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lessonslearnt · 7 years

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Something to learn from ? Maybe you're meant to read this.

The lessons on mental health/relationships/life I’ve learned so far from my personal life experiences.

16. I remember my mom driving me to an urgent appointment at children’s mercy hospital downtown the day i returned from week long summer camp. My little sister, who had joined me at camp, had “ratted me out” to my mom.

I felt the way a drug addict would feel when being escorted back to rehab after returning from a week long bender.

All while being driven there by their cold, unaffectionate, un-empathetic, un-sympathetic, authoritarian mother; screaming at them for the duration of the half hour ride to the hospital.

In some ways, I WAS a drug addict. An addict for death, if death was symbolized as my “drug” , like a heroin addict returning to the the heroin, both myself and the heroin addict searching for the “high”, the release, the numbness, the sleep, the death.

Her words communicated: Disappointment. Shame. Black, deep, heavy self hate for what I was doing.

Face right up to mine. Screaming with angry passion. Flecks of spit on my cheek. Crying. Me. Always crying. Because I had a demon in me, and I had no control over what I was doing. Why didn’t they understand or believe me when I told them “I can’t help it…”?

She didn’t know how to handle me. I wasn’t an easy child, emotionally. She didn’t say or do the healthy or right things for me, and usually she actually exacerbated all of my hardwired mental dysfunctions.

But it wasn’t her fault, she couldn’t have known based on HER own life experience how to be what I needed. She did her best. And I love her for that.

And it’s all ok, because it was all a part if the plan. She played a role in getting me to where I am today, at this moment in time.

Lesson: I will make mistakes in my loved ones’ lives, it doesn’t mean I love them less. And if I keep loving them, they will hopefully see that. And vice versa for those that wrong me. True love. Gods’ love. Not YOUR definition of love.

I forgive my mom, and I hope she forgive me too.

I remember the EKG machine in the doctors’ office suddenly beeping numerous, loud alarms from a box on wheels connected by wires to adhesive patches on my chest and rib cage.

The tech putting her head down, eyes to the floor, ever so slightly shaking her head in almost a ‘disappointed’ manner. My mom glaring at me with a cold side glance, simultaneously giving me the same exact slow, disappointed, shake of the head that the EKG tech was expressing.

The Doctor calls my mom into the hallway outside the exam room, alone.

Low, concerned, serious muffled voices.

Doctor returns, without my mother or anyone else, looks me in the eye, tells me that if it was up to him, he’d have me hospitalized right this second.

I am at high risk for dying at any minute, he tells me, but my mother is refusing inpatient treatment. “you have to be serious about wanting to live, or no body can help you”, a line that stands out in my mind. I have to want this and participate in aggressive rehabilitative treatment, outpatient.

I nodded my head slowly, shamefully, head tilted and eyes down to the floor, can’t make eye contact with him.

And he says “you might want to say farewell to those you love…” as he exits and closes the door.

That’s heavy shit, right?

But I didn’t care!

This meant my plan was WORKING! I was content, though, not even that. I don’t really understand what I felt.

Driving home, sitting at a red light, mothers’ face has been a wrinkled ball of tight, hot anger. Knuckles white and clenched over the top of the steering wheel. Horrible silence. Hot, muggy car.

Although, the enveloping 90 degree oven the car became in the roasting July parking lot of the doctors office felt wonderful to me, given I had 1-2% body fat.

My mother started in on a slow, aggressive, anger filled response to the events that had just transpired at the hospital.

Then a crack in her voice, she stopped talking, I looked over…

I saw her crying.

A wet trail leading from her right lower eyelid, sliding right on down off of her jaw line; a tear had just fallen from my mother’s eye.. I don’t see my mother cry. I don’t see my mother express sadness, Especially not for me!

