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How Mental Illness Affected My Life

Depression is not just sad girls on Tumblr.

By Linda FitchPublished 6 years ago 4 min read
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TRIGGER WARNING: sexual abuse, self harm, suicidal thoughts.

Throughout my life, I have struggled with various mental health issues. At a very young age, I faced trauma that no person should have to go through. Starting when I was just five years old, I had to learn how to begin coping with sexual abuse. For ten years, I worried about whether or not I would be able to sleep at night without my abuser coming into my room at some point while I slept. And I never told anyone, until about a year ago. I am nearly 21 now, and I still struggle with many things, because I was never able to healthily discuss what happened to me. I have never known how to talk about my trauma without making jokes about it, and unfortunately, that is not exactly the way to live after abuse.

At age ten, I lost my older brother. Since then, I have had far more struggles with my mental illnesses than I knew how to deal with. When I was only 12 years old, I turned to self-harm in order to cope with things that were happening in my life. I developed anorexia, because I was so terrified of gaining weight. I would go a week at a time without eating anything, and I would take pictures on my camera to track my weight loss progress. Until I was about 18, I self-harmed because it was the only way I knew to let out any sort of emotion. I could no longer cry unless I was hurting myself, and even then, tears were rare. I calmly mutilated myself, later tending to the wounds I had left on my own body. I did this for six years. While I have relapsed a couple of times since then, I have worked very hard to get to the mindset that I am at now. I still struggle with my eating disorder, but I have finally gained a healthy amount of weight.

When I was in high school, my mom wanted to send me to therapy. She was unaware of the abuse that I had suffered, but she knew about the self-harm. We were always a low income family, so there was no way that we could imagine being able to afford sending me to therapy. It always seemed like something that would forever be out of reach.

Now, as an adult with my own insurance, I have begun taking medication, and attending therapy sessions for the first time in my life. Being able to talk to a professional about my trauma, and having someone be able to tell me that what happened to me was not my fault, is the exact thing that my younger self needed when I was living the worst parts of my life. My support system today is so much greater than I ever could have imagined.

Due to my childhood trauma, I lost out on so much of my life as a kid. I was unable to handle situations rationally, and sometimes still struggle with being able to differentiate between things like abandonment and just forgetting to respond to a message. While I have been diagnosed with depression and my eating disorder, my therapist and I are in the works of discussing post traumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder, and attention deficit hyperactive disorder. I truly believe that if I had not faced what I had as a child, I would not be struggling as much with my mental health now as an adult.

Even still, after being on medication and seeing a therapist, I have bad days. Not bad days as in, feeling sad, but as in feeling so helpless that I am physically unable to get out of bed. Some days, I find myself completely unable to eat or drink anything. I can't get dressed, and I spend my time either on my bed or on the floor, hyperventilating because there are no more tears left for me to cry, and my lungs feel like they are shrinking in my chest.

But, more often than not, I am able to have good days. There are days that I feel the love from my friends and boyfriend, from my dog and my family. There are some days that the sun feels like the exact warmth I had been missing for years. More often than not, I feel incredibly happy to be alive, and I know that its because of this medication, and the wonderful lady I see once a week, and my amazing support system. I always thought that saying, "it gets better," was just a lie, just a saying in order to keep suicide statistics down. But, it's true. I faced suicidal thoughts constantly in my teens. But I have gotten better. It does actually get better.

*If you, or someone you know, is dealing with mental illness, know the signs. Learn what you can do to help. Research in order to fully understand what you can do, and understand what they are going through.

recovery
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About the Creator

Linda Fitch

Lover of hair, makeup, and skincare.

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