‘No, we’re not OK; it’s time we (really) talked…’

Author: Jessica Germantsis

Many of my memories, even my early childhood ones, are tinged with a familiar feeling of uneasiness, like a faint watermark over an image. In some of them, the spectre looms large, its towering might casting a shadow over everything, leaving me rattled to my bones and reduced to my instincts. In others, a neck-prickling disquiet ebbs almost continuously just beyond the periphery, threatening to rush in from all sides and wash over me, yet never quite reaching its peak. This is anxiety. 

Dilated pupils distorting your vision, slick palms on trembling hands, nauseating dizziness, and a heartbeat thrumming so forcefully, you can feel it down to your toes. Desperately sucking in air through the invisible hand over your mouth, you’re seasick on dry land. Your thoughts race, your mind spins. When it’s bad, you ask the stranger in the mirror if it’s all a terrible dream. You begrudge your former care-free self; how naïve to think it wouldn’t happen again! This is panic. 

Occasionally, its partner-in-crime, depression, creeps in like a thief in the night. Despair cloaks you, every move like wading through molasses. The intruder turned the lights off, and you only vaguely recall your surroundings. Those you know best seem to float around you like ghosts, intangible and uncanny. You’ll stumble around in the dark for some time now. A large part of you worries that the dawn may never arrive. 

At times you dream of it, other times you wake up in it. In good times, it seems like a distant memory- perhaps belonging to someone else. You bask in the sunshine while you can. In dark times, it makes itself at home in every fibre of your being. “What if it never leaves?” you wonder as you lay down each night. “Not again,” you think, before your eyelids have cracked open the next morning. It’s seeped in once more and will colour your day.

The problem is that we don’t talk about it, candidly, enough. A sense of isolation intensifies this all-too-often silent struggle. Stigma and shame still make us feel small. We worry about burdening others with our baggage but there’s no sense in that; it’s harder to pick up the pieces when the last straw brings it all crashing down around us.

 We hear about the prevalence of mental health conditions, and that an epidemic of loneliness is growing alongside them. We’ve come far in terms of awareness, funding, supports and treatments, but we need to make more space and time for difficult conversations about our mental health in our daily lives- with family, friends, workplaces and our communities.

We can all do our part: if you’re right in the hell of it, speak up and voice your lived experience, and your needs, unapologetically. If you know someone who’s buried deep, reach out and commit to listening with an open mind, and an empathetic heart. You may be the only one who’s offered to meet them where they are, so stay a while.