Blog Post | In My Mind

Last year, I posted a blog post and invited you In My Mind once again. In this post, I admitted that I have depression. Admitting that was difficult for me because this meant that I was allowing myself to be vulnerable. More importantly, it was a way for me to admit something I often kept to myself, and now I had to learn to accept it and move forward.

Often times, in the African American community, there is this unspoken stigma placed upon us where admitting our problems to an outside source (psychiatrist, friend, stranger) is not supposed to be done, because we deal with our “problems” amongst our family or internally handle our own situation.

As a Black female with a disability, I have faced a lot of obstacles both from outside sources and internally. Depression is one of them, and boy is it something. Some days I am happy, other days I’m sad, angry, and then without warning, I can experience a combination all in one day. And I feel that having Cerebral palsy only assists my depression along further.

Everyone has their bad days, but I think when you’re battling illnesses like depression, your bad days tend to happen a lot more frequently and last longer than you would like. Depression doesn’t just affect the person experiencing it, it can affect everyone involved in some capacity with this person.

So, I’ve decided to include seven ways I feel depression has affected my life, and I hope that my story can encourage someone to seek the help they need, or maybe some can relate to what I have to say and would like to share or leave a comment. The point is not to stay silent, rather it’s to educate/enlighten individuals about an illness that many people struggle with and the way in which it can affect them.

Here are seven ways depression affects my life:

Feeling as if you’re not worthy of success, relationships, love, etc.
The constant emotional changes.
Not having the energy to complete responsibilities/goals you have set for yourself.
Having difficulty explaining to a loved one, friend, etc. what is going on with you. You can’t seem to find the right words to explain your depression.
The constant comparison of yourself to others.
The mental battle with yourself of knowing you want to feel better and do better, but you just can’t bring yourself to do this because you’re focused on the negative.
The struggle of admitting your depressed in order to seek help because you feel as if you’ll be labeled in a negative light, so you just deal with it.

Again, these are just some ways in which this illness has affected my life. Everyone’s story is different, but I hope that those of you who read this and are struggling with depression can find comfort in knowing YOU’RE NOT ALONE and that you can seek help.

Blessings,