What are we but the sum of our memories and experiences? What if experiences are not remembered? What happens when that knowledge may be recovered? What does integration mean, really? What does it mean to be "multiple?" Separate experiences arise in separate states of conscious awareness. Each identity with their different set of memories stored, [...]
My strongest childhood memories are of headaches, backaches, sore legs, fatigue, and the constant feeling of needing to be small and of needing to hide. I presented to the world as a typical child. I was sometimes shy, sometimes outgoing, and usually very talkative. I went to ballet, jazz, tap dance, swimming, and piano lessons. [...]
Your dog ran away while you were at work. It’s okay, though, because we found her. I wasn’t sure how to process this text from my 18-year-old sister Gretchen, mostly because she had picked up the dog from the animal shelter two hours before sending it. She and her friend Gabby had been driving to [...]
by Lindsay Holmes Trigger Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of suicide and self-harm. In his song “Hurts So Good,” John Mellencamp had it almost right. Sure, love may sometimes hurt good, but not in the way I’m talking about. I’m referring to the sweet burning release from pressing and [...]
I had a traumatic childhood. My father was an addict, chronic hoarder, paranoid schizophrenic and a dealer. Whilst he never hurt me directly, the clientele he let into his house was a different story. For most of my young life, each day was an endless tedium of boredom and neglect punctuated by moments of intense [...]
Depression. You ask me: "what does depression look like?" Well, depression can be many things or just one thing at once. Sometimes, depression doesn’t look like anything; Sometimes depression is hidden. Depression has traits that are hard to understand. Depression looks like hands of a stranger coming up behind you grasping your neck, leaving little [...]
She had been the fearless one, entrapped in a perception that she had created for so long. She listened silently as her friends commented on the latest news. Another famous person had taken their own life. “What a waste” one said “I don’t feel sorry for them, they had everything,” Said another “Why?” was heard [...]
I lay here, curled under the covers at 1 p.m. Motionless, I stare at the curtain blocking the world out. Sometimes I think it ripples, feeling the breeze against the window. The overnight rain has subsided but I guess there’s more to come. The dark cloud of depression has settled itself in my room. Stretching [...]
This mental health office is pretty nice for a government room. There are ferns and lush ivy, and they seemed to be thriving. There are maps and trinkets all over, as if someone real works here. As if they might have a real name and maybe a whole life outside of these four walls. As [...]
I was voted most likely to succeed as a high school senior. Like so many things in my life, it surprised me. I thought I understood success, but I was wrong. My first year at Ohio State, I fell head-over-heels in love and married the next summer. A month after my wedding, newly 19, I [...]
