Hi, I’m Casey. I’m 26 years-old, I have a very large family and quite a few very close friends who I consider family. I played college hockey and still continue to play in both men’s and women’s leagues. I coach hockey at a prep school and have had a couple of college offers. I am a certified phlebotomist and have been working in property management for 5 years now. I have owned a condo for the past two years and have already had three brand new cars. And I have traveled, a lot.

My life is, by every objective measurable, very very good.

And in spite of all of that, I struggle everyday with my self esteem, my self worth, and my value as a human being.

That’s because I live with anxiety and depression, the tag team champions of the World Wrestling With Mental Illness Federation.

And I’m not ashamed to be sitting here, writing this to soon be published for hundreds of people to read online, and proudly say that I live with mental illness. I say “with” because even though my mental illness tries its best, it doesn’t control me, it doesn’t define me, and I refuse to be stigmatized by it.

So. My name is Casey, and I have anxiety and depression.

It’s taken quite a few years to say those ten words, and I’ve been suffering as a result. I touched briefly in a previously blog post about it, but I am here to talk more about it – I’m here to share my story with you in hoping to help end the stigma and prejudice that surrounds mental illness.

When I was a little kid, probably six or seven years old, I started having panic attacks. Back then, we didn’t know that’s what they were, and because they usually happened when I was asleep, the adults in my life just thought I had nightmares. Well, I did have nightmares, but they were so much worse than just bad dreams. Night after night, I’d wake up in absolute terror, and night after night, I’d drag my blankets off my bed, to go sleep on the floor of either my mom’s bedroom or my grandmothers bedroom or my aunt and uncles bedroom (depending on where I was sleeping that night), because I was afraid to be alone.

There were occasional stretches of relief, sometimes for months at a time, and during those months, I felt like what I considered to be a normal kid, but the panic attacks always came back, and each time they came back, they seemed worse than before.

When I was around twelve, my anxiety began to express itself in all sorts of delightful ways.

I worried about everything. I was tired all of the time, and irritable most of the time. I had no confidence and terrible self-esteem. I felt like I couldn’t trust anyone who wanted to be close to me.

All the weird, anxious feelings I had all the time? I’d been raised to believe that they were shameful. That they reflected poorly on my parents and family. That they should be crammed down deep inside me, shared with nobody, and kept secret.

My panic attacks happened daily, and not just when I was asleep. When I tried to reach out to the adults in my life for help, they didn’t take me seriously. And that’s when my anxiety turned into depression.

(I’m going to take a moment for myself right now, and I’m going to tear a hole in the fabric of spacetime and I’m going to tell all those adults from the past: give this kid a break. She’s scared. She’s confused. She’s doing the best she can. I wish you could have seen that she’s suffering and that she needs help).

I was miserable a lot of the time, and it didn’t make any sense. I was living a childhood dream, being pulled from school (picked up in a limousine) to travel the country. During the winter months, I’d go down to Florida for weeks at a time. I had all the video games and board games I ever wanted and played any sport I wanted to play.

I struggled to reconcile the facts of my life with the reality of my existence. I knew something was wrong with me, but I didn’t know what. And because I didn’t know what, I didn’t know how to ask for help.

I wish I had known that I had a mental illness that could be treated! I wish I had known that the way I felt wasn’t normal and it wasn’t necessary. I wish I had known that I didn’t deserve to feel bad, all the time.

And I didn’t know those things, because mental illness was something my family didn’t talk about, and when they did, they talked about it like it was something that happened to someone else, and that it was something they should be ashamed of, because it was a result of something they did. This prejudice existed in my family in spite of the ample incidence of mental illness that ran rampant through my DNA: more than one family member has bipolar disorder, many who have clinical depression, AND anxiety everywhere, alcoholism, drug addiction, you name it – we have it.

Now, I don’t blame my parents for how they addressed – or more accurately didn’t address – my mental illness, because I genuinely believe they were blind to the symptoms I was exhibiting. They grew up and raised me in the world I’ve spent the last decade of my life trying to change. They lived in a world where mental illness was equated with weakness, and shame, and as a result, I suffered until I was in my early twenties.

And it’s not like I never reached out for help. I did! I just didn’t know what questions to ask, and the adults I was close to didn’t know what answers to give.

Mom, I know you’re going to read this and I know it’s going to make you upset. I want you to know that I love you, and I know that you did the very best that you could.

Looking in from the outside, you’d think I had the best life. I underwent many, many years of emotional abuse and it’s something I am still dealing with today, unfortunately. It’s something I struggle greatly to talk about so I won’t go into detail, but it’s what I think is the root of all of my issues and that I feel is important to mention.

Through my early twenties, I continued to suffer, and not just from nightmares and panic attacks.

When I was 21, I was assaulted both physically and sexually to the point where I had to go to the hospital. I have scars on the inside of my thighs to show for it, and every time I go to change my clothes, shower, or even just lay outside in a swim-suit, I am reminded of that horrific night. Sometimes it triggers a panic attack, and other times it doesn’t. Of course this brought on even more anxiety and depression, and it was still being left untreated.

