nearconstantsadness:

Imagine with me.

You’re an athlete. You’re gearing up to run the next 5k in your town.

You get there, and your number’s on your chest just like everyone else. You’re at the starting line, just like everyone else.

Bam, off goes the start signal.

Suddenly, you feel a little funny. Everyone else around you is gaining a lead they shouldn’t otherwise gain. Even the little old lady who does this for fun is now almost 50 feet in front of you.

But you keep pushing, right? You’re bound to catch back up, you’re an ATHLETE.

You pump as much of your strength as you can into your legs. You’re using what feels like every ounce of effort you have in you to just get your legs moving. All the while, that lead that everyone has on you is getting bigger and bigger…

People are suddenly farther and farther away…

You keep going You have no choice. You’ve GOT to finish. And you do.

But that’s when you collapse from exhaustion. Everyone around you is looking at you now, very concerned, wondering what could possibly have gone wrong, you were fine yesterday. You looked fine even the whole time you were running! What could POSSIBLY have happened?!

You can fill in the blanks with any invisible malady you like: heart problems, asthma, fibromyalgia, sciatica, what have you. But it’s SOMETHING that nobody can see. It’s something even YOU didn’t see.

Welcome to mental illness.

EVERY DAY is that 5k. Waking up in the morning is the start signal going off, and no matter how much energy we could put into something as simple as making breakfast, suddenly everyone else around us has their day’s tasks half way done and we’re still standing in the kitchen choosing eggs or bacon as though our lives depended on it. And sometimes, it does.

Eating is a chore. Standing up is basically like asking us to climb a mountain. Taking care of ourselves is tiring. Let alone taking care of someone else, if we need to.

That collapse at the finish line of the day could be a panic attack, it could be a fit of tears, it could be the mounting and exploding feeling that you’re a failure, you’re worthless, why do you even bother. It could even be an angry and persistent suggestion that you should just kill yourself so you’re not wasting space.

And let’s not forget, we didn’t do this to ourselves. We couldn’t have predicted this, we aren’t just sitting there asking for people to pamper us, in fact sometimes that makes us feel WORSE.

And at the end of the day, quite possibly the best thing you could do is hold us, tell us it’ll be okay, and just listen.

Most often, there’s no rhyme or reason to our thoughts. I was a straight A student for a long time and if I got less than 80% on ONE test, I flipped out and resigned myself to failure. But anyone else would’ve been like ‘Sweet, I passed!’ People tell me I’m doing well at work, and I’ll just focus on that one mistake I made two weeks ago and oh well, I’ll get fired tomorrow.

We DO NOT DO THIS ON PURPOSE. And it’s not as easy as saying ‘Oh just stop being so hard on yourself.’ That’d be like asking your athlete self to just grow some new lungs/muscles/heart valves and you’ll be fine.

We know you want to help. ❤ And most of us appreciate it SO MUCH, OMG THANK YOU. But sometimes, cuddles, blanket forts and movie binges are enough to keep us going. We don’t need to talk or reason things out all the time.