Over the past few years, I have gone through a long struggle of dealing with my problems. I've gone through a lot of different stages of self-destruction.
For me, knowing first hand what it's like to hit rock bottom, it's very hard to see people romanticizing things like depression, self-harm or even suicide.
An article pointed out to me that there's now a trending hash tag on instagram with people encouraging others or praising those who have commited suicide.
I wasn't going to write this chapter, because I know many of you are actually struggling with serious problems. With depression, anxiety or eating disorders. But I also know that those of you have the same annoyance with this new "hype".
Being depressed is not a fashion. Cutting yourself is not cool. Starving yourself is not a great way to get attention. Saying that you're going to commit suicide, whiles you know that you are not, is not brave. None of those things are pretty. None of those things are romantic.
It's one of the reasons I have a lot of trouble with the site Tumblr, where pictures of pretty girls with an empty bottle of vodka and a cigarette hanging out of the corner of their mouth, catches my eye lot. Included with a very deep quote about how they are so alone and how nobody will ever understand them. How it's them against the world. Make-up running down their faces, hair wild and a look on their face as if they want to beat the crap out of you.
That's not mental illness. Let me tell you that. First of all, it's not posting pictures of what you are going through with some very inspirational quote. It's hiding in your room, by yourself. Sure, it's sometimes smoking, it's sometimes drinking, it's sometimes starving yourself, it's sometimes binging food. But none of that is every portrayed with people who have demons in their mind.
It's not romantic.
Being depressed is not romantic. Having anxiety is not romantic. Not being able to sleep on your stomach because your hip bones are sticking out too much, is not romantic. Having the urge to order food fifteen times a day because you can't stop eating your feelings away, is not romantic. Being afraid to go to public places, is not romantic.
"Hating people" is not a mental illness. Telling people how you feel so fat so you skipped breakfast once, is not a mental illness. Telling people how you're hungry all the time so you could eat everything, is not a mental illness. Feeling sad and expressing how you could totally kill yourself right now, is not a mental illness.
And mental illnesses are not romantic. Having a mental illness, having scars, being a skeleton, is not romantic.
So stop making it seem like it. Stop making younger people feel like they're not cool if they're not depressed, don't have an eating disorder, don't have cuts or burns or smoke or drink or whatever. Stop ruining the next generation.
It's not romantic.
It never will be.
Stop acting like it is.
- Kyran