ACCEPTANCE
ACCEPTANCE
By Jena Gonzales
There I sat staring down at my white Nike Cortez’s, unable to look my doctor in the eye. I could feel the blood drain from my body as she said the word “depression.” Depressed? Me? No, I can’t be depressed! Depression isn’t real. Where I’m from, we silence our sadness, tough it out, and carry on by any means necessary. Depression wasn’t something I was brought up to respect or acknowledge. It was a privileged disease; an excuse “other” people used.
“ Where I’m from, we silence our sadness, tough it out, and carry on by any means necessary.”
On the East Side of San José, we’re raised to be proud of our heritage. However, our pride has a price: it can keep us from accepting our reality, that we’re not as strong as we present ourselves. We belittle others with phrases like, “Don’t cry unless you have a good enough reason, or I’ll give you one” and, “What are you sad about? You have a place to eat and sleep.” So no, I couldn’t be depressed; this had to be a thyroid issue, narcolepsy, or anything else that my family and I would deem “real.”
“Our pride has a price: it can keep us from accepting our reality, that we’re not as strong as we present ourselves.”
However, after years of internal work through therapy and medication, I now recognize depression and addiction have always been real in my family. It was real for my grandmother, who drank every evening after losing her firstborn son to suicide. It was real for my mother, who was sexually abused as a child and turned to drugs as self-medication. And it continues to be real for me. I am a mosaic of the two women who raised me, women who couldn’t overcome the stigma of mental health in our culture. As a child, I had to comfort myself. I hid and cried, knees to the chest, holding myself together. One day my mother found me and mocked me, saying, “Stop acting stupid; you’re not crazy! It’s time to break the cycle of trauma we call culture. I tell my story to create a safe place for anyone struggling. We should be proud of our culture, but also of our ability to change. My mother was the first person I saw change in. Although she never overcame her depression, she did beat her addiction. For that I am forever proud of her.
“I am a mosaic of the two women who raised me, women who couldn’t overcome the stigma of mental health in our culture. ”