It's breaking my heart...this divide. It's tearing me apart. The drama, the perceived slights, the resentment, and bickering...this isn't what I imagined we would become. Growing up, it was always us. Sisters. Blood is thicker than water. Our parents raised us to look out for one another, to support one another in each new endeavor. [...]
The rock. The warm hug. The one you call. The one who would listen. The one who didn’t judge. That was me. I wasn’t a person with mental illness. I was a person who had friends with mental illness. Amazing, one of a kind, incredible, motivating, strong friends that I loved and admired very much. [...]
I am staring at the scissors in my hands and I am shaking. I am twelve and I don’t know that I can simply take the screen out of the window. I assume that I have to cut it away. I assume that even ending my pain will be difficult. I assume that I cannot [...]
For everyone with depression, the experience is different. But you wouldn't know it from our societal image of the black dog. A million and one cookie-cutter 'signs and symptoms' pieces online, will blithely tell you the things to look for. Sleeping too much or not enough, isolating, lack of personal care and loss of interest, [...]
What's it Like to Feel Crazy? The other day at work, I couldn’t take any more. I grabbed my water bottle and keys and followed the road near my office complex until it led me to the highway. For 45 minutes, I drove. Where I went didn't matter. The trees blurred past my car windows [...]
Wrestling for Control of My Mental Health Mental illness is a unique issue in that everybody has an opinion about what it is, how to treat it, the use/efficacy of medication, etc. Often, the person suffering doesn’t have a voice. In the past, I worked as a caretaker and nursing assistant for patients with physical [...]
TINYLETTER.COM/CRYING Eve Peyser I began sending out a newsletter every time I cried because I thought it would be funny. A compulsive journaler obsessed with keeping track of my various mental health issues—depression, anxiety, severe suicidal ideation, ADHD—I never had much desire to keep any of my mental health issues a secret. Talking about what [...]
Spectrum. It's a lovely, loaded word. I like it. Disorder? Thats where you're wrong, kiddo. I have Asperger's Syndrome. What I've just told you tells you nothing. If you meet one person with Autism, you've met only one kind of Autism. The potentialities of the human mind are infinite. Our neurons separate us from the [...]
My heart is telling me I need to leave and get out of town. My stomach is so nervous, it is threatening to wage a war and force me to completely shut down. This stupid blinking line is taunting me, saying I’m too scared to write the about ripples of 2016 that shattered me. Why [...]
I was born in the state of infancy to a working-class couple who were young and inexperienced. By the end of their 20s they had four children, the third of which was me. I was a very anxious baby such that I screamed and cried in my mother’s absence. I was so inconsolable I had [...]
