Whether you live alongside mental illness during day-to-day life, or assist someone who does: it can be an uphill battle. A fight that it feels as though it can never be won; relentless and soul destroying.

If I didn’t understand, or didn’t suffer from mental illness personally, perhaps I would too be telling you to “snap out of it”, or that “you’re being ungrateful for the good that you’ve been blessed with”. But the truth is, I do live alongside psychiatric disorders, and have done for most of my life. Within that relatively short span, I have learnt one of the simplest, yet almost universally unaccepted, facts of life: you feel what you feel, and sometimes, nearly all the time, that’s okay. It is not disrespectful to the less fortunate to be unhappy. It is what it is, and there’s no blame in that.

However, maintaining a sustainable-perhaps even enjoyable-level…