Sarah Khan

Thanks to a number of different stressful factors, I was sent to the Centre For Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) emergency department recently at the "professional advice" (read: insistence) of my general physician. This all happened because I admitted to planning the care of my beloved cats in case I killed myself.

There are only a few people around who haven’t seen the video/picture of the group of sorority girls at a baseball game doing nothing but taking selfies. These women have become the butt of jokes all over the Internet and are being held as an example of the supposed egotism and self-obsession of today’s youth.

Welcome to the 21st century, in which women have more power than ever before, yet have less power than ever before as well.

When I tell people that I keep a box of tampons on my desk at work, they are either surprised or they want to know why. As if keeping a box of tampons on my desk is any different than the box of Scooby-Doo Band-Aids or the bulk candy I keep on there as well.

I’m proud to say my mother is a supporter of SlutWalk, is staunchly against victim-blaming, and all for empowering women. But when it comes to me, her ideals seem to change.

Recently, my poop schedule got a little wonky and instead of going first thing in the morning (like I prefer), my bowel movements have unfortunately been at work. Usually, this wouldn’t be any issue, except the time I got unintentionally poop shamed.

For the last six years, I have been living with depression. Despite the fact that I have extremely low moments when there is an inexplicable and unreachable pain inside me that demotes me into a sobbing, self-harming, low self-esteemed shell of the person that I actually am, there are a number of ways that living with (not suffering from) depression has improved my life and made me a better human being.