There is no one untouched by crises of mental health. And yet, when you or someone you love is struggling, it can often feel like you’re alone in the dark, searching for a light. In honor of World Mental Health Day, we are publishing a series of essays, starting today and running through the weekend, that tackle this topic through a personal lens. We hope these essays offer insight into the many ways that people struggle, and how they can come out the other side with dignity and grace.
My dentist recently told me that my gums were healthy. An unremarkable observation to most people but one that, for me, caused a surge of relief and joy. When I left her office, I wanted to text someone about what she’d said before realizing that even my best friends would only be able to pretend to care all that much about my gums.
Nine years ago, when I was 27, a dentist told me the bone levels on the lower left-hand side of my mouth had already depleted to the levels typical of a 50-year-old, due to chronic inflammation and disease. “Lifestyle factors” were most likely to blame, I was told. The lifestyle in question? Well, it consisted of sick leave from my office job, lying on a mattress on the floor of my rented bedroom in south east London (an flatpack bed frame was still in its unopened box in the corner) for days at a time, occasionally getting up to smoke a badly assembled roll-your-own cigarette or, when it was very bad, to drink my housemate’s wine in the fridge straight from the bottle before passing out in the same dank squalid spot where I’d spent the past week. No, I didn’t brush my teeth often enough. I became severely vitamin D deficient too. It’s still on my medical record. Severe depression, gender identity issues, vitamin D deficiency. It’s giving vampire, as the Tik Tok kids say.
To have survived a major depression is to be forever haunted thereafter. I’m now many years past the last episode but all it takes is a single bad day, perhaps due to hormones, or low mood in the coldest depths of January, for me to fear I am being dragged back by my ankles. Depression reveals one’s own brain to be a double agent, an enemy within. How do you ever fully make peace with it again? Like a marriage after infidelity, the trust may never be restored. Would I survive another round?
Read the full article here