I had seen my mother angry. I had seen mother disappointed. I had seen my mother express contentment with her surroundings. I had seen her have moments, just minute long moments, of flitting joy; usually just a false high before the crash. My mother wasn’t somebody you talk to about your problems. My mother wasn’t kind, nice, empathetic, sympathetic, warm, expressively loving, a hugger, a kisser, a “let’s do this together!”, let me put myself in your shoes, saying “I love you”,

Type of mother.

It’s not her fault. It’s not my fault. It was all a part of the plan.

The emotion that rarely surfaced to the outward character of my mother, was that of which I was witnessing in the car this very moment. Sadness. Not just sadness though, empathetic grief for what her daughter was experiencing. A broadened mindset in regards to what another human benign could potentially be tolerating in their mind, outside of their control. A realization that not every hurtful action towards you by other people is maliciously carried out. That people aren’t perfect. That people have real, raw, loss of control. That mental DISORDER, caused by genetic predisposition and environmental conditions, is a dysfunction of the brain ORGAN, at times out of ones control.

It appears through her actions to follow that she realized her child had essentially been suffering from a chronic health condition, no different from say, type 1 diabetes (dysfunction of the organ, the pancreas), one that her child could not control, and one that needs just as much intervention as any other bodily disease.

She couldn’t think this way about all of my “quirks” and “behavioral issues” until this moment, until JUST now.

At least, that is my perception based on her reactions and expectations of me I observed going forward.

Prior, she couldn’t think of me as anything but 100% in control of my thoughts, actions, and decisions; not trying hard enough to “get better”. She didn’t realize that the demons that she learns about every Sunday in church could manifest so blatantly in her picture perfect life!

Until this moment.

She loved me in that moment, that is, showed me that she felt sad for what I was experiencing; told me that she loves me.

Told me that she loves me.

Told me that she wanted to support me in any way she could, and that she didn’t blame me for all of my actions, and that she wants me to feel better because she…wants ME to feel BETTER.

No strings attached, no other motives or fake prayers at the dinner table that I’d “magically be cured overnight”.

She still didn’t take me to inpatient treatment out of fear of all the people in her social group “finding out” about the fuck up that they had so clearly produced. But hey, I get it. I really do.

That was the right decision, it ended up working out beautifully. It got me to where I am at this moment in life. The perfect moment.

Lots of intensive outpatient psychiatry and psychology appointments, as well as starting the medication Paxil, helped to jumpstart some recovery and motion forward.

In addition to those interventions, experiencing the communication of love my mom had just given to me, helped me return to a functioning level of mental health. Without that, no other intervention would have helped me.

The OCD voices were quieter. I learned therapeutic thought interventions to help with rational thinking. I felt…numb.

I know the medication made me feel a bit numb, and I’ve seen this side effect on many forums where people are sharing their “reasons for stopping an anti-depressant”…“it just made me feel numb…like a zombie, man…”

Yeah, see, I don’t understand that. At THAT time, anxiety and depression physically HURT my mind, body, and soul, so badly that feeling any sort of NUMB was a reprieve from the alternative option.

I started school, junior year of high school. I made friends. LOTS of friends. And a couple very, very close ones. I experienced the closest, most honest, and truest loving relationships with friends I had ever experienced on that level prior.

These RELATIONSHIPS were the real anti-depressant at this time. This still holds true as a fact, to me, that healthy, honest, mutually loving relationships are the best remedy for a depressed mind.

I feel that maybe…God let’s us get just the right amount of depressed in order to force us to expand our life and reach out for other relationships. Sometimes. It depends on the story he has for you.

But what do I know?

An overwhelming euphoria overcame me, the best feeling I had felt to date. Friends. Deep, connected, loving people in my life. I just wanted to give love and be loved. And my new friends wanted the same. We were high off love, I stopped using all drugs (after using them pretty frequently, especially marijuana), and never drank or “partied”. Just experienced life with like minded, loving human beings.

My creativity and passion, soared on the wing tips of my new found relationships.

But some relationships don’t last forever.

People rapidly change at 16. My new found friends found new found interests in drugs and/or new “boyfriends”.

Shit happens to everyone, I suppose.

But me, being hyper emotional and feeling as though losing my friends was like losing romantic love partners, my mind started to be clouded slowly, but fiercely, by depression.

Ugh, then the cycle! Depression leads to OCD, leads to anxiety, leads to depression, around and around and around…just takes a spark of something to start the demons’ cycle.

Sleeping through class all day. Back to marijuana. Reaching out, but now there really was NO body there, or so I perceived. Alone. Panicked. OCD thoughts returned with a vengeance.

People don’t ever have, In my opinion, a clear picture of what OCD looks like in ones’ mind.

The world views OCD as:

Weird rituals, sometimes due to anxiety about germs or disorganization; likes things organized to reduce anxiety; neurotic <well THAT can be true, haha.

A more realistic description, IMO, of OBSESSIVE AND/OR COMPULSIVE thought processes, for me and most others I’ve talked to with similar minds/diagnosed OCD, is that of my mind at this time in my life:

All of my actions and the thoughts I would willingly produce in my mind were determined by whether they met a set of guidelines, based off of the doctrine of Christianity, mostly, but also some arbitrary rules I’d created for my self.

Everything was “good” or “evil”, “right” or sinning".

I thought to myself, “maybe if I do everything God asks of me, he will grant me internal peace at last…”.

I rule followed and ritual abided my way with false purpose through life, irrationally believing that living this way would please God and grant me “a real life”, free of the mental burden.

I reached out for and tried to foster a couple relationship/friendships with other people, but they didn’t feel right. I just wanted to be alone.

My new escape from life, OCD. Plans, lists, cleaning, organization, exercising, every calorie and micronutrient counted for. Carried out the exact routine, every day. So much time devoted to the drive for the routine, no real relationships being fostered or created at this time.

The routine… the one I thought would grant me peace from God.

I punished myself heavily for “sinful” or “impure” thoughts.

Journal entries from this time are eye opening because you can see the conversations I had with, what I then and now call, the “demon”…

Thoughts the demon would produce and attempt to force me to carry out include but not limited to:

Feel like I wanted to be done, feeling tired, unable to produce one single more thought. feeling like I wanted to cut myself. feel like I wanted to kill myself in order to just…be done, be asleep, as simple as that sounds?

feeling like I wanted to starve myself to death, for the same prior reasoning.

Another mis-conception: Every person with an eating disorder, is doing it to “look” a certain way or because of poor body image, although our culture gives girls/women a good reason to have one for those reasons.

The mind of someone diagnosed and almost killed by anorexia:

I wanted to kill myself. I didn’t know any other way to do it without upsetting those around me too much. I thought, if I just don’t eat, I will die. I can blame it on…some sort of illness. I’ll deny I did it to the end, so they won’t KNOW that I killed myself. And I will suffer in the meantime, I thought, since I’d be starving and dizzy and wasting away..

I liked suffering, you see, very fucked up stuff, yes!

To this day, after reaching what I consider to be the healthiest place I have ever been in my entire life, and after having studied all mental disorders exhaustively, I am not exactly sure why I obtained pleasure from hurting myself, all the time, in all sorts of ways, at that time in my life.

The thoughts that lead to THOSE (self harming) feelings, were and are SOMETHING else, not me.

Call it a demon, as I’ve labeled it, or whatever, but it’s not ME controlling them…and well…

We all know that thoughts lead to beliefs leads to actions, leads to REALITY.

Philosophers could argue what the demon was and IS…but it’s not ME, it’s not what I ever wanted to be…

You don’t have that perspective of mental health at seventeen or eighteen years old. Thoughts are you and you are your thoughts,

Good or evil,

And let me tell you a secret…

The demon, OCD, whatever you label it, puts a lot of evil thoughts in your brain without your permission.

A lot of “worse case scenarios”.

But not just thinking them, experiencing them! visualizing them! playing them all out, one by one, from least worst case scenario to best worse case scenario (following?)..just like a detailed movie.

And watching that movie makes me anxious. It makes me feel a great desire to engage in a cycle of “action checking” in order to prevent the movies from becoming reality.

“Action checking”. Basically just anxious thoughts running through your mind, making sure you’re abiding by “the rules”, again, to make sure your visions never become reality.

My rules waxed and waned and came from no where in particular. The demon himself, perhaps!

Unfortunately, my SELF was not given mercy by the obsessive-compulsive nature of my mind.

Self-hate. Lots and lots of self-hate, brought on by obsessive thoughts about my imperfections. External, internal, and otherwise.

I knew I was different and “troubled”, but my internal will told me that I wanted to be “normal” more than anything, so I could be, so I thought, happy. Finally.

The depth of disordered thought processes and the depth of my mind remained secret; I maintained appearances; never quite “normal” per society’s standard, but flying enough under the radar to get by unnoticed most of the time.

That wasn’t healthy what I did, stuffing down and hiding symptoms that would occasionally, semi-frequently, drive me to suicidal ideation.

Suicidal ideation: something for me that I became aware that I would do during depression, mostly, but sometimes for not that much of a reason at all.

I “learned” to not act upon my impulses by sleeping. I could dream of being dead all I want, in bed, in my dreams, which would wet the appetite of the demon and take the urge away long enough to go away.

17. Senior year. My parents allow me to finally start taking Ritalin for ADD, something I was diagnosed with a few years prior.

I don’t blame my parents for not giving me medication sooner. They had their valid reasons, namely that I was born with a heart condition known as SVT, something thats could “flare” up, even silently, for the the rest of my life. It’s basically a fucking fast and out of control as hell heart beat that if not returned to normal within a certain amount of time, can cause death.

Stimulants + rapid heart condition = not a great mix. Totally get that.

But starting Ritalin changed my life.

My grades go from at most B-, mostly C’s, a couple D’s as the norm… to straight A’s my senior year, including advanced placement Spanish, Art, and anatomy/physiology. What the hell?

It really was a wonder drug for me academically, socially, emotionally…essentially I realized that whatever I have going on in my head to encourage and produce my actions (perhaps, ADD? But I hate definitive labels..) is calmed by this medication.

I don’t care about anyone else’s argument for or against the medication, for me, it changed my life TREMENDOUSLY, and if that puts me at greater risk for dying of a heart condition, so be it.

During this time I continued to maintain my anxiety levels (thoughts) through rituals and organization.

I returned to a fly-under-the-radar functional state my senior year of high school, in most part due to (I think/believe): Ritalin, Paxil, recent graduation from therapy, the ease at which school came to me at that point, the endorphins from running constantly for cross country, and having hours to decompress every day in senior placement art, where I could create whatever I could get my hands on, releasing TONS of negative emotion.

I was feeling so good, I stopped the Paxil cold turkey, mistakingly thinking, like many people do, that I was ‘cured’ and that I could handle things on my own without medication.

Most would, as I did for so long, call this a mistake, as it is true you should never stop an SSRI antidepressant without weaning from it per doctors direction. It actually can be life threatening to stop it in this manner, which I didn’t understand at the time. However, I don’t regret that decision, because it was a part of the matrix of decisions that I have made to get me to the current place I am in my life, with you. But I would never advise someone do this, just a quick call to the dr if you want to wean from medication.

I did ok. I went to college. I did what my parents recommended, which is actually wise for a young adult searching for direction and guidance for the future. They are highly successful. They claim to be happy. Copy, paste. Yeah, I’ll reach for that. Goals arbitrarily decided.

18-26 was a blur, just moving towards the aforementioned goals.

Roller coaster of emotion, dissociated from it with humor, no talk of emotions to ANYone. Not one single person knew even a twentieth of the capacity at which my mind could function “normally” under dysfunction. Private life. Secret life.

Lonely life.

What is true to me is my reality, and no one else.

Therefore, I’ll use the word true to describe the feeling of having a real, understood, raw connection with another person. Something I can not explain to you, only I know.

There was no one true. There was me on the “surface” to all of those around me, people only received glimpses when i fucked up at hiding myself. Reaching out, not sensing what I need. Who I need. Who did I need? What did I need?

In private, there was crying on the bedroom floor, crying until my pillow literally dripped with tears, heavy emotion brought on by everything, nothing. Everything just feels like too much. I can’t keep up with this life. I don’t have the energy. I can’t appease the demon. I can’t live up to his standards.

cutting my body, hiding my cuts, loving the pain when my sleeve brushed up against the cuts, hating myself for being so “fucked up” to do such a thing, chugging vodka, gin… or really anything intoxicating…as much as I could, often alone.

Feeling my body for imperfections.

Finding them.

Disgust.

Barely keeping myself from cutting at them. It would feel so good…but why?

This is confusing.

Moment of clarity: why am I doing this? Why do I want to CUT MY BODY? Why does it feel so good to hurt my self?

8 years, always had my finger on the mouse button, cursor on the “submit appointment request” button on the website offering free mental health services to students/young adults.

I knew that my mind was not operating healthfully, but I knew what getting help meant.

It meant that they would recommend I stop the things that comforted me the most. The addictions, the things that numb, the obsessions and compulsions. You see? The demon is self preserving, it makes you think you can’t exist without it.

If I couldn’t get to the bottom of why my mind functioned the way it did, I felt no one else could either.

(It’s ok, because now I know why it functioned/functions the way it did/does, and it was all for the purpose of getting me to the moment I am at today, with you.)

I lived during this period of time feeling as if I was living a life “not worth living”, and I was, in a way.

Life was torture. And that leads to guilt; you see what everyone else sees, a lucked-out-at-life girl in the least bit of tortuous surroundings.

You don’t know why, exactly, that life’s torture.

It’s like your true self in the depth of your soul is looking for an answer to a question that can’t seem to ever be fully answered. You can’t quite grasp onto what the question is, so you damned well don’t know the answer.

But some thing is telling you to ask and seek with insatiable thirst. A thirst that leaves you depressed and strung out, ready to give up, if not attempted to quench.

Mind expanding, opening to what the question, what the answer, could be?

At this time I THOUGHT I had expanded my mind to its max capacity of being “open minded” (don’t we all usually think that?), but the quench was still there; anxiety and overwhelming fear creeps in. This is it? This can’t be it, the thoughts are still there!

I’ve expanded and opened my mind! I don’t understand, what do I want? What is my goal and purpose in life? Who is God? Does God even exist?

Wait!

These are..

The Questions.

Ok, now I just need the answers.

My arbitrary goals as previously mentioned, start becoming met, each without any increase in my subconscious goals of peace and happiness, or answered questions.

But with the hope that they were part of the answers to my questions, I kept going.

In retrospect, It seems a root of my anxiety was perhaps having an extremely philosophical mind? Brought on by a tremendous volume of thoughts and rapid thought cycling? Perhaps.

If you could think about a facet of life, I felt I had thought it, especially compared to those around me. My mind was on overdrive, I couldn’t Intake enough stimuli to wet my appetite for answers and knowledge.

I knew deep down that having my mind had to be a positive energy for the world somehow, I could sense others pain and emotion, after all. I had pain when others had pain, and found pleasure in expressing empathy and helping others reach a positive energy and mindset. I started to feel an ounce of self worth, for the first time ever.

I started to wonder if my purpose was revealing itself slowly? Could the fucked up mental health cards I had been dealt, been dealt by God on purpose in order to experience what I had experienced, so that I could have the capacity to truly and completely empathize with others?

Maybe. God’s purposes are all in love, after all.

At some point in college:

After one of the many times I felt I could not handle the internal me, when I realized I hadn’t found answers..

I think, so let’s try to fix this “mental instability” issue one last time. Let’s step back. What piece of knowledge or eternal truths or WHATEVER will take away the anxiety, the compulsive thoughts and actions, the depression, the desire to leave this lifetime…….away? Let’s get to the bottom of the questions.

I want to be normal. There’s something I’m missing. A piece to the puzzle. I’m going to try to get better. I’m going to try harder.

25. Insert mass amounts of knowledge intake. Every subject I could think of, googled, documentaries galore. I had to find the answer before I lost all control. I explored answers to every question I had about life. I practiced yoga, meditation, vegetarian dieting, positive thinking practices, sleep hygiene, effort, effort, effort…. not working…..anxiety exponentially worsening because I felt like I just gave all my energy into last ditch efforts to be “normal”, and even my greatest efforts could not set me free me from who I was.

26. Depression creeping back in. The weight of the world.

I now know so much more information, but it’s only worsened my state. The more information I obtain about the world, the more depressed I become.

I can’t change it, I’m growing tired of trying and putting SO much EFFORT into life. I gave myself one last chance to “get better”…now what?

To be fair, I feel like through deep meditation during this time I had briefly understood, for a moment, that the point to life was to do and think everything in love, even to yourself. That is all. Nothing else.

God is love. We have God inside of us. Happiness is bringing out and remaining in Gods presence, love, as much as and as often as possible.

God doesn’t even have to be how you describe the one that can bring you happiness. Spirit, Creator, or just simply, Love. Call the force whatever it means to you.

I felt bliss for a couple days following this revelation, I had answered my question! I felt it! I really, truly, felt i had, at least part, of my questions answered.

But the bliss sharply faded as I quickly realized that even though i had the answer, not a single other person in my life did; Not that I could SENSE, anyways. Not in the way I understood it. Not it the way others expressed/claimed they understood it. It was like God had spoken to me, but I couldn’t share the experience with anyone, because the lock and key just didn’t work. If others truly understood what I felt, I could tell them anything about myself, and they would love me anyways. I couldn’t sense this as an outcome with anyone around me.

The actuality and depth of my revelation left me alone, feeling different, feeling frustrated with the world and God.

Why give me the answer with no one to share it with?

Depression. Hard. Fast. I’m 26.5, and suddenly I’m a different person, but I don’t know this yet. This hasn’t been revealed to me. I stop taking care of my appearance. I stop exercising. I couldn’t hardly make it work on time, getting late points for the first time ever. Calling in “sick” a few days because I couldn’t get out of bed. I mean, my body wouldn’t let me. There was no point. Suicidal ideation is strong now, but I’m experienced with my mind at this stage in the game. I don’t take the demon too seriously this time, I just know he’s there, and it hurts every part of me.

It actually frightens me to have such a clear perspective of the demon vs ME in my mind. This made possible because of the experiences and maturing I’d gone through at this stage in my life and, naturally, more matured mental capacities vs the last full force encounter with the demon with a teenagers mind and brain.

Cliche truth: The demon isn’t you. It can tell you to think and do things you don’t want to. Everyone’s demon is different in its manifestations, but the demon is real. Your mind CAN control you, and don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.

I heard it. Just nudging, nudging, pick up the pill bottle. Dump them into your hand. Feel them. Imagine them all in your stomach. Imagine the sleep. So amazing. It would be over, complete.

August. Springfield Missouri for a friend’s wedding. I feel done. I feel so, so, tired of opening my eyes each morning.

Drive there: praying a car would hit us on the highway and kill me. Praying hard.

Wedding venue: a very tall skyscraper in the downtown area; I can’t stop imaging bodies falling from the highest windows. I imagine myself falling. I calculate the likely hood of landing on a different balcony, of how long Id be suspended in air, free-falling before instant death?

Train tracks behind our hotel. I’m suddenly out there, on the tracks, eleven or so at night.

I don’t know what I’m doing, I just wanted to BE there.

Train is coming, my mind is telling me to play chicken with it.

I sit on the tracks. The train is coming. It’s headlight blinds me. It’s horn vibrates my entire body through the metal and wood of the tracks.

It’s exhilarating. I feel alive. I’m excited.

Suddenly: I’m worried I’ll ruin our friends’ wedding tomorrow. What if I don’t die and I just end up a vegetable? This isn’t going to definitively kill me, this isn’t thought out. This isn’t planned well enough.

Sat two feet from the tracks as it went by. Felt the sparks from the wheels grinding the tracks hit my legs. Felt numb from the sounds of the horn enveloping my entire body in sound vibrations. It hurt my ear drums, and I liked it. I think I still have some hearing loss from this experience.

But that’s ok, it all turned out OK. It was all supposed to happen.

If I had killed myself, I would have never been on earth long enough to know what I know now.

I felt ashamed about the train, but no one knew. I felt ashamed because that is not ME, that is not a decision I would make! The control, the power, someTHING had over me.

And then, one day, a few months later, clarity.

I was filled with empathy for all those who have experienced suicidal thoughts and attempts in the past, and for those who continue to experience them every DAY.

I have an advantage over the demon. Mental strength from fighting it since I was seven years old. Such an advantage.

I am filled with love when I think of all the individual souls, people, who couldn’t help but fulfill the viciously tempting will of the demon, at the time of their death. Their “suicide”.

For many people, the demon comes into their mind out of no where, full force with no prior experience for a person to use against it. They listen, because they do not know better.

See, rather than making the decision to kill themselves, they were walking a plank on a pirate ship, blind folded, stumbling to their death. They didn’t decide to do this.

Organisms are innately and subconsciously self preserving.

The pirate commanding them off the plank was the demon, of course.

Each person carrying a different demon, using different tactics, usually through thought of the mind, to carry out THEIR will. That is, to make a human end their own life.

This encounter-realization of “hearing” someone, someTHING, else, in my mind, scared me enough to call my psychiatrist and set up an appointment with a psychologist.

But at the exact same time, I started going on breaks outside a couple times per day at work with the “smokers group”. Mostly because I was so depressed I couldn’t focus on work. I couldn’t give less of a shit about anyone, anything, myself.

I was possibly facing the worse depression I’ve ever faced in my life. In the past, finding honest, true, loving relationships was the key to suppressing the demon. And this time would be no different.

In fact, the love that came from a relationship, is what would ultimately give me my answer to my questions. By changing my routine, influenced by depression, I met a person that would change my mind and life forever. A person that God used to communicate His answers to my questions for me. At 26.9 years old, I can honestly say, I have peace. I am not normal, at all. I am me.

When you’re depressed or suicidal, you may hear those around you say, “just hang in there, it’ll get better”. Bleg. Means nothing to a depressed mind.

But let me tell you, you do have the ability and power to find peace, even with your mental “differences” (experiences as I like to call them). Just be you.

This takes loving yourself for who you are. And to love yourself you must be and aspire to be who you love .Once you do that, you will attract people to you that love you for who you are. People that can know you better than you know yourself, sometimes, but that still love YOU.

The first step if you’re struggling with any mental health disorder, is to seek psychiatric help. Sometimes you need some help clearing the cloud, the demons directions, so that you can get back on the path YOU want. You may not need medication or therapy forever, but they are amazing tools, and are just interventions for an ill mind like anyone would do for any other ill organ in the body. Secondly:

Connections with other likeminded and loving people. Hate to say it, this may or may not be your family and/or current friends. Be open to making connections with anyone one around you, especially if they’re reaching out. You never know who is meant to be in your life.

Love in all you think and do. But it’s ok to not think or be lovingly at times, because that’s the balance of life, but just try. Can’t hurt to try.

I love you. I can honestly say that. To know God is to know Love.

#mental health #mental disorder #ocd #suicde #love #anxitey #self help #life #testimonial #anoreixa #mental illness #mentally ill #mindset #addiction

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