Recently, I went to a tattoo artist -- and for $60 I let a man with a giant Jesus tattoo on his head ink a semicolon onto my wrist where it will stay until the day I die. By now, enough people have started asking questions that it made sense for me to start talking, and talking about things that aren't particularly easy.
We'll start here: A semicolon is a place in a sentence where the author has the decision to stop with a period, but chooses not to. A semicolon is a reminder to pause and then keep going.
In April, I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. By the beginning of May, I was popping anti-depressants every morning with a breakfast I could barely stomach. In June, I had to leave a job I'd wanted since I first set foot on this campus as an incoming freshmen because of my mental health. Depression took a lot from me, but one of the most difficult things that my mental illness snatched from me was the title of Summer Welcome Leader.
I got this tattoo as a promise to myself that I would never willingly end my sentence. I got it as a reminder to take this summer as a pause, and then to keep going strong next year. I also got this this tattoo to open up conversations between myself and other humans about mental illness, because as difficult as mental illness is, what's more difficult is feeling stigmatized. Or like you failed. Or like people are feeling sorry for you.
[For more of this story, written by Heather Parrie, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...hp_ref=mental-health]
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