I’m Still Fighting For Joy
My own mind has been telling me I’m wrong, awful, fat, stupid, worthless, not deserving of happiness, better off dead, all of it, since I was about 12. I started coping by overeating, hurting my friends emotionally and pretending to be happy. I didn’t know why these thoughts were attacking my self esteem, so I tried to come up with reasons. I thought the uncontrollable emotions were punishing me because I had made mistakes in my past. I couldn’t forgive myself and the self hatred grew and grew as I thought about every little thing I had done, and I believed I caused more harm than good. Because of my negative self worth, people manipulated me. I thought if I gave everyone what they wanted at my own expense I could make up for my mistakes. I got so depressed that I stopped doing quality school work and the perfectionist part of me added my bad grades to my list of flaws.
I had anxiety and I coped by cutting, isolating myself, compulsive exercise and restricting calories. That was all by the ninth grade. In the first two weeks of tenth grade my suicidal thoughts became so bad that my friends called the cops on me. I didn’t want to go to therapy because I thought that would mean I was a psycho and I would have to hate myself for that, too. I had grown up with so much stigma in me against anything perceived as lazy or a failure. The therapy didn’t help at first. I surrounded myself with people who understood me, so they also were suffering. One of my closest friends starting cutting and drinking and doing drugs. Another friend took pills but survived. Eventually I couldn’t handle the self hatred and the manipulation and not meeting expectations and not being enough for anyone, so I took some pills.
I went to the mental hospital and got started on medication and put in even more therapy. It didn’t help. I went back to the hospital a month after getting out. I got a disability plan with my school, I got tutors, and I brought my grades up. People were nice enough, but I felt invisible and worthless. I should have felt proud after passing all my classes that tumultuous year, but I was still so depressed. That summer, I tried drugs, alcohol, cut even more, etc. I told me therapist about my suicide plan and went to residential treatment. I ran away, then jumped from hospital to hospital for a long time. I had no hope and all I thought about was how I could hurt myself more. I even resorted to cutting with my retainer. I was having nightmares, homicidal thoughts, and was gaining weight because I stopped caring.
But then I found hope. The psychiatrist suggested a fast acting antipsychotic. Within days, I was a new person. I could hear my own self instead of just the negativity. I know it doesn’t work like that for everyone. And it didn’t solve everything. When I was released, I was still having panic attack every day pretty much. A few weeks into school, I had to get stitches in the ER for self harm. But I was starting to recognize happiness. I began to smile again. I began to sing again. I picked my guitar back up. I gained forty pounds and my life was still hell, but I had hope. I think that’s really what changed things for me. The medication helped balance my mood, but it mostly gave me hope. I realized I actually did have a self, and that self wanted to help people and pet dogs and learn about plants.
The thoughts never went away, but the medication and Dialectal Behavioral Therapy and the hope instilled in me, those things made it so I am here today. I have not cut for over a year, and I am all set to graduate high school in June. The negative thoughts are still bad, I think about suicide passingly probably every day. The difference between the beginning of my journey and now is that I have found I am a person worth being. I have fought and fought, and I have come so far that I am not willing to give up. I can make my own choices about who I am. That is not up to the critics out there who call me selfish or inconsiderate or fat or melodramatic. My being is up to me. I am choosing to live and I am choosing to be me and I am choosing to move forward no matter what.
There’s a lot of stigma against us. People like us get called nutjobs, or psychos, or lazy bums. The most important thing is finding help so that you can learn who you really are. You aren’t any of the insults they call you. You are that core part of yourself that knows right from wrong, finds humor and hope, and wants to make a difference. You don’t have to save the world to be worth staying alive. Sometimes all you have to do is save yourself and go from there.
There is hope. Reach out and you will find it in the concern of others, the shining of the sun, the smiles of children, and in your own ability to keep standing back up after falling. You’ve gotten this far. Keep going. The storm will pass. The spring will come. I’m still looking for consistent happiness, but my journey has given me the hope that it’s out there.
