I'm fine, thanks. How are you?
Sometimes it feels like the weight of the world is physically on your shoulders, and like an elephant is sitting on your chest; and like someone's prodding your deepest, darkest memories and emotions with a red-hot poker straight out the fire. You begin to feel like you're dying, and then you wish you really were, just so it would stop. And people ask what's wrong and you shrug and shake your head as tears sting in your eyes or spill down your cheeks, because the feelings don't translate into words properly, and because "nothing" and "everything" are wrong at the same time. You can't explain what's wrong when you yourself don't even fully understand. "It hurts. It hurts so badly, I can't stand it." "What hurts?" "Everything." This is clinical depression. This is severe anxiety disorders. This is PTSD. This is mental illness. This is chronic, invisible to most, and essentially unbearable—with or without medications and therapy. This is all with life-long chronic physical illnesses and the accompanying intense pain, fatigue, weakness, and sprinkling of other symptoms on top of it. This is why some days, I don't seem like myself. Because some days I'm not myself. Some days I haven't slept for more than eight or nine hours total in the past week. A lot of days, actually. Some days I'm violently drowning at the deep, dark bottom of the ocean all while I'm standing right in front of you; only you can't see it and you can't know, because it's all inside. All you see is the vacant look in my eyes and the slight slump of my shoulders and all you know to do is say, "Chin up! I'm here for you!" because that's what we're taught—that everything in life is just what you make of it, and all our problems can be solved with a can-do attitude, and that these mental illnesses are simply moodiness that ought to be better controlled, or that can be fixed by someone saying an encouraging word or two. This is a lie, and an especially dangerous one to people like me. Sometimes, I smile and say "I'm fine, thanks. How are you?" because I feel the need to protect you from everything that's crashing down on top of me until my very soul threatens to implode from the pressure of being crushed. Or because I know that's what I'm expected to say. No one really wants to know how you are when your brain and body are this sick, but you look "normal". No one wants to venture into the darkness and feel that weight. People really just want to stick to the script, "I'm fine, thanks. How are you?"