don’t be the smartest person in the room, its corollary is: if you look around and see that you are the smartest person in the room, find a new room.… - Wil Wheaton

What I mean is, if you’re feeling overwhelmed by your internal monologue, and the voice delivering it is no longer a friendly one — please — don’t be afraid to ask for help. One of the most insidious lies mental illness tells us is that asking for help, or taking medication to get better, means that we are weak. It means that we are a failure, and we somehow deserve to suffer. This. Is. Bullshit. You don’t deserve to suffer. You are not weak. You are not a failure. Your brain, like mine, needs help to keep its profoundly complicated machinery working. Depression lies, and when it tells you these lies, you can look right back into its stupid face and say, “Shut up. Wil Wheaton told me that it’s okay to get help, and he pretended to live in outer space, so he outranks you.

It’s painful to recall, but I’m not ashamed, because all those thoughts — which I thankfully don’t have anymore, thanks to medical science and therapy — were not my fault any more than the allergies that clog my sinuses when the trees in my neighborhood start doin’ it every spring are my fault. It’s just part of who I am. It’s part of how my brain is wired, and because I know that, I can medically treat it, instead of being a victim of it.

I guess that the thing people say to me all the time is, “Were the leeches real?” They then turn to their frat guy friends and snicker, like they’re the first person to ever say that to me. I wait for a second, so they think they’ve really cut me down, and I say, “Yeah. Ask your mom about my scar.” Finding new and preferably disgusting ways to degrade a friend’s mother is always held in high regard.