My writing

open your eyes

For the people who think mental illnesses are cute or funny or dramatic. It takes me at least fifteen minutes to find the motivation to drag myself out of bed every morning. It usually takes me at least five minutes to convince myself to eat something instead of starving myself. And I've gone through countless hours of crying, begging myself to just stay strong and not let it get me. Because even after four years I'm still fighting the same demons in my mind but I'm fine right? It's just a phase, it'll go away, right? No. Mental illnesses weigh us down more than you could possibly imagine. It feels like you're carrying tons of  heavy ass boulders on your shoulders, they weigh you down and no matter how hard you try to get rid of them, you cant. How would you feel if you were trapped with no way out yet you could see people all around you, laughing, smiling, living and you keep crying and screaming but they don't hear you? Well, that's how people with depression and anxiety feel every. Goddamn. Day. We're fighting a battle as real as a war and as life threatening as cancer but its treated like a sore throat or a head cold, something that goes away within a few days. But it doesn't just go away. Mental illnesses are demons, they live inside is, they tell us lies that we eventually believe. They slowly consume us, they drag us away from the people and things we used to love. These demons, they kill us slowly,  so slowly hardly anyone notices until its nearly too late, sometimes not even ourselves. They make us despise ourselves to the point where we can't look in mirrors or step on scales anymore. They take over, they make us feel numb, like we aren't alive anymore and they diminish every feeling that's not pain or numbness. These demons, they cause pain, so much pain, and this pain, its horrible, it's worse than anything you could possibly imagine. And you can't possibly understand until you've felt it. This pain, it makes us destroy ourselves, it makes us cut and burn and starve ourselves. It takes A LOT I mean a lot to get to the point where we turn mental pain into physical pain. And sometimes the pain is So bad that we would kill ourselves to make it stop. People think suicidal people are stupid and ungrateful but were not. Were broken, damaged, we don't really want to die, we just want to stop the pain. Mental illnesses are underrated, overlooked and misunderstood. 95% of the time we're actually struggling and we want help but because of the other 5% of people that have the nerve to fake mental illnesses for attention people think we're doing the same when were not. We just want help but we can't get it so we turn to things like self harm, eating disorders and suicide because nobody listens.  Nobody believes us. But its all a phase right? We struggle every single day but it's all a phase right? Hundreds of kids will commit suicide this year, at least twice as many will attempt and at least five times as many will have suicidal ideation. 80% of teens have/will or do self harm in one form or another But it's not a real problem right?