I would share this every day, every hour, until everyone I know understands this. This isn't a millennial problem. This isn't us being weak or unable to handle reality. This affects every generation. I have family members who are 60+ who admit to me they too suffer from Depression and Anxiety. But it's so stigmatized that if you admit to this, then you're just weak and lazy. That you aren't trying hard enough. That the very fact that you may need therapy or meds to help makes you weak willed and worthless.

It's the constant feeling that you will never be worth anything. The threat of being fired from a job because no matter how hard you work, that if you let your anxiety step in for even a second you aren't worth keeping around. This is friends telling you that being your friend is just too much because you have bad days and they don't want to be there. This is questioning myself, like why do I exist, why do I hurt, this is fear of sharing the very things that caused it because you don't want people to look at you differently or to stop talking to you.You are afraid to open up that much of yourself because you just know that the second they hear the stuff that happened, that tortures you even now even when you're an adult, they'll call you a liar. Or that they will just avoid you.

I have friends who tell me privately that they struggle with this because the idea of admitting it publically is basically signing a death warrant. This is the fear that they will lose loved ones, friends, respected peers, etc. because they will suddenly see them in a different light. I can't count how many times I've tried to type up posts explaining where mine stems from, the nightmares I still have, and the reasons why I act the way I do, and then I just delete it. Because I think that once I say it, that means its out. And that means questions that I might not want to answer. That means pity that I don't want, and people that just won't understand at all. I question myself and everything I do all the time to the point that I don't talk to anyone at all and make myself a recluse. You slip on a smiling mask to hide whats underneath so that no one will ever know. wedding outfits with crop top

If anyone on my friend's list needs me, I will be your late night chat or call. I've been there before, I know this road well. And I will love you regardless.