The Rawness of My Mental Health

This paper is going to be about mental health and my journey through it without any form of sugarcoating; I want to introduce the real and raw me. Mental illness is a hurricane that starts off by stripping the color from your world, and then perhaps even your identity depending on the severity. The shades of color that were so vivid and bright suddenly dull and fade to gray, and you have no idea how it happened. Your world slipped through your fingers. You plead and beg the universe to let your mind stop swirling for half of a second, please just silence all of the chaotic happenings, but no matter how much you plead for that control, unfortunately, getting to a point where things do start getting quiet and coping mechanisms become less harmful takes an incredible amount of work.

My first panic attack was in 6th grade at my very first dance, a Halloween dance to be exact, and it was the scariest thing that my eleven-year-old self had experienced. I still remember cowering in the corner of my middle school cafeteria, lined up against the wall in uniform with the folded tables. My throat tightened to the point where it kept my quickened breath in my lungs, my chest rose and fell in irregular pattern, sweat started to fill the palms of my hands, and all that I felt I could do in that moment was collapse to the floor. Finally, a hand reached out to me and brought me from this other world back into the reality in which we lived. The principal of the school, who now stood in front of me, was the only figure who I could make out of the uncanny silhouettes that were dancing and conversing. Her outstretched hand led me outside to get some fresh air, and soon enough my mom drove to my rescue. Unfortunately, the first dance that I had ever attended ended in tears and the start of my journey through mental illness and trying to gain a sense of control.

I can best describe anxiety as the famous piano piece “Flight of a Bumblebee” by Korsakov, so intense with so much going on, chaotic. The keys that hit are being touched so quickly, and you must move at a rapid pace in order to keep up as the staff keeps going on with more notes leading measure after measure, the time signature urging you to keep up the pace. Yes, you’re doing it, you have some control, you’re moving through the piece at the demanded speed, your piece is coming together, there is beautiful music surrounding you as each finger is lifted from the black and white keys; however, this skill requires so much practice in order to make these notes manageable and playable. There is so much time and patience to gain that kind of control over those notes as opposed to becoming frustrated and just slamming keys, just as there is so much that goes into controlling anxiety in order to make it manageable and less daunting.

People might not stereotype anxiety symptoms as so blatantly harmful or a way of losing yourself to your thought patterns. Most people stereotype personality disorders as more harmful than anxiety disorders. Some might say that people who suffer from these disorders are fragments of people with no true and complete sense of self, just pieces of a mosaic on a wall. A vague sense of self is a symptom of borderline personality disorder (BPD); sufferers might feel as if they have no identity, believing that the fragments of their mosaic don’t line up and make beautiful pictures. They look at themselves and believe that their sense of self is so unclear that others might see them the same way, as random pieces that don’t quite fit together; I can confidently say this as someone who deals with BPD.

I am no monster as the stereotypes might declare me to be; I am just an individual who has undergone so much weathering throughout her short life that it just happened to have such an impactful effect, which translated into her malleable brain as a child and haunted her into adulthood. The haunting calls for me to find control; I need to gain control to make up for what control I might have lost as a young girl. Before my therapies, behaviors such as needing to control outcomes, becoming angered over events that I could not control, or doing opposite of what was expected, such as wearing different clothes than my peers or being involved in different activities, were factors that had played into my early journey of BPD and a need for control. Behaviors such as these became extremely harmful and had only progressed into worse, where I would go to the point of mirroring others’ personalities to control how much they liked me. I would mirror their personalities to fit into what I thought that they might want to see from me, and while I gained a sense of control for their liking of me, I lost control over my sense of self. I had a major identity crisis all due to the fact that my mental illness wanted me to constantly be someone who I was not. What a tragedy for a late middle school student to experience.

I wanted so badly to be happy and accepted by my peers after being bullied for my appearances, relationships, and even likes. I needed them to love me. Why couldn’t they love the person who I was? If they didn’t like who I was, then I would simply become them and cater to their likes and dislikes, swaying my opinions of different people, hobbies, music, and anything in between depending on the person who I was talking to. I would do this for my parents too, specifically my dad. My dad was a big reason why I shifted my personality and identity so often; in fact, I think that a lot of it stemmed from him. My dad playing such a small part in my life made me question how I could be enough for not only him, but others, because if I wasn't enough for him, how could I ever be enough for anyone else? I would control how he liked me; he could create his second family, or replacement family as my brother and I call them, but I could control where he ‘ranked’ us. I could control how we would always be his number one priority. As a spoiler, I could not, he definitely sees them over my brother and me, but from this and through my therapies over the years, I’ve learned that the best form of control comes from realizing and accepting that you cannot have much control at all.

Now, I have revived my sense of self and the pieces to my mosaic have created a whimsical and authentic piece. The colors of my mosaic are vivid and bright after being dulled for so long; they just needed to be cleaned and appreciated for what they were. I couldn’t control the fragments that were dealt to me, so appreciating what they were and how beautifully they complimented each other to make up this artwork was the best thing that I could do. I might have some cracked pieces, but knowing that I have moved into healthier and much less harmful coping mechanisms for control has been the best thing that I could do for myself and my wonderfully captivating mosaic that is myself.