Bricks in the Wall.

T/W: assault, drugs, abuse

It's been exactly a year now, to the day, since I was drowning in the epicentre of convulsions, depression, anxiety, & painfully crippling withdrawals. I remember on this day, saying to myself; "I can't do this anymore. I can't keep fighting. I am EXHAUSTED, & all I want is to come up for some air. Every single part of me has died." & yet - much to my gratitude - I did not quit. I've managed to tower over that hell of an ordeal & come out on the other side, able to look back in & feel so proud of myself for being as stubborn & headstrong as I am (for once).

I was medicated, heavily medicated I might add, at the very young age of 12. It was against my will, & was even a repercussion - for lack of better words, for my own fleeting youth, & the innocence of retaining my virginity being literally ripped from me, & in the process causing a full collapse on my mental state. It was a nightmare of an experience, & yet somehow that wasn't the worst part of it. The worst part came afterwards, as I was confronted in the halls in school for "acting inappropriately" & pulled into the school therapist's room for further "discussion". Let me be clear; I wasn't acting out of character for a 12 year old. I wasn't being "inappropriate". In fact, the only reason this particular school held such glaring eyes on me at all times was simply because I was "different".

Being the only goth in my entire hometown at the time, every single move I made was diligently watched, & subsequently dissected. I was "different", & the adults in this school didn't like that. My weird clothing & weird books, & the weird way I expressed myself artistically through (healthy) mediums such as writing & hair colour/makeup was jarring to them. An actual conversation this school therapist (read: flashlight therapist) had with my mom at one point was that she "needed" to dispose of all my dark clothing & force me to wear jeans, she "needed" to force me to choose between brown or blonde hair, no more of these unnatural colours, & that she "needed" to monitor what kind of literature I was reading & music I was listening to, & add censorship to essentially everything that made me feel comfort. Lucky for me, my mother found this conversation as ridiculous & gross as I do now.

So on this particular day, being incessantly pulled aside for absolutely no reason at all was not abnormal for me in this setting. But, being that my psychological state was very fragile, & I actually did need some manner of comfort, or at the very least a discussion on the events that had recently taken place, I attempted to open up, ever so slightly. This was when I was naive to the inhumanity of power trips imposed on young people by adults, whose only reason for doing or saying what they were was because "I'm older so what I say goes".

Jump cut to me being ridiculed into a pile of tears by a police officer that always hung around at the school -....for some reason? - for this assault happening to me obviously happening because of the way I dressed & how I expressed myself superficially. The identity of the boy that did this to me wasn't ever even poked at. I put faith into the justice system being able to keep this boy away from me, & I put faith in the mental health system being able to comfort me through such a trauma. If there was one thing I could do with the ability to go back in any time from my past & say one thing to myself, it would be to absolutely NEVER put any faith in any of the "higher ups" I would soon, & so often, encounter.

These adults that mocked, ridiculed, & guilted a literal child into taking the responsibility for a sexual assault happening, had me put on a 72-hour hold in a mental health facility. Read: ripped me away from any fleeting comfort I had left, & tossed me in a mental hospital sans any parental consent, or even discussion, where I was then force-fed - quite literally - high doses of antidepressants & antipsychotics. This was the beginning of one of the worst nightmares I've battled.

Dozens of doctors, therapists, psychologists, pills, & mental hospital "visits" later, I was drowning in a state of mental exhaustion from constantly having all these different medications tossed at me. They would switch them around weekly, essentially using me as their guinea pig, with but a mere cost of just my soul, as well as the ability for my brain to actually properly develop & not become an even bigger problem in the even bigger picture. I hated every aching, draining second of this madness, that went on to last years, up until I was 16 & ended up just walking out of a psychiatrist appointment & never coming back. Except, at this point I was already into a different batch of very toxic nightmares.

I was a pincushion for all the insecure boys in this town to be able to take their sexual frustrations out on, as word had gotten around that I was "easy to rape". I wish I was making that up. In an attempt to heal myself from this constant abuse & constant pain, I got into some very toxic relationships. One relationship in particular, was with meth. But at least meth gave me the ability to become fearless, & walk away from this town for good.

To keep things brief, as brief as I can anyway, I'll skip ahead 10 more years, to being 26. I was cycling through doctor after doctor, desperately trying to find means of pain management for a diagnosis of stage 4 endometriosis, as well as severe insomnia, & the way sleep deprivation fucks your head up. Instead, I was put on more antidepressants, but presented to me in the form of "pain & sleep management". It wasn't until I couldn't stand another dose that I did my own research & found out I was on copious amounts of anti-everythings. 6 pills in the morning, 5 in the afternoon, & 9 in the evening. How I didn't die is beyond me, but after having died twice before from drug related incidents, I've come to terms with my immortality.

In November of 2019, three years later & one year after my father's passing, I decided "this is it. I'm never taking another fucking prescription pill from these power tripping doctors, ever again." & I wasn't lying. But the road went to an abrupt uphill battle, knocking me to my bruised & battered knees almost immediately. The amount of times I woke up wishing I didn't wake up at all, & genuinely feeling pain in my chest from fearing this chemical nightmare would never end is countless. The amount of times I said I could no longer continue fighting, especially with nothing to fight for, was constant. But the amount of willpower I've managed to build up for myself from years of addiction, plus my sheer stubbornness ended up saving me. I ended up on the other side of that wall; somewhere I honestly never thought I could reach.

My story on medication doesn't go as a blanket statement over all forms of medication, or medical professionals for that matter. This is simply my story on it, & how it destroyed me in permanent ways, & how insanely disgusting full grown adults treated a child for no reason at all, other than "she's different & we don't like different". There was reason for my overwhelming depression at the time. I was mourning the theft of my innocence. I was never some "unpredictable misfit that must be treated before they become a danger to us all!", I was a fucking child, enduring very traumatic things that even adults have difficulty getting through.

If my experience could do anything for me, I would only want it to be of help for anyone else that may be/have been in a similar situation. Just because a medical professional is called a medical "professional", that doesn't mean they know what's best for your own body &/or mind better than you do. Get off that medication if you feel like you're chained to it, & you can eventually fight your way to the other side, just as I did. But it is absolutely a fight, & an exhausting one at that. The dark before the dawn seemed endless, but now that I've seen the dawn, I couldn't have imagined it could be so intoxicatingly captivating.

Everything fell into place, exactly as it was meant to, & now I get to rewrite my own blank slate.