You opened WhatsApp this morning and saw that your message from three days ago is still sitting there. Read, no reply. You checked Instagram and watched someone from your secondary school post about their new job, their new relationship, their new apartment. And then you looked at your own life: the bills you're not sure how to pay, the job applications that went nowhere, the Saturday nights you spent alone. A thought crept in that you've been trying to fight off for weeks now: Maybe I'm just not meant for good things. Maybe something is wrong with me. Maybe everyone else figured out a secret to life that nobody told me about.
If that's where you are right now, I need you to stay with me. Because this piece was written for you, exactly for you.
You Are Not Failing. Life Is Just Hard Right Now.
There's a particular kind of pain that doesn't have a name but almost every young person today knows it. It's not hunger. It's not a broken bone. It's something quieter and in many ways more dangerous. It's the slow, grinding feeling that everyone around you is moving forward while you're standing completely still.
You see it every day. Your age-mates are graduating, getting jobs, travelling, falling in love. Meanwhile you're sitting in your room wondering why you cannot seem to catch a break. You were born into a family that was already struggling with no connections, no capital, no cushion to fall on. You work hard but it feels like the ground beneath you keeps shifting. And on top of all that, the very people you thought would walk this road with you have gone quiet. The group chats moved on. The promises to hang out turned into silence.
Recent research shows that nearly one in two young adults between 18 and 24 report feeling lonely. You are not alone in this. But loneliness makes you feel utterly alone, which is the cruel irony of it.
Kwesi sits in his room scrolling through his phone at midnight. His siblings are asleep. His parents are sleeping. The house is quiet except for the hum of the generator outside. He sees notifications from people posting, celebrating, laughing in pictures. He hasn't posted anything in weeks because what would he say? That he's still looking for work? That he's still trying to figure his life out? That some days he doesn't know why he bothers getting out of bed?
He puts his phone down. Opens WhatsApp. Scrolls through his contacts. Sees names of people who used to call him every week. Now they go silent for months. He types a message to someone he used to be close to. Deletes it. Types it again. Deletes it. Why bother? They're probably busy anyway. They probably don't want to hear from him.
Three hours later, he's still awake. And he's more alone than before he picked up his phone.
What Social Media Is Doing to Your Brain
Here is something nobody tells you when you download Instagram or TikTok: You are not watching people's lives. You are watching their highlight reels. Carefully selected moments. Filtered, sometimes staged, designed to look effortless and inevitable.
The girl who posted that birthday photoshoot? She cried herself to sleep two nights before it because she felt completely alone. The guy showing off his new car? He is paying for it with money he does not have, and the stress is keeping him awake at night. The couple looking madly in love in that photo? They had a screaming argument that morning.
You are comparing your raw, unedited, behind-the-scenes reality to everyone else's rehearsed performance. That is not a fair comparison. It was never meant to be. And your brain, already stretched thin from stress and loneliness, is taking that comparison and using it as evidence against you.
The most dangerous thing about social media is not what it shows you. It is what it makes you feel about yourself in the silence after you put the phone down.
Ama spent forty minutes crafting the perfect Instagram caption for a photo of herself smiling at a friend's graduation party. She used a filter that smoothed her skin. She cropped out the part of the photo where you could see her worried expression from just before the picture was taken, when she was thinking about how she still didn't have a job lined up after graduation.
Within an hour, she had 47 likes and comments from people saying things like "You're living your best life!" and "Queen!"
But five minutes after posting, she was lying in her bed crying because the truth was: she felt completely lost. She was terrified about her future. She was embarrassed to tell people she was struggling. And now she had just performed being fine for two hundred people.
Her phone buzzed with a notification. Someone had commented: "I wish I had your confidence." Ama read that and felt even worse.
Why Being Born Into Struggle Feels Like a Personal Failure
This is important and not enough people say it out loud.
If you grew up in a home where money was always a source of tension, where your parents argued about bills, where you had to watch your friends do things you simply could not afford, where every opportunity seemed to come with a price tag you could not meet, then you already started this race carrying a weight that others did not have to carry.
