When people ask me why I’m depressed?….
Maybe the fact that I put myself through a college education to be told that the only hope I have of getting into that career field is to either work for nothing, or compete against ‘influencers’ and ‘well known faces’ in an industry that is doing more and more to push out the qualified in order to facilitate the unqualified who are social media famous.
Maybe it’s because I stepped into another career field where I’ve spent 7 years doing anything and everything that’s been asked of me, showing company loyalty time and again and turning myself inside out with stress and exhaustion, taking on more work and responsibility than I can handle to not be given a single pay rise in that time.
Maybe it’s because when I ask for something it’s pushed aside yet the revolving door of employees who have been and gone over the years have had everything handed to them on a plate.
Maybe it’s because the rate of inflation has made it that I’m no longer working to earn a living, I’m working just to survive.
Maybe it’s because of the fact that I can’t afford health insurance, or counselling or medical intervention to deal with this hell.
Maybe it’s the fact that at this stage of my life in my 30’s I feel like everyone around me is surpassing me, settling down, starting families and buying houses, yet I’m wading in the same muggy waters that swallowed me whole in my college years.
Maybe it’s the fact that several years ago my family fractured and the people I used to go to with my problems, are now strangers on the street.
Maybe it’s the fact that time and again I show up for everyone, but when I need someone, no one is there.
Maybe it’s because for years people have perceived my daily annoyances and bad temper or mood as me just being argumentative or stressed rather than me trying to express the suffocation I feel every day.
Maybe it’s because I’ve always been the one who has been expected not to engage in conflict or to air out grievances, to keep quiet and carry on with my business, be the sensible one, yet people also complain about the fact that I’m guarded and don’t tell them what’s going on with me.
Maybe it’s because I’m perceived as the funny one, the one who eases everyone else’s stress or worries with a joke, so that must mean I’m okay.
Maybe it’s because no matter how hard I try nothing ever changes.
Maybe it’s because when I finally do find the courage to speak up, I’m bombarded by fixers who what to pull me up instead of just sitting down with me in silence and telling me it will be okay.
Maybe it’s because I’ve always had to be the one who has her shit together, that people can rely on, yet has no one to rely on when I fall apart.
Maybe it’s because I shoulder the burden of other peoples stress and pain so that they don’t have to.
Maybe, just maybe, the reason why? Is standing across from me asking me why?
