It's Mental Health Awareness Month; I have a mental illness and I'm very aware of it.
I take Prozac for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. When I'm not on medication, life sucks and is hard and it took me like 15 years to find a medication that works for me and also that I had OCD and not some anxiety disorder.
If I had to describe it simply, imagine if you had intrusive thoughts that wouldn't go away. It's a treadmill of the same thought(s) over and over again and it ruins your life and relationships and makes you insane.
I've written about having mental illness twice over the last year
https://medium.com/@theblacknerd_23078/godspeed-you-black-nerd-a0909c405d34
A fucked up thing about not knowing your real diagnosis is when you finally know what's wrong with you, it feels like having lived someone's life up until then
It's like studying for a test and getting to class and it's an entirely different subject than what you've studied