Everyone tells me that stress is normal when you get to be an adult, but how is feeling like you’re staying strong just by completing basic tasks and feeling like there’s an emotional barrier that makes it hard to understand reading normal? I just feel more shame now because I get overwhelmed so easily but apparently stress is normal, it’s just that people who function well deal with it better than I do. Sometimes I feel so exhausted from suppressing meltdowns, and sometimes I just want to do everything that’s bad for me—I actually crave sadness and letting myself down. People know I’ve had a history of anxiety, but not all of them know that there’s a part of me that’s (maybe) severely depressed. I hide it well, I go about in the world—can you be an active part of the world and still be severely depressed?

It’s so hard to have a good attitude sometimes. Please, please, don’t tell me it’s normal to feel stressed, when “stressed” is a code word for “hurting inside.”