stop crying over spilt milk when everybody’s drinking alcohol
I wasn’t dealing with depression until the latter half of my college life. Most of my initial struggles with my mental health were due to panic attacks and anxiety. Specifically, social anxiety. That was easy to understand and navigate. No talking to people, no attacks. Half a pink tablet when my breathing starts to become shallow, no worse attacks. I felt like I was doing a good job as a mentally disabled person, so I deserved a star on my wrist. I knew when and when not to take my Xanax. I didn’t take more than what was in my prescription, despite the intrusive whispers of my curious, scientific mind. (Am I allowed to say that on the Internet?) I was the Summer Hathaway of therapy, so certain that I was way ahead of my psychiatrist’s other patients.
The thing with my panic attacks is that they’re explosive. What starts with hyperventilation would eventually become bouts of uncontrollable screaming and, eventually, a loss of control of my muscles. I am a very shy person, but my illness didn’t care for that. When I experience a panic attack, everyone in the room will know. Perhaps the ones next door, too. It wasn’t something I could hide, nor could I control. I remember putting both my hands on either of my ears whenever it happens, as if I could save my eardrums from my own screaming. I wasn’t in control of my body. It was evident in the way my body would collapse on the ground afterwards.
Catatonia follows, or at least a state similar to it. I could not and would not move my body; my own breathing was controlled. Every nerve and artery in my body stays still, as if I’ve exhausted all the energy my body had when I was screaming my lungs out. There’s a static, a hum of quietness in my ears that silences even my family’s frantic words. The first few times, they’d ask me if I wanted to be brought to the hospital. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t nod, or shake my head. I could only stare as a dead person would. And I think that’s what scared them the most. Eventually, my panic attacks didn’t feel novel, and they knew what to do with my body during this state. Carry me inside a room — usually my grandma’s, since that’s the closest.
“What is it? Is it school? Is she pressured? Has she told you anything?”
I couldn’t respond, but I could still see and hear and understand. Sometimes my grandma would play gospel songs while waiting for me to thaw. After a few minutes, I try to stand up. I take a shower.
The visibility of my panic and anxiety made it easier to manage. It’s not normal for a person to have a tendency to scream uncontrollably and go into catatonia simply by being spoken to. At least my family could agree that, at some level, something was wrong with me. They may not be able to fully understand how or why I got it, but it was enough to tell that something is wrong.
The coming of my depression almost felt like a betrayal. It was quiet. It sneaked into my routines like a trained stealth assassin. No warnings. No tell-tale signs of an attack. It just occurred, disrupting my days and leaving me wondering whether the problem is me, or if there’s another assailant involved. It was nearly impossible, even for me, to recognize that there was another entity at play. Even now, four years after my diagnosis, I still doubt myself whenever I feel its presence.
I doubt it again and again, even when it stares me in the eye. Depression tricks its victim by posing as something else — laziness, apathy, gloom. Perhaps even those were reiterations of the same enemy. But it made me question my own reality. What if I’m only being too sensitive and whiny? What if all 8 billion people in the world have gone through this, and I’m the only one making it about myself? Am I depressed because I do not know how to cope? Or do I not know how to cope because I’m depressed?
The trickery heightens whenever I get a small glimpse of the light. That crack in the cave, blowing fresh air and providing a tiny sense of hope. Some days I am okay. And those days, I wonder if I have really ever been not okay. They tell me progress isn’t linear. But even when I’m on top of the circle, depression still finds a way to alter my perception. My relief comes with guilt. The thing with fighting an invisible enemy is that, once it’s all over, I’d convince myself that I was just dancing.
It’s not enough that I feel guilty for being diagnosed, when sometimes I don’t trust myself to be telling the truth. My reality has been so much tampered with by this illness that I couldn’t trust anyone — even myself. I feel ashamed for affording a doctor, for even having a mental illness in a Global South country. I am not proud of my medicine, of the support I get from friends and family. This small mass of muscles with barely any purpose and nothing to offer doesn’t feel worthy of any help. Why does it feel like I need a reason to live?
My depression is chronic, but treatable. I didn’t know how to live with that until recently. I was torn between acknowledging that I am more than my depression, but also accepting that it’s going to be with me forever. I didn’t understand why I felt hurt when my mom once prayed for me to be “fixed”. I almost responded, “but I’m not broken.” Then again, I’m also not whole.
All this deception and internal manipulation is rooted in the fact that I myself didn’t believe in my own illness. I’ve defended my case over and over again to close-minded relatives and boomers on the internet. I even used my background in STEM to achieve credibility and provide a scientific, tangible explanation why I’m wired differently. But deep down, I still doubt my own disease — or its very presence.
It’s embarrassing to admit that I had to explain my own depression to myself like a five-year-old to genuinely understand. Here’s what I pictured: imagine a person with a missing leg. It’s not his fault he lost a limb, but he also cannot be attacked for needing crutches. His normal and your normal will never be the same. Yes, he’s physically disabled in a way that closes some doors for him. But it doesn’t close all doors. And at some point, he needs to come to terms that he’ll never regrow a limb, but that doesn’t stop him from carrying on with life.
Chronic mental illness is just like that, but it could also involve other complex factors, such as fluctuating symptoms, severity, and treatment response. Getting comfortable with the crutches is okay, positive even, but it doesn’t erase the disability. I guess living with it means finding yourself at the tip of a triangle, constantly trying to balance optimism and realism.
At some point, like everyone else, it becomes your responsibility to keep yourself happy. I’m more than glad to explain my illness and experiences to those who are willing to listen and understand, but I need to learn how to stop. How to stop talking and sharing pieces of me to unwanting observers whose minds have already been made up, anyway. Stop crying over spilt milk when everybody in the room is drinking alcohol. Collect yourself and carry on, perhaps somewhere else, there are people with cookies in their hands too, waiting for you.
This piece was originally posted on Substack on November 25, 2025 and migrated to BearBlog on March 19, 2026.