I’m one of the lucky ones. Mental illness enslaved me when it locked its sturdy chains around my hands and feet in the late 1990s. But I fought back – strongly and fiercely. Not only against the curse of the illness itself, but against the curse of the stigma it uses to plague its victims. [...]
Trigger warning *talk of suicide I’m a walking. talking contradiction…at least in my mind. Living with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder makes me feel like a complete hypocrite because of my contradictory thoughts. I’m simultaneously stressing out about all the things I want and need to do while I have many thoughts that [...]
Darkness surrounds me and I feel as though I can’t breathe. All I want to do is sleep and cry, but then I see a light at the end of the tunnel. I try to get up, but it’s like something is holding me down so I can’t move. I try to move but it [...]
The faces of mental illness put forward by the world never match mine. They’re nearly always white rather than brown, as I am; they’re generally wild eyed or in the context of violence or out of control. That’s not how the people in my life describe me, and even those closest to me often miss [...]
The day I disclosed the abuse to my supervisor at work, it had already manifested as a critical issue that needed to be addressed. She and I were alone in that office as I sat in silence staring at the floor, too ashamed and too frightened to force the words from my mouth. He was [...]
In June 2005, I was returning to the United States from my first deployment. As soon as my unit landed, there was a lot of fanfare from the public. I truly felt like a “hero” because our unit helped facilitate the first election in Iraq. My job as an electronic technician, was to maintain communication [...]
The first time I thought about killing myself, I was five years old. I was rocking back and forth, holding myself and crying, while hiding underneath a pile of clothes on the floor of my closet. My sexual abuse started three years earlier, and would continue for another seven. The signs were all there: acting [...]
BACK THEN It all started when I was about 7 years old. My parents fought a lot. My dad often abused my mom by doing terrible things to her. I would often hear her cry and scream and there would be sounds of glass breaking , chairs being thrown, or anything breaking , really. I [...]
DON’T BELIEVE MY SMILE: A COLLAGE I.“You’re not depressed,” my depressed friend said to me, laughing. Our hostess swept by with a tray of hors d’oeuvres and another friend, glass in hand, joined our circle. My friend was so sure about my mood, citing reasons like my extroversion, my smile. It wasn’t easy to insist, [...]
When I was three years old, my parents divorced. My mother, suffering from bipolar disorder and not knowing how she could raise a child on her own, attempted suicide. I have vivid memories of her return from the hospital: she was so sedated that she could not pick me up. With the dissolution of my [...]
