Surviving when {almost} no one knows

Trigger Warning: This post discusses suicide, sexual assault, and some of the challenging life circumstances that can lead to suicidal ideation. It is intended to be supportive, but may be challenging to read at points.

I wrote most of this post on June 9, 2018, just days after a few very notable individuals had taken their own lives. But I have been sitting on it. Part of my hesitation comes from fear of reputation consequences and/or internet harassment. The other part is the behemoth inertia of the silence that has sealed my lips all my life. **One does not simply disclose one’s mental illness to the entire world.**

I hope that in posting this now, at the beginning of Fall Semester 2018 for the many students who are starting up classes again today, I can contribute to keeping the conversation about #mentalhealth and #suicideprevention alive. People are always struggling, whether or not someone famous recently sparked a conversation. Here is my writing from earlier this year.


I often struggle with the way that people talk about mental health online, as though it were an abstract object of study, policy, or opinion (which, of course, it sometimes can be), or as though it merits a few timely words in the wake of public tragedy (which, of course, it does). The buzz comes, the buzz goes. A steady hum of conversation about mental health drones on in the background, but the feeling of movement fades when the next big headlines break, and the world spins madly on.

I am glad that there are many people in the world who do not personally struggle with mental health.

I am not one of them.

When celebrity suicides break the Internet, a diffuse sense that the world cares permeates my social awareness. I find myself tempted to shout out, “My gosh, oh great peoplez of teh social mediaz, I need some of that good, good support you’re all vaguely offering. I need to talk about this deep, dark shit that’s stirring inside me. I need to feel accepted and cared for in the aftermath.”

I wish I believed that I could be honest in those moments…or like, all the time. I wish I believed that most of the people who post those timely messages would truly accept me if I came to them with my struggles. But anyone with mental health problems knows that being honest feels virtually impossible with most people, most of the time, even when the invitation is vaguely, publicly there.

Many people with mental health problems also know what it’s like to make that leap of faith, disclose to a friend, and then receive the cursory awkward silence, followed by neglect to ever broach the topic a second time. It hurts badly to share that part of you and never receive any follow up. You feel forgotten, ignored, like the words never even broke the silence to start with, making it all the more impossible to feel safe speaking up next time.

So then, there’s this quintessential problem that very often, nobody even knows about the mental health struggles a person is going through. I, myself, can be an exceptional actor. I am extroverted af. I am a high-functioning academic (PhD student, STEM field). I sometimes perform amazeballs feats of accomplishment under pressure. No one would have guessed that a few months ago, I sat on the ledge of a cliff for two hours, barely restraining myself from taking that leap. {Almost} no one knows. I called my therapist. She called the police. They came to talk me down. It was a f***ing trip.

So I’m going to take a moment to be brutally, publicly honest. Because I want to give a voice to the people who are like me, people who suffer quietly most of the time with smiles at work, and maybe a cheerful drink after. People who go home and weep and rip at their hair because the world is so cold and unfeeling and silent towards the struggles that are yours, the struggles that you didn’t do anything to deserve, but that you are nonetheless forced to endure. I want to offer the type of perspective that comes only with experience. And I want to stress that this is only my experience. Yours may be different. Regardless, you are never, never alone.


In the last year, two people in my family took their own lives, one leaving behind parents, the other leaving behind young children. In the last year, two people in my family died of cancer. Three years ago, my mom died of a rare sarcoma for which nothing could be done. (I love you mom.) The grief I carry for these (and other, older) losses is tremendous. At times, it is overwhelming. Yet I carry it, and it changes over time. It becomes more bearable.

Just a few weeks ago, I broke up with a person whom I had thought I would marry, only afterward to discover the perverse lies they had told me from the utter beginning of our relationship. They had lied to me about fundamental facts that lead me to consent to have sex with them. We dated for an entire year and a half before I found out that I had never known who they truly were.My body felt excavated. My heart re-fractured into a million fractal shards.

Five years before that, I had filed a restraining order against a partner who raped and assaulted me, a partner who moments before they beat me down, said they loved me. And before that, the first person I gave my heart to (what feels like millennia ago, but which was, in reality, only 6 years ago), slept with someone else and then destroyed my first pure love with a single surprise text while I was at work.

The hardest things to admit publicly are the diagnoses: the fact that I was hospitalized (twice) for an eating disorder during high school; the fact that I spent most of my 20s on and off a slew of medications for depression, anxiety, bipolar, borderline, whatever. No one actually knows what it really is/was. Brains are tricky like that. Sometimes, they just don’t work right, and it’s hard to understand what’s wrong.

In short, I have survived a series of horrors, both before and during my academic career. And survival is, quite literally, the best word I can think of to express it. None of the things I described were within the locus of my control. Things simply happened the way they did. It’s Dark. It’s Real. It’s often simultaneous. It’s not my fault. PTSD is now a good pal of mine who comes at odd moments to paralyze and shake my body.

