Victory Starts in the Dark

Dark.

The lights shut off.

Darkness closes the windows of my sight, a perfect canvas for the eon-year-old mind within my young brain to paint its fears liberally. Am I living someone else's nightmare? The night's blindness amplifies every faint sound around me; the loudest silence ever broken by the heavy footsteps of an intruder and the smell of the monster's breath. I cannot see them, but their presence feels real. My muscles tense, ready to bust through the walls towards my parent's bedroom at any moment, but I dare not to move.

Do you remember the day your brain outgrew darkness? This early victory over the forces of nature when you realized there was nothing underneath your bed but the pixels of your imagination.

A seamless transition from night-induced irrationality to peace and sleep. You reached the stage when reason gained the strength to topple imagination and baby step its way into adulthood, but fear is relentless like the Lernean hydra upon Hercules and his blade.

Three heads grow back after each one you slay.

You can be a functional adult with a bank account and a purpose, far from the terrified kid alone at night, yet underneath these layers lies a familiar darkness. Monsters and murderers are now failures and solitude projected as complex short films onto the same canvas.

Terror evolves into anxiety and grows resistant to reason like a superbug with antibiotics, then drains your calories until you can barely get out of bed in the morning. This parasite saved your life, a long time ago, and has now turned its back on you as your tyrant.

The thoughts keep you awake at night, dazed by day, paralyzed. The world heavy on your shoulders.

Rock bottom is inevitable. You are bound to sink at some point or the other. Some people are better a swiping their problems under the rug, but no amount of material things, sex, and pills will ever fill the void they avoid. More heads grow back.

This darkness is a typical chapter of the human experience, but the standards of society somehow stigmatize the whole process. Depression and anxiety are symptoms of weakness, says the psychiatrist who called you crazy. Responsible tribal adults are supposed to be invincible.

People prefer silence over help to avoid detection by others as a result, but internalized fear grows stronger when locked in a cell. Mental misorders are on the rise albeit a peak in scientific advancement.

This paradox raises the question: Where do we stand in the grand scheme of things? Earth is a dust particle covered in bacteria floating around a hot beach ball inside time and space, upon infinities, after all.

Does the term "expert" as we remain students of the unknown? The idea that we are missing the critical variables needed to reverse the chronic disease epidemic slowly eating our adult population from inside does not sound like such a conspiracy at this point.

Rise.

The time to redefine mental health is now.

Everybody needs help, even the heroes. Hercules killed the Hydra because his friend Iolaus helped. Virgil guided Dante through the nine circles of hell, and Yoda helped Luke Skywalker face himself. All mythologies have the same quest wired within their stories.

Mobile technology links the four corners of the globe like never before in history. You can evolve, now more than ever.

The internet amplifies your voice and can guide you to others fighting the same battles. Your smartphone can communicate with a world's worth of health professionals of all hats suited to your needs and personality, at all times, one finger swipe away. Cutting-edge devices will measure a broad range of health metrics and deliver the results to a physician in an instant for anybody connected to the great invisible network.

You are far from alone in this digital era. You outgrew darkness earlier, and you were just a kid. How hard could the journey be?

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