Air

“Sometimes I get this feeling

I was breathing someone else's air”

-Tidal, Noah Kahan

This line always resonated with me. It struck me the first time I heard this song. There was a part of me that intimately understood those lyrics.

It often feels like there are two versions of Wendy. There is Wendy who is happy and light and bright. Wendy who sings along to the radio and smiles with ease. Wendy who laughs uninhibited, who lives life with a full heart.

And then there is another Wendy.

This is the Wendy that gets pulled into the darkness. The Wendy who is feasted upon by a depression so dark and all-consuming that there is no light, no hope. That Wendy, the one who struggles to make it through a day. That Wendy, who imagines carving lines into her skin as a way to remove the pain from her body, cannot believe that the lightness exists.

That Wendy feels like she is breathing someone else’s air every single time she is the happy version. Every single time that I am that bright, happy, joy-filled Wendy, the Wendy from the darkness wonders how it is possible that I can live within a body that experiences both of these things. The Wendy who has been knee-deep in a soul-sucking void whispers at the back of happy Wendy’s mind with wonder, “How can this be true? How long will it last? Is it really me feeling like this?”

I think there is a unique duality that I deal with being someone who experiences severe bouts of depression, and also experiences joy, happiness, and light.

It splits me in two sometimes, this fear that the joyful days are not mine, that they are borrowed. That I am simply breathing someone else’s air before the darkness comes back in.

I recently emerged from a long, draining, and dark depressive period. It was hard every day to put one foot in front of the other. It was hard to get out of bed. It was hard to eat, sleep, and sit through work calls when I could barely muster the enthusiasm to live.

But I made it out the other side. I took my medication, I went to therapy, I practiced all the things that aid me in leaving the darkness, and I made it through. When I started to have better days I had this fear, the fear that I was breathing someone else’s air, that my time out of the darkness was fleeting, that it wouldn’t last.

I share all this because every single time I talk about mental health, I hear from other people who feel the same way, or who understand a piece of what I am going through. For so long I kept my emotions trapped in a box, afraid to tell people the truth.

I spent so much of my life afraid to tell everyone I hated my body, and instead I developed an eating disorder. I spent so much of my life afraid for people to know I was depressed because I was supposed to be the happy, fun girl. I spent so much of my life afraid that if people knew I had anxiety, they would think I was weak.

Once I stopped being afraid and started sharing my truth, my world changed, it shifted. I suddenly was less alone. 

So even though I sometimes feel like I am breathing someone else’s air, I know I am not alone in the darkness. I also know that I am not alone in the light and that my life is worth something. Let this be a reminder that your life is worth something, and that your mental health matters.

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We aren’t broken. We don’t need to be fixed.