Truly the light is sweet, Ecclesiastes 11:7
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Welcome to Searching for Sunshine! |
Have you ever walked into a crowded room and felt completely alone? It sucks right? Okay, now imagine that feeling, except the room is full of people that you've known for years. Maybe it's your classmates, your friends, even your family. For me, it was my old youth group.
I had been with the group for about six years before this started to happen. The group had become a family to me. Sure I had my family at home, but if I were to wrap all of my dad's office supplies in cling-wrap, he'd ground me, not laugh. So this youth group, I'd been going for 6 years. I met my best friends there, I found my voice, I learned to love myself, and those around me. (Cringy, I know, deal.) So how did this place, a second home of sorts, suddenly become so foreign to me? If you guessed anxiety, ding-ding-ding, you are the winner! (No prizes, I'm sorry...) I started to experience my anxiety about midway through grade 11. And, as with most diseases, the symptoms started off very inconspicuously. "Am I anxious, or am I just tired?" Grade 11 is when it starts to get hard, and it didn't help that my sleeping habits were not exactly fantastic. So when I had my first bout of anxiety, I thought I was just stressed about a tremor in my hands. I didn't know that the tremor was due to the anxiety, and not the other way around. As the anxiety got worse, and I started to recognize it for what it was, I became more enclosed. Secluded. I was embarrassed. I didn't want people to know. Anxiety is weird, I didn't want to be one of the then "1 in 5" teens who experienced it. No. That was not me. I would not allow it. That was when I started to lose myself, and when my "safe spaces" became nuclear. I didn't trust the people around me, no one knew how to handle me. I was anxious, I was depressed, and I wouldn't listen to everyone's advice to "Just Think Positive!" Towards the end of grade 12, I spent 8 days in the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Program. Yes, I got that bad, I went to hospital. When I got out, I was very fragile. At the same time, my close-knit group of friends from youth had imploded, and so I was left feeling very lonely. Regardless, I went back to youth. I walked into a room full of people I'd known for years, and I felt completely out of place. I'd missed the previous two meetings after 6 years of near-perfect attendance, so people were curious. Sure, everyone wanted to make sure that I was okay, I got hugs, and the sad caring look that soon became familiar to me, but I felt completely out of place. Everyone knew, "Ali had been to hospital, she was Depressed." They weren't being mean, but they all knew, everyone knew my big secret that I had tried so hard to hide. I may as well have been standing on stage with no clothes on. Eventually, I got over it, I opened up about my experience. I even went back to the youth group after graduating to tell my story. I learned not to hide from my mental illness, it's not something to be ashamed of. As it turns out, speaking about it can help other people who have similar experiences. Knowing I wasn't alone in my struggles helped me, and it helped me help others.
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