Mental Health & the Pandemic
** TW: Mentions/Thoughts of Suicide and Self Harm **
It has been absolutely awful. My mental health in the first place was never great to begin with and the pandemic really took it to a whole other level. Despite it literally being a year now since it all started, I feel lost.
I think what’s funny is hearing people talk about life going back to normal. I think things will eventually (in terms of schools or work places) but I don’t think people will. I think this pandemic has brought so much pain and suffering that no one will ever be normal again.
The question I constantly asked myself last year was “what’s the point?” All life has been is work and class and work and class - over and over again. Seriously - What is the point? To achieve some mediocre job after I graduate? To take another standardized text and go to grad school? This question soon stopped relating to just the prism of school. I spent the entire fall semester asking myself “what’s the point” but more so “what is the point of life”. I had felt like this in high school before but this was worse.
Every day, I would just bawl my eyes out - sometimes it would be for reasons I wouldn’t even know. I would be attempting homework or watching something and not even realize that I’d be crying. I thought it was normal for me when it first started - I’m a pretty emotional person so I just thought it aligned with who I was. This went on for months so by October it was not surprising to me when I was experiencing self-harm urges and thoughts of suicide. By the end of the month, I had a plan. I decided on a whim to call my brother and just tell him first. In a way that call helped save my life but it also made me come to a realization.
I still have so many suicidal thoughts and feelings but- as long as certain people are alive, I wouldn’t want them to carry that pain. I know what it’s like to have people commit and it’s a pain that will never go away. I’ve been able to get help through online counseling. Personally, I don’t know that talking about what I feel is the right path for me, but if anything, I think it does help in knowing that someone else is listening.