Depression and addiction are both mental illnesses that can cause a person to feel incredibly alone. I know that I felt like I was different from my peers countless times throughout my life. Even though I have been lucky enough to have some very good people as friends of mine there are still moments where I believe they don’t care to be friends with me at all.

Growing up I knew that I was a bit different from my friends. Maybe I was more sensitive, or angrier. Whatever the feeling was, I had a core belief that I was unlike anyone else in the world. I think that’s one of the goals of addiction and depression. To make you feel as alone as possible.

By feeling so poorly about myself I was able to justify doing incredibly foolish things such as abusing drugs. And once I was old enough to realize there was something out there I could take that would make me feel better about myself immediately, I grasped onto it for dear life. The tricky things with drugs though, is they never make you feel better forever. It’s a bit unfortunate, all of the negative things that come along with drug use. Because if I’m being brutally honest, the early days of my drug use were very happy times. It was innocent at first.

Sure there is even stigma around using drugs, but with the crowd I fell in with when I was younger it was just part of the norm. And once I entered high school, it seemed like everyone was engaging in some sort of partying. The carefree times were very short lived, however, and if I would’ve known just what was going to happen to me in the future I might have even stopped using all together. Maybe.

Even though I had some time where it seemed like the cool thing to do was to get high and drunk. The parties would end, and I would still be looking to use more, do more, drink more. Other kids were having some lighthearted fun that might have been a bit unhealthy for their age, I was trying to do anything to make myself feel better.

I was incredibly depressed, but I didn’t even really have a concept of depression. None of my friends talked about being depressed, and since I had felt this way about myself for so long I just thought that’s how things were meant to be.

As I got older it became clear that I could no longer ignore the internal struggles I was having and something needed to be done in order for me to find some peace. My parents also recognized this and they decided to step in. When I was 16 years old I was sent to several treatment centres in order for me to find some help. The first place I went to was a mental and behavioural health hospital. After that I went to a wilderness program and then to a therapeutic boarding school. I was away from everyone I knew for about 15 months. Upon my arrival home I told many stories about my time away to many people and didn’t mind the attention I got because of it. But the one thing I never told anyone was that I went to mental health hospital.

I didn’t want anyone finding out I went to a psych ward because I was afraid of what people would think of me. It was “cool” to get sent to a wilderness program and boarding school because I was able to spin that into a story of getting punished for partying too much. But if people knew I went to a psych ward then they would think I was different, which I was trying hard to be.

Eventually my drug use progressed to levels that were incredibly dangerous. I was using substances every day and my friends took notice. I’d embarrass myself by making a fool out of myself by using too much. It got to the point where my friends would no longer allow me to go over to their houses, for fear that I would overdose and they would find me dead. I stopped spending time with other people and spent my days alone getting high. This didn’t help how I felt about myself at all. I entered rehab a few more times but now it was no longer something to brush off and joke about with friends.

I was in rehab because my drug use had gotten so out of control that I was going to die. No one thought it was funny and most people also questioned me as to why I wouldn’t just stop. Things had gone on long enough, it was time for me to stop being a junkie and use responsibly.

It’s difficult for people to understand things like addiction and depression if they don’t go through it themselves. Why should they understand? They don’t really have any reason to. It’s not their fault they can’t rationalize what it’s like to not be able to stop using a substance, or have overwhelming lows that feel like things will never get better. Now that I’m sober and have undergone treatment for my depression it doesn’t bother me that my friends and family don’t completely understand these things.

I have found self-worth that makes these things possible. That I think is the biggest thing that has led me to overcome the stigma around addiction and depression. I no longer care that I have these issues. It’s just part of who I am. It doesn’t make me less than anyone. It just means that I have to be more aware of where my head is at, so I don’t revert back into old unhealthy habits. Building my self-esteem was no easy task, but because I finally took the help that was offered to me and pieced together some sober time I’ve begun to feel a lot better.

Now I am able to be of service to other people that struggle with depression and addiction. Because of this I can show someone else that the stigma around these things isn’t really a big deal at all. People not understanding things that don’t affect them is very common in society today. So if they want to look down on me it doesn’t bother me at all. I have internal validation that reminds me of the hard work I have put in to get better. And at the end of the day that is all that matters.

- Jack Agatston

Jack lives in Atlanta, GA. After getting sober he threw himself into recovery. In addition to spreading hope through his writing, he works as a tech at an outpatient treatment center. You can read more of his work at thesummitwellnessgroup.com/.

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This is something I wrote in my journal this afternoon:

I am not okay. I haven’t felt like this in months. How am I not prepared? How did I think I was making progress? How did I think this was manageable? It is not manageable. It is unbearable. I can’t do this. It’s too much. It isn’t fair. How did this happen? I was fine this morning. Why do I feel like this now?

