I hate myself today.

Guess World Mental Health Day isn’t different for me.

On this World Mental Health Day, I woke up thinking: I hate myself.

No question or uncertainty, I knew this without any doubt. Today, October 10, 2021, I hate myself. Luckily for me this was not a new discovery and did not derail my previous scheduled plans to lay around the house and watch football all day. I’ve been here before, no big deal.

Awaking to the leaden feeling of having to live another day as myself is one I know all too well. Mind-chatter repeating at high volume every mistake, embarrassment, and negative thought from 40 years of a life lived becomes the playlist of the day. Food is too hard to make, clothing too cumbersome to change out of, to do lists too difficult to focus on. This is how so many of my days have started.

It would be soothing if it wasn’t so damn annoying.

I think it’s only appropriate I should feel this way about myself on a day meant to bring awareness to mental health. This is the entire point after all, to remind humanity that people live with, suffer from and fight mental illness — often hidden and in silence — every day. To those who are fortunate enough not to have personal experience with mental illness, I envy you. If your only experience of mental illness is through the care of a loved one you have my thanks.

For my siblings in the mental illness battle grounds, I truly wish you did not experience this, I would wish it on no one — not even rival football teams.

So today’s flavor for myself is self-hatred and the wish to be anyone but me. My depression started a fight in the inner workings of my brain while I lay sleeping and I woke up with it having won. Happy World Mental Health Day to me.

And it is a happy day, because where once this feeling would last for a year it will not do that today. I fight this battle no longer alone, but with professional and medical help as well as friends who would support me if I turn to them. Because they are aware and they are willing and ready to assist should I need it, and often I do.

I may hate myself on this World Mental health Day, but I probably will not hate myself tomorrow. And that is what this day is ultimately all about.