Depression....the millennial boogie man (part 2)
Hi all!
What can I say? Thanks to whomever is out there (if your are a believer), we're still here!
I am writing part 2 because I felt the need to share this with people, even if  know I might only reach one or 2... but hey I reached someone!
A few months ago I was working on a very well know start up company. At the same time my grandma, which I have been taking care of since before my mid twenties, got the shingles. And we're not talking the normal kind one but an extreme case with blisters the size of fists, due to her previous illness, rheumatoid arthritis. Arthritis itself is a b*tch, causes severe and chronic pain and my grandma has had it for 30 years. Now add the fact that you have blisters all over your right shoulder, neck and chest and you have a recipe for disaster! She then was sent home by the doctors (still not cured) because there was a super resistant bacteria (was it a load of crap? I don't know, we just had to take her out)...
She was translated to another Hospital, a private one this time around (we thought we could afford it cuz grandma had been a nurse for 50 years...damn were we wrong). So there she got pneumonia, she was also dropped by the nurses 4 times...yeup...4-freaking-times! The result? A coccyx ulcer (WARNING: if you google it you gonna have bad dreams), a concussion and epilepsy.
This happen through November and December and January and February...and well I got a bad panic attack in my work place. I went to see my shrink and he prescribed me more meds but I needed time off cuz, my life was wake up go to work til 6 pm and the going to the Hospital until 9 pm. I was exhausted physically, mentally but specially emotionally.
I was on the edge of breaking...and my job as a phone operator was not helping with the customers always complaining and my boss having picked on me from the start. I was the only newbie that passed the marks set to the people that had been working there for longer and, just because an older colleague picked on me and I had to run to the bathroom to cry, I was now the black sheep.
So yes, I needed a few days off just to be able not to have a breakdown. And I turned to my shrink and asked him if he could give me a sick leave.
The moment the words came out of my mouth, I knew I shouldn't even have asked and the doc just said what I was thinking out loud.
"I don't think that is a good idea"
Why wasn't it a good idea? Because a sick leave from a Shrink is like a stamp on your forehead saying you are crazy. I would be marked by my bosses as the "freak" girl who had to go to the shrink and I would be an outcast socially...
This is what our society thinks of mental illness: they don't see them so they don't exist. Funny, it's like a colour blind person saying green and red don't exist because they never seen them.
We have to learn to be highly functional while battling depression. Be able to keep a job without anyone noticing that we are fighting ourselves ALL THE TIME!
Our masks cannot flutter, our mascara cannot run...we are the best actors. We can fool anyone. Our bosses, our friends, family and let's face it, we can even fool our doctors if we wanted to. We are THAT good.
But we shouldn't have to hide! We should be able to speak openly about our illnesses, the distress it causes and everything that comes with it!
I say we deserve to be viewed as valuable members of society because we work, we fight battles that others have never fought before and we manage to keep putting one step in front of the other!
I say we are heroes! To me, each and everyone of you that is battling depression or other mental illness and has made it through another day is a hero! And we will beat this! The stereotype, the illness itself, the voices in our minds! We will come out the other side, maybe not today or tomorrow but we WILL! Because we are FIGHTERS! We face fear, anxiety, discrimination, etc head on every day!
So let's stop the stereotype! If they have a problem, it's theirs not ours! We fight and we will conquer!
We can do this!
