My story begins when I was around 8 years old, I’d been ill with nausea and vomiting. I’d never knowingly been sick before. I remember feeling frightened. I remember feeling a total lack of control over my body. Over the following weeks and months I can remember becoming obsessed with making sure I wasn’t sick [...]
On April 9th 2008, I was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer – osteosarcoma of the femur. At the tender age of fourteen, I wasn’t too concerned about it. It didn’t even occur to me that I could die from it. Something was telling me that I would be just fine and my [...]
The pigeon man fills his hands, with morsels caked in time He pilfers through the garbage can, so birds will flock to dine Talons cling to threadbare skin, impervious to tears Grownups judge while children grin, as droppings drench his hair Treasured by this vagrant, is bond of bird and man I stroll on by [...]
The Call of the Void "You know when you have so much stuff to do, but thinking about it makes you stressed out, and then that stress keeps you from doing anything? Well you have anxiety, you know what I'm talking about right?" My coworker asked me while leaning against the beige wall of my [...]
Riding passenger with my mother traveling back to my lux two-bedroom apartment, I suddenly burst into tears. She sat confused, and bewildered. I later learned symptoms of mental illness usually strike in the early 20's of many young adults. I can attest to this fact, they hit hard. Unable to truly express my feelings the [...]
FRIENDS? __________________________________________ Dear friend, Today is a terrible day, I wish it was just bad. Funny, how we miss things once we lose them… I will take bad days over terrible days any day. I am back to pretend life… pretend you are not dying inside with every breath you take… pretend that you are [...]
Most men and women will grow up to love their pity servitude and will never dream of doing something good for others. Therefore they will never experience what I have experienced in the last half year. I like to refer to my life before I worked in psychiatry as “naïve-ism.” My existence as I once [...]
The Monster in the Bed When anxiety rears its ugly head. I was always a nervous kid. When my classmates were jumping off the top of the monkey bars, I was worried about broken bones. I was cautious and timid. Really, I was scared. If anyone had asked me what I was scared of, I [...]
I was taken advantage of -over and over again- at points in my life that I needed to be supported and protected. Started with age three until eight, I'm raped and molested. Funny thing, PTSD. It does a great job at hiding the screams of the innocent child, stuffed inside the adult. I grew up, but screaming [...]
THE LIES THAT SAVE YOU Anxiety was a tiny flower that grew in the deep shade of my childhood’s fairy tale garden. As it curled open, its petals were an exploding snap of OCD, situational panic disorder, and slight claustrophobia/agoraphobia. I also exhibited signs of Asperger’s and, by my late teens, had developed BDD (Body [...]
