This was a book that came at the perfect moment. It’s been a tough time for me lately and I needed to hear from someone who has gone through something similar to what I did (although Maggy faces much greater challenges than me). I stumbled across these lines in the first chapter and I knew that this book was going to make me cry (spoiler: it did):

“Ultimately, your mental illness lies to you. It’ll tell you that everything is wrong and that you have no future. It’ll tell you that you should be ashamed and you’re a nuisance and you don’t deserve to get help. The world in which depression and anxiety reign supreme is extremely lonely.” 

Yes, that was exactly how it felt at my worst and in recent days. Everything feels like it’s behind a thick layer of glass and no matter how positive the interactions I have with people, something in my head will tell me that I messed it up and I have no friends and people are just being polite. It’s an exhausting and dark place to live in.

How Not to Fall Apart is a series of chapters where Maggy talks candidly about her struggles with mental illness and gives us lists of things that she finds helpful. The topics cover from “when you’re scared of your own brain” to “when you can’t stand your own body” to “when someone else hurts you” and “when you’re alone.”

Even though my depression is considered pretty mild, it still hurts. But because it’s mild, I quite often feel uncomfortable verbalising my emotions. I probably talk about my struggles most often on this blog and I definitely am not writing about things until they’re pretty bad and writing becomes the only outlet for my thoughts. I already said this once, but I can’t stress enough how much it means to read something that resonates deeply. By the time I was done with the book – and I finished it in one long train ride – I was tearing.

Some takeaways:

• “Friendship is about being there, about showing up, about listening. Friendship can scoop you out of a low mood, but friendship isn’t about being each other’s personal saviours.” 
• “The whole nature of a mental feedback loop is that it’s tricky to unshackle yourself in one swift swoop. It takes time, and it’s always going to want to drag you back in.” – THIS. It took me so long to admit to myself that I needed to go back to counselling earlier this year and that definitely did not help me.
• “You need to become your own advocate. ‘You have to be your own carer, because if you don’t do it, no one else will’.” 
• “You are not a burden. At their core people are good and they want to help each other, they just don’t always know how to.” 
• “You don’t have to do everything by yourself. Battling a mental health problem, whether it’s temporary or more permanent, is something that requires help.”
• “You’re not crazy. Telling someone […] doesn’t mean your friends will brand you as a loon and ditch you for good.”

This was a difficult review to write. To be honest, I wanted to be a lot more honest about everything to try and show you how much an impact this book had on me. But as usual, the words won’t come (yet). What I can say is this: if you’re struggling with your mental health, even if you think it’s not severe or not something that you’re ready to tell someone about, read this book. It’ll help you know that you’re not alone.