An Introduction to Being Mental

 Who I was is not who I am. 

Who I am is not who I will become. 

Write your story. 

Don’t let your past write your future.

When I was a kid, I wasn’t afraid of much.  I would do anything I was dared to, to the point of getting pretty banged up in the process.  I climbed cliffs, floated the rapids, hiked up mountains, and jumped from tall structures.  I played sports. Shot bow and arrow and guns, and built fires.  Even with all these activities,   I was always a little shy, always sensitive.  But something happened along the way that changed me.  I became mental.  Mentally ill, that is.

My parents and teachers noticed raging anger and extreme sensitivity to criticism.  Eventually, I was taken to mental health services, which was not easy due to the way insurance worked back then and the long trip on the highway to get there.  We had one vehicle and one parent who drove.

Depression was discovered early on.  It wasn’t the occasional blues or the response to a sad event.  It was deep, dark, and persistent.  By the time I was 11, I was self-harming.  It wasn’t until I was 12 or 13 that my parents became aware of it.  I harmed to feel. I harmed to stop feeling. I harmed myself to control just one thing in my life.  I was adept at first aid and wound care.  Since I lived in an area with quite a few blackberry bushes, owned cats, and rode my bike everywhere, it was easy to explain away the tentative cuts.

There are a lot of gaps in my memories surrounding my mental health. I do know that the counselor I was seeing was a jerk and blatantly invented conversations we had in private sessions so he would have something to report to my parents in the family sessions.  I would sit in his office for half an hour to an hour and just stare at the floor or the wall and said absolutely nothing.  If I answered him, it was short and surly, not letting him learn anything that was going on.  When I became frustrated with his lies to my parents, I called him on it.  He tried to deny it but my parents believed me because I was so livid.  That was the last time I saw him or any other therapist as a youth.

I did some group and one on one counselling with the school psychologist in high school.  It was good for me and I remain friends with the two, other people who were in the group with me.

Eventually self-harm got the better of me and I took an overdose of aspirin.  I woke the next day feeling horrible.  I told a friend and was called to the office. My dad had to come and drive me to the hospital. I spent a few days there, some in the ICU to get the aspirin out of my system, some in the mental health unit.  It was terrible but they finally let me go back home.

That was a wake-up call for me and my friends.  I had talked about death and dying for years and injured myself repeatedly. This solidified that I was no longer just talking about things.  It also woke my family up.  But that wake up came in the form of restricting my movements and constant arguing.

Eventually I graduated.  I went to college and my mom was diagnosed with cancer.  I moved back to be close and attended community college.  She died a year later.  Things at home were rough with my dad and I moved out. I lived with a friend’s family for 5 months before I moved to Texas for college. 

Much has happened since then. I had two severe cutting incidents, one sent me to the state mental hospital.  At some point, I was diagnosed with PTSD, Panic attacks and Borderline Personality Disorder along with Major Depression and General Anxiety Disorder.

Recently, my therapist and I revisited the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder and concluded it was not a good fit. Sadly, I spent 20 years of my life thinking I had the answer to why I behaved the way I did.  But the way I was, is not how I am now.

After finding a great therapist and a dialectic Behavior Therapy Skills group, I have learned to cope better with my high sensitivity and mood swings.  I take one pill that controls the depression and has the wonderful added effect of eliminating that irrational rage.  I no longer cope by cutting, though the urges are still there. There have been some recent triggers that have made those urges more intense.

I am mental. I am disordered. I don’t know what the next diagnosis will bring but I know it will not write my story. I will.  And I will share it with you.

*Rewritten after accidentally deleting the original post.*