I am angry. I should’ve seen this coming, and I’m angry with myself that I didn’t. I’m angry I wasn’t more proactive. I’m angry that I don’t have the support I need, and I’m angry that I have to deal with this at all. I am so angry.

I’m sad. My chest is heavy with the weight. I’m overwhelmed. I am sad for all the years I’ve lost. I’m sad for my kids.. I’m surprised and I’m scared by how quickly this sadness has swallowed me, and by how completely. I know there was a time when I didn’t feel this way, but I don’t remember it now.

More than anything, I am lonely. The feeling is so intense, it feels like my body will not be able to contain it. It’s screaming inside of me, trying to escape, desperate to be released. It is all I can feel.

It is too much. It is all too much. I thought I was okay, but I’m not okay. I can’t do this. How did this sneak up on me? I was okay this morning, wasn’t I? What happened? I need this to stop. How can I make it stop? I didn’t remember that it’s like this when it gets bad. How did I forget? What am I going to do?

---

There was a time when an experience like that would have been debilitating. Unable to deal with the intensity of my thoughts and my emotions, I would have tried to numb them. I would have retreated to the safety of my room and hidden away in my bed. I would have shut out everything until the feelings went away. It might have taken the rest of the day, it might have taken two or three days or even a week. Or longer. There have been winters where I have barely left my bed. Thankfully, today wasn’t like that.

Today I was able to recognize that my feelings were overwhelming me and identify the desire to shut down. I chose instead to leave my house so that I couldn’t give in to the need to numb. I went to the lake to ease my distress and ground myself. I wrote in my journal, observing and recording my thoughts and feelings. Today when my thoughts and emotions had me convinced that I wasn’t going to survive, I understood that thoughts and emotions aren’t reality.

Today was different because I’m putting in the work. Today was different because I make myself meditate even when I really don’t want to. It was different because of the weekly DBT group I attend. It was different because I choose to go to yoga every Monday night and because of the countless books I’ve read. Today was different because I’m learning discipline and mindfulness and patience and self-compassion. Today was different because I am making progress. I am making progress, and I am so grateful.

- Rosella Reinwand-Crooks

About Rosella: I was diagnosed with bipolar II and bpd in 2017 when I was 36 years old. The diagnoses made sense of so much of my life. Then I began to learn about trauma and its impact on mental health. In 2018, I was diagnosed with inattentive-type ADHD, and the final piece fell into place.

Below is a poem I wrote whilst taking part in an 8 week residential recovery program in February and March of this year. I was admitted to acute care for 2 weeks prior to commencing the program.

The poem outlines my life on a very personal level.

My emotional invalidation as a child, the death of my father at aged 9, sexual abuse by the policeman who lived next door and then my stepfather. My rebellion and promiscuous lifestyle as a teenager. It outlines the misdiagnosis over the years.

Then the story ends with my suicide attempt and the recovery program.

My Story

An emotional child
 I was considered a sook
Retreating to the plum tree
 I would read a book

I can't remember
My mother comforting me
She was devoid of emotion
No hugs there would be

 My Dad died of cancer
When I was only nine
I remember crying
For days at a time

I was given ‘nerve’ pills
 Hidden well out of sight
Administered daily
My secret ‘plight’

 The friendly policeman
Who resided next door
Was my first perpetrator
A man of the law!

 My pre-teenage years
Were lived in desperate fear
Every time that man
Came anywhere near

He warned me often
That if I were to tell
He would start on my sister
And abuse her as well

 But we were each his victims
We were both his prey
He continued his games
Day after day

 My mother was oblivious
To our plight
As we lived our lives
In trembling fright

 My Mum soon moved on
 Marrying another man
Who I found rather creepy
I was not a fan!

 She was in hospital
With a new baby to be fed
My stepfather came creeping
Into my bed

 He was an evil predator
I was threatened once more
So I kept my silence
Just like before

 But somehow I believe
My mother suspected
But she did nothing
 I was always neglected

 I had wild mood swings
That were quite out of hand
How I could I explain them
I didn’t understand!

 I was a seventies hippy
Coloured scarves on my head
Batik skirts and halter tops
With high boots that were red

 I partied hard
Mixing alcohol with drugs
Pot smoking and sex
With a gang of thugs

I met an innocent farm boy
Who had absolutely no clue
What he was saying
When he said ‘I love you’

 Numerous breakdowns
Over the years
Would see me reclusive
Drowning in my own tears

 Imbalanced hormones
Is what the doctors proclaimed
So I walked through the years
My sanity I ‘feigned’

At last I was diagnosed
I had depression that was manic
Prozac was the answer
There was no need to panic

 My husband and I
Had many separations
My moods were not conducive
To happy marriage celebrations

 Breakdown after breakdown
I endured this pain alone
I thought that I travelled
This journey alone

 We divorced after many years
Of tumultuous pain
And another breakdown
Saw us back together again

I hit rock bottom
And ended up ‘In care’
This was five years ago
It caught me unaware

 I described my symptoms
My classic signs of distress
Borderline personality disorder!
I was relieved I confess

 At last I had a diagnosis
For my very ‘psychedelic’ life
As a daughter of this woman
And my pathway as a wife

 Living life as a borderliner
Is a journey fraught with pain
My changing emotions
Surface time and time again

 Impulsivity is rampant
My errant mind runs amuck
Irrationality and incohesiveness
I want to move but am stuck

I socialise very little
Anxiety grips my soul
I am reclusive in nature
I don’t feel whole

 The intricate web of my mind
Is slowly strangling me
Do I want to live
Or do I want to be free

 So late in January
I grabbed the bottle of wine
I swallowed some pills
I was not feeling fine

 I couldn’t work out in my head
Which way I should go
Was I brave or a chicken
To dial 000?

 I am accepting my illness
Moving away from my past
To have some peace in my life
To put me first at last! 

- Vicki

That sentence probably made a lot of people squirm, which is an indication that we still have a lot of work to do regarding the stigma associated with mental illness. But I stand by my statement.

In retrospect, I’ve always been a bit anxious and prone to feeling down (even as a very young child). In my junior year of high school, things were really tough and I felt incredibly upset on a daily basis and was having trouble with no appetite.

The doctors thought I was anemic, which I happily accepted as the cause of my issues. It really should have been the first indication that something was direly wrong, but it cleared up on its own my senior year of high school and I was back to myself again. Similar issues happened in my mid-20s but to a much lesser degree, so I didn’t really seek help regularly.

The thing that precipitated the worst downward spiral in my mental health was pregnancy and motherhood. I was 33 when I had my daughter and had been feeling great for several years leading up to my pregnancy. I was running regularly, eating well and had just married my husband. We were living well, enjoying our careers in Silicon Valley as engineers and traveling quite a bit. I was even training for my very first marathon ever… until I found out I was pregnant.

This news floored me. My husband and I hadn’t planned on having kids (due to our age difference: 18 years), and we were living in a tiny little apartment. Thankfully the pregnancy was a smooth one. But after I had my daughter, things just never “felt” the same. I cried – A LOT. I was so sleep deprived. I was forced to stop running altogether and forfeit my marathon plans. I was envious of other moms who seemed to fall into motherhood like they were MADE for the job.

Not long after that, when my daughter was 10 months old, we left all family and any remnants of a support network behind and moved to Colorado for work. And bought a house. And started new jobs. And put my daughter in daycare for the first time. This was immensely stressful, but I kept muscling forward just as I’d always done throughout my life.

This continued on until shortly before my daughter turned 2, and that’s when the world went black for me. I began losing my appetite and feeling unbearable nausea almost constantly. I had panic attacks for no reason. I could not sleep more than 45 minutes at a time and had frightening thoughts of bad things happening to me. I went to my primary care doctor several times and tried several things, but kept getting misdiagnosed. “Indigestion,” or “Go see a gastroenterologist!” or “You have an eating disorder” and even, “Maybe you’re bipolar, go see a psychiatrist.”

After two months of this, a 20-lb weight loss, and frighteningly little sleep, I could no longer see a tomorrow. All I could see was nothingness. It was hurting my family to see me like this… I contemplated suicide. It was almost involuntary when it first happened and it horrified me beyond anything I’d ever felt.

I needed help. Right away. I remember driving to my first psychiatrist appointment and thinking, “If he can’t help me, then this is the end…”  Thankfully, he DID help me. We tried several medications (which, to those familiar with the process, is like professional dart-throwing), and some made me worse. But I wasn’t going to give up: my daughter needed me, and she needed me WELL.

My psychiatrist encouraged me to ask my mom and dad about family history of mental illness, which led to my discovery of a strong genetic predisposition to depression/anxiety on my dad’s side. I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder, comorbid (I hate that word, but doctors love it) with Sever Anxiety. This led me to start taking the medication that saved my life (and that my dad also takes): Paxil.

