Stones
One in four people will be affected by mental health issues in their lives: suffering, often in silence, often in fear that they are completely alone. Mental illness is regularly ignored or worse still is stigmatised.
Nobody chooses to be unwell. Nobody chooses to be depressed, panicked, or suicidal. It’s the invisible burden that so many carry every single day.
That burden does not need to be invisible. If we acknowledge that someone is pushing an invisible boulder, and we do not judge them for it, then we can help them to push.
Nathan
Having only come to terms with having a mental illness in the last seven years I look back and I can see it started before I was even a teenager. Anxiety attacks in exams, feeling like I never quite fitted in and preferring to spend time on my own. Most people would look at me today and say I'm successful in life, I have a good job, I have a beautiful family, we are in a good position financially what do I have to be depressed about. Truth is I don't know why I get anxiety attacks, I don't know why I get depressed, I just wish it would go away but I know it never will and all I can do is try to manage it. I can go months at time feeling on top of the world then I'll get struck with a manic low that can last months and every time that happens I have to fight and fight hard to pull myself back out of it. My wife worries and that breaks my heart she's scared one day I'll take my life and leave her and our beautiful kids, I'll never let that happen I'll always fight for them. I'm lucky to have amazing people around me and I've learnt to talk about my problems and when I'm not feeling myself, I have a fantastic therapist friend and we talk regularly. I've started to make time for myself as I know I need it, martial arts now play a huge part in my life as does meditation, I make it a priority now to make sure I get a decent amount of sleep and also watch my diet. I really try to enjoy the simple pleasures and I try to remove negativity from my life as much as possible. I do all this and it helps but it will never cure it. It will always be there, like a dark passenger on my life's journey.
Pallavi
As a woman, working in a senior role in a competitive financial services industry, I hid my mental health illness for a long time. First from myself, as growing up as an immigrant, I had learnt that these feelings / thoughts are signs of weakness, signs of ineptness of managing adult emotions and worse of all - a reflection of ingratitude for having a good life. Then, when I made the slow, painful and very lonely climb out of the darkness through therapy and medication, I hid it from family, friends and colleagues. It was a full-time job just to fight my inner demons and show up every single day. I had very little of me left to spare to then explain, defend, educate and even protect myself from others. Especially protect - as in a corporate environment, any vulnerability leaves one an easy prey. Then one day there was a call on social media for this photoshoot to raise awareness for mental health. They had posted a picture of a person holding a heavy rock against a quintessential Hong Kong backdrop of grandness. I remember seeing that picture and feeling the weight and loneliness of holding that rock in a city known for its daily hustling. I responded to the request. Coincidentally, ironically and significantly, the photoshoot was in front of my office building, a place where my sense of isolation was louder. When the newspaper article about the work came out, it was for the first time that I felt that someone was speaking on my behalf. Without a single word, I shared that article with some close family, friends and select colleagues. Some responded with perfunctory, politically correct soundbites, but some asked me if I wanted to talk. A dam broke inside me.
Those pictures, the article, the work, spoke on my behalf, saved me the energy of having to explain myself, gave me the courage to open up to people close to me and most poignantly - made me realise that I am not alone.
