Joy: Depression Growing Up

Originally released 2020

In Episode 2 of Our Stories, Joy talks about depression that began in the teenage years, mental illness in the family, and the pressure of wanting to make immigrant parents proud. Joy also describes the high school art teacher who recognized a call for help.

Watch Episode 2 on YouTube · See all episodes of Our Stories

Transcript

This transcript is lightly edited for reading: punctuation added, and “uh” and “um” removed where the meaning is unchanged. Words in [square brackets] are editorial, [inaudible] marks words that could not be made out, and [censored] marks a word the captions left out.

Mental illness has actually run in my family for quite a bit, and so it was something I’ve always known about, especially in the women on my mother’s side specifically. So my mother is mentally ill, and so was my grandmother. And I kind of realized when I was about 14 or so that all these feelings I were having weren’t really [inaudible] something that a lot of folks were going through, and I realized that maybe I should be asking for help.

And so it was things that were like feelings of guilt, even when I didn’t really do anything wrong, now that I look back on it, or feelings of not feeling good enough. And that kind of has followed me for a really long time, which isn’t great when you’re, like, a creative person who doesn’t have, like, boundaries between, like, what you do and, like, your self-worth.

I was, like, 16 before I, I kind of mustered up the courage to go to the doctor. And I remember sitting in my doctor’s office, and I couldn’t even say the word “depressed”. I was, I was saying, “I’ve been feeling a little blue lately.” And so it was a way of trying to, like, talk around it.

And even though mental illness is something that many family members have gone through, I couldn’t really talk about it. Like, we, we didn’t really talk about it much in our family. We just sort of knew of the, like, the occurrences or, like, the symptoms of it. Like, “Oh, my aunt, like, is in the hospital,” or, like, “Oh, my mother’s having a bad time again.”

So my dad is someone who, like, won’t take aspirin for any kind of pain. Like, he really believes in the all-natural organic [route], which is great, but it was really difficult actually to talk to him about it, as someone who, who was young, who relied on my parents to guide me. And I had to have someone say, “You know what, you should really, like, try not to be on antidepressants. Like, that’s not good for you.” And I’m like, “But that’s…” At that point it was the only thing really getting me out of bed.

I felt like I couldn’t really go to my parents. I didn’t want to disappoint them. I think that at that point, that’s, that’s what I was feeling. Like, I didn’t want to be someone who had all this opportunity… Like, my parents are immigrants, and they’ve done so much, right, to sacrifice to come here to Canada and give me this opportunity to be, like, not even a doctor. Didn’t even ask me to do that. They didn’t ask me to be a doctor or an engineer or a lawyer or anything. They just wanted me to be happy, and I couldn’t do that for them.

Luckily, my, my high school art teacher was someone who was really patient and really understanding about talking to me about things, and allowing me to say things I didn’t really have the courage to say to anyone else. And I remember it’s, like, Grade 12 now, feeling like [censored], really not getting any assignments done at this point. And, like, my teachers had known me as, like, a good student, and I was getting everything done, and I was a pretty good writer, so I took a lot of English classes. And of course that meant a lot of assignments had to be done, and I was missing deadlines. Now I was slipping.

We had this trip to New York, and I thought, “Okay, great. I just need to maybe have a change of scenery. I’ll go to New York with all these other people I weren’t really close with.” And I just remember this overwhelming, like, heaviness. Even though I was surrounded by, like, beautiful art and beautiful people, I just felt like I was being stepped on. It was at that point that I really felt like, like I couldn’t do it anymore. Like, [it] was just [an] overwhelming sense of, like, “You’re not good enough. You’re wasting everyone’s time. You’ll never get out of school anyway. Like, why bother? Nothing you do matters.”

I knew, like, I, I just couldn’t continue. So I went to my high school art teacher and I said, “You know what? I don’t, I don’t think I can do this.” And I think she recognized that call for help. She was like, “Okay, you stay here. I’m just gonna go grab us a cup of coffee or something, okay, and I’ll be right back.” But what she had done was actually go to [the] guidance counsellor and say, “You know what? Okay, no, this, this dude needs help.” And so I was really lucky. I think if it had been delayed any further, I probably would have followed through with something. I would have planned something.

I wish I could say I knew exactly what it was that, that allowed me to kind of grasp onto something and try to get out of that hole, but I don’t think it’s anything that can be written down as step by step. It was just a lot of realizing for myself that I, I still had a lot that I wanted to do, and clearly my parents loved me, and, like, I wasn’t wasting their time or anything like that.

And I think it was also the, the heartbreak, too, because I told my dad, “I don’t think I could do this anymore.” And he said, “Then why, why am I living? What’s the point? I’ve done everything… for everything, for you, for you to, to be here.” And that look in his face, like, is something I’ll never forget. Because I don’t, I don’t want to hurt him, right? Like, I don’t want to… I couldn’t imagine the grief that my parents would feel if I had ever done something like that.

Luckily, I’ve been better since, when I was 18, 17, 18. I think I, I kind of latched on to my work, to my career, and I kept doing things that brought me, as [Marie Kondo] said, [inaudible] sparks joy. For me, the more I stayed in school, the more I realized you can’t just take every failure as a failure of your character, right? And so there were times where, like, I didn’t make a great piece of work, or, you know, that piece of writing was garbage, and [that] doesn’t mean that I was garbage. I couldn’t equate what the things I produce as, as a result of my, my character. I think I had to learn how to set boundaries that way.

Help is out there. Like, it’s not perfect, but help is out there.

About Our Stories

Our Stories is a 10-part documentary series from URevolution. In each episode, one person talks about their own mental health in their own words. See all episodes, transcripts and support resources.

If you need support, find free helplines in Canada, the US, Australia and elsewhere.

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