Not long after, I began to develop obsessive behaviors that I’ve never shared publicly until right now. Here’s a very incomplete list: I began to worry that the things I did would affect the world around me in a totally irrational ways. I would hold my breath underneath bridges when I was driving, because if I didn’t, maybe I’d crash my car. I would tap the side of an airplane with my hand while boarding, and tell it to take care of me when I flew places, because I was convinced that if I didn’t, the plane would crash. Every single time I said goodbye to someone I cared about, my brain would play out a vivid detail how I would remember this as the last time I saw them. Talking about those memories, even without getting into specifics, is challenging. It’s painful to recall, but I’m not ashamed, because all of those thoughts – which I thankfully don’t have nearly as often, thanks to medicine and therapy – were not my fault any more than the allergies that clog my sinuses. It’s part of how my brain is wired, and because I know that, I can medically treat it, instead of being a victim to it.

One of the primary reasons why I’m speaking out about my mental illness, is so that I can make the difference in someone’s life that I wish had been made in mine when I was young. Not only did I have no idea what depression even was until I was in my late teens, once I was pretty sure I had it, I suffered with it for another five years, because I was ashamed, I was embarrassed, and I was afraid.

So I am here today to tell anyone who can hear me: if you suspect that you have a mental illness, there is no reason to be ashamed, or embarrassed, and most importantly, you do not need to be afraid. You do not need to suffer. There is nothing noble in suffering, and there is nothing shameful or weak in asking for help – something I am still learning to do today. This may seem really obvious to a lot of you, but it wasn’t for me, and I’m a pretty smart girl.

I missed out on a lot of things, during what are supposed to be the best years of my life, because I was paralyzed by What If-ing anxiety.

That difference, between existing and living, is something I want to focus on for a minute: because before I got help for my anxiety and depression, I didn’t truly live my life. I wanted to go do things with my friends, but my anxiety always found a way to stop me. “What if… something totally unlikely to happen actually happens? What if the plane crashed? What if I sit next to someone who freaks me out? What if they laugh at me? What if I get robbed? What if what if what if what if…

When I look back, it breaks my heart that when my brain was unloading an endless pile of what ifs on me, it never asked, “what if I go do this thing that I wanted to do, and its… fun? What if I enjoy myself, and I’m really glad I went?”

All the things that people do when they are living their lives …all those experiences that make up a life, my anxiety got in-between me and doing them. So I wasn’t living. I was just existing.

And through it all, I never stopped to ask myself if this was normal, or healthy, or even if it was my fault. I just know that I was nervous about stuff, and I worried a lot. For my entire childhood, my mom told me that I was a worry wart, and my dad was the primary reason for a lot of my anxieties… that’s just the way it was.

Except it didn’t have to be that way, and it took me having a full blown panic attack and a complete meltdown for one of my good friends to suggest to me that I get help.

Like I said, I had suspected for years that I was anxious and depressed, but I was afraid to admit it, until someone in my life told me without shame or judgement that she could see I was suffering. So I went to see a doctor, and I will never forget what she said, when I told her how afraid I was: “You are too old to be feeling this way, please let me help you.”

I think it was then, at 22 years-old, that I realized that mental illness is not weakness. It’s just an illness. I mean, it’s right there in the name, “mental ILLNESS” so it shouldn’t have been the revelation that it was, but when the part of our bodies that is responsible for how we perceive the world and ourselves is the same part of our body that is sick, it can be difficult to find objectivity or perspective.

So I let my doctor help me. I started a fairly high dose of an anti-anxiety medication and a low dose antidepressant, and I waited to see if anything was going to change – and boy, did it ever.

My friend and I were having a walk around a pond in Woburn and I realized that it was just a really beautiful day – it was warm with just a little bit of a breeze, the birds sounded really beautiful, the flowers smelled really great, and I loved the sun reflecting off the water.

As we were walking I just started to cry and she asked me, “what’s wrong?”

I said, “I just realized that I don’t feel bad and I just realized I’m not existing, I’m living.”

At that moment, I realize that I had lived my life in a room that was so loud, all I could do everyday was deal with how loud it was. But with the help of my friend, my doctor, and medicine, I found a doorway out of that room.

I have taken that walk for almost nearly ten years, before I ever noticed the birds or the flowers. Ten years that I can never get back. Ten years of suffering and feeling weak and worthless and afraid all the time, because of the stigma that surrounds mental illness.

Now, every time I take a walk, I leave my phone at home or in my pocket and I take it all in – the breeze, the sound of the birds, the smell of the flowers.

Sorry for the sarcasm in advance but one of the many delightful things about having anxiety and depression is occasionally and unexpectedly feeling like the whole goddamn world is a heavy lead blanket, like that thing they put on your chest at the dentist when you get x-rays, and it’s been dropped around your entire existence without your consent.

Physically, it weighs heavier on me in some places than it does in others. I always feel it weighing right on my chest. When it’s really bad, it can feel like one of those dreams where you try to move, but every step and every motion feels like you’re struggling to move through something heavy and vicious. Emotionally, it covers me completely, separating me from motivation, my focus, and everything that brings me joy in my life.

When it drops that lead apron over us, we have to remind ourselves that one of the things that depression does, to keep itself strong and in charge, is tell us lies, like: I am the worst at everything. Nobody really likes me. I don’t deserve to be happy. This will never end. And so on and so on. We can know, on our rational minds, that this is a giant bunch of bullshit but in the moment, it can be a serious challenge to wait for depression to lift the roadblock that’s keeping us from moving those facts from our rational mind to our emotional selves.

I’m writing this today because I unfortunately am feeling that heavy lead blanket. I am struggling but I know it will pass. This shitty, awful, overwhelming, terrible way I’m feeling is not forever. It will get better because it always does. I’m not alone in this fight. I am OK.