Mental health should be more of a priority in this country. I know that I have been dealing with mental health issues since I was a small child, yet I know now it was mostly ignored because I was a kid.
When I was a freshman in high school getting some kind of help was pushed on me, or should I say pushed on my parents. A forced meeting with the school counselor said I needed to see a psychiatrist. I still remember this guy, it was like the ghost of Sigmund Freud walked out of history and into the office I was in. I don’t know if I knew that then but that is what I think of now. I also had to see a psychologist and bare my soul. Well, I did I told my truth. Then she talked to my mom and stepdad and My mother said I was lying and that what I told the psychologist or social worker never happened. That was the end of that.
My mental health was never taken seriously by my parents. I think that visit to the shrink and therapist was the beginning of the end of my relationship with my mom and stepdad. I don’t think anything was ever the same again. I never saw another therapist or psychiatrist until I was old enough to go on my own. So much went on during my early to late teens. So many behavioral things, and so many memory-based issues which I’ll talk about at another time. But when I was 16 my sister decided to try to commit suicide. I found her. Things changed again. My bio dad came back into the picture.
There is a lot to this story which, again, I’ll tell you at another time. Suffice it to say that I was FORCED to go on a road trip with the sperm donor and my spoiled rotten sister. Not all things that happened that weekend was bad. I met the family. Not all family is created equal. Some were wonderful, My aunt Sue and her husband and my cousin Terri My Uncle Mike, even my aunt Reene and uncle joe and my cousins from them were nice (at the time, another long story). But the reason for this whole fucking trip was my sister’s desire to “meet” and to get to “know” the bio dad.
When we got home this whole thing became my fault and relations got even more strained between my parents and me.
I can say now that my mental health continued to fall apart. My world kept getting darker and darker. I had no one I could tell what was going on. My best friend moved away and the friends I had left there I wouldn’t talk about depression and how I felt.
By the time I was 18, I was out of the house not by my own choice. One bad situation after another then I wound up in the hospital for the first time. My parents were moving with my brother and sister to California. I begged them to take me with but they left me behind. I spent a month in the hospital and wound up on disability.
My mental health issues have never gone away. I have had issues ever since. I am 59 and I have been on some kind of medication since I was 18. I struggle on a daily basis. Unless you deal with these kinds of issues you don’t get it, won’t get it at all.
I don’t think my parents even ever understood, but then they were never around and wanted nothing to do with me for years. I am still, at 59 taking multiple medications to moderate my moods. It’s unbelievable that I’ve been on meds for so long.
Those of you who battle with your mental health every day know how difficult it can be. It’s really effing hard. I would love to have a break, even for a day from the pain and ache I feel all the time.
Enough is enough for now
Eyes Forward
Me
EYES FORWARD 