This I Believe

According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, “among adolescents with mental health needs 70 percent do not receive needed care.” I am part of the remaining 30 percent. It takes a few years for me to get to this place but I am here now. This is partly because of the most important belief in my life at the moment. “I believe that things will get better.” And yes, that’s written in quotations because I’ve said those words so many times that I have the right to call them mine.

            It starts when I am thirteen years old and I am sitting with my mom in a psychiatrist’s office and he tells her that I have depression. He told her that things will get better once I get a bit older. Well I get a bit older and things never really get better, and I stop going to see that psychiatrist. It continues and now I am fourteen and I am told almost every day at recess that I have no friends and that no one likes me. And I try to act as if I’m not there but no matter how hard I try those words stick with me even as I move to high school. At fifteen I begin to worry. I never stop worrying that one day someone would say those words to me again because I believe that they are true. And then I am sixteen and I am saying those words to myself and I refuse to think anything else.

But then I am still sixteen, and I think of my parents and friends and how much they care about me and I want to stop thinking this way. I eventually begin to want to help myself. That is the first step. I learn that I need to stand up on my own before I can run a marathon. The second step is believing that things will get better. Everything in life is temporary. It takes me a long time to learn this but I eventually do. Now that I’m standing up, I know that I can only begin to move forward and if I fall down I know how to get back up again. If I keep moving forward, things can only get better.

I am one of the few people who have mental illness that actually get help for it. I wish more people would see the effects of mental illness and actually take it seriously. It’s not just about feeling sad and anxious all the time. It’s planning your every breath because you are worried that people will judge you. It’s counting your reasons to keep living. It’s staring at the ceiling for hours on end because your thoughts won’t stop replaying in your head. It’s feeling guilty that other people are trying to help you because you believe you are not worthy of anyone’s help. Mental illness is a real thing that impacts real people and the first step to getting help is recognizing it and talking about it. I hope that one day people with mental illness will be taken seriously but I believe that things will get better for us.