A.A.

Mental illness and cancer both run in my family very dominantly. My great grandma had bipolar depression, and brain cancer. My grandma had breast cancer. My great aunt had breast cancer and has depression. My mother has depression and beat breast cancer a few months ago. And while I didn’t know what it was, I have been dealing with depression since 5th grade. I self-diagnosed myself my sophomore year of high school and I wasn’t formally diagnosed by a doctor until my senior year.

My senior year of high school was more difficult than most. Just like everyone else, I had AP classes, SATs, college essays, student government, sports, scholarships to apply for, senior year activities, a serious boyfriend, all while trying to wrap my head around leaving everything I knew and starting completely over somewhere else. I also was trying to manage my depression and suicidal thoughts with talk therapy and prescriptions. Finding the right mix and doses of antidepressants is very difficult. My mom has tried 12 different ones within the past 10 years, not to mention managing the side effects. Trying to do all of that senior year stuff, while also struggling with pill-induced insomnia and stomach issues, and maintaining my mental health, was really hard. 

Right in the midst of all of this, my mom was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer that spread to her lymph nodes. This was a lot to handle as I was wrapping up my senior year. We spent Mother’s Day in the hospital. I was very grateful to have a boyfriend at the time that was there for me in so many ways and that his family took me in as their own. The day before I graduated high school, my mother had her first chemo treatment. My mom had surgery when I was in New York for my senior trip. One of the hardest parts was having her treatments continue while I was 500 miles away at school. 

My way of coping with her diagnosis was pretending it didn’t exist and avoiding the topic as much as possible. And while people had the best intentions, asking me “how is your mom doing” fifty times a day was one of the most painful things that I experienced. And while my mom chose to share her cancer journey on Facebook with the world, that would not have been my choice. I would rather tell my closest friends and family, my support system, and that’s it. I did not want to be reminded of such a terrible thing every time someone asked me about it. My mom wanted to “be positive” and post about it on social media. I wanted people to stop probing into our lives and I couldn’t deal with my parents shoving this positivity down my throat. They were trying to keep me and my brother positive and part of that was not letting us see them upset, scared, or really any negative emotion. It made me feel like I was the only one who was upset about my mom’s cancer and this created a lot of tension in my family. 

I had always been a really good student and worked very hard in school. During the second semester of my senior year, I began to dissociate from school. I wasn’t turning in my work and I barely had enough motivation to go to class. One of my teachers, who I consider one of my biggest role models, and one of my closest friends today, was part of the reason I was able to overcome these challenges. She helped me talk to my teachers and I was able to make up a lot of the work so I could maintain my acceptance to Cal Poly. My boyfriend at the time was also a major influence in my life and quite honestly the rock that I needed then, he understood me and what I was going through. My mom and I also bonded a lot that summer before college and are closer now than we ever were during high school. My mom is one of my best friends. 

I have changed a lot as a person as a result of these challenges. With the help of medication, therapy, support from my family, keeping myself busy, making time for myself, and taking care of myself mentally and emotionally, I finally feel like I am in control of my life, I am happy, I am healing and I am handing it. Two years later, I am grateful for the difficult experiences that made me grow as a person and have made me stronger. Social media can be a really great way to share our experiences with our friends and keep in communication with people, but it also can be toxic. We only see people’s positive experiences and compare their perfect social media life to our real struggles. In some ways, social media can be a really positive way to share the good things in our lives with others. However, most people (including myself) don’t post the negative things because we don’t want to draw attention to us or people to look at us differently. I felt this way about my mom’s decision to share her cancer journey on social media and on a blog. I didn’t want people bringing it up, and I didn’t want to remind myself of the negativity every time I looked at my phone. 

It wasn’t so much that I felt like I couldn’t share about it on social media. I really didn’t want to share it. Part of this was that I thought other people weren’t dealing with anything like this. And realistically, there is a stigma around mental illness. The amount of support my mom received for her cancer was immense, but if you replaced ‘cancer’ with ‘depression’, it would be much different. If I were to share about it, I’m sure a lot of people would comment about supporting me and being there for me, but the amount of people really actually there for me would be a fraction of that. I’m sure a lot of people would tiptoe around it, and a lot more people would tell me to “just cheer up”.

So, to any woman going through anything similar to what I did: a few things. One, find your support system. When you tell people about what you’re going through, your real friends will stick around, and your fake friends will fall away. Your “people” are the people that would be there for you, no matter what. One thing I learned through all of this is who my people are. Two, you need to put yourself first. No matter what. You can’t pour from an empty cup, so you need to do things that fill up your cup. Three, there are other people that are going through this, just like you. Find those people and lean on each other. You are NOT alone.