And now I’m in this bizarre grad school universe where I’m supposed to just churn out academic publications about sciencey science. I’m supposed to sleep at my desk to run experiments in order to competitively prove my worth. MUST POSITIVE IMPACT. MUST SOCIETAL IMPROVE. FUTURE! INNOVATE! Because if I don’t personally science, then basically, we’re all gonna die. Wouldn’t that be just tragic? At least that’s how it feels in my head, where I am obviously just an imposter. It’s a lot of weight for one person to carry, on top of the, you know, death and rape and general shittiness of romantic betrayal that now feels routine in my life.

(Some of you are probably reading this and recalling that person you know with a diagnosis. Maybe that’s yourself. Maybe that’s your ex, your child, your best friend. Chances are, whoever you’re thinking of, you’re also thinking of the pain they have caused you through behaviors that resulted from their disorder. Now close your eyes, keep that person in your mind. Send them peace and love. Wish them healing. Empathize. It’s good for you. It will help with your pain, too.)

I wish I believed that I inhabit a world where I could freely express the pain I carry. But instead, I live in a world where I run to hide in the bathroom for 15 minutes — and yes, I literally have a preferred crying stall at work — and then return to lab with slightly-less puffy eyes I hope no one will notice. I live in a world where I work my ass off and try to prove my worth through demonstrating my passion and intelligence in a socially validated manner. I usually only post the types of things on Facebook that people “like.” But secretly, I know that I am posting pictures of the things that help me survive: my plants, my cats, the scientific research I am committing my life to completing.

But I don’t believe that I inhabit a world where I can be honest most of the time. Most people struggle with how to respond to mental health disclosures. They’re not bad or heartless people. They just don’t know what to say or do (see the end of this post for some ideas). They just haven’t been through what I’ve been through, what we have been through.

So, where does that leave us? What’s the point? Why not take that final leap? We’ve struggled enough, haven’t we? Why would the future be any different if the past wasn’t? {Almost} no one knows, and {almost} no one cares?


The hard truth is that people don’t care about things they don’t know about. It’s unreasonable to expect that people are going to pick up on subtle cues. They’re busy. They’re distracted. Our culture at large is not a culture of observation, compassion, and awareness, but a culture of flashy self aggrandizement and curated online self-depiction. It’s a culture that more often “likes” appearance than substance. No wonder it’s a trip to try to trust people with the hard shit that hides under the smiles. (Especially when your mind is supposed to be some bastion of brilliant scientific intelligence.)

The thing is, though, when you’re sitting there on the cliff (metaphorical or real), you actually have an opportunity that a lot of people never get.

You get to choose to wake up.

Your demons are there, in your face. They bare their wicked teeth, they raise their hell howls, they call you forth to join them. Everybody has demons to varying degrees. (Although arguably, for people with mental health problems, of whom there are more than average in academia, those demons are on the more extreme end of the spectrum.) It’s just that for a lot of people, they’re never willing to meet them face to face. They might even refuse to recognize them, period. So their demons just sit there, quietly making the calls, spinning minor tragedies, laughing all the way home.

Meeting those demons on the ledge, you can finally choose to see them for what they are: vapid beastly lies. They rise from true circumstances and real obstacles and excruciating facts. But the solution they offer — to leap, to escape, to give up — is an abject lie.

The real solution is to make the radical decision to trust yourself. Having seen your demons face to face, you now know them. You now have awareness. From awareness springs forth the possibility of change, either of material circumstances or of mindset.

Woah… Hold the phone. A lot of people probably just had their bullshit sensors go off. Are you reading this and feeling angry or resistant? Are you thinking, “No way. No way. My situation will never change. My mind will never change. I’m not doing anything wrong! My life is just screwed!” Good. I’m talking to you. Please listen. Please, please, listen. You need this. Take a deep breath, right now. Don’t instantly assume that I’m sugarcoating your struggles with nonsense.

F***, trust me, I know how hard it is when there are unchangeable facets of your experience and/or your mental health condition. But you can always change how you think about things. And more often than not, you can consciously change the actions that create at least some facets of your circumstance. But only if you accept the facts of what your demons are, and radically trust yourself to overcome them. This solution might feel like a monstrous whopper, a much bigger lie than you’ve ever had to stomach from your demons. But that’s a feeling, not a fact. Trusting yourself is the first piece.

Nurturing your strength is the second piece. So I’m going to prevaricate about strength for a minute now, because you have immense strength. You do. But have you validated that for yourself recently?

Strength looks like being honest with yourself. This is not the same thing as believing all the shitty lies your mental illness tells you. This means looking your problems squarely in the face and saying, “I recognize you. You are real.”

Strength looks like continuing to trust yourself that healing is possible, no matter how bad the thing is, no matter how redonkulous that feels. You CAN fix things, no matter how improbable or difficult that may seem to be.

