Mental health is health

I write this post with grave solemnity.

A couple of weeks ago, the University of Waterloo lost another young student to suicide, the first of this year. Just last year alone, there were three cases like this at the same university.

I graduated from Waterloo last fall with a Bachelor of Arts in English. I was living in Waterloo on and off (because of co-op) for five years until last August.

One thing is for certain, the me today is certainly not the same girl I was when I first got to Waterloo in 2012.

University was a difficult time for me. During the five years, I experienced sexual harassment, insomnia, eating disorders, anxiety, depression and periods of burnout.

And through it all, I was feeling utterly alone.

The experiences themselves aside, I was suffering because I didn’t say anything. There was nobody I could talk to, or at least so I felt. Moreover, I truly thought that my problems were not serious enough to even be looked at. I’ve only told a very few people that I was suffering, simply because I feared that they would laugh and say “Toughen up and move on.” My family, to this day, have no idea — I am terrified of them finding out. I tried many times to tell them, but the words just never came out of my lips. Perhaps I am just a coward.

So, I tried to deal with all of my issues by myself without seeking help. It was hard for me to stay still, so I tried to fill up my time with stuff. I took on part-time jobs, I met new people, and I went to countless social events and parties, trying to get through the days without giving myself time to stop. I needed to look like I was having a blast. I felt the need to maintain an appearance of control, success and independence. And I was good at it. It worked for the most part — for a while. But it was a temporary solution, and I kept slipping back into the abyss. I would overload myself with things to do and other distractions, burn out, recover from being sick, and do the same thing again. Even when I realized that this cycle wasn’t good for me, I couldn’t stop because I knew no other way to deal with it. The weight was simply too heavy.

I still remember the summer of 2015 when I couldn’t sleep unless I was sitting in my bathtub, and I couldn’t eat more than a few bites of fruits even when I felt insanely hungry. But even then, I didn’t want to admit to others that my mental health was in bad shape. I didn’t even want to admit it to myself. I thought if I did, I’d be disappointing my family, friends and myself.

When asked, I said that I was busy having fun.

In my final summer at Waterloo, I was at a very low point, I was stuck in a relationship that was going nowhere and stressed out about graduating and finding a job. I was constantly feeling helpless and trapped. My mental health began to affect my daily activities as well as my physical health. I had rashes and pains that couldn’t be explained by the campus clinic doctors, and my sleep was worse than ever. Some days I even thought about what it would be like to disappear — even for a little while. I wasn’t thinking of suicide, but thinking back, I was intrigued — almost fascinated — by the idea of death and mortality. I remember wondering about how I would die, and how one day I’ll become the soil and air. I remember thinking that death was the only means of getting away from my past, my thoughts, my sentiments, and my body. Yet each time I also thought to myself, death is so very final, but life is full of possibilities.

I saw death in everything I consumed — books, films, poetry. And I read this passage from The Green Man by Amis Kingsley again and again:

Death was my only means of getting away for good from this body and all its pseudo-symptoms of disease and fear, from the constant awareness of his body, from this person, with his ruthlessness and sentimentality and ineffective, insincere, impracticable notions of behaving better, from attending to my own thoughts and from counting in thousands to smother them and from my face in the glass.

Finally, one day, when I couldn’t stand my insomnia and inexplicable physical symptoms anymore, I gathered up just enough courage and went to counselling services on campus. I can’t say it didn’t help. It helped, a little. But I couldn’t help but feel that my issues weren’t really important — Every time I tried to make an appointment, they’d say that the immediate slots were for those in crisis. How was I supposed to know what “in crisis” meant objectively? In the end, I went to three sessions in total, all about a month apart. Each session felt rushed and though it helped a little, it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t even close to enough.

There was a shortage of staff and a lot of demand. I believe that mental health is at least partially a moral responsibility of educational institutions, and there needs to be more financial and human resources put into it. If we want young people to do well in universities and beyond, they need to first be granted physical and mental health.

For me, the turning point came when I went travelling. After a trip at the end of my final summer in Waterloo, I finally found a little bit of myself that I could hold onto. I’m happy to say that today I’m working with my doctor to get myself back on track, with the help of medication and therapy later on.

I am not 100%, and I probably will never be, but now I’ve accepted that. It’s okay to be less than 100%, as long as we are not alone. Today, for the first time in my life I feel like I am not in this alone. I have a little more courage to talk about it, with my loved ones, and with you.

To be honest I still don’t feel comfortable talking about my struggles — but I feel compelled to tell my story because I hope that other people going through similar or greater challenges can gain a little bit more courage and talk to someone.

Mental health is health. Mental illnesses are real. And they hurt. Talking about them will hurt, but they are affecting more people than we might think, so it’s time to acknowledge and accept them and start the conversations.