6/22/25
My friend asked me, “If life is mostly all butterflies and sunshine, then why do you struggle with mental health issues that make you feel depressed?” That wasn’t exactly her wording, but it’s what she meant. And I told her it’s because I have to live in this world surrounded by people who are nothing like me.
I spent the better part of my life changing who I naturally was just to fit into places I was never meant to belong. When you’re a child, you rarely have the maturity to navigate your thoughts, your actions, or your surroundings with true understanding — that wisdom comes with time, age, and the experiences that shape you. And I have learned so much about myself and the world I must live in.
Sometimes I wonder why I was chosen to feel so deeply, to see beyond the surface, to question the systems I’m part of — to want to understand them, to challenge them, to change them. For a long time, I’ve done the work internally and externally to become more in tune with all the pieces of this life’s puzzle. Yet that path can feel so lonely, especially because my family doesn’t see the world the way I do, and neither do most of my friends. Even those closest to me may share some knowledge, but their ways of moving through life and my own feel vastly different.
And sometimes the calling I feel over my life seems too big to conquer because I’m being pulled in so many directions just to exist — so much so that I can’t fully evolve into the being who’s truly ready for the challenges that matter most. The ones that would feed my spirit most. Instead, I fill myself each day with tasks, food, information, conversations, and actions that leave me feeling empty and exhausted.
So when someone asks me why I wrestle with mental health struggles and depression, my answer is this: the person I was born to be feels painfully distant from the one I’m forced to live as — the one I’m pushed to become just to have an easier life. Except that life is never really easier. It’s just a quieter settling into a façade that every internal part of me aches to escape.
That’s the cost of waking up in a world that asks me to stay asleep. But I will never go back to who they thought I was. I’ve taken the red pill and will have to fight through this eternal heartache to live as the version of me my soul recognizes. That’s a war that’s worth all the battles and the bruises that come along with it.
Fierce Rebel