By Ashley, cis female

Content warning: suicidal ideation

I never felt legitimate enough to think about therapy until a friend told me that most thirteen-year-olds don’t comfort themselves by dreaming of hurtling themselves out of high rises, and because I never stopped. My depression and suicidal ideation were always things for me to handle myself. It just never seemed bad enough, legitimate enough, when there were people who were actually depressed and taking meds, when there were people who were visibly suffering, visibly hurting themselves, visibly attempting to end themselves.  People who didn’t look like me.

Because people who look like me don’t suffer. We carry on, grateful to be here. What is our suffering when our ancestors were raped and massacred in Nanjing, starved throughout the countryside, jailed for whispering a word about their pain? When no balance could be found between work and life because for immigrants like my parents, in this country, without work, there is no life?

No, in this country, people like me are not allowed to hurt. We are not allowed to mourn the silence and  emptiness of the house – at least we have one. We are not allowed to hurt from kids making fun of our food – at least we don’t starve. We are not allowed to feel unwanted at school – at least we’re in school. We are not allowed to want a dog, a white picket fence, to be best friends with our neighbors, nor are we allowed to feel comfortable in our skins – we survive, and that is enough.

“你的皮膚為什麼那麼薄?”

“Why is your skin so thin?” my parents would always ask. Mom would touch my cheek, tell me not to 害羞, not to be embarrassed. Don’t be so sensitive. All your problems are because 你的皮膚不夠厚, your skin is not thick enough.

“They mean well. You take everything too seriously.”

It’s you, you, you. If you struggle, you try harder. If it hurts, you swallow it and toughen up. If you are sad, you just need to think positive and cheer up.

No, I dared not breathe a word.

This story is part of a series for 心怡HARMONIOUS, a Chinese mental health initiative, overseen by Dr. Xiaoduo Fan for the UMass Chinese Mental Health Program. To share your story, please use the anonymous submission form found at https://projectharmonious.org/share/. 

To read this article in Chinese (Traditional), please click here.