Jack L.

If you’re reading this, it’s okay not to be okay.

I used to play a game with myself, almost as if I was placing bets. I would say things such as if my favorite hockey team didn’t score by the time I finished my snack, I would have to hurt myself. Or if my mom got home from her walk before I won a game of Fortnite, I would self-harm. These bets I made against myself only evolved. I loved control, but I couldn’t control when my favorite hockey team was going to score or when my mom got home from a walk, or whatever else I placed my bet on. The one thing I could control was my personal tendencies. 

These bets turned into my control. I started telling myself things such as if my twenty-question math homework took me longer than five minutes, I lost the bet. It gave me a reason to hurt myself, tricking myself into thinking that I wasn’t depressed and I had to hurt myself because I had lost my bet, so this wasn’t a choice. It was something I had to do.

As I entered high school, these tendencies began to fade on their own, but my depression followed me around like my shadow on a sunny day. I stopped self-harming for two years because I no longer placed bets with myself, so in my mind, I had no valid reason to be punished. That all changed when I entered my junior year in high school - my depression was no longer just a shadow; it was consuming my mind with sleepless nights, harmful thoughts, and everything in between. I had reached my breaking point, and one night I snapped. Within the next day, I was hospitalized and felt more alone than ever. My external wounds were treated, and I was transferred to a psychiatric hospital. 

I still didn’t feel as if I had “earned it.” I was now surrounded by people who were struggling, just as I was, but their reasons seemed so much more valid than mine. This was a common feeling among the patients in my ward. No one felt as if they deserved to be there, as if we were taking hospital space from people who truly needed it, but in reality, we all were the ones who truly needed it. Picking each other up on the rough days and laughing on the lighter days. Life began to not seem like a chore, and I began to embrace the unknown rather than hide my uncertainties behind a mask. I learned to express myself and to love myself through the other patients’ love for me, even on my worst days. The people I experienced this short period of my life with still are some of my closest friends even three years later.

I found the love for myself that I had been missing since I was young. I deserved help just as much as anyone else experiencing mental illnesses, and you do too. Nowadays, I’m a sophomore in college, and things that used to make my mind spiral now seem lighter. While life isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, there is no light without the dark and no good without the bad. You deserve the world, and don’t settle for anything less than that. Life can be daunting, uncontrollable, and intimidating, but once you find comfort in the uncomfortable topics, there is nothing you can’t do.

Give yourself a chance to help yourself. As scary as it may be, you deserve it just as much as the person next to you.

Jack L., Former Syracuse University Student

Providence College

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