Sometimes, strength looks like crying and staying in bed because you can’t even. And then, after that, strength looks like wiping the last tear from your face and dragging your sorry ass into the shower to cleanse away the ugly cry.

Strength looks like dragging your sorry ass to the self-care activity of your choice, to a social activity you’re scared to show your face at, to an exam you might fail, or to the grocery store.

In moments of extreme anguish, strength looks like getting a therapist if you don’t have one, calling your therapist if you do have one, ringing the suicide hotline at 1–800–273–8255, or going on the Internet and finding a friend, or maybe even a compassionate stranger. It looks like telling someone that you are scared of yourself, that you are scared of your thoughts, and letting their words of comfort resonate beyond your brokenness, even if they don’t say the exact thing you thought you wanted to hear. (Because how could anyone know exactly what you wanted to hear?)

I am writing this because I believe in you, whoever you are, especially if you don’t believe that you can be honest, either. I want to provide concrete evidence that you are not alone. Our problems are solvable, our hearts are healable. If our minds are broken, we can find ways to co-exist with them and succeed. Despite the horrors I have survived, I am moving forward along the challenging life path I have set before me, with failures and successes along the way. It is all going somewhere. I am finding solutions.

My personal struggles have built within me a tremendous compassion for those who taken their own lives, and for those they have left behind to mourn them. I have no judgement towards them. They are beautiful souls who suffered. We can never truly understand their decisions. My personal struggles have also built within me a tremendous compassion for those who are surviving. I send this compassion out to you, all of you, all of the many millions of you.

I hope that you can choose strength today, because strength leads to action and behavioral change. I’m not going to write that much more, because really, I just wanted to give you a glimmer of hope if you’re thoroughly horrified about having to survive a whole new academic year like I am. Because, um, science — and scientists — can be pretty cold and unforgiving. There are books written about mental health, but maybe you just needed a quick read on Medium today. (FYI: Jenny Lawson is pretty funny. Cheryl Strayed is pretty badass. If anyone knows of a good one about academic life in particular, share in the comments. Otherwise, maybe I’ll add “write a book” to my to-do list. Oh wait…that’s already on there.)

You’ve been a badass all your life. And even if {almost} no one knows, there are those few precious people, or maybe just that one person, who does know. They do love and care for you. Sometimes, those people still won’t know what to say or do, but they will support you to trust yourself and help you to nourish your strength. Let yourself feel their support. Try to let their support feel as real as your pain. It won’t make your pain go away, but it might help.

Also, we are creating a world with greater awareness. Someday, it will be easier to be honest publicly. Someday, there will be fewer blank stares. We’re not there yet, but I have tremendous hope that we are getting closer.


A few thoughts to those of you who got this far, and who are thinking of someone you know struggling with mental health, even if you’re not going through it yourself. Maybe someone disclosed to you directly, or on social media indirectly. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe that gives you the feels. Maybe you just don’t know what to do or say. My suspicion and personal experience is that good people often just don’t know what to do, so they sit quietly and observe from the sidelines, even though there truly may be a kernel of care in their hearts. They express that care with their timely Facebook posts, and that’s a good start. But there are many ways to make a simple difference in profoundly meaningful (or even life-saving) ways.

It takes guts and some finesse to get over the internal awkward hesitation of “What should I do? Will it be the ‘right’ thing to do, given that person’s mental state?” If you’ve ever been in that position, my recommendation is to pick something concrete and just do it. Here are a few ideas:

  1. Spontaneously offer to buy them breakfast, for no reason; use the time to ask how they are really feeling. Don’t try to fix their problems; you can’t. Listen empathetically.
  2. Leave a handwritten note on their desk that says, I’m thinking about you, [insert first name], because you are a wonderful human.
  3. Offer to help with a specific chore or roadblock task that maybe seems like it has been insurmountable for them.
  4. Get a coffee with them and be authentically vulnerable yourself, because that can help to make it feel real.
  5. Or the simplest thing to do, if you don’t have time to go out of your way, is to just ask them directly every now and then out of the blue, “Hey, how are you feeling?” It sucks that people frequently ask about how I’m feeling after I’ve had the flu, but people seem to ask way less frequently about how I’m feeling “after” mental illness. If someone were thoughtful enough to just check in once in a while, gee, would that ever make me feel heard.

If you set your goal to be simple compassionate human connection, you can do a lot to help us feel cared for, and to help transform the cultural realities surrounding mental health. Share more ideas in the comments. I’d love to hear how you help others.


Thank you for reading. Thank you for existing. You are a worthy, wonderful, brilliant human being.

You’re going to survive this new academic year. Even if that means quitting your program and figuring something else out. There is always a way. And who the hell knows, you might even thrive.

Please share this if you think anyone you know might benefit from feeling less alone.

PhD Student, Anonymous

Written by

I’m a STEM researcher at a big university. Here, I’m writing about how I survive academia with mental health problems.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade