Dear Thirteen: You’re Not Crazy, It’s Mental Illness

When people talk about childhood fears; I often indulge them with the fact that clowns used to freak me out, or I tell them about my dad showing us the film Arachnophobia at way too early an age. But truly my biggest fear when I was kid, was the Rapture.

The Biblical event in which people that are saved will get swept away and taken to Heaven, and people that are not- will be left behind.  

If I woke up in the morning and my mom wasn’t home, I would start to cry, convinced that I had been left behind. I’d pray at night that the Rapture wouldn’t come until I was old and had experienced enough life. I remember patiently waiting for the clock to strike midnight and then I would say -out loud- that I KNEW the Rapture was coming today. You see, in the Bible it says that no man knows the day or the hour in which the Lord will return, so by saying I knew that the Rapture was today, I was loopholing God. I did this every single night for God knows how long. 

Ten years later, I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. 

I think about the moment I heard the words for the first time, and I remember that I smiled. The doctor remarked about how well I was taking the news much better than most people would and all I could say was that for the first time ever, I felt at peace.

Diagnosis was a relief for me. It was physical proof that something was wrong. All of those times when I had a panic attack at a restaurant because I was convinced the wait staff was mad at me, the days when I had to cut myself out of my clothes because they suddenly felt too tight, the nausea that came when I thought about the fact that one day I would die. I wasn’t crazy, or dramatic, or high strung.

Something. Was. Wrong. 

Since then I have done the work to try and heal my brain. I attend therapy regularly, when my psychiatrist thought meds might be a helpful part of my regime I listened. And most importantly, I don’t pretend to have it all together. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I in no way have all the answers to my brain. She is an enigma that I will spend the rest of my life trying to unfold.

I still have some bad days. 

When I’m doing my budget for the month and I can feel the panic crawling up my spine. Or the way the intrusive thoughts creep into my skull when I’m left alone for too long. 

But I’m trying. I want to be better. To feel different. 

I don't want to be this anymore. I lay awake and night and think about the ways that I want to feel new. How I long to be free. But I know it’s going to take work.

So I’m putting in the work. I’m fighting everyday and giving it my all. But I also know that- much to the dismay of some of the elders of the church- this is a very real illness. I need to treat it as such. Society needs to treat it seriously. Mental health is a matter of the utmost importance and I will do everything in my power to ensure people treat it as such. This is life or death FOR REAL.