Michael Kimber is the author behind the blog, Colony-of-Losers.com where he discusses issues from job hunting to quarter life crisis, to mental illness. Check out his site here and our interview with Michael here.

I never learned anything about mental illness in school.

My education has been watching my friend’s collapse, chase drug addictions and commit suicide.

At 25, my life fell apart.

I suffered a nervous breakdown brought on by intense anxiety.

By the end I was down to two hours of sleep a night, trapped in a constant cycle of negative thinking that I couldn’t break out of.

When I went to my community health center, I was told that I would have to wait six months to see a qualified therapist.

I was sent to a self-help group where I was the only person in attendance, where help was a human pamphlet reading a power point presentation without paraphrasing a single sentence.

Imagine looking for help and not being able to find it.

Realize that 2/3 out of people who suffer from mental illness don’t get treatment.

I didn’t recover because I was strong.

I recovered because I was lucky.

My family was able to pay the 150 dollars an hour that my therapist charged so I had the privilege of getting better.

My problem was that I felt like I was too lucky to feel so fucked up.

I had a beautiful and incredibly intelligent girlfriend who loved me, a family that supported me, and everything in the world going for me.

I didn’t have a right to feel this way.

My feelings about my thoughts super powered my anxiety.

I wasn’t just anxious about my future, I was anxious about my anxiety.

I worried that I’d never

I tried so hard to feel better.

When I tried to sleep I became an insomniac. When I tried not to be anxious I lived in fear.

I didn’t trust life so I tried to control it.

My psychiatrist explained to me that we don’t get to control what we think and feel. That we have a right to be sad, to be anxious, to be jealous, and to be imperfect.

That the more I struggled to cure myself of these thoughts, the worse I’d get. He told me that if I accepted my fears, they would no longer control my life.

It took me a long time to accept myself despite what he said.

I didn’t know how someone so weak could be worth loving.

I was lucky to be with someone much smarter than me.

When I talked to my first love about my fears she laughed and said that everyone feels jealous, everyone worries about their future and everyone gets depressed.  There was no reason to hate myself for being human. She slept next to me when I couldn’t sleep.

She helped me realize that even in the worst of my depression I could love and be worth loving.

I was privileged with having the support the system couldn’t provide me.

Everyone tells us to talk about mental illness but we rarely get a clear picture of what life is actually like for people living with mental illness. We talk and talk and never manage to say anything.

We only tell the success stories of celebrities who accomplish their miracles despite the obstacles in their way. Or we talk about murderous psychopaths who society failed to help or homeless men and women who can’t help themselves. We are either inspiring, terrifying or objects of pity. We are whatever sells newspapers that week. Since most of us can’t identify with heroes, we worry that society will identify us with the other stereotypes.

We need to talk people who don’t have stories that sell papers. Who get up, take medication, exercise and go to work every day no matter how they feel. Who struggle to tell the people in their lives what they are dealing with on a daily basis and stay silent about their illness for fear that others will think they are simply seeking attention. People that sometimes wonder whether it would be easier to die then to live like this. Who face everyday even when it’s difficult to do so. I know the people who get worse because they don’t want to admit they need help. Who are dying to pretend they’re normal. Who are going crazy for fear of being labeled crazy.

I know what it is like to feel broken.  To mistake my illness for a lack of strength of character.

Some people can’t recover and that isn’t their fault.

My six terrifying months in my own personal darkness was the worst time of my life.

For others, this is their life.

Without a happy childhood, supportive family, an amazing girlfriend, without the money to afford counseling and medication before it was too late, that could have been me.

Some can’t live in the unbreakable darkness. People who talk about suicides being selfish have no understanding of what suicide actually is. Have never had to peer through a darkness that seems unending. To have their entire life eclipsed by their own fear and self-hatred, to see the world disappear into their disease.

Right now suicide is the leading cause of violent death, not homicide. 4,000 people die of suicide every year in Canada, 32,000 in the United States. The silence comes both before and after suicide and it’s the silence before that we need to deal with most.

We can’t keep our children in the dark for fear they will never be able to emerge from it.

I talked to a 60-year-old mother who hid her illness from everyone in her life including her husband and children. I know a 25-year-old university student who refuses to tell her parents about her condition because they blame themselves for her brother’s mental illness and she doesn’t want to add to their burden.

More than 30 years separate these women and things haven’t changed enough.

In Canada, it is a privilege to be able to get better.

I’m asking you to help people who weren’t born as lucky as I was. To help us take the first few steps towards providing counseling to those who need it not just to those who can afford it. To begin the conversation with our youth to break the shame that is the foundation of so many of these afflictions.

To eradicate this phantom idea of normalcy that makes so many of us feel hollow and broken, unable to live up to a standard that no one could ever hope to reach.

February 9th is Talk About It day.

I want the politicians to talk about mental illness in Parliament, in cities halls and in cabinet meetings. To make the government educate our children when they are going through puberty and experiencing those first changes. When they are in high school and university when most mental illnesses set in.

I want parents to talk about it with their children.

I want voters to talk about it in the upcoming election and make this an issue with their party leaders.

I want you to talk about it with your friends and coworkers.

Things can’t be like this when I have children.

Things can’t be like this for your children.

We can’t simply accept that the system will fail.

On February 9th Canada talks about mental illness.

I want you to make this conversation mean something.

Update: I have now emailed every member of the House of Commons this email. I now have carpal tunnel. To do the same go here.

By Michael Kimber