Healthy Life; Healthy Mind Vol. 1

Something I don't talk much about publicly is my mental health history. However, with everything going on in the world right now, I thought it was time to share my story and some of the things I do to cope with different aspects of my life. I will be writing 5 parts to this blog series, including this one. So make sure you subscribe and never miss a post!

Disclaimer: This is a very long and possibly triggering post. Read at your own discretion. PLEASE, If you or someone you know feel some sort of depression, know that you aren't alone, ever. Everyone has someone.

I first encountered my struggles with ADHD and Depression when I was in the Seventh grade. However, I didn't know what I was experiencing until the Eighth grade. I didn't know that it was abnormal for a kid to lose focus in class so easily or have the inability to make eye direct eye contact when talking to someone. I thought I was just a hyper kid who was bad at school. That was until I almost had to retake Seventh and Eighth grade. That was when I started to feel like something was miswired in my brain. I barely made it through Seventh grade, but making it through Eighth grade seemed just hopeless; no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't pay attention in class. Winter of 2014, I Self Harmed for the first time. My best friend told the school guidance counselor after she had seen the cut on my wrist, and a meeting was called between her, my mom, and me. And I lied my ass off. I said something along the lines of "I caught my wrist on my locker." I think I was just scared of disappointing my family. I didn't want to be the broken kid that everyone had to walk on eggshells around. To this day, I still don't know why I self-harmed. I didn't want to take my own life, and it wasn't intended as a call for help, but I think subconsciously, it was. Either way, it was a wake-up call for myself. I sought help when it came to passing my classes, and I finished Eith grade with the rest of my class. I still felt my depression during that year, but I diffused it by keeping myself busy with dance, gymnastics, and friends.

That summer, my mom took me to meet with the Family Services Board at my highschool to evaluate my ADHD. This meeting was to determine what course I would be enrolled in for Freshman year. I don't remember much about that day cause it was 5 years ago, but I do remember during the meeting, I found out that I wasn't even supposed to be there when one of the board members said, "Typically, the child is not present for these evaluations." They didn't ask me any questions. They only talked to my mom. It was then determined that I didn't have an attention or learning disorder. I

was just a very hyper and talkative child who had "focusing issues"; I would be placed in average high school classes, and no medical or psychiatric actions would be taken. I thought that was the end of it. "Ok, I just have trouble focusing, I guess," is what I told myself all summer. Then Freshman year started. I had the same frustrations as I did in middle school, and I found myself right back in the same depressed state. However, this time, I just focused on gymnastics. It became my outlet for every day to day frustrations. And it was working...until it couldn't anymore.

In the early spring of 2016, I tore a muscle in my shoulder and was scheduled for surgery at the end of April, which meant months, maybe even a year of recovery until I could return to the only thing that was keeping me sane. That's when the depression really started to take a toll on me. But since I was still scared to tell anyone, I was forced to learn to live with it. So I did. I got more active in Theatre and with my friends. I kept it at bay for a few years. Everything was good until my Senior year of high school.

What's the one thing every 17 and 18-year-olds are focused on during their senior year of high school? Answer: College or whatever they're gonna do after high school. The question "what do you want to do for the rest of your life?" gave me so much anxiety. Because I didn't have the best GPA or SAT score, I didn't even know if I was going to get into a college, much less be able to pick a major. This was when I started self-sabotaging myself. I broke up with my boyfriend, who tried to give me the world, and I jumped right into another relationship. In the beginning, it was great. I had a distraction from school and the future. But then November came around, and I had to start making college applications. I was on track to apply to JMU's Fine Arts Program. I had recorded all of my audition videos and filled out my application; all accept the Essay Portion. I think the question was, "Discuss the biggest struggle you've had to deal with in your life?". I started an essay similar to this post; talked about my depression and my shoulder surgery, my social anxiety, and then my struggles in the past with school. Then it hit me: "I barely graduated high school, how am I supposed to do well in college?" So I scrapped all of my JMU plans for the time being and started making plans for community college. I remember going to my parents when I first had the realization, just sobbing. I felt like such a failure; like I was quitting before I even started. They told me everything was going to be ok, but I couldn't shake the pit in my stomach that would form every time I thought about life after graduation. In the end, everything was ok, and I did make the right decision. But the entire time I was trying to make up my mind, my anxiety was taking over my life, and I started showing signs of BiPolar Depression.

For pretty much all of November during my senior year, I was taking my anxiety and Depression out on EVERYONE, including my boyfriend at the time. He tried to be as supportive as possible, but at the end of the day, it took a massive toll on our relationship. And deciding not to apply to JMU probably made it all worse. I stopped caring about everything in my life. I just lost my motivation to be a productive human being. I started skipping school and work, I stopped trying to pay attention in class, and I even started to lose interest in theatre, the very thing that I wanted to base a career around. Then after two months of me pretending everything was alright, we broke up. This was the hardest time in my life that I had ever had to go through.

The break up wasn't even that bad; I had just focused my entire mental stability around the relationship. I knew it wasn't healthy, but at the time, I didn't know what else to do, which made me start to hate myself. This caused the aftermath of the breakup to be extremely messy; fights over text, rumors around the whole school, friends being forced to take sides. My mental state was in complete disarray. But then I got my car. Although my life was in shambles, I found the calm in the storm when I was driving. It didn't matter where I was going or who I was with. I could be sobbing, but I was still calm. I started trying to care about work as much as I could. (It helped that I went to my boss and told him everything that was going on and that I might need a couple of days to rest.) I still had days where I didn't want to want to wake up, but the loudness in my head started to dampen. I spent more time with my best friend Annie, and I started getting more involved with the Senior events at school and in Theatre. I even gave therapy a try (that is a long story that might make a part 6 but probably not).

Even now, almost two years later, I still feel my depression. But instead of working against it, I work with it. The biggest thing to remember is that everyone's mental health is different. There is no magic way to make it go away in a heartbeat. It takes work and finding what works for you. Just two nights ago, I had the biggest episode I've had in a long time when I was home with my boyfriend. I went straight into defense mode; I just wanted to go to our room, lock the door, shut out all of my problems. But he stopped me and just hugged me while I cried. Then he asked me if I wanted to watch Netflix and eat pizza. Then I took a shower, drank some herbal tea and waster, watched a couple of funny videos, and went to bed. Then it dawned on me, that was the first time I had ever healthily de-escalated an episode that big. It's what inspired this series. I've collected this little bag of Self-Help tactics that WORK FOR ME. I look back at the last few years, and I see the progress I've made, and I'm proud of it. I'll never 100% get rid of my depression because it's a genetic trait that runs in my family, and it's apart of me, but I'm learning to live with it. As for ADHD, I have no clue how to handle that, but I guess it ties in with the anxiety: deep breathes, lots of water, and making lists of everything I need to get done.