I began the healing process. I took the medication faithfully. I started running again. The diagnosis was still a shock to me and I was initially ashamed of it: I felt like an inmate that had just escaped a maximum security prison and was trying to walk around like nothing ever happened. The stories of others who had been in similar situations was like a magic salve to my soul

People who made the conscious choice to open up to me about their own mental health struggles are the ones that encouraged me to accept it for what it is and NOT be ashamed of it. In fact, as the months went on, I started to realize that I was a different person: more calm, more compassionate, more kind, more appreciative. ALL of these wonderful things blossomed in me after dealing directly with my mental illness.

Gifts that I probably would never have received had I not gone through such an experience. I was even able to finish my first full marathon, and then my SECOND full marathon - all after that harrowing chapter in my life! I have made a pact with myself to abstain from silence: to NOT be part of the problem when it comes to mental health. Escaped inmates live in hiding and fear – I am NOT an escaped inmate… I am proud of my mental illness and all the rewards I’ve reaped from it.

I am more than willing to talk about it to anyone who may want some comfort. I’m ready to help others profit from that pain.

April W
Check out her Instagram and Blog

My name is Arianna Dixon. I’m a rapper and I go by the alias “MPTH.” My story isn’t like a lot of other rappers. I didn’t grow up in the hood and join a gang and drop out of high school. I’ve never done drugs or partied until I blacked out. I’m a rapper because one day I found the words to express myself and I never looked back.

I’ve been struggling with mental illness since I was about 13 years old. My mother says there were signs before then that pointed to mental illness but it didn’t fully develop until my teenage years. When I was 13, I became suicidal. I also discovered I was a lesbian. I also got kicked out of my youth group worship band for being a lesbian. I also had my first heartbreak. I also started getting bullied. To me, it seems like there were some good reasons why I felt like I didn’t want to be a part of this world anymore. Doctors had a different opinion.

I was admitted into a psychiatric hospital and force fed medications that turned me into a zombie. For the next 5 years, I was force fed medication. They didn’t make me feel good but if I refused my medication, my mom would call the cops on me and they would force me to take them. Now, don’t get me wrong, I believe mental illness is a real thing. What I don’t agree with is the term illness. Illness suggests that you have something wrong with you.

Illness is a harsh word for the condition that a lot of us reading this blog struggle with. People with mental illness are proven to have higher IQs, are more creative, are able to experience deeper, more sincere emotions, and all of the great people in history had mental illnesses. So, is mental illness really an ailment? I don’t believe it is. 

My parents took me to get brain scans done when I was 15. I have attached the images of a “normal” brain compared to my brain. It’s very intriguing. My brain looks like a damn Christmas tree. An average human uses 10% of their brain. As you can see, I use way more than 10%. I wouldn’t call this an illness. It has helped me immensely in my art. I’ve been drumming since I was, you guessed it, 13! It seems like that’s when my life really began. I taught myself for the most part aside from a beginning percussion class.

My parents and I were walking down the street and someone was selling a very old drum set their roommate left behind years ago for $100. They bought it for me and I set it up. For the next 6 months, I spent every waking moment I wasn’t in school playing this drum set. I put headphones in and did exactly what Tre Cool was doing in all the songs of the American Idiot album by Green Day. I spent 8 hours every day playing! I tried out for the Orange County High School of the Arts six months after my first drum lesson and got in.

School was a very difficult time for me. I started at OCHSA in 8th grade and, at that point, I had already attended 4 other schools. I didn’t have any friends because I jumped around too much. Music was my escape from everything, though, so I loved it. Attending this school was exactly like high school musical. People practiced their dance routines outside at lunch. There was always a guy with dreadlocks rapping and singing very loudly through the halls on his way to class. The drummers always had sticks in their hands and were tapping on anything they were allowed to.  

It was awesome! I performed in Carnegie Hall in 9th grade. I performed at Galas that cost $1000 per seat. By 10th grade, my depression got really bad. I was on a high dose of several medications and I turned into a complete zombie. I no longer had interest in drumming or schoolwork. My grades started to slip. My girlfriend broke up with me. I punched a fellow drummer in the face. I dropped out of OCHSA. Now, onto public school.

Public school and I didn’t get along. I was very artsy to begin with and, after going to OCHSA for almost 3 years, I was extra artsy by the time I got to Orange High School. I was severely bullied. I adopted the nickname “psycho.” I got beat up. I had no friends. I did music outside of school but the desire to fit in kicked in and I was distracted by it. My mom tried to get me help because I was failing all my classes. I couldn’t stay awake. I couldn’t wake up in the morning. I don’t really remember the last 2 years of high school because I was asleep for the most part. Finally, the school district agreed to put me on the home hospital program. A private tutor would come to my house every day and sit there and teach me.

 fell asleep every day. It’s almost like I had that disease where you just fall asleep everywhere and anywhere at anytime. I wouldn’t have made it through high school if it wasn’t for the next tutor that stepped in - Ms. Stewart. She realized I was extremely intelligent and struggling. She dropped off my assignments one time per week and picked them up the next week. Not to her surprise, I finished all my assignments. She even urged the school to let me finish my entire senior year in one semester so I could get the hell out of high school. I graduated early!!! Woo hoo!!!

