Lately I have been thinking a lot about life, past, present and future, mostly my past because some things from it are giving me a hard time right now. As I have mentioned before I was sick a while ago, I had to have two small surgeries and more than once a doctor said the words "cancer" and "possible" and I even heard "hysterectomy" (which means surgery to remove the uterus - fortunately I was spared from that one). All of that plus some things that I had buried deep inside my mind and that found their way out eventually led to a light case of depression. Light, but still enough to affect my daily life and my family so i went to get help.
Now the worst thing when you are depressed and having a bad day is...thinking about it. Which, more often then not, is making it even worse. You get caught up in a circle of thinking about they why's and what if's and even if you know that you could get out of it you don't know how or have not power to do it. Those days I usually try to avoid being online. I seem to not be able to stand either others being happy or others being as sad as I am or worse.
During the last few months I have noticed something else being online, maybe it is just the people around me but I doubt it. More and more people are not feeling happy, regularly, even on a daily basis. I know so many people who have experienced Depression or feel they are close to a Burn Out. Not only people who work but also Mom's I know, who are exhausted with taking care of the kids, household, daily chores and more and mostly Mom's who also work part-time besides doing household things. I mean this is probably not different than it was when I was a kid but nowadays with all the social networking, Twitter, Tumblr or Blogs you hear about it more and more. People feel safe talking about it semi-anonymous on the internet (like me). Maybe to get it out of their heads or to seek help from they online friends, maybe because if you online know someone online it is easier to open up to them. I read somewhere that by 2020 Depresson will be the second most common health problem worldwide...scary, huh?!
What surprised me (and scared me at the same time) is how many young people are affected. Especially on Tumblr, where you can "hide" behind a screenname, post anonymously and don't need to tell anyone who you are and where you are from, people post pictures, quotes, gifs and stories that are sometimes serioulsy messed up. Pictures of self-harm, stories about how they are the victim of mobbing in school, quotes saying something along the lines of "just disappearing and wondering if anyone notices". In between posting of concerned people posting the phone numbers of suicides hotlines or newspaper clippings of kids who commited suicide, kids that are sometimes not older than 14 or 15.
Seriously, has that become more since I was 14 or 15 or is it the same, just more commonly known and "into our faces" because of above mentioned social networks? I mean I wasn't the happiest kid in school, I wasn't popular, I didn't wear designer clothes, my parents were not rich (even though I went to the "rich kids" school because we lived on the edge of the school district), I was a nerd, always running around reading books and listening to music on my walkman and I was slightly overweight. I didn't have a lot of friends and my best friend didn't even go to my school, so I was all alone during the (school) day. I mostly kept to myself, I was bullied sometimes but I stood up for myself if necessary. I didn't pick fights but I also didn't avoid them if someone said something mean. I know I heard that bullying/mobbing has become more severe in schools but is so bad that kids actually think about hurting/killing themselves? No matter how bad it was, that thought seriously never crossed my mind when I was a teen. Going through that phase of my life wasn't easy, I am sure I cried myself to sleep a few times (but I don't remember it vividly so i guess it wasn't traumatizing) but I got over it. I became a stronger person. Yes, I envied those kids with rich parents, who always got what they wanted and were popular even though they didn't do anything except walk around in designer clothes. Most of them weren't even nice people, they were mostly arrogant and didn't care about anyone then themselves. Still everyone wanted to be friends with them. I wonder what happened to them, did they succeed in life? Did they ever have to struggle in their work life? Or did it all come easy to them, like it did in school.
As I said, I know from experience, that being "un"popular during High School can be tough, but did it become "tougher" over the last 15 years or did the teens just become more whiny and pampered by their parents? Do we tend to keep our kids away too much from the struggles so they don't know how it feels? I hope I will find a good middle when I raise my kids...not too strict and hard, so they don't end up bullying others but also not to soft, so others will be able to hurt them.
Well, these are my two cents about the whole thing!
Irene
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