This is a 4-part blog and will span over May – August 2021.
In honor of National Mental Health month, I’d like to share with you my mental health journey over the next few months. My goal, as always, is to share my experience, strength and hope, so that it might help YOU, the reader and/or others. Please like and share to spread the healing of feeling connected through telling our stories.
Some of you have read my book: Life Launch! Surviving the Storms of Physical and Sexual Abuse, Book One, in which I weave my mental health history and some of my family’s, throughout. It chronicles the first 25 years of my life.
Here, in my May 2021 blog, I will chronicle the first 25 years of my mental health journey and a brief summary of my family’s mental health history.
When I was in 3rd grade, I started having migraines and sleep-walking nightmares. The sleep-walking nightmares lasted a few months, but the migraines have never gone away completely. I have learned quite a few techniques to reduce the frequency of my migraines, but I do still occasionally suffer from migraines.
Starting from approx. 1972 (9 y.o.) through 2005, I wanted to either “disappear” or end my life at least a half dozen times. This portion of my mental health history will go over the first 4 times:
The first time I felt unloved and like I wanted to disappear, I was between 9-11 yrs old (3rd-6th grade). I could feel that my large family (6 siblings, 2 parents) “didn’t like me”, so I pretended to leave the house one night after dinner because I “knew” they were going to talk about me after I was gone. When I snuck back inside after opening and closing the garage, pretending to leave the house, I heard them talking about what a big mouth and pain in the ass I was. Either that night, or shortly thereafter, I decided to run away. I prepared a “Huckleberry Finn” stick, with a bandana attached to the end that I had placed a few “essentials” in, and I “ran away” to the stand of pine trees behind the houses across the street from us. I was afraid to go any further, and I felt safe and protected by the pine trees around and the pine needles underneath me. As darkness started to fall, I started thinking, imagining, that my mom might be worried about me. I couldn’t stop thinking about what my mom must be going through if she knew I had run away and she couldn’t find me. After about 15 minutes of that, I decided to go back home because I didn’t want my mom to worry. When I got home, no one had noticed that I was even missing. No one was worried about me and no one noticed that I had come back. It was like I was invisible, like a ghost.
This marked the first time in my life that I seriously thought about how I could somehow, just go away and never come back. I remember I became very quiet and morose for the next couple of days. Only one sister seemed to notice and care enough to ask me what was wrong. I told her that “nobody loves me”. She tried to assure me that the family loved me, but I was positive that was not true and argued back with her that they didn’t. She then said, “well, I love you” – and that was like GOLD for me. It was the only thread I had to feeling loved, worthwhile, and accepted. I believe her words saved my life that day.
*At this age, I started cutting on myself.
**Just about a year later, my oldest sibling and only brother was killed in a car accident – I feel it’s necessary to mention here because I started using alcohol immediately before his death and abusing drugs and alcohol immediately after. So, that contributed greatly to the decline of my mental health – I had only just turned 13 yrs old.
The first time I remember wanting to disappear by actually ending my life, was when I was 15 yrs old. My mom told me that she found a “Romeo and Juliet” type letter of a suicide pact between my boyfriend and myself at the time.
I don’t recall that, but I remember telling my mom, after she was verbally putting me down again for not doing things right (“If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself!”), that “it won’t matter anyway…” After she realized what I meant, she sent me to a counselor, who saved my life at that stage.
He taught me techniques that I could use to relax my mind and body; and also, how to slow down conversations that were getting out of hand – which helped me feel that I had slightly more control over myself and my environment – which, again, was life-saving to me at that time in my life.
***It must be noted that several other traumatic things happened in my life and surroundings at this age, which contributed to the decline of my mental health, despite this good counseling: a good friend from my HS and neighborhood killed himself by GS wound to his head over a relationship break-up; another HS classmate ended his life by hanging because of his shame and embarrassment that he wrecked his Dad’s car; I lost my virginity; I was hit by a car jaywalking and broke my wrist while running drugs from the ex-con at the gas station to my classmates waiting at our HS; a very close friend from our “gang” was killed in a drunk driving accident while riding home from a party with a pile of our friends in the car and one of them was the drunk driver; I was having a sexual relationship with an adult man, however, I was below the age of consent.
At about 17 yrs old, I was bulimic for about a year. I specifically remember my reason for doing it was that I wanted my parents – at least one of them – to notice and to tell me to stop. But after a few months, they never did notice or tell me to stop, so I realized that this was not “working” and I was able to stop, thank goodness.
Also, at 17 yrs old, I got pregnant and secretly had an abortion. I asked my girlfriend to pay for it because I had no money of that magnitude (about $400) and my boyfriend, the father, wanted nothing to do with me or it, to the point that he disappeared into a cave for the week – spelunking. I carried much shame and guilt about that for many years.
At 19 yrs old, I was raped twice within my first 4 months away at college – I felt embarrassed, ashamed and at fault because I was drunk both times and had lost control of my body – couldn’t fight off the perpetrators.
At 20 yrs old, just before graduating college, I became pregnant again and had another abortion because my boyfriend didn’t want it, however, we did get secretly married the following month – just a few days before I turned 21 yrs old.
While on my honeymoon, I received a call that my first cousin, who was only 2 years older than me, had killed herself. We cut our honeymoon short to attend her funeral. Needless to say, I felt terribly sad, devastated and shocked.
The first time I heard a diagnosis was about a year later. I was married, living in another state, working and had started going to counseling on my own – mainly because my husband and I were fighting a lot. She told me the DSM number she was using. When I asked her what that meant, she said it was kind of like I walk around with a dark cloud overhead most of the time – so, a mild form of depression.
By the age of 25 yrs old, my divorce from husband #1 was final. I felt like a failure because my marriage failed and I couldn’t fix it. I also felt that old familiar guilt and shame. This resulted in a very serious mental obsession with wanting to kill myself – first during the separation and second after the divorce.
During the separation, I was dating someone who kept breaking up with me – rejecting me. That plus the shameful messages growing up of “what’s wrong with you?”, made me want to take a whole bottle of pills that would put me to sleep forever – but I didn’t have a resource for that. I called a friend and told her what I was thinking and wanting to do – she came to my rescue – picked me up from where I was right then, and brought me into her home until I was able to move out on my own a couple of years later.
Shortly thereafter, I was starting to think I might be an alcoholic and drug addict – which was yet ANOTHER thing for me to feel ashamed and embarrassed about. The 6th time this boyfriend broke up with me, (now I was divorced), I felt like walking into the middle of a very busy highway. I called back home that day and ended up getting the support that I need from my father, mainly, and enough from my mother to help me feel a sliver of hope. This was the day that I started going to AA and NA.
I was 25 years old and it was May 1988. I didn’t know it then, but joining AA and NA were going to help to transform my life! It was a BIG step in my road to mental health and recovery from addiction. I was still very sick, and there were many more tragic and traumatic events yet to come, but there was also a whole lot of healing yet to be done, and the 12 – step programs helped to set me on that path and to clear my mind, body and spirit-soul of the “wreckage of my past”, so that I could be an open vessel for the healing resources that I would stumble upon (God would bring me), either directly or through connections with others.
****To be continued****
My Personal message and commitment to YOU!:
Since writing and publishing my book – Life Launch! Book One, I have committed to helping others get through their life’s traumas, by sharing my experience, strength and hope with mine – through podcasts, stages, my website/ this blog, and Social Media: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram.
But also, I committed to donate 15% of the proceeds of all of the sales that come from my Life Launch series of books, and any of the other educational products related – including my Self-Guided Web Course: Arise! Mind, Body, Spirit Healing and the other healing resources you will find at my Mind, Body, Spirit Healing Institute.
