Cape Town - East Coast Urban radio host, Thandolwethu, has opened up about her battle with depression.
Taking to the station’s website to share her battle with depression, Thandolwethu mentioned how she responds to people who do not understand how it is to live with depression with understanding and sometimes jealousy.
Understanding just how brutal depression can be, she explained to DRUM that she feels a bit jealous to learn that the people who pass such comments have never gone through the struggle of being depressed.
“We are all ignorant about something in our lives until we are educated about it or directly affected by it. I get slightly jealousy of people like that because that person has never been so sad, they just see darkness. That they keep hearing a distant voice telling them to just end their lives.”
Thandolwethu explained her own struggle with depression and how it affected her.
She told DRUM that her depression got so bad that she felt dead. She wasn’t suicidal but she felt like there’s no life in her. So she started cutting herself to feel again.
“When I started cutting a few years ago, I was broken because no one noticed, no one saw me. And let me tell you, being invisible is not nice.”
The first time she realised that she suffers from depression was when she discovered that her hangovers are different to those of others.
“I’d tell people that something is really wrong with me but some would just brush it off as a hangover, but when I did some research, I learned that alcohol is actually a huge downer, and when you sober up, the high comes off and you crash,” she says.
“It got so bad that at my old job, a colleague of mine says he found me lying underneath a table in a fetal position. I remember him talking to me, but he sounded so far away, you know. I felt so alone. And this was triggered by the hurt my boyfriend at the time caused me, and that everyone close to me knew about it but me. This was someone I thought I would spend the rest of my life with,” said an emotional Thando.
“But I believe that what he did was a blessing in my life because it has gotten me to this point, and even though I haven’t figured everything out, I’m here now, and I’m so grateful to be here. I even called him up this year and just told him I don’t blame him for anything, and I don’t. It’s not his fault”
Now, Thandolwethu says she does everything she can do to better herself.
“I even stopped eating meat for a year and noticed that after making that decision, people said I was so much nicer and happier. And I advise people to trust their gut. If you thinking packing your things and moving to Bali will help, do it. Do yoga, meditate, pray. Do whatever it is that will make you happy,” she explained.
Thandolwethu concluded by saying that she hopes whoever reads her story, who happens to be in a place of darkness, may find something in their life that drags them into the light, so they never look back again.
