Anxiety • part 2

8 • live

I sat down at the kitchen table and opened the instagram app after placing a quick message on twitter. I promised to be doing it at 1, so I gotta do it now.

Ashton was still in bed, sick from eating something wrong, so I had the living room for just me to do this video. It took me a lot of courage to finally swipe left on the homescreen and turn on the live video. Within a few minutes, 3000 people were watching me. 3000 people were watching my coming out video.

Not in that way. My coming out with my mental health video. Something I have always supported and encouraged so I have to do what I tell others.

"Hey everyone." I said with a smile as I looked at the screen. "There's a lot of you which is great but also freaks me out just a little. But I promised the video so here it is. As some of you might have noticed, I have been very inactive on social media the past year. I mainly used it to post the necessary things about events or music I wrote and got released. I spend a lot of time writing last year with many artists and it has been amazing. But beside that I spend a lot of time working in hospitals to finish my last year of med school. I worked some days from 7am till 10-11pm to combine music with my studies. And I had to push myself through it because it was hell." I said with a soft sigh. "10 months ago the most important person in my life got taken away from me, way too early. And I fell into a depression, hard."

"I think part of my current depression is because I never got time to process it. After it happened I got a week to prepare everything for the funeral because my mom couldn't and the next week I spend trying to be there for my mom and sister, before my semester started again and I was working shifts from 7am till 6pm, 6 days a week and work in the studio most nights till 10pm. The first break I had was around the holidays. We have a mandatory two weeks off from university but I spend it traveling between London, Antwerp, LA and Sydney. I never spend more than 3 days in a city and I was so busy that even when I finally had a break, I still had to push my feelings back and push through. So by the time 2020 started, I hadn't had time to mourn or process it yet, like I should have. But I still had the same crazy work shedule afterwards untill my exams started which made my days even longer and harder. So the past year, I have been pushing through, forcing myself to keep going but now that I'm graduated, have 3 months off work, I can finally breath again and take the time to process it."

"So I'm not okay yet and I probably won't be anytime soon. But I'm getting help and I am taking time to process it now. I'm working on myself now and I will take my three months off to get better before getting back to work in October-November." I said before turning on the comments on the screen so I could watch it. I had said what I needed to get out, so now it was time to say what they need to hear. "I decided to open up about this now because I still believe these topics should be talked about but not before the person is ready to do so. I wasn't ready yet to talk about it, but I am now. And I will not push my feelings in a corner for social media or make myself fit in a box for anyone. I am me and I am not okay at the moment, but I will be okay."

"A girl sended me a private message yesterday, she lost her mother very recently and wanted to know how I dealt with losing my dad. But to be honest, I don't have a good answer for that. I replied to the girl already but I want everyone to know that you can just send me a message. You might have to send a few before I see it but I try my hardest to atleast look at all the messages you send me and reply most, I do fully ignore all messages that ask me to follow someone." I said as I looked at the camera with a half smile. "But back to the topic of how to cope with the loss of a parent, there is no simple way to do that. You need to take time to process it, to talk to someone and it goes different for everyone. So I can't give anyone advice on how to do this, because I haven't figured it out yet myself. But what I can do is be the listening ear you might need or help you find someone that will listen incase I can't help. That's what I can do but I can't tell you how to do this."