The suppression of women with mental health disorders

You know what sucks? Anxiety.
There are days when an unexplainable feeling has washed over me and I am completely overwhelmed by everything. Nothing goes right for me on those days and unfortunately its in those times that even the tiniest drop can send my world crashing around me.

You know what's worse? The inability to explain how I feel to others.
Knowing that despite my best efforts to make words come out they will never understand how it feels to walk around with your stomach in a knot so tight you'd have to cut it to get it undone. And I feel sick. Like my ulcers are back I keep getting pains even when I'm not eating.

And because I'm a female? I must be on my period because that one statement discredits my disorder since nobody could ACTUALLY feel like that all the time.
Because I am female and because that is the only excuse to be emotional, my feelings become irrelevant to those around me.
So much so that I even excuse it myself, because "I'm sorry for acting out I'm just on my period" somehow validates my actions to others more than a mental health disorder.

And people won't understand, they never do. But it seems almost irrelevant to argue that my anxiety is real and I am cracked at every edge inside, but I have been taught not to show it because feelings are weak.

But I am not.

Quite honestly? People with these disorders are the strongest that have existed fighting without revealing what could actually be going on.

Because it's "not real", "its all in our heads", "we're worried about nothing"
As if we don't already know that.

We know.

We cannot validate ourselves without the fear and knowing that someone is going to invalidate us everytime.

And no it's not everyday I fall apart, some days are better than others. I am not always drowning beneath the waves... but I am constantly treading water.
- The suppression of women with mental health disorders