There is an incident that happened a few years ago that I remember to this day. We were at a class gathering at a friend’s house and I suddenly felt this strong wave of disassociation from everything around me, like someone turned the volume down on a television and made everything blurry. It wasn’t as if I was scared or going to faint, it was more like I was fading further and further into the background of what was happening.
Thereafter, I walked to the kitchen and thought to myself “what would happen if I just jumped down right now?” There was no logical reason for why I thought that, or any way to rationalise why I just could not enjoy myself there with all my friends on a happy occasion. I mean I loved all my friends and we were all having fun at this party watching movies and cooking together. I should be happy ...right?
Thankfully one of my friends found me staring into space at the window and asked me what I was doing.
Looking back now, that friend might have actually saved my life. I guess these thoughts of suicide were not new to me, after all I had depression and anxiety since I was 11 or 12 years old. But what scared me the most about this incident was that, there was no reason that I wanted to die, I just wanted to jump... In moments like those, all rational thought leaves you. You won’t think about how stupid you are, how selfish you are being and how much of a great life you have yet to live.
To a lot of people and maybe to myself, there was no ‘real reason’ why I should be depressed. The typical ‘you have food, shelter, a good education’ and ‘other people have it worse’ mantras constantly echo around me. But do we actually need a reason to be depressed? I mean if there was a legitimate reason for it, then it wouldn’t be termed a mental illness right? Even more hurtful was those peers around me who had mental illness who tells me “You are not medically diagnosed, so it doesn’t count” or “you don’t take take medication, so you don’t actually have depression.