"I am a fighter and I will keep fighting. So should you."

Hi. I’m Dayana. I was a top student, head girl, active in extracurricular and obtained a scholarship. I look good on paper, but I’ve got battle scars. This is my story.

I’ve always been told to never show them that it hurts you. Whether it’s words, dirty looks or mean comments. Chin up, stand tall, they say. As a kid, I copied everyone around me, even when I felt like doing something different; like sitting with one leg on a chair, or drawing when the teacher’s talking or screaming when everyone else was too loud cause I wanted to listen to what the teacher was saying. I noticed weird shapes on things that people didn’t see, like a shape of a man’s face looking to the side on the tiles of my bathroom. I was always looking around when people were talking to me. Fidgeting, stacking my pens during exams, yes, exams, colouring every single letter on the test paper, and putting wet glue on the table to let it dry for a day every week, non-stop, and getting excited that it became a plastic. Nobody understood why I did what I did, neither did I. Sometimes, when I did what I wanted, I was the weird one. I was the outcast. Or at least it felt like that deep down.

Cause I’ve masked all my symptoms so well by copying others, I no longer know who I am. I remember wanting to fit in so bad, that I begged for forgiveness while kneeling in front of my friend at just 11 years old. It is always my fault. I am always guilty. I deserve this. All these were my everyday mantras.

Being accepted by friends meant a great deal to me because at home, I was always beaten up by my younger sister. She was bigger than me. She’d pull my hair, punch me, slap me in the head and never failed to remind me that I was the reason my mother loves her less. She would bite me till it bled, and for some reason, I never felt like it was her fault. I was so scared of her that whenever she got mad, I would hide in the bathroom. The constant reminder that I was hated made me believe that my family was better off without me. So, school had to be my safe place. But, it wasn’t.

At 14, I was bullied, called names, isolated, and it felt like the whole world was against me. But, “Never show them that it hurts you”, so I kept it inside, and scarred my hands, cause I wanted to be in control of who could hurt me the most. And it had to be me. I’ve always felt like a burden. A financial burden to my parents, a sick friend to my friends and a barrier between my sister and my parents. The world would be better off without me. It was harder because I didn’t feel like I was in a place to complain. I have nothing to complain about. Right? Wrong.

My struggles, your struggles and everyone’s struggles are valid. Never. NEVER let anyone downplay it.

At 16, diagnosed with ‘sleep anxiety’, parents brushed it off. Approaching SPM, chronic back pain, outcasted because I was “faking it”, depressed, alone and wanted to end it all. At 18, I was free falling, sent to the ER for being suicidal, 10 464 km away from home, begged to be on meds, request denied, pretended to get better because I was tired of the system. Finally, at 19, I got diagnosed with ADHD, MDD and anxiety. Got the help I needed. Most importantly, had an explanation as to why I was not as ‘normal’.

But, it didn’t get easier. People who knew me before my diagnosis, would say “but you are smart” “but you were the head girl” “you’re exaggerating” and post-diagnosis, all I wanted was for people to understand me. But they refuse to or are not ready to. The journey of recovering and rediscovering who I am is hard but I am up for it. I am a neurodiverse and proud of it. I don’t have to subscribe to neurotypicals’ standards and no one can force them on me. It doesn’t matter how people react anymore, cause I have lower expectations now, I can’t just expect people to accept it and understand just because I do.

Everyone is different and that’s okay.

It got better for me and it will for you too. My family started learning, I started advocating for ADHD and mental health and I cut off toxic people. I made new friends, other advocates, discovered ADHD twitter and had people who lifted me on bad days instead of stepping on me. My younger sister never told me why she hated me so much, but she got diagnosed with ADHD too. I always think that it was because she was undiagnosed, it made it hard for her to communicate back then but things are better between us.

There are still days where I wanna end it all. It doesn’t get better overnight, but it will eventually. Social media will keep telling us to be ashamed of our mental illness, to struggle silently, to avoid getting judged and be ‘positive’. But I say, we show the world what reality is, that life isn’t just rainbows, success stories and good days. We should normalize talking about our mental illness and mental health, because it happens to all of us and we should not be ashamed of it. I am a fighter and I will keep fighting. So should you.

- Dayana, 19