*** I don’t often believe in making trigger warnings, I feel that people should read the hard stuff to be able to handle the reality of this world. However, I can’t imagine forcing somebody to read the hard stuff while likely expecting my usual therefore PLEASE BE AWARE OF THE DISCUSSION ABOUT TO HAPPEN IN THS POST. If you or your loved one reading over your shoulder may feel anxious or afraid reading about mental health, please choose to read this surrounding those that you trust and can speak to.
Before you close this out; I know what you’re thinking. “Ugh, more of this BS. Just medicate yourself, do what makes you happy, stop acting so miserable, maybe do good things.” Before you leave, ask yourself this; if something like a liver disease happened to you, you would get a liver transplant. So then what if your brain developed an illness? You cannot receive a new brain. I assume you may choose to live with it, regardless of the incurrences proceeding after this illness. Very much like someone with mental health concerns do daily. There is no replacement, there is solely adapting to live with the illness. I wish I could emphasize to you just how difficult that may be to somebody with mental illness in their lives. Believing that mental illness does not exist, that it is solvable through very obvious (and wrong) things, that my friend makes you a callous imbecile and I have no time for you, the exit button is on the top left of your browser. ***
So here it goes.. I was not even a preteen when I had my first depressive break down. A highly anxious and depressed child quickly spiralled as I grew into my teens, anything was worth making up for the feelings that I felt; I used drugs to feel anything after never feeling for years on handfuls of different medications. After befriending people much older than I, I made decisions that a girl my age today would never have considered. I risked my life with strangers (and not even the regular kinds but the drug dealing kind, the “20 years too old for me” kind, the kind who picked up 13 year old girls on the side of the road to take her to the liquor store and asked her to come hangout), I drank and drove with all of my “too old for me” friends around in their cars before I could even hold a learner’s license, I did anything and everything that I possibly could to either evade my negative thoughts. 13 year old Neesh would do anything if it meant avoiding sobriety… or I’d just smoke enough cigarettes in a day to kill a horse in hopes that it would slow my anxious heart down just enough to get through whichever class in school I decided to attend for that month.
I was an intelligent girl, far surpassing my grade on the street, attending the few classes I needed to pass the course and if I didn’t, I had the social inept to pursuade my teacher into omitting whatever was necessary to allow me to take my provincial. I was not failing, I was mediocre, but I was getting through. Somehow, over the course of my four “dark years”, I succeeded. Even if I could not tell you what day it was or recall the previous three months of my life. It was what I considered at the time manipulation at it’s finest.
It didn’t end until the day that I was sleeping on some drug dealer’s couch for the third week in a row after running away from home and an addict broke through the front glass window and nearly stabbed my chest with a piece of the window that I decided this was not the way to solve my mental health conflicts. I went home and locked myself in my room, I cut out these people in my life and went through a difficult withdrawal, drenched in sweat, shaking, vomiting, and just laying on my bedroom floor crying in agony as my memories returned and reminded me of all of the god awful things I had done in the last three years. I had no will to live, to this day I am not quite certain what it was that kept me alive. I was 14 when I quit this stage of my life. No person that knew me before, during or afterwards had known just how bad it had gotten, no person knew how much I wanted to end my life throughout that time or through the withdrawals. I was fourteen years old.
I was 15 when I dropped out of high school. My vice principal spent hours a week with me one on one. She believed in me regardless of the shit that I had caused at this high school. She realized my potential and could see that it was not because of what I did that caused this disconnect with traditional highschool, but rather, she realized that I needed something different. This was not my way. She encouraged me to leave. From that day, I had different attempts in my efforts of graduating. Nobody understood why I could not handle this streamlined version of success aside from this VP. It wasn’t until I left and attended a learning centre where my English teacher approached me on lunch break and realized I had been reading a college based novel that I was recognized again for my level of intellect.
I cycled through different stages of handling my mental health. The years proceeding the dark years, I remained relatively sober. I drank heavily for a couple of years to handle the hate I had for my young self, I partied for some in attempt to prove to myself that I was not an addict anymore. There are many more dark times along these years, some include a psych ward and a large amount of one-on-one psychotherapy, others include even further traumas that lead me into a state of hate and depression even worse than my early years, but after extensive practice and a lot of stubborn growth, I learnt how to bottle things up or isolate and hide with them (we’re evidently not done with my coping mechanisms yet). I have been medicated at times, but for the most part I have actively chosen not to be while working extensively on my well-being. I have survived sexual assault, physical abuse, emotional control, friends that shut me out and secluded me, family that couldn’t decide whether they hated or loved me, and even losing the desire to live.
