This book is dedicated to every person who has walked in and out of my life. Although there is a lot of bad in this book, you all helped me find the good parts of life. You helped make me who I am, and Ill forever be grateful for that.
Introduction
I woke up at 6 p.m. on a Thursday. I had slept for sixteen hours. I was only awake to eat, shower, and go back to bed like I had done for the past month. I was a junior in college, and I had been living with four complete strangers for about two months after living with my ex for a semester. Depression had completely taken over at this point. I no longer felt in control of my actions. I didnt care about school, I didnt care if I did any physical activity that day, and I didnt even care if I drank any water. Physically and mentally, I was purely in survival mode and did the bare minimum to keep myself alive. This led to a numb feeling, and thats what terrified me.
It terrified me because I cant turn my brain off even when I want to. I remember sitting on the edge of my bed that Thursday evening in my Hanes mens boxers and baggy T-shirt. The sun was setting after a heavy rainstorm. For the first time, my mind was completely silent. Not a single thought went through my head except for an overwhelming amount of fear. Completely numb and scared to death, I knew I needed to get help and take back control of my life.
We experience many downfalls as young adults. These bad experiences can derail us off the path to success and happiness. Whether depression, hard relationships, bad connections or situations with family members, college life, being sexually harassed or assaulted, or a mental or physical condition, the list of downfalls goes on and on. These things can and will affect your entire world, but thats okay and thats normal.
Lets Talk about It
When I first started dealing with depression, I had no intention of telling people and even made my parents promise me that they wouldnt tell anyone. I was scared to death of what society would think of me if they knew I was struggling mentally. Not until I educated myself did I realize what I was experiencing wasnt as foreign as I thought it was. Doing research, listening to interviews, and reading statistics about what I had been dealing with helped me see that.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) conducted a survey of students who dropped out of college and found that 64 percent of them dropped out because of mental illness. Forty-five percent of those did not seek help on campus before dropping out (Gruttadaro1 and Crudo 2012). Society leads us to put mental health on the back burner, but mental health is just as important, if not more so, than physical health. Although millennials and Generation Z are normalizing conversations about mental health, we still have far to go.
The same goes for family estrangements. When I was twelve, and my big family quickly turned into a smaller one due to a family falling-out, I thought I was the only one and often wondered why this was happening to my family. When I got to high school, I realized there are many families out there going through something similar. According to Scientific American, a large survey of young adults, all college and graduate students at universities in the northeastern US, found that about 17 percent experienced estrangement from an immediate family member, most commonly from the father. Surveying older adults found that about 12 percent were estranged from a child or children(Savvy 2020). When you realize that youre part of that percentage, it makes a big difference in how you view your own situation.
Realizing also that I was one of hundreds of thousands of women (and men) who are sexually assaulted or harassed each year opened my eyes to my own traumatic experience with sexual assault (SA). Nationwide, 81 percent of women and 43 percent of men reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment and/or assault in their lifetime, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (Kearl 2018). When I saw this statistic, I knew I had to share my story if 81 percent of women have been in my shoes.
In the last decade or so, we have made major strides countrywide with the stigma revolving around mental health. More people are talking about it and more people are going to therapy, but we have only scratched the surface of what can be done to further emphasize how important mental health should be. I think this can be done through more people being vulnerable and sharing their own struggles.
I believe its time we start normalizing things like struggling through college, families parting ties, and sexual assault. We need to share our stories and realize that mental health is not only real, but a major component of our everyday lives. We must start respecting the struggles young people go through, giving them the tools they need to process and heal so they are able to live a beautiful life. We need to be able to look at them and say, You are strong for speaking up and getting the help you need.
This Book Can Be Your Friend
Often when you pick up a self-improvement book, you pick up one written by a psychologist or someone with career experience in mental health or therapy. The beauty of this book is that Im just a normal twenty-two-year-old trying to find myself and navigate the world. Through my own personal journey with mental health, I have developed the passion and real-life experience necessary to write a book like this. I always swore Id never tell my stories or be vocal about my journey until I wrote a blog post about my depression. The feedback I got was overwhelming and made me curious to know others stories.
Because of this, not only is telling my own story important, but sharing the stories of many of my peersaverage students and adults just like meis important as well. Many of their stories and experiences helped me heal in a way I never thought possible. In addition to sharing my personal journey and the journeys of those Ive interviewed, I have filled my brain with books, podcasts, and TED talks that support the challenges I present in these pages to demonstrate how many of us struggle and that we are not alone.
Im writing this book so you can find comfort in the journey of others, so that you can know youre not an alien, and most importantly, so you realize you arent alone in what youre feeling or going through. The stories, stats, quotes, and research Ive compiled helped me heal on my own journey in some way, shape, or form, and maybe they can do the same for you.
I always wished I had a book like this one during my time of sadness, pain, and healing, something that made me feel alive, normal, and proud of myself, rather than feeling as though I needed to change in order to be normal. I searched for how to be normal until I realized I dont even know how to define the word. Hearing stories from others like me helped me find myself, heal, and realize that theres no such thing as normal. Were all on a different path with similar stops. If you are currently dealing with or have dealt with depression, anxiety, sexual assault, a breakup, losing a friend, or life struggles in general, then read on and allow this book to be a friend for you in a time of need.