Now, when I got into college, I made a lot of mistakes. I focused on girls and sex rather than adulthood and music. I can admit to my mistakes. Let’s just say the next few years were full of heartbreak. Let’s skip ahead to when I started writing music.

I married a girl. We will say her name was Jessica. We had been in a very difficult relationship for 2 years when we got married. I loved her and believed in her even though she proved I shouldn’t have. I’m somewhat of a hopeless romantic. When I proposed, it was magical. It was at Disneyland right after the fireworks. Everyone was lined up outside the ropes to watch the fireworks and the guest services cast member allowed us to go behind the ropes so I could propose in front of the castle with everyone still watching. She had no idea what was going on and when we walked out and she saw the crowd, she was so surprised. She said yes!

We got married and 2 months later, she left me for a guy she met. Yeah...I know…what a bitch. I hit rock bottom. I had been working as a manager of a sales office in Las Vegas and when she left me, she also kicked me out and took my money out of my account. I moved back to my parents’ house in California. I started drinking because I couldn’t wrap my mind around my wife of 2 months breaking my heart. I could accept my biological father abusing my mom and leaving me when I was 6 months old. I could accept Christianity not accepting me for being gay. I could accept getting raped and molested. I could accept 4 other girls breaking my heart and leaving me for someone else. I could accept my ex-girlfriend punching me in the face and leaving me for a married man. I could accept getting bullied for most of my childhood and getting beat up. I could accept that doctors and nurses thought I was crazy and ill. But not this…

Marriage and love has always been a big deal to me. My parents and grandparents all had amazing love stories. I thought marriage was the realest, most raw thing in the world. I threw myself into music. Around the same time this happened, my old band mate moved back to California for a job. We started a band. Before this happened, I was horrible at writing lyrics. All the emotions from my whole life suddenly came pouring out in lyrical form.

Here are some of the lyrics -

“I’ve got no place to go but I can’t stay.” (Adventuretime by Adventure Awaits)

“I put my head down, prayin’ for recovery but everyday I wake up and my demons are still haunting me.” (Recovery by MPTH)

“I never had a minute to realize where it resides, inside, and all I gotta do is pull it out and burn it down but I never seem to reach in deep enough without you comin’ around.” (Voices by MPTH)

“I guess we’ll just undress and press ourselves against this life depressed. I need you, going to confess, obsessed and stressed, you were the best.” (Voices by MPTH)

“I got the talent from a boy who never quite grew up. He threw my mom against a wall until she fuckin’ stood up.” (Fate by MPTH)

“I’m livin’ in the land of the free yet it seems I feel the need to pay a fee every time I breathe. I’m thankful for the trees and the flowers and the breeze and the water in the ocean comes back when it leaves. I’m missin’ all my friends I used to have before I lost myself, before I killed myself and lived to tell the story to myself. Feelin’ sorry for myself me me me, I’m also tired of feelin’ sorry for my need in my time of need.” (#Depression by MPTH)

I wrote all the songs for our band, Adventure Awaits. I also started going to a local dive bar for karaoke every night and started rapping a lot. I am tone deaf so rap was naturally the next best option to singing. I met a manager for a record label in Vegas when I lived there. One day, when I was very depressed and drunk and couldn’t pull myself out of it, I called her and told her I wanted to be a rapper. She sounded concerned but told me to just write something, anything, record myself rapping, and send it to her. I did. She said it was good but needed a beat.

When I was 18, I went to Audio Engineering school so I knew the basics of production. I made a basic beat and recorded the same rap and sent it to her. She said it was way better with a beat. I started writing more and she sent me beats. I will admit I was really bad at first. I kept practicing different parts of rapping - flow, intonation, rhythm, wordage, and eventually I got better.

Now, I am a rapper. I drum, play guitar, play bass, and produce as well. But, I’m focused on hip hop. I’ve dug myself out of rock bottom and although I’m not at the top, I am a lot better off. I almost died when my ex-wife left me from suicide. I took 100 pills. I survived and music saved me. Throughout my whole life, music has saved me. Countless times, I have locked myself in my room and blasted Linkin Park (RIP Chester), Good Charlotte, Blink 182, Eminem, and other artists and cried and screamed.

Have you heard the phrase “turn the music up so loud they can’t hear you screaming?” That’