Today, I consider myself a social drinker. I am 26 now, I still get into trouble every so often but it isn’t the same trouble that I see people near my age getting into today. In my time of “sobriety” (I didn’t drink for two years) I thought that everything would improve, I have worked so tremendously hard on my mental health. I began reflecting, journalling, writing publicly, learning to share my thoughts and emotions. I learnt how to let people love me (sort of) and how to reciprocate said love, I taught myself how to get active and notice my triggers or actions when I begin to fall back into the ruts of darkness, and most importantly, I learnt when to socialize myself when it got to that point that nobody seems to want to speak of. I’d pushed myself through tremendously dark times of hurt, misery, disgust, hate, loss, guilt, embarrassment. I’d thought if I could handle all of this shit, I must have ridden of this illness, I thought it would all go away.
But that is not how it works. You cannot cure this. It does not go away. Instead, one has to learn how to cope and speak your truths in how one feels. One needs to be able to ask for an ear or an embrace and not feel ashamed because of how hard it is to speak about. Unfortunately most people never receive the opportunity to even seek the help that they so desperately want.
I’m going to share some information that should be evident: I have been suicidal. I know people that are currently suicidal. My friends have called as they held a gun to their head on more than one occasion. Myself and so many close to me have already lost far too many incredible human beings to mental health. Many of us are only okay because we spoke, because we asked shamelssly for help in such desperation to live. It is not easy to do. Mental health is not a rare disease that no person has ever witnessed; 4000 Canadians commit suicide every year, 1 in 5 Canadians will personally experience mental illness, 8% of all Canadian adults will have a major depressive stage of their lives. THIS IS NOT A RARE DISEASE. It is common. It should be treated as such, it should be okay to be afraid of your own self and mind, it should be okay to ask for assistance, it should not have to feel shameful to express your thoughts.
To this day I still seek professional help when I require it. I had a counsellor two years ago, I have one again today. Therapists are an incredible tool to keep close to you and speak to regularly. Get used to the idea of having one, because the day you really need one it will feel like you must move mountains to get to the point of actually meeting one, let alone a stage that you want to be with them when you genuinely do need help.
I wrote this this evening because this morning I learnt that yet another person close to me has ended his life. It was not very long ago that this happened in the same friend circle. We spoke of mental illness often, we shared inspirations, we discussed our struggles, but he never once shared his thoughts of suicide. Neither of them did actually. It pains me to learn this and realize that they both, were to ashamed of speaking out on just how badly they felt inside. I hope that no person has to experience the loneliness and sadness that comes to one that makes this decision.
I share this hesitantly but shamelessly because I want to impact change. I want to normalize this discussion in hope that you may see how dark life can become, but that you can see the light at the end of the road. If you made it this far in my novel, you would know that I have a brighter outlook in life and try to find the good in all of it. I know that my life is in no way a perfect picture of what a good outcome in mental health is, but I hope that it’s enough for you to feel human as well. I hope that I overshared enough for you to feel comfort in wanting to reach out, regardless of to who that may be, if you need it. You don’t even need to need it, maybe you are simply sad one day and want somebody nearby. Whatever it is, I hope that you are never afraid to speak up. Please do. You are so immensely valued.
Before I go, I challenge you to one thing… Please take the time to assess how to speak to those around you and ask yourself this very hard question; “Am I helping or hurting this person by the things or actions that I choose when interacting with them?” That right there, “helping or hurting“, that is the most important piece of information that you can give yourself when assessing what and who you are to those around you. We have this tiny mundane power that makes such an impact on individuals. Put more good out into the world, attempt to follow a “helping” morality in day-to-day life and maybe, just maybe, put in that little bit more to assure that you are there without judgement for those close to you so that one day a person is able to stay in our lives a little while longer.
Thank you.
I have attached a few links to mental health awareness and help directories below:
https://www.camh.ca/en/driving-change/the-crisis-is-real/mental-health-statistics
https://suicideprevention.ca/need-help/
https://letstalk.bell.ca/en/get-help
Dedicated to Jerid & CraigThank you for putting smiles on all of our faces; All without showing just how hard it was to put on yours.Rest well my friends, we love you.
Neesh Media 