I am a twenty-two year old writer from the East Coast of America. I am gender-queer, mentally ill, and disabled. I adore science, writing fiction, and being a mental health advocate.
You are not the sum of what your friends tell you. Despite what people say, no one knows you better than you know yourself. They receive a projection of you. You know how you are, and you know how you tick.
My therapist has a thing for drawing me charts that she hopes I bring home and post on my wall (I do). It ends up straining both my eyes and my mind. We tend to get into complicated conversations that involve chaos theory and the nature of humans. My most recent chart (a flow chart of such) describes how the past connects us to depression, the future to anxiety, and the present to calm and balance. But I have questions. As I usually do.
I am now in the throws of working towards my recovery. Like many others in recovery, you may find yourself making drastic life style changes. Whether that be working out, quitting smoking, picking days to socialize, and participating in therapies or support groups. Many of you may also find that it is bloody exhausting. For […]
I arrived at the hospital at 8pm. They tell me at 11pm that the psychiatrist is actually not here. So I will have to spend the night, and I would be seen in the morning. This was especially frustrating considering I was used to this. I have been generally ignored by physicians in emergency rooms most of my life. Especially as a mentally ill, disabled person. We are pushed to the back burner. Even in an ER that currently had three patients who were there for bone injuries.
These past months (as gone by my silence) have slowly burned me down to nothing. I took on too much took quickly, became everyone’s rock, and I forgot about myself.
My brothers death happened seven months ago. People are now telling me it’s time to pack his things away, time to dust his room (which is now my room). People are telling me it’s time to put him away.
But how am I meant to put away a life I am just beginning to grieve? And from this, I get asked; “Why do you feel this way now?”
I was diagnosed with anxiety/panic disorder at the age of seventeen, though my anxiety has been around for far longer. I am now twenty two years old, a caregiver, a partner, and a writer. So it has been shown to me through my own approaches to my anxiety that I have got some hang on myself. I am no expert. I am my own person who has lived with this mental illness my whole life, so I can only speak for myself and my approaches to easing the ever looming anxiety monster and hope that these tips some how aide in the anxiety of another.
I have no beautiful words to share or anything to make the pressing issue of coming out an easier one. I have nothing to offer but the advice I have been given and continue to follow in protection of myself.
It is very much okay to stay in. It is very much okay to find safety in the proverbial closet. Staying in, is in itself, sometimes needed for survival. It is okay to keep your sexuality/lack thereof, gender/lack thereof, tucked away and safe within your chest.
It remains difficult for some to fathom the weight of stigmatization that is carried on the backs of the millions diagnosed with mental illness each year. Mental illness is, indeed, an illness. A disorder of the mind that equally affects the body. Mental illness is something that can make living day to day extremely difficult, painful (both emotionally and physically), and nearly impossible.
The value of life, the value of your life, is one that will be questioned in variables and determined by the abundance of self help books with anonymous authors who will tell you a few basic things. These things, as I have learned through the many books “gifted” to me or sent to me in depressive episodes are this;
A life worth living, a life worth value, consists of:
A deeply engaged social life.
A job that pays high and treats you well.
A deep connection and a non wavering relationship with family members.
Extroversion and all it’s many gifts.
Love and fear of the Lord
A healthy diet and a light weight.
A loving heterosexual, romantic partner (unless you have Borderline Personality Disorder, then you should stay away from romantic or non-romantic attachments for the safety of others)
An adult attitude and an “adult” handling of emotions.