Time and time again, I'm sure you've heard the phrase "It's okay not to be okay." But that doesn't make it easy to grasp when you feel like it's not as simple as not being okay. In today's day and age the dialogue about mental health has been more widespread, educating the masses and taking away the stigma behind it. These stories aim to help with the de-stigmatization of Mental Health. The mind is a powerful thing but sometimes, it just needs to be handled with care and a little bit of lovin. And I repeat, therapy is ah.ma.zing. It is with that in mind that we share the fourth installment of Damn, You Too?

The first time I realized that I suffered from depression, I cried all day. I cried all day because it was the first time that I could make sense of what had been going on for years and it also made me feel like something was wrong with me and it scared me to come to terms with that. All I knew was that every time school let out, and the nice weather would come, I would just have this really dark and heavy feeling and I'd cry a lot.

It started when I was in middle school and I didn't self-diagnose until I was in college. After that self-diagnosis, I sat my mom down and tried to explain to her that something was wrong and I wanted to do something about it. So I asked her to put me in therapy. She didn't really understand what I was trying to explain to her, to this day, she still doesn't understand it. In her mind, there was no reason for me to feel sad, and I just needed to toughen up because life is hard.

She put me in therapy but always made comments about me going there and she would ask me what I talked about, if it made me feel better, and why I couldn't just talk to her? She didn't understand the need for a "doctor". I didn't need medication so it wasn't a real sickness and even then, she thought I just didn't know how to handle life on my own. She verbatim told me once that I was simply weak and she wished that I had been more like her.

My depression comes and goes, never really leaving tbh. But I've learned to live with it. I don't think there's anything wrong with me - life's circumstances simply depressed me and that's nothing that I have any control over. 300 million people have a form of depression in this world, and I just happen to be one of them.

~ Anonymous

My parents got a divorced when I was in high school, old enough for me to understand and be apart of what was going on and old enough for it to affect me in every way possible. Growing up, I had always been super close to my dad and when my parents separated, it kind of felt like he got separated from me too. Because we had always had that close relationship though, he always felt comfortable enough to vent to me during the divorce and even though it probably wasn't the healthiest thing for me, I always listened and tried to understand what he was feeling.

Dealing with my own depression at the time, whenever he called or texted, I offered a listening ear. To me, I was just listening and offering whatever advice a kid in high school could offer on marriage or the lack thereof. But what I didn't know was that me taking the time to listen to him speak and telling him whatever made sense for me to say, was actually me talking my dad off the ledge of doing something that would've changed my life forever.

He told me one day while we were out to lunch that I had saved his life by just listening and talking to him. It was then that I realized just how important mental health is and how being in the wrong frame of mind for too long without speaking to someone can really be the difference between life or death, losing yourself,  or even losing a loved one. I've found myself in that super dark place before, where I felt like I just didn't really want to live anymore, but I always found myself fighting to remember the life that's ahead of me and all the wonderful that is yet to come. If you're dealing with any of those horrible thoughts and you feel kind of just lost in the sauce, I get it ... just take a second to still your mind and think of all the great that's waiting for you in the future. Whether it be starting your own family, or finding the love of your life, or even creating the life of your dreams with the career of your dreams. It's all a reason to fight past the dark for. So don't forget it.

~Anonymous

I've battled depression for a min and so I've always kind of managed to live life with it on the side. But then I fell inlove, like reallllly fell inlove and it was with a guy who I thought was great but low and behold, he put me through some really shitty things. Without even realizing it, I put my happiness into this person and I found myself feeling happy and good when things were happy and good with us, but the minute he would do something that hurt me and we would break up ... I'd find himself in a deep dark hole.

And despite him knowing what his actions did to my mental state, I don't think he really cared. We had this back and forth cycle, each time - me getting happy when he came back and then feeling really low when things came to a breaching hault. I'd always given off the impression that I didn't care when he left but it legit killed me everytime. There were months where I simply cried and laid in bed, there were months where I heavily drank or smoked just to preoccupy my mind, and there were months where I found myself in a bed with someone else just to convince myself that I was over him, all the while - hoping he'd come back.

We are no longer together and it wasn't until I finally let go of the relationship that I realized just how toxic it was. There was manipulation, my mental state depended on him, and I can't even be mad at anyone else but myself. He kept coming back because I allowed him to and my mental state was compromised because I gave him the power to affect it. I found myself anxious whenever my phone rang or vibrated. It was like shock therapy with sound and it used to always feel like the state of my life depended on whether or not we were together. When we were good, everything else was good but when we were bad, life sucked.

Luckily for me, I found love for myself though along the way and these are no longer my circumstances. They taught me a lot though and so no matter who I'm dating, I'm continuously trying not to let all of my mental depend on them. It's not fair to them and its not fair to me. And if I ever feel a slight trigger with someone new that makes me feel the way I used to, that's the end of that because there's no way I could ever compromise my mental like that again.

~Anonymous

Depression is a bitch. It plagues our generation and is more prevalent than we care to admit. From a psychological perspective, many things can lead to depression. Living in the hood- check. Growing up impoverished- check. Having a single parent household-check. All of these things, enabled by society’s shitty system of oppression, leaves little black boys and girls, unknowing, to feeling at a deficient and feeling helpless. I would know because I experienced this first hand. 

Like many of the other submissions, I’ve dealt with depression since I was a youth. I didn’t know what to call the darkness that made me up. People said I had anger issues. Called me crazy. Said that I always had mood swings..but I know now that depression presents itself this way in adolescents. It presents itself differently in a lot of different communities. 

But in my hood, we didn’t experience mental health illness. It was either you’re strong and a survivor or you’re weak and need to do better. We didn’t consider the weight of the system on our backs or how our anger and unrest were normal responses to not having enough resources and just barely making it. We didn’t consider the weight of the system on our backs or how our anger and unrest were normal responses to being put into boxes that meant you were an oreo should you not fit. We didn’t consider the weight of the system on our backs or how our anger and unrest were normal responses to being treated like animals and criminals in the 4th grade and having to enter our learning environment through metal detectors. We didn’t consider the weight of the system on our backs or how our anger and unrest were normal responses to being negatively labeled before we could become who we wanted to be. 

The most important thing I have learned, besides to put my faith in God, is that this life will spit you up and chew you out. It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to cry. So long as you take all of that emotion and anger, let it rise to your fists and fight for what you want. Self love is a war zone. And happiness is a state for which you must be proactive. To all my Black and Brown brothers and sisters battling depression, keep going. You are loved. You are seen. You are heard. 

Namaste.

~ Anonymous

It is our hope, that by sharing these stories, we can continue to have an open dialogue about mental health and it's many faces. Be kind to everyone you meet, because you never know what kind of demons they're battling and how far a little kindness can go ...