As soon as I opened my eyes I knew it was going to be one of those days. The kind that makes walking to the bathroom feel like a marathon sprint. The kind that makes faking being okay next to impossible. I said hi to my sister as I waddled past her, attempting to bring myself out of this depressive funk. She looked at me with pity and slight horror, “Wow you sound terrible,  you should rest today. We can watch movies and I’ll cook us up some soup. It’s okay, you’ll get through this. Why don’t you call your therapist and tell her your symptoms?”.

“A lot of older generations thought that physical illness was a choice, that it didn’t exist or you were weak for seeing a general care physician”

It wasn’t unusual for people to seek out advice from their therapists or psychiatrists when having poor mental health days. They would recommend the latest clinically proven medicine to help (exercise, maybe some meditation, medication if it was a persistent illness) and write us a note if we needed it for work or school. We often never needed proof of our mental illnesses though, employers and professors always immediately believed us when we told them that our minds were giving us a rough time. It was wild how differently mental illness was treated versus physical ailments like the common cold or flu. God forbid we had a cough or a sniffle, professors would tell us tough shit and say how they struggled with a bad back or weak knees but it never kept them from coming into work. A lot of older generations thought that physical illness was a choice, that it didn’t exist or you were weak for seeing a general care physician.

“It was normalized to try and hide the sickness you were experiencing, or people would see you in a completely different light ”

Luckily, some of that was changing as of recent. Huge movements against the stigma that physical illnesses held were helping to change the narrative. Some people just had weaker immune systems than others, it wasn’t their choice to get sick. Trying to break the taboo around taking  a z-pack  or other medication when illnesses were more severe was still a present struggle. I had my fair share of sicknesses, and luckily my parents weren’t against seeking treatment from a professional. On one hand it made sense to me that mental health was held of higher importance than physical illness. If you were struggling with multiple depressive episodes, anxiety attacks, or schizophrenia it could eventually lead to death if left untreated.

“It always made me chuckle and shake my head, no self respecting society would disregard something as chronic and fatal as mental illness”

And yet, I never understood why physical illness always took a back seat. I mean for god sakes, millions of people all around the world were struggling with ailments. It was normalized to try and hide the sickness you were experiencing, or people would see you in a completely different light. You were defined by your physical illness, one facet of who you were as a person. Doctors from all over were trying their hardest to come up with new ways to treat these illnesses, despite most of the world looking the other direction. I wished so badly that we could live in a world where physical illness was seen to be just as debilitating as mental illness. It’s a part of the reason why I wanted to become a doctor, but whenever I told people I wanted to specialize in general medicine they laughed at me. Said that if I wasn’t becoming a therapist or psychiatrist then there was no point. I’ve always wondered if there was an alternate world where physical illness was taken more seriously than mental health. It always made me chuckle and shake my head, no self respecting society would disregard something as chronic and fatal as mental illness.