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Life with Mental Illnesses

People think that OCD is checking that you’ve locked your car doors before you leave, that it’s about being overly neat and obsessively clean.

But here’s what OCD is really like: I can’t break my shower routine or I’ll keep showering till I get it right. I can spend an hour writing an essay and spend two hours checking it because I had an intrusive thought while working on it. I sometimes have to wash my hands multiple times before I can leave the washroom because I think I’m carrying bacteria. I need to check that I’ve locked my doors in multiples of 4 before I feel comfortable to leave (and sometimes, that’s not even enough). And if OCD still sounds okay to you, imagine this: imagine having uncontrollable thoughts about the people you love getting murdered in cold blood and there is nothing you can do about it.

People always think that eating disorder means being skinny and underweight. The media romanticizes eating disorders because it fits into the idealised concept of being thin.

But here’s what eating disorder is really like: I used to abuse laxatives so much that some of them don’t work on my body anymore. Because of my eating disorder, I used to eat 600 calories a day and work out for 2 hours. I used to cry if I had to eat any fried food and I couldn’t eat anything that I deemed unhealthy. Because of my eating disorder, I lost 20kg in 6 months, but I also lost my life when I constantly had low blood pressure and hypothyroidism. I lost my scholarship, my grades slipped and I was crying in the shower every night. My body started to become more sensitive to the things I ate and my bowels took the blow. I lost my period for half a year and I was so terrified that I’d never have children because of it. I once spat out blood after trying to induce vomit.

People always think depression is about being attention-seeking and sleeping in all day when you’re really just too lazy to get things done.

Here’s what depression is really like: I used to be able to sleep at 11pm, got up at 6am for school and felt like I could take on whatever the day hurled at me. Now, I barely get any sleep at all and I wake up feeling so anxious that I can’t get out of bed. I used to have fun hanging out with family and friends and now, I just want to hide away because I think I’m not good enough for them. I used to look forward to life but these days, I just wish I didn’t exist. I used to countdown in excitement for my birthdays and now, I don’t even remember them anymore. I used to thrive on my emotions and used them as anchors for change in my life and now I feel nothing. I’m only either depressed or empty.

The world needs to change the idea of what mental illnesses are because if it doesn’t, millions of people are going to continue to suffer in silence. And what good is there is a world where people are laughing while hiding their pain? What good is there in a world where people refuse to care about one another? What’s the point of living when we thrive on the expense of someone else’s wellbeing?

Let’s not just talk about mental illnesses, let’s listen about them too.