This blog post, which was originally published on July 1, is cross-posted from Interestingly Enough, a blog written by Kibkabe Araya. She is a senior at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, who has allowed Girl HeadQuarters to start cross-posting some of her excellent writing! Here’s Kibkabe!

How do you really feel? Sad, depressed, gloomy. I feel those adjectives describe many girls whose emotions are ignored or misunderstood by close ones. Two days ago, supermodel Ruslana Korshunova, a native of Kazakhstan, plummeted to her death from a Manhattan apartment building. Her death was ruled as a suicide.

She was very successful, sashaying the catwalks for Betsey Johnson and Jill Stuart and gracing the magazine covers of Elle and Vogue. We looked at her like she had everything, but obviously there was something missing. I feel people treat depression as a stigma, especially for young women, since you are viewed as weak or strange. You might tell someone your feelings, and before you know it, he/she is gone. I wish people were not prejudiced against certain things like depression because everyone is different, everyone feels different things because different events happening.

Girls do not have a place to feel comfortable about sharing these damaging emotions, which I hope can be repaired, so events like the supermodel’s suicide will not occur. Women deal with depression more than men do, so this is a problem, and hopefully people can be more understanding and helpful when a girl runs to them for refuge from the sadness.