Trigger Warning: I approach every situation nowadays with a measured air of cautiousness. It’s surprising how fragile we as humans can become when presented with the right combination of words and visuals, despite their separate trivialness. I do not want to be responsible for a crack in the eggshell of another’s person. Trigger Warning: What if I already am? As a species we have a tendency to avert not only prying eyes, but our own as well, away from any possible damage to our foundations. Quick to plaster our wounds and slather on a coat of cheap paint, it is inevitable the cracks will eventually show through these walls we have erected. It is only when we take peel back the layers of these defences that we will come face to face with our own realities. No one is undamaged. No shell still fully in tact, we are only fooling ourselves with the crazy glue and tape. We must recognize these scars as not flaws, but progress, and help one another to rebuild from the ground up. Only then will we begin to heal.

Mental health is both something I find myself discussing frequently and not at all. This is to say, it is a constant in my life, and often works its way into a conversation unintentionally by means of myself or another. However, I sometimes choose to hide in the shadows of these discussions. The topic seemed all too familiar when I posed questions of such things to friends of mine, and it became clearer with each interaction that none of us were strangers to the ailments of anxiety and depression. Some attributed this to the juggle between school and social life, others to simple genetics. I found that as I talked with my peers, we wanted to be truthful with one another but simultaneously feared encroaching upon too heavy of topics. There’s a fine line between conversation surrounding mental health and conversation that becomes cause for concern. Each of my friends I talked to shared their experiences with me willingly, but some clearly preferred to listen rather than offer their own comments.

It was perhaps the last peer I talked with whose answers surprised me the most. As we sat across from each other on the floor of her dorm room, I took in her pale complexion, littered with evidence of times she had gotten ahead of herself and removed one too many perceived blemishes. It seemed she herself was not all too sure where her head was. She told me she had come a long way. She is entering upon her fourteenth year of therapy, and has an arsenal of benzodiazepines and SSRIs backing her. It has not been an easy path. There is a single identifiable moment during our conversation in which she truly became aware of her progress. Her eyes glanced towards her shower caddy tucked away in the corner of the room, and she said, almost as if she too was only learning of it, that last night was the first time in two months she had touched a razor and been able to walk away not in more pieces than she had began. The simple act of trusting herself with this otherwise mundane object hit her in an instant. In this overwhelming moment of realization, she closed her eyes and began to recite the names of everyone she knew loved her. Her mother, her friends, the woman who held the door for her a second longer than necessary last week. She has come so far. I see in her an urge to keep going. I offer a consoling smile because I know the path can be hard. Trigger warning: I am still surprised when the mirror smiles back at me.