Thandolwethu opens up about cutting and battle with depression

How do you respond to a person who thinks that now HHP's death has been linked to depression, everyone is now claiming to have depression?

When people dismiss the severity of depression with a very cold, "Hai we all have problems", you respond with love and slight jealousy. Love because we are all ignorant about something in our lives until we are educated about it or directly affected by it. Slight jealousy because that person has never been so sad, they just see darkness. That they keep hearing a distant voice telling them to just end their lives.

READ: Being in a depressing job almost made me lose my mind

How the voices of their family push them deeper into darkness with comments about how it's an ancestral issue, next thing you’re becoming iSangoma or they call you moody, and all you want to do is scream "Something is wrong", but you can’t because you have no light and no voice. Jealous because they’ve never had to look into the eyes of a person they love and it's blank. When someone who is so full of life from time to time will sit in one spot for days not eating, not moving and not speaking.

They say ignorance is bliss so congratulations if you think depression is an act, spoken as a female who went into depression and started cutting.

I was so numb that when that razor slashed across my skin and that pain ran through my body, I was glad I could feel something that meant I was alive. I was never suicidal (thank the universe). I was just numb.

I hope that whoever reads this who is in a place of darkness may you find something in your life that drags you into the light so you can never look back.