That is not a personal failing. That is circumstance. And circumstance is not destiny.
But here is what makes it hurt even more: society does not like to admit this. Instead, it sells you a story that if you just work hard enough, want it badly enough, hustle hard enough, you can overcome anything. And when you do all of that and things still do not work out the way you hoped, you internalise the failure. You think: Other people from hard backgrounds made it, so it must be something wrong with me specifically.
That thought is not truth. It is a trap. The people who "made it" from difficult backgrounds will tell you themselves: luck, timing, one person who opened a door, one break that came at the right moment. They were not stronger than you. The door just opened for them before it opened for you. That does not mean your door is sealed forever.
Yaw grew up in Tema in a three-room apartment with his parents and two siblings. His father was a fisherman and some weeks there was plenty to eat and other weeks there was barely anything. His mother worked as a market vendor. He watched his friends whose parents worked in offices go on school trips he could not afford. He watched them buy new uniforms every term while he wore the same one.
He was brilliant in school. He got into a good university. But university meant leaving home. It meant buying books that cost money he did not have. It meant going hungry some weeks because he was sending money home to help his family pay rent.
He graduated. He applied for jobs. Forty applications. Twelve interviews. No offers. His father told him he was lazy. His mother looked worried. His friends from university were starting their jobs. He saw their announcements on WhatsApp status. He felt something break inside him.
One day, six months after graduation, he ran into his old high school principal who remembered him. She asked what he was doing. He told her he had graduated but had not found work yet. She knew someone at a company. She made an introduction. Within two months, he had a job.
This is what luck looks like. This is what timing looks like. He was not more deserving than the forty-nine people who applied to the same company and never got an interview. He was not working harder. He had just been given a chance that came at the right moment.
Why People Go Quiet, And What It Actually Means
Let us talk about the WhatsApp message that was read and never answered. The friend who used to call every week and somehow stopped. The person who told you "I am always here" and then was nowhere to be found when you actually needed them.
That silence feels like rejection. And sometimes, honestly, it is. Some people reveal themselves to be fair-weather friends. Present in the good times and absent in the difficult ones. That is a real and painful thing. You are allowed to grieve it.
But sometimes, and this is worth sitting with carefully, the silence is not about you at all. People get consumed by their own struggles. They assume you are fine because you have always seemed fine. They do not know how to start a difficult conversation. They are fighting battles of their own that they are not telling anyone about either.
The loneliness of feeling like no one checks on you is real. But so is this: Most people are waiting for someone else to go first. They are sitting in their own room, looking at your name in their contacts, thinking the same thing you are thinking. "I wonder if they would want to hear from me."
Abena and Zainab were best friends in secondary school. They talked every single day. Then Abena went to university in Accra and Zainab stayed home. At first they called all the time. But Abena was overwhelmed with school and struggling to adjust. She became quieter. Zainab assumed Abena had moved on, had made new friends, had forgotten about her. So Zainab stopped reaching out. The calls became less frequent. Months passed. Eventually they were just exchanging hellos on birthdays.
Two years later, they ran into each other at the market. Zainab brought up how hurt she had been that Abena "forgot" about her. Abena looked shocked. "Forgot?" she said. "I thought you forgot about me. I was so depressed those first months in Accra. I wanted to call you so badly but I felt like you had moved on. I didn't want to burden you with my problems."
They both cried right there at the market. The truth was: they had both been waiting for the other person to go first. And both had been lonely, thinking the other person did not care.
What Depression Does to Your Thinking, and Why You Cannot Trust Everything It Tells You
Living with this feeling for a while changes how you think. It is important to know this: depression is not just about being sad. It is like a lens that gets in the way. It distorts your reality and makes everything look much worse than it actually is.
Under that filter, a friend not replying becomes: Nobody cares about me. One failed job application becomes: I will never get anywhere. A bad week becomes: This is just who I am and how my life will always be. The filter takes isolated events and turns them into permanent, sweeping conclusions about your worth as a human being.
And here is the cruel part: it uses your own voice to deliver these messages. So they feel like your thoughts. They feel like truth. They feel like you have finally just accepted reality. But they are not reality. They are symptoms.
Depression is not your inner wisdom finally speaking honestly. It is an illness speaking in your voice. There is a difference, even when it is impossible to feel the difference.
Research now confirms what people have always suspected: loneliness and depression feed each other. Loneliness increases your risk of depression nearly four times over. And depression makes you withdraw from people, which deepens loneliness, which worsens depression. It becomes a loop that is hard to break.
For three months, Kwesi felt like his brain had turned into a radio that would not turn off. And the only station it played was a station that hated him. "You are useless." "Nobody actually likes you; they feel sorry for you." "You will never amount to anything." "Your family would be better off without you."
He knew, intellectually, that these thoughts were not true. His mother loved him. His sister had told him she believed in him. He had gotten A's in school. But somehow the radio did not care about facts. It just kept playing the same messages, louder and louder.
What he did not know at the time was that this loop had a name. It was depression. It was an illness. And the fact that he could not turn off the radio did not mean the radio was right. It just meant he was sick and needed help.
When he finally talked to someone at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital, they explained to him that the thoughts he was having were symptoms of depression, not truth. That was the first time in months he felt something that was not despair. He felt hope.
Practical Things That Actually Help, Not Toxic Positivity
I am not going to tell you to "think positive" or "count your blessings." When you are in real pain, that kind of advice feels like being handed a plaster when you need surgery. Instead, here are things that actually work. Small, honest, manageable things:
1. Send the message you have been holding back
Not to a group. To one person. Someone you have not spoken to in a while, or someone you trust. It does not have to be heavy. It can be as simple as: "Hey. I have been going through a rough time and just wanted to reach out."
That is it. You do not have to explain everything. Just break the silence. You will be surprised how many people have been waiting for exactly that kind of honesty from you.
Kwame had not talked to his best friend from secondary school in eight months. He felt too ashamed. What would he even say? That he was still unemployed? That he felt like a failure? That some nights he did not want to wake up?
One Sunday morning, he typed a message. It took him thirty minutes to write four sentences. He almost deleted it five times. But he sent it.
His friend replied within two minutes. Then called him immediately. "Man, I have been so worried about you. I thought you were mad at me. Please tell me what's going on."
They talked for three hours. His friend told him about his own struggles that Kwame had never known about. By the end of the conversation, Kwame did not feel fixed. But he felt less alone. And sometimes, less alone is enough to get you through the next few hours.
2. Put a time limit on social media
Not because social media is evil, but because scrolling when you are already low is like pouring fuel on a fire. Set your phone to limit certain apps to 30 minutes a day. When the notification comes up, honour it. What you do with the time you reclaim, even if it is just sitting quietly, will serve you better than another hour of comparison.
3. Move your body in the smallest way possible
Not a gym session. Not a 5km run. Walk to the end of your street and back. Stretch for five minutes in your room. Dance to one song with the door closed.
Movement does something to the chemistry in your brain that no amount of thinking can replicate. It does not fix everything. But it shifts something, even temporarily. And sometimes, a temporary shift is enough to get you through the next few hours.
4. Write down three things that are factually true about today
Not three things you are grateful for, which can feel forced when you are struggling. Just three things that are objectively true. "I ate something today. I am still here. The weather was okay this morning."
This is not about pretending things are fine. It is about training your brain to operate in facts rather than letting it spiral in feelings.
5. Talk to someone, anyone
A family member. A friend. A teacher or mentor. A pastor or imam. A counsellor at school or work. If none of those feel accessible, there are text-based mental health platforms where you can type to someone without speaking out loud.
The act of putting words to what you are carrying, even once, to even one person, begins to loosen its grip on you. Keeping it inside gives it more power, not less.
Ama had decided not to tell anyone. She thought it would make it worse. She thought people would judge her. She thought if she said it out loud, it would become more real.
But one day, her English teacher asked her to stay after class. She had noticed Ama was not herself. Ama broke down. She told her teacher everything. How lonely she felt. How scared she was about the future. How some days she did not want to get out of bed.
Her teacher listened. She did not try to fix it. She just listened. And then she gave Ama the number for the Mental Health Authority. She told her: "You deserve help. Not because you are broken, but because you are hurting. And people who are hurting deserve care."
Ama called the next day. It was terrifying. But it was the beginning of her getting better.
6. Remind yourself that this moment is not a life sentence
Write this somewhere you will see it: Feelings are weather, not climate. A storm passing through is not the same as the land itself. The hopelessness you feel right now is real. But it is also temporary. People who felt exactly as you feel today have, with time and support, found their way to lives they are genuinely glad to be living. That is not a motivational poster. That is a documented, repeated, human reality.
If the Thoughts Are Getting Darker
This section is for those of you for whom this goes beyond sadness. If you have been having thoughts of hurting yourself, or thoughts that everyone would be better off without you, or thoughts of disappearing: please read this carefully.
Those thoughts are symptoms of how much pain you are in. They are not instructions. They are not truth. They are your mind, overwhelmed and exhausted, searching desperately for a way to make the pain stop. And the pain can stop. Not through harm, but through help.
You are not a burden. You are a person in crisis. And people in crisis deserve care, not silence.
Please tell someone today. Not tomorrow. Today. A parent, sibling, friend, teacher, anyone. If you are in Ghana, you can contact the Mental Health Authority by going to mha-ghana.com to find support services or a hospital near you. You can also visit any government hospital and ask to speak with someone about how you are feeling. If you are in immediate distress, go to your nearest hospital emergency room.
There is no version of your future that requires you to not be in it.
Kwesi finally told his father. He was terrified. He thought his father would be angry at him for being weak. Instead, his father listened. He did not understand everything. He did not know the right things to say. But he held Kwesi while he cried. And he took him to Accra Psychiatric Hospital the next morning.
The psychiatrist explained to Kwesi that what he was experiencing was real, it was serious, and it was treatable. She prescribed medication. She referred him to a therapist. She told him: "You are not broken. Your brain chemistry is out of balance. We can fix that."
It was not a miracle. It took months. There were still hard days. But six months later, Kwesi could not recognize the person who had thought about disappearing. That person was in so much pain he could not imagine it ever ending. But it did end. And he is grateful every day that he told someone.
A Word About Being Young, Broke, and Trying
Being young and struggling financially in a world that constantly shows you what you do not have yet is genuinely, legitimately hard. It is not weakness. It is not laziness. It is not a sign that you are cursed or forgotten or less than.
The people we admire most once felt exactly like you do: trapped in a room that felt too small, holding onto goals that felt out of reach. The main reason some people succeed while others do not is not just about genius or skill. Usually, it is just that they outlasted the hard times. They kept showing up until the situation finally shifted in their favour.
Your job right now is not to figure everything out. Your job is to stay. To keep the thread of your own life in your hands, even when it feels like it is unravelling. Because threads can be rewoven. Stories can turn. And yours is nowhere near finished.
Research in sub-Saharan Africa shows that about 27 percent of adolescents are living with depression right now. You are not uniquely broken. You are part of a generation that was handed a harder starting point. But you are still here. And that counts for something.
You Are Still Here. That Is Not Nothing.
The fact that you read this far, that some part of you was searching for something to hold onto, tells me something about you. You have not given up. Even if it feels like you have. Even if you would describe yourself as someone who has lost hope.
The act of looking for words that might help is itself a form of hope, even when hope feels impossible.
You are worthy of connection. You are worthy of a life that feels good to wake up to. You are not too broken, too poor, too behind, too much, or too little. You are a human being in the middle of one of the hardest seasons of your life. And seasons change.
You have not failed at life. You are just bleeding in the middle of a chapter. Most people would have closed the book by now. The fact that you are still turning pages is not nothing. It is the whole damn story.
Hold on. Reach out. Keep going.
If you need help, you are not weak for asking. You are brave. And help is real.