This is part of a MyndStories initiative to encourage more conversations and stories from people whose voices have been stifled. By life. By society. By the voice inside. 

This first-person account is shown as, barring minor changes for grammar. The objective is to showcase how mental health and life are intertwined. Indeed, there is no health without mental health. 

Don’t you see I am hurting Mom.. Dad..   

How could you not know? 

I wanted you to… 

But was too afraid to show. 

I wanted to share the anxiety that I live with every day. 

I wanted to… 

But you’d just turn and look away. 

Yes, I have fears, and they were real to me. All you said was to MAN UP. Not sure what that did to my fears, but to that kid, you became the enemy. 

A kind word was all I wanted on those days, so maybe it would give me the courage to face the fears that held me tight in their embrace. 

I came to you with heartbreak. What you saw was a defiant teen, not my tears nor my heartache. I came to you with a troubled mind. What you saw were excuses to not live by your rules and never some empathy could you find. 

Your ideals and beliefs always reigned supreme, oblivious to what they did to my being, it made me unfaithful and filled me with deceit. Despite it all, since I followed your path, you sang glory to me.  

You have earned the right to live as you please. My life, it seems, is indebted to you. Walk my path, I dare not. The price of finding myself is to lose you. 

I am from you, and you share a part of me. 

How did we become so distant then, how then, despite being together always, strangers we have now come to be?