Hello,
I am a student that currently attends UMBC. My topic is not only about mental illness, but also about self-harm, bullying, and family problems. Growing up my parents always fought. My dad had and still has an anger problem, and my mother had her issues as well. I grew up seeing my parents hate each other, and had the police come to my house a couple of times. Somehow they stayed together through those times and are still together at this time- and are doing much better. Growing up I had a lot of confidence, but in high school is when it started to deteriorate. There were multiple reasons for this, bullying being one of them. My home situation along with my situation at school led me to rock bottom. I started self-harm, I fell in depression..I absolutely hated myself. If someone was to say something bad about me I would sit there and listen to them and agree with it. I did try to commit suicide in highschool, and thank God it didn’t fall through. I believe I tried to commit suicide as more a cry for help than anything else. I ended up telling my parents and they were deeply concerned, but that only lasted so long. Going into college I still was depressed and I began to develop anxiety. It began slowly but developed over time as severe social anxiety. I believe the reason behind this is because I had forced myself to stop cutting. Since I had stopped, I didn’t have an outlet to let out the frustration I felt, and in time it built up and started to become social anxiety. This past semester at school, I contemplated suicide almost everyday. They were the toughest months of my life. I remember sitting in the bath tub with razor in hand, just staring into space. Throughout these years I visited two different psychiatrists but would always fail to take the anti-depressants they prescribed me due to lack of trust. In my family, as in many south Asian families, mental illness is not something that is acknowledged nor something to be talked about. My father told me to stop taking the medications once he found out and forbid me from seeing my psychiatrist. I thought he was right so I stopped going. After a few months I started seeing another psychiatrist, without my father knowing. I took the anti-depressants for a while that he prescribed but just like before ended up stopping. I started to see him again since the beginning of this past school year and I have been taking medication non-stop. I thank God for this, because I am a totally different person because of them. I know what it feels like to look forward to the day, to feel happy, to feel loved, to have self-worth and self-respect. I believe the people I surrounded myself with as well plays a huge role in how I am doing now. I surround myself with people who love me for me. Who don’t judge me or carry negative vibes with them. I would credit these people with saving my life. I just want whoever is listening to this to: 1) Understand that there is nothing shameful in taking medication for mental illness, no matter how it is viewed in your community. Mental illness is something that is real and exists, and it is about time it is looked at that way. 2) Surround yourself with people who genuinely like you and make you feel worthy. Life is too short to be around people who only bring you down. I know this has probably been said a million times, but it is the absolute truth. 3) Love yourself and everything falls into place- literally. I went from having depression,anxiety, doing self-harm, having suicidal thoughts to being able to love life again and BEING HAPPY. The key to this is to love yourself unconditionally. You are an amazing human being, and should not think of yourself any other way. Life will knock you down more times that you can handle, so please don’t knock yourself down. Last but not least, If you see someone who is not acting “normal” socially-please accept them and make them feel like they are okay. The biggest thing I have learned from having social anxiety is that love and acceptance makes a huge difference in helping that person out. It might come off as “off-putting” when a person acts awkwardly, but judging them and making them feel like shit about it only makes it that much worse for them. There is way too much hate and negativity in this world for a person as it is, please don’t go out of your way to add to it. Thank you.
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I was abused as a child by a close family member.
When I was younger I hated that person. The more I got to know about the sick history of my family, it turns out that the family member who abused me was also abused. I found out that sexual abuse seemed to have a viscous habit of repeating in my family. I don’t hate that person anymore. I hate the cycle. I’m going to end it now. I’ll make sure it doesn’t continue. Ever again. Don’t make excuses for your parents and family.
Many non-Black PoC have been using the phrases “yes, but I’m [my family, parents, culture] don’t think that!” And “But I [my family, parents, culture] do support your causes!” I was one of them until recently. Growing up I went to a private school where the population of Black kids could be counted on one hand. Because of that I never realized the struggles they went through outside of school. As I grew up, my closest friends were Black, and though I could never understand for the life of me the struggle they went through, I did become aware of the hardships they endured. Whenever they mentioned that “(Insert Race)” were racist I would become defensive, because I feared they saw me like that as well. For the longest time I would also tell them not to generalize because my parents weren’t either…that was a lie. My parents despite being good kind people did have a hint of a racial stereotyping view. Because of their own friend groups they were able to look past their original thoughts of a person and not show any prejudice. They had somehow differentiated between Black people and their Black friends in their mind. Now I know many non-Black PoC jump to the defense of their parents, cultures, and communities when confronted by people who call them racist, and the truth is most are. Let me tell you why. My parents are first generation immigrants. They came from a country where everyone looked, acted, and dressed alike. There was just one way of life. Then they come to America, where the advertised lifestyle is of a middle class white family with the white picket fence. They come here and what of they see? The media defines anything remotely related to Black culture as “ghetto” and white people as your friendly go to neighbors. Black people are described as “thuggish” despite the fact that no one even knows what that word means. They’re seen as over zealous and violent while white people are quiet suburban and peaceful. My father moved here first and lived in a majority Black neighborhood. He was robbed and assaulted twice, and both times by a Black man, keep in mind that they are the majority. Despite the fact that two people do not make up an entire race, my father took from that coupled with the media description of Black people, and chose his outlook on race. On the news he sees that crime committed by a white man is caused by mental illness, and crime committed by a Black man is caused by the fact that black people are violent. So when I hear my Black friends try to raise awareness for the many injustices done onto them, I have to bite back my defensive words and realize that they have the RIGHT to say those statements because they are TRUE. Instead of getting defensive, our goal should be to help. To understand the privilege we do have, and accept it. To support their cause, and to not just educate ourselves but our families, our friends, our communities. Because if we don’t change our mindset and unite to help, where is our humanity. How easily we can assemble ourselves to fight attacks on our own ethnicities and religion, but can not see the attacks on another’s We do not have to compare every suffering and every struggle to one another’s. The overseas struggles of Iraq, Libya, Syria or whatever country you can think of have NOTHING to do with the struggles of Black people here in America. Do not disrespect either of their suffering by comparing and contrasting. It’s hurtful and creates nothing but animosity and turmoil. As a Non Black Person of Color I often times felt attacked when my Black friends would talk about people being racist, but in time I understood that they had that right and instead of feeling attacked and hurt I should focus my energy on helping them and supporting them in their battles against injustice. ~Anon Do you ever have days where you feel so inspired and energetic? The days when you feel like you can take on anything and anyone in the world and come out on top. The days your brain is buzzing with plans and ideas and you feel your hands shake as you try to explain all of it to whoever is willing to listen. It’s like a crazy high that you acknowledge surrounds you, but you can’t stop it.
Do you ever have days that you feel like you are the scum of the earth. Days that you wish you could hide from underneath your covers. The days that there’s an invisible tentacle of death around your throat, neither choking you nor letting you breath. Many people can experience these feelings, if they can be condensed into a single word as weak as feelings. The point is many people can have either of those days. How many people have both in random subsequent orders? How many people can go to sleep at night perfectly content and confident with and in themselves and wake up feeling like living death. There’s a meme that says ‘I have two settings, sometimes I hate myself and sometimes I’m Kanye’ and I suppose many people find it funny. I, however, hate that meme. For people like me there are no settings. There is no on or off switch. I don’t have a manual or anot instructions guide. If I did I guess I could be considered defective. This concept of stories really speaks to me. I love the fact that you’re giving people to really share their own experiences, because no one has the same ones as others. Life is full of statistics and generalities, that we forget about the individual. My story isn’t the same as another’s even if we share the same disorder, which if many didn’t guess is bi-polar. It’s a label that I’ll live with for the rest of my life, but I hope that it’ll also help others live with theirs. |
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