Hi! My name is Justin. I am just an average guy. Mid 30's. I have been married for 11 years, I have 2 kids, I have a good job at a bank, I am a avid dog lover and have 2 of the best dogs in the world, I enjoy playing music in my spare time. I can sorta play the drums, I am even worse on piano and shouldn't even be allowed to play the guitar but yet I still try. I have a pretty good life. Own a house in suburban Minnesota. I really can't or shouldn't complain about much....Here is the deal though - I have a disease. I am sick. Don't worry it is not contagious. You can't catch it from me if I sneeze on you. You won't get it if you touch me or get too close. It isn't sexually transmitted either. You probably can't even notice it by looking at me. If I went to my family physician, they could run a million tests on my blood, check every part of my body and they wouldn't be able to find it either. So... what the hell is it? Is it some invisible made up illness? Does it even exist? How the hell do I know I even have it? My disease affects pretty much the central command center of my body. My brain. I have a mental illness. Well what the fuck is that right? I wish I could tell you. My brain doesn't fire correctly and something in there is not wired correctly. How do I know I have it? I live in a depressed state of mind along with 7+ million other Americans. Now - you need to understand that there is a difference between sadness and depression. Sadness is an emotion that comes and goes. Depression is a state of mind that does not move forward. I lack motivation to live life. I feel like I am constantly looking up from a hole and can't see any light. It isn't the inability of feeling happiness, I can be happy and from the outside, I probably appear happy most days. I try to live a positive life. This depression in my brain makes me think very inappropriate things. Sure I can have good and bad days but when depression hits, I find myself secluded and isolated and only wanting one thing and that is to remove myself from this world. When I am at my worst, I can't think of others and the impact that I have on them. They are irrelevant. All I can see or feel is my own desire to not exist anymore. That smile my daughter shot me, my son telling me he loves me, that amazing sex I had last night, none of it matters and none of it proves to work as a reason to stay. Most people cannot comprehend that and I really wish that they could. It is super important for others to realize that it isn't just a mood thing that can just be changed. It is a medical condition that requires medication and therapy to fix. Suicide accounts for 35,000 deaths a year (homicides account for around 16K a year). Think about that for a moment. We hear about murders and homicides on a daily basis yet they refuse to ever mention someone dying of suicide unless it is a famous person. They do this to prevent copy cats and giving people the idea of suicide. Well I will tell you this - if a person is contemplating suicide, it isnt because they heard someone did it on the news. They have been thinking about it before. And MAYBE just maybe we want to use that same tactic for homicides? Do you think if we didn't mention them on the news they just magically wouldn't happen? Of course not. Depression and suicide are such taboo subjects. No one wants to talk about them or acknowledge them. We just hide it in the headlines under the guise of "died unexpectedly" Fuck that. They died of suicide. They had a disease/illness. If you want to compare it to cancer, we can say that they lost their long courageous battle with depression. Let's get people to talk about this openly and honestly. I think we need to be real about this if we ever expect to see change.
No comments:
Post a Comment