'you are african you can't be anxious or depressed' ; The Mental Health Wave
Words like 'why are you having an emotional breakdown, those are white people illnesses', 'why are you still holding on to that you need to get over it and move on', 'you probably just acting up' are words I get from family and friend's who think me having anxiety is just me acting up or seeking attention.
A few months ago I lost my cousin who was like a best friend to me. I didn't know how to mourn him especially because I couldn't even go to his funeral so as a writer I resorted to writing. This helped for a couple of weeks because I felt I wasn't doing justice in honouring his memory.
The plan was to ease the pain and be at a point where when I think about him I smile, I laugh and maybe giggle just a little bit. For those weeks I thought about all the amazing memories we created together, I had positive flash backs as I took it one day at a time. My cousin's death wasn't the only thing I was battling with I had a few things that got me mixed up a bit, my career wasn't going as I had planned it, I wasn't mourning my cousin the way I thought I would and I still hadn't found closure for his passing. All of this led me to having anxiety. Yes you guessed it right I'm anxious and from time to time I have an emotional breakdown because I just can't balance my emotions right.
My family thought I would do what they normally do and that is to cry for a few days, bury the person and then move on like nothing happened. For me that was a struggle, I tried it but I couldn't. I just couldn't act like nothing happened, I had just lost someone dear to my heart so yes I'm bound to fall apart, I'm bound to feel out of place and maybe have myself having to resort to other ways to dealing with this.
Never did I think losing someone close to me would lead me to having trouble sleeping. I struggled with sleeping so much that it led to me having to take sleeping tablet's (these did not help) I told my doctor maybe I need something that will calm me down from time to time and she gave me anxiety tablets (these helped for a couple of weeks just before they could declare that I'm actually depressed). Wait a minute, I can't be depressed this doesn't make sense, I need to not be depressed. Well I guess this explains why I've been so distant, this explains why most of the time I chose to be alone then to be with people and when I'm with people I'm physically there but emotionally and mentally distant.
It breaks my heart that even today young people are faced with not only mental health issues but family and friends who think we are "acting up" family and friends who think being anxious is taboo because we as Africans do not go through that. It's sad that our fight isn't just us getting over anxiety, depression, bipolar but also family and friends who are ignorant to mental health issues.
I pray that in this day and age we do not look at our friends and automatically judge them when they say they have anxiety or bipolar. I pray that this generation becomes a generation that will educate each other on mental health, be a generation that educates it's parents and also educates the young ones that are coming after us. May we become a generation that is vocal about mental health, a generation that makes mental health awareness a thing, a generation that vocally puts mental health on the top of the trending list from time to time.
May we also normalize not BEING OK! But also normalize not dwelling in that pool of sadness.
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