I spent a while mulling over whether I wanted to publish this or not. But... here goes.
Today is Bell Let's Talk Day, an initiative designed to foster a national discussion about mental health, raise money for mental health programs, and encourage people to tell their stories.
This is mine.
I've never been diagnosed with depression or any form of mental illness, but I've felt it at different points in my life, especially during my childhood.
As a kid, I was always the shortest in my class and always one of the smartest, but that often works against you in the schoolyard. I wasn't a jock, I didn't fit into the group of popular kids. I was never cool.
I was bullied at school. Most of the time it wasn't overly extreme. But I was mocked, made fun of, ridiculed. That can really mess you up as a kid and impact the way you carry yourself later in life.
I became insecure, and eventually I learned not to say anything that might get me laughed at. It's not a great way to spend your school days.
It didn't help that I was born with a rare pituitary disorder called panhypopituitarism. The gland was somehow squashed when I was born, which meant it couldn't put out hormones properly. The effects of the disease are wide-ranging. It's complicated to explain, but it's why I'm short, why I can't grow facial hair to save my life, and why my appetite is smaller than most people's, among other things.
The pituitary disease isn't a big deal now as an adult, but as a kid, my mom had to give me an injection of human growth hormone six days a week for 15 years. It's a good way to make your arms constantly sore. Not only that, HGH is a banned steroid in sporting events, so there went my dreams of being in the Olympics one day...
(Speaking of which, a huge shout out goes to the IWK Children's Hospital
in Halifax — without their early diagnosis and the care of their
doctors and nurses for 15 years, who knows what kind of shape I'd be in
right now. They are miracle workers.)
Of course, not many people knew about this, but it still added to my feeling of inadequacy. I wasn't good enough. I was weird, "different". As you grow older, you learn that this is something to be embraced, but as a kid at school, it's an affliction.
Anyway, back to the bullying at school. In junior high, I decided to start fighting back. I got into quite a few fights, and a few more in high school. I didn't always win, but at least I was standing up for myself.
(I'm in no way encouraging kids to fight as a response, I'm saying it's important to stand up for yourself. If you feel like you need to do that with your fists, that's up to you. I'm not passing judgement. And by the way, parents: don't tell your kid to ignore it. It's nearly impossible to do, the bully knows you're trying to do it, and it usually solves nothing. If that's not working, take some real action and go to the school about it. Schools didn't do much about bullying when I was a kid, but it seems like that's beginning to change.)
Toward the end of high school and in university, I started to find myself (for lack of a better term) and developed a lot of new friendships. Because as people get older, they simply don't care that you're different. I had a great time in university and I've become more sure of myself as I've gotten older.
But that insecurity from my childhood definitely crept into my working life in some ways. When I started out with the Kindersley Clarion, if I got a complaint or some criticism, I'd spend the rest of the day thinking about it, maybe more. It got to me. But I quickly got used to it. If you can't handle criticism, it's pretty tough to work in journalism.
I still have some anxiety at times before going to cover events. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it isn't, and it doesn't seem to matter what kind of event it is. I have no idea why this happens, since the vast majority of the events I cover are things I've covered before.
It doesn't make sense... but depression doesn't make sense. That's the point. Depression and mental illness can happen to
ANYONE. Whether it's the average office worker, a professional athlete, a CEO making bucketloads of money, it doesn't matter. ANYONE can be afflicted with mental illness. It's pretty much a guarantee that there are people you know who suffer from some form of it in silence.
My dad has bipolar disease, or as it's also known, manic depression. He was diagnosed in his early 20s. It was one of the factors in breaking up my parents' marriage, and it's made the father-son relationship between us challenging at times. But it's never made me think any less of him. You can't control whether you have something like that or not. The good news is he and my stepmother have put together a little program to help him manage the mood swings, and his bipolar doesn't have nearly as much of an impact as it used to. He's got a great support system, and that makes an ENORMOUS difference.
I know some people laugh and make jokes about manic depression. Fortunately, I think that's changing. There shouldn't be any stigma attached to mental illness. It's not something people have control over. They need a support system, not ridicule.
You can help raise money for mental health programs today. For every tweet with the hashtag #BellLetsTalk, or Facebook share of Bell's Let's Talk photo, or texts and long distance calls sent by Bell users, Bell will donate five cents to fund Canadian mental health initiatives. As of this writing, the total number of tweets, Facebook shares, texts and long distance calls was over 33 million. That means more than $1.6 million has already been committed.
Don't feel sorry for me. There are oodles and oodles of people who suffer through worse. My story is just an example of how so many people deal with mental health issues. People you know, people you love. Odds are you don't know anything about it.
So... let's talk.
