All this time, I’ve been dealing with my mental illness on my own, maybe with the help of my best friend and sometimes a therapist, but mainly on my own. I just went through another major depressive episode and it lasted for over a month and resulted in changes on my medication. I talk about it with certain people and I always get the same answer, “talking about it will help.” The way I normally deal with episodes is I hide from the world and don’t talk to anyone but my best friend and even then I don’t tell him everything. No-one really knows it’s happening until I start going home from work and with COVID happening, there isn’t much gatherings going on so I am able to hide even more.

I posted something on my Instagram that caught some attention, not that I was asking for attention. My mom commented “I’m always here to listen, cry and laugh with you, just let me in….” I have my reasons for not being able to talk to my mom about this stuff and even then one of my problems is that I have so much that I want to say about everything, good and bad, but I can never put it into words!!

I’ve learned to internalize so much of everything that I’ve gone through that I’ve never really learned how to voice anything out. How can you speak when you can’t speak? Even when they ask me if I am okay, I say I’m okay even when I’m not. I learned to suck it up, no one needs to know about your problems, just keep them to yourself. No-one can know that you are struggling. Everything is always okay. Nothing is wrong. Not only that, I have a hard time trusting people and I also have shut everyone out. Goes to show that if anything goes wrong, the only person to blame is myself. One more thing, when I try to say something, it takes me forever to say what it is that I want to say because I can never put into words exactly what it is that I want to say or what I feel. I don’t know how. And back to How can I speak when I can’t speak?

So… How can I talk to someone about my mental illness when I can’t even tell my therapist and my best friend everything? How do I learn how to talk about things without crying before the first word even comes out? How do you learn to let everything out when all you know is to keep everything in? How do you learn to trust people? How do you let people into your life after you have shut them out for so long? How? How? How?