her desk. She didn’t miss class often, but not many people thought anything of it. During the next period, someone told me she was crying and sobbing on the bathroom floor. I walked in a few minutes later and I realized how much paid she was in. She looked at me like she was lost.
Girl: I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping well. Um, I wouldn’t talk to my friends. I would only stay in the classroom and study, because that’s all that I was worried about: studying and making sure that I had A’s.
EM: Depression is something that can be hidden away for years, and no one would know that you had it. In this case, my friend locked hers away from the people she loved the most, even me, a close friend.
Girl: So, I kind of just hid my mental, like, health, like, deterioration, to myself, until I started showing signs, publicly. That’s when my teachers started getting concerned. That’s when my teachers started telling me that mental health is, like, totally okay to talk about, and that I shouldn’t be worried about what other people would think of me because of what was going on.
EM: It’s so easy to ignore something that everyone else is already ignoring. I ignored any feelings of depression in high school; I didn’t think anything of it. It was something I was scared to even think about. My friend ignored her depression because society taught her not to talk about it. And other people reaching out to her made her realize that, well, there was a stigma and there really shouldn’t be one.
Girl: So, that’s when I started thinking that, “Okay, mental health is actually important. It’s not some sort of stigma.”
EM: So she found refuge in learning more about her depression and talking to people who were going through the same thing. She even joined a group that eventually helped her get back into the light.
Girl: Not only was I looking after myself more afterwards, I became a mental health advocate. So I joined a nonprofit organization called The Buddy Project. So, our job was to advocate for mental health in schools and talk about different mental illnesses to students and teachers, so that everyone would know what was going on, why we shouldn’t treat it as a stigma and all of that.
EM: Google defines stigma as “a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person.” Through her experience with depression, my friend learned how to avoid carrying it as a burden. She knows now that the stigma around talking about your feelings shouldn’t exist, even if that means that we have to be vulnerable. As for me, I keep up my relationship with my friend. She’s made me realize that not only is there sadness in depression, but there’s also a sense of being lost, and sometimes you have to take someone else’s hand to guide you out of the darkness. But it all starts with you, and eventually, it might reach someone else.
Girl: I feel like there would be less problems in the world. There would be less violence, less stigma, people would be more understanding of each other if mental health was so important in other people’s lives. Mental health is such a big deal and I think that if it isn’t treated well or it isn’t taken care of seriously, then there will be tons of problems in the person’s life that’s dealing with it.
EM: And one of the biggest lessons she learned was that she was never working on her journey alone. Her biggest jump to becoming comfortable with her feelings was trusting that other people could guide her. And eventually, that brought her to help other people, as well.
Girl: I think that mental health is something that you shouldn’t be working on by yourself. Honestly, like, as cliche as this sounds, you actually are not alone. Because I do believe in God, I do believe that everything happens for a reason, and I believe that what I went through back in junior year of high school was meant to happen in order to help me find out more about who I was and what my identity would be shaped into.
EM: Taking care of yourself mentally is just as important as taking care of yourself physically. When you fall down and scrape your knee, you have to get up from the ground, even if that means asking for a hand. And the same goes for depression; You have to get up somehow.
Girl: The only way to get back up from such a low point is to just keep going forward.
