[Don't] Call Me Crazy: 33 Voices Start the Conversation about Mental Health

by Kelly Jensen

I am not always a good friend. I am not always a compassionate daughter. I am not always entirely “there” in my own life, let alone the lives of those around me.

Here’s the thing: For me, depression is not sadness. It’s not having a bad day and needing a hug. It gave me a complete and utter sense of isolation and loneliness. Its debilitation was all-consuming, and it shut down my mental circuit board. I felt worthless, like I had nothing to offer, like I was a failure.

It’s a knee-jerk reaction to judge people when they’re vulnerable. But there’s nothing weak about struggling with mental illness. You’re just having a harder time living in your brain than other people. And I don’t want you to feel alone. You know what happens when I visit my doctor regarding my mental health? He listens. He doesn’t downplay my feelings or immediately hand me a pill or tell me what to do. He talks to me about my options. Because when it comes to your brain, there are a lot of different ways to help yourself.

My teachers saw me as introverted and shy with a dash of stubborn defiance. It’s not their fault. Without context, the manifestations of my PTSD read falsely.

Growing up unafraid to say the wrong thing? I missed that. Allegedly, there were people who didn’t practice words in their heads before they said them. They just opened up and were out with it. It sounded made up, but that’s what I was told. Whatever that was called, that talking without practicing the sounds—without wringing out the words first, to make sure they wouldn’t stain any moment—that would have been nice to try on as a kid, to feel it.

By the time I had fully arrived in the moment, I was soaked with other people’s expectations. What to say was always blurry. I would shiver, practicing all the wrong words in my head, while people waited for me to say something.

The pieces that matter, though? I’ve worked to get them back. The talking that I was afraid of then is one of my greatest strengths now. I understand words differently. I’m careful with them. I know that the words I put on someone become part of who they are. And I have promised myself that no one I know will ever go through their life struggling to believe that they have worth because of something I said to them. It’s

So I started getting anxious about going out. Really anxious. It developed into agoraphobia, which, for those of us who get panic attacks, means the fear of being in a place where we can’t easily escape if we feel panicky. I always needed to have my back to a wall. I needed to know where the door was. I needed to know I could bolt at any time. Sometimes just thinking about leaving my house and being around strangers would make me hyperventilate.

Acceptance was the first step. Loving my anxious self was the basis of making some changes that made my life easier. Anxiety is just one part of me, along with the fact that I’m a devoted friend and a good cook and I buy multiple copies of my favorite books because I love to give them away. I embrace my weird now. I’m not ashamed of who I am. When I started asking for help when I needed it, I learned there is nothing weak about doing that. I realize now that it is incredibly brave to admit when my anxiety is more than I can handle by myself.

The nurse asks why I’m here. I explain that I’ve been hearing telephones, whispered voices, people outside windows. I explain that I have become certain everyone around me wants to hurt me. I explain that I spend long stretches of every day numb and almost outside my own body, that this has characterized my mind for most of my life to some degree, though it has recently gotten worse. For some reason, I believe this calm, easy professional will assure me this is normal, that everyone feels this way, that I am just under stress and my loved ones are fussing over nothing. His eyes still widen, because this isn’t normal. People aren’t supposed to feel this way, and, it turns out, I need help.

Just as with mental illness, we don’t like to talk about grief because it doesn’t make sense. We want our mourning periods to have a set time frame, wherein we get to progress through sadness and anger, and then we’re done. We crave a linear experience. But it doesn’t operate that way. My doctor said it best: what makes us human is that we have emotions, some good and some bad, some comfortable and some not. If we didn’t, we’d be robots and nothing in life would have meaning. It’s when we go in the wrong direction for too long and can’t course correct on our own that we need to find what helps us do just that.