When I was 12, I was diagnosed with separation anxiety. A year later, it expanded to generalized anxiety disorder. Soon after came severe social phobia and major depressive disorder. A few years later, they threw in bipolar II disorder.
Illness after illness, label after label, medication after medication, mess after mess, I just tried to make it through each day. It sucked.
“Smile!”
“Oh, it can’t be that bad.”
“Cheer up!’
“Just calm down!”
“Snap out of it!”
Sound familiar to any of you?
“Why does it even bother you? Why do you care?”
I’ve been asked these questions time and time again by numerous people from every facet in my life. Yes, I take certain comments personally, and many events that may be perfectly normal to most are incredibly traumatic for me. Why? Continue reading
Think back to 4th grade. Elementary school is supposed to be full of fun, sparkly poster projects, and gossiping about crushes. Based on my old journal entries from the 90s (since I don’t genuinely remember much), I only managed to experience tidbits of a typical childhood.
I was a sad, scared, and angry girl. Continue reading
My past is a cloud of uncertainty.
One day in high school, we were instructed to search the depths of our minds and find the earliest memory we could muster up. We took turns sharing. Most of my classmates seemed to remember their childhood. They spoke about their friendships in preschool and transitions into kindergarten. My stomach flipped, and my anxiety began to flare up. When it was my turn, I spoke about an experience I remembered from middle school. My teacher demanded I come up with something earlier. I couldn’t do it. There was nothing there. There still isn’t.
I cried that day, because I realized not only that what I was experiencing wasn’t typical, but also because it meant I was left without a past.
There are plenty of definitions of mental illnesses out there. I can offer you nothing new in this regard. What I can offer is a depiction of what these illnesses look like in my life. I spend each day battling various forms of anxiety, severe depression, and bipolar disorder. These labels are massive, and they sit on my shoulders like 500 pound weights. Some days, I can barely stand.
This is what it’s like:
Running on Thin Ice 