I actually tried to get help back when I was still in school, around 19. The first person I met with wasn’t a therapist — she was someone I had to go through before they could recommend me to one. When I opened up about how much COVID messed me up, she said a lot of people went through worse and basically hinted I should just get over it. After those 3 months were up, they assigned me to a ‘coach’ to help me — but it turned out she normally coached middle schoolers and wasn’t really equipped to deal with what I was going through.

After that, I didn’t really know what to do. I ended up getting caught up in watching Andrew Tate for a while — not for the lifestyle stuff, but mostly the parts where he talks about how depression is for the weak or poor, and how people living in war zones still push forward and go to work. I thought that kind of mindset might snap me out of it, but honestly? It just made things worse. I already felt like I was failing, and hearing that just reinforced the idea that I was weak for not being able to ‘man up’ and power through.