Minds

I used to think that I would only be happy if I came as close to being “neurotypical” as possible. I thought that I needed to be cured to live a whole, fulfilling life (which is one of the downsides of the medicalization of our struggles, but that’s a story for another day).

I made the decision to come out of the mental illness closet and face the world without fear or shame. My son will grow up in a house that doesn’t stigmatize mental illness, but instead, strives to understand it.

All day, you eagerly anticipate finding just 30 minutes to chill out, catch up with your significant other, and relax into sleep. But the problem is... though your body is ready to plop down on the sofa and decompress, your brain is still going a mile a minute. It's stuck in "go-go-go" mode. As a result, you're there with your loved ones, but you're not really present. You think, What's wrong with me? Why can't I relax?

I need to know that you love me with all of my brokenness. I need to know that you can see me in my most self-destructive, fucked up place, and you won’t flinch. I need to know that you understand the darkness and that the darkness is a part of you, too.

There were pills for the pain, but there was nothing that could help me forget that my boyfriend didn’t truly care about me. I couldn’t swallow a drug and turn my partner into someone who not only wanted to take my pain away, but believed that I was in pain at all. There wasn’t a prescription a doctor could write that would make my despair believable. There wasn’t a cure for my boyfriend’s apathy.

As an adult, I’ve experienced more trauma than I ever knew possible. Between multiple sexual assaults, the unexpected death of my first child, the highly traumatic birth of my second child and his subsequent months spent in the NICU, I am often surprised that I am still standing.

I went to my first therapist when I was a teenager. My family was dysfunctional to the point of being non-functional. If a decision needed to be made about custody arrangements, my parents were incapable of making it without me. Instead, I was the mediator (and had been since I was a young child), speaking first to my father on the phone and then relaying the message to my mother.

The issue is that most people don’t recognize these inherent strengths that they actually have. These quirks in the personality or physiology, or experiences or family background, that make certain activities so much easier for them.