Hello to all my friends in Women's Mental Health, 

I hope I haven't driven everyone insane by my mantra, tough love. If you haven't chatted with me on one of my posts, you can ask me about how I adopted the mantra sometime!   

Many of us on here it seems suffer from some sort of mental illness or at the very minimum mental distress. I opened up to everyone in a post on Talklife about me being right there with you all and not to despair. I'm going to take it a step further as well as rehash the point of my that post. 

No one but us knows how deep the darkness and the abyss of depression can be and the hell that anixety, phobias, and obsessions creates for us. People look at us like we are being overly emotional or needy and say "take a chill pill dude" during an anxiety attack or "snap out of it" when we are depressed. Yeah people we tried that one already and if you didn't get the message we'd rather not get that way anyway! Who asks to go through this kind of nonsense that mental illness brings on us? Yet the actions of a few faking mental illness make us all like we are just crying out for attention and cause those on the outside not to take us seriously! 

But to anyone who's reading this and can relate, don't listen to those who are ignorant or unwilling to listen. You know what you are suffering through is real and so do your doctors. Who else would need to know other than you and them anyway? 

So to conclude I leave you all with this: 

The night is darkest just before the dawn. If your numbness and blackness of your being is at its deepest that probably means you can't even more depressed than you are now. The only way left to go is up through lots of love, support, therapy, and medication or else stay down where you are at. With this kind of illness you have to stand up for yourself and be your own advocate. If you tell the doctor you feel great on the medication you are on and you don't really then your doctor isn't going to know any better and keep you on second rate crap. It's kind of hard and awkward since the depression makes us feel lousy but it's a must in getting better! You are worth getting better even if you don't feel like it at the moment. Your friends, loved ones, and people you'd know will tell you that and they wouldn't lie to you. I'm not a liar either. 

And the rays of life and healing will peer through the opaqueness of night, and its light will grow stronger until the dark becomes but a distant memory and a dead chapter in the book of life! 

Wishing you all good mental health, 

Mary