Addiction and Mental Health my Story.

Chapter 1: - Mental Health issues in my teenage years

Chapter 1-  I have been struggling with mental health issues since at least 12 years old, mind you before that I wonder if it was their but  just not seen. When I  hit puberty  it was as if all  hell broke lose.  I remember stepping on the scale at age 12 and freaking out because I weighed over 100 lbs, and that was the day I started to try to control my weight. I passed out in class but no one saw a big deal. I was anxious but I didn't know what anxiety was.  I was depressed, but I also did not know what depression was. In my 12 year old brain it was normal to be all alone, and normal to be sad all the time.  I didn't even know at that age that wanting to kill myself was a sign I had a serious problem.  As I look back I can see that there must have been a higher power looking out for me but I didn't see it at the time.   I remember the time I was going to kill myself and overdose on a bunch of OTC pills.  I went and grabbed the bottle opened it up only to realize that there was not pills in the bottle but shampoo, and it shocked me enough to talk myself out of overdosing. I learned years later that the pills I was planning on taking could have very likely killed me if I took enough of it. I am not naming it because I don't want to give any ideas.  Growing up I was really athletic and running was my addiction, it gave me an endorphin that I loved, and between that and not eating enough I stayed at a pretty low weight but not low enough that people saw that I had an issue.   I felt like the odd one out when I was in school that I did not fit in, that I was all alone which only increased my depression. Though luckily for me most of my friends from elementary school who teased me a lot didn't go to high school  with me. I had  new start. I made some new friends, but got hard core into cross country and academics. I was a perfectionist to the core, anything under an A was a failure.  I am very artistic I used to win contests when I was in elementary school for my art but when I did an art class in grade 10 I got a 78% , 2% lower then my magic A I needed and vowed never to take Art again in school. I never did and it turned me off art for a while but I now use it to express myself and I am enjoying doing it all over again.    I was busy all the time and a big people pleaser trying to do well in school, help people in need and be involved with a million extracurricular activities.  At the end of grade 11 I ran my last cross country race of the season only to injure myself and I have never been able to run the same since that day. It devastated me, running was my addiction and now it was gone. So I turned to restricting food. In grade 12 I tried to run again but couldn't do it, which lead to more depression and anxiety. No one really noticed the fact that I wasn't eating accept one guidance counsellor  who asked what I was eating and I lied because I didn't want people to know I was skipping lunch, but I passed out about four times in class within that grade 12 year.  With all of that I still managed to graduate with am A average a scholarship to university that covered all my first year tuition and won a couple school awards for volunteering and contributing to the school.    That summer I went on a trip  and got really sick, and my eating issues got worse, when I came back from the trip my parents didn't recognize me because I lost so much weight.   When I got home I gained a lot of the weight back, and started to panic, and went into severe restricting mode again. This time  I hit a cycle of restricting and more restricting that I could not get out of.  In my eyes I was fat but in the eyes of the world I was fading away.   Around this time is when I discovered cutting. I wouldn't say I discovered self harm because I had been doing it in various ways since I was 12 years old, hitting myself, and scratching myself, but I had found a new method..... Cutting. The first time I cut was an accident. I was shaving my legs and accidently cut myself with the razor and was amazed on how much release I felt from that feeling.  It was amazing it was the relief I was looking for, but like any destructive behaviour it soon turned into a problem and an addiction which now even 8 years later I still haven't been able to totally overcome.   I also was having crazy dreams I remember waking up in the morning one day to see that I was bleeding on my forehead I had scratched myself so much in my sleep that it bleed now that is scary and also showed how tortured my mind was at this time.  Around this time I also had to report an instant of sexual abuse that happened to me  about a year before and it created a really big conflict and the police did nothing and it was all he said, she said and they couldn't do anything. That really started a disrespect for the police as I was not heard and felt like they could never help me, which when more sexual trauma occurred I did not report it due to fear and believed it would not be dealt with just like this first issue was not dealt with.    Depression, anxiety, suicidal thought, self harming and not eating I was quickly falling downwards.  I was trying to complete my first year of university as well and I still wonder to this day how I passed that first semester- five courses with a B plus average. I even missed a whole month of school in that first semester because I was in the psych ward because I was suicidal.  It was the psych ward where I was diagnosed with Anorexia, Borderline Personality Disorder, Major Depression, and Social Anxiety disorder. I remember calling my parents from the psych ward being " I am Anorexic" and my mom saying yes I know, we have known for a while now. That shocked me that my parents knew that I was struggling with an eating disorder and I did not.  This first psych ward experience was the first of many and a new direction in my life which has been a rollercoaster ride up and down.

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