Mental Challeneges: Severe Depression

As I mentioned in my previous post, BDD is more joke and t comes with consequences as well. One of them being depression. In my case, I have suffered from it since I started this journey in High School. One would think that with the weight loss it would get better but that, unfortunately, was not the case.

When you ask anyone who suffers with depression 'why' they are feeling the way they are, it is one of the worst questions to ask. The answer is simple. They don't know and that's the point of the illness. For me, I just don't know an exact reason but I think it can be narrowed down to the act of losing weight. Personally, I think that it has just been a handful on contributing factors that have kept adding weight to my shoulders. High School was tough for me, mainly due to my weight. It was not necessarily a bullying problem, but more of a lack of healthy friendships.

Then the transition between high school and college hit me hard. Form the time management to the academic work load. I didn't know many at my school and navigating my way through was difficult. I also didn't but down my hours at all in my job outside of school as a server/bartender and was pulling nearly 40 a week while in school fulltime. I overworked myself by trying to balance a healthy lifestyle in and outside of school. Even worse was my relationship within my household with my Dad. It was, and really never has been, fully healthy. It was the first month of Spring Semester when I hit rock bottom mentally and the depression soon flowed to the point where harming myself was in the question.

In April of 2017 I came out to my family and friends and it soon started to go uphill. I continued losing weight and before I knew it I was at the lowest I've been in over five or six years all the while finishing off my freshman year unscathed and finally started sophomore year; my best year yet in terms of relationships, academics, mental well being, etc. Then the BDD started to kick in even stronger and it came back. Now in December of 2018, I like to lead myself to believe I am doing rather sufficient in my academic career as well as outside of school with work and internships. The BDD is there, and always will be from maybe a year to ten years down the road. Only I will know. But the depression seems to be a long-lasting lingering effect in which I have yet to fully commit to seeing someone to address it for a handful of personal reasons. I battle with myself everyday because I know the right thing to do is see someone for more than a few days but always fail to commit in doing so.

Although
the depression still lingers on and off, which does significantly effect my academic school work, the key parts that get me through it all are my friends that I surround myself with, ESPECIALLY here at UNH Manchester. it is just important to keep in mind that weight loss is something people can not take lightly. BDD and depression are real results of committing to a life changing journey and not enough awareness is spread for it.