Emily G.
Photography by Owen Hobbes
If you’re reading this, you don’t have to pretend anymore.
Mental health issues are not new to me. I struggled with my mental health throughout high school, and the only way I managed to get through was by repeatedly telling myself that things would get better in time. I put my faith into the predictable cycle of life’s highs and lows, keeping my feelings largely to myself. And for a while, it worked. I rebounded during my freshman fall at Colby; I was the happiest I have ever been. But I couldn’t shake the thought that the bad days were bound to show up again at some point down the road.
As the middle of my sophomore year at Colby rolled around, the nagging worry in the back of my mind slowly turned into dread. I could feel myself teetering on the edge of a cliff, and I knew at any moment I was bound to fall back over. So I did what I had always done: put on a brave face and pretend to be okay for as long as possible.
I started seeing a therapist at the beginning of sophomore summer, but I held back the worst of my feelings from her because admitting them felt like failure. I kept it up into the fall of my junior year, guided by the flawed premise that if I pretended to be okay, my life would stay on track. I was constantly trying to live up to a perfect version of myself I had created in my head, and anxiety and depression had no place in that picture. I convinced myself that my bad days were behind me. But pretending was exhausting.
Sometime between late October and early November, the loneliness I had been pushing away for months came in full force, and I finally fell past the tipping point. It felt like the world had come crashing down around me. I would get back to my room after class and crawl into bed, every ounce of energy drained from my body. I wasn’t eating enough. I wasn’t working out. I would cry for hours, not moving until it was time to brush my teeth and go to sleep.
At some point in the following weeks, I realized things were not, in fact, going to magically work themselves out. I finally told my therapist what I had really been feeling, and although it wasn’t immediate, I could begin to feel a tiny bit of weight lifting off my shoulders. As we talked more over the next month and eventually worked out the details of a prescription for antidepressants, the weight gradually lessened. It’s been a long and difficult healing process, and I still have my fair share of bad days. But I’m proud of myself for how far I’ve come since last fall.
We can’t promise ourselves that there won’t be more bad days, bad weeks, or even bad months. But what we can do is not be afraid to let our walls down. Nothing about anxiety and depression is easy, but asking for help can make the lows less isolating. I had to figure this out the hard way, but it’s my hope that this letter can make speaking up seem just a little less scary. Nobody struggling with mental health should feel like a failure. It doesn’t make you less of a person. Opening up can feel terrifying, but in the end it’s the most important thing we can do.
Emily G., Colby College
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