Just Smile!

 As a literature blog, I mostly share poetry, rarely short poetry, and nearly never essays. I use this platform of mine to digitalize the work I have created for the fact that things are never truly and fully deleted from the internet at all. Since the official publishing date, which is 2017, I shared many of my written work, and I can obviously say that I have improved my writing skills at many aspects. Both studying English Language and Literature at university and continuity of writing made me the writer I am today. In these years, I had many different reasons to write, however, my main aim was to improve myself on my writings skills. I have learned and lived a lot, as a result my style and content of writing changed in paralel. 

If not it is unnecessarily personal, I had found out the reason of my "depressed" moods, rapid mood changes, nightmares, the reactions that I did not indent to make, and many more. I have been suffering from PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which a very common mental illness today. 

What is it?

I am not a degreed doctor, psychiatrist, psychologist, or a therapist. I am just a nearly graduate student of English Language and Literature. I see the right to speak about this because I have it. In very basic terms, PTSD is the effects, which you choose not to see for a long time, of the traumatic event in your life. When you search it up, you will see these "extreme" examples to traumatic event such as war, abuse or rape, death etc. However, it is not necessary to live war to have this. I prefer not to share my experiences but I would like to say that the treatment of a person, an action that you did not wish to live or forced to live, the place/position that you have been force to be, may be considered as traumatic event. This is a mental illness, and as the reaction of an event changes person to person, what you see something as trauma can change as well. That it, it should not be expected from human beings to understand you fully, and it is unfair to judge someone based on their experiences. 

How do you now that you have or not it?

First of all, how am I supposed to define this? I have been suffering from it for nearly a decade and I end up to find out that this was an actual illness. You can search, as well, to see that mainly nightmares, memorizing a certain event, negative reaction to similar actions, insomnia, easily getting angry- scared-, fear or anxiety to re-live the certain event, alienation from social enviroment, rapid mood swings,  unbalanced state of mind  under the  pressure of stress, and many more. Still, the rule of relativity goes on at every paragraph I write. As you can see, these are considered to be symptoms of many mentall illness. The best way to unsure your mental health is not reading a blog post written by someone at internet, to going and seeing an actual doctor who spent years to study mental health. Talking from my own experiences, I did have my nightmares, I had and still have unbalanced state of mind under pressure of stress, alienation from social enviroment, rapid mood swings (mostly to negative). 

Why?

Why? Why do I write these things? I have one solid reasons, I know. I know how it feels when you are mistreated by someone just because they try to euphuism and ignore the fact that this is an actual illness. I know, you body is fragile, can break or get ill, can be cut and burnt, however, just because you are not seeing the illness, it does not mean that it is not important. The reason that I came to this realization after a decade is because I always thought and was said that this was a change of mood, I was looking for attention, I was just tired. For the last 5 years of my life, whenever I had my crisis, I have been told to "Just smile!" or "You are pessimistic, be optimistic!". It is rude and even beyond rude. You don't/shouldn't/had better not say someone who has cancer "Just don't have it!" because you should be aware of the fact that having an illness is not someone choice. Forcing yourself to think more optimistic, be optimistic will only make the situation worse. This is not flu or any kind of "less" serious of an illness. This a necessity of professional help, go get it. It is expensive, believe it I know, but this is not a do or not situation, 

If you are not suffering from it, hopefully, how does it feel?

Even though at not very extreme levels, I know what physical pain is. It forces me wish for physical pain instead of mental suffering.

Is there any remedy, solution, treatment for this?

Unfortunately, there is nearly none. Anyone who suffers from this mental illness can be provided psyhcological help such as therapy. Medical helps can also be provided to balance your hormones as well. However, I find medical help, aka pills, not helpful rather detrimental. My experiences trying those were not positive although it may be very helpful to someone else. I try to meditate, walk, and relax in general to cope with daily stress of my life. It works so far, but I highly recommend removing toxic relationship, and social expectations from your life. Without even noticing, we are letting way to much toxicity into our lives. One suggestion on that is deleting social media accounts. There are more but that is for another text. Do whatever makes you better. Most importantly, seek for professional help, who can tell you way too better suggestions made with your personal information. 

My only intention for writing this is to spread awareness even a little. 

Thanks for reading.