Some real talk about my personal experience with it, but also the hard truth I’ve learned since meeting others who have been dealt the hand of serious and prolonged mental illness - it is universal. If you’re honest about it, you lose people. If you smile and just say you’re ok even when you’re not or even better just stay away from people or social media - no news is good news, right? Except it’s the exact opposite. And we are all complicit. And the stigma and the silence it’s met with, the silence those of us who live with it are met with - it is real, it is devastating, and it is deadly. It needs to change. We need to change. It’s all just talk otherwise. Vulnerability is strength, silence comes from fear. Because we’re not like it, you’re judging us. We are judging us. Acknowledge it, and when we know better, we do better.
Stop letting people just disappear because it makes you uncomfortable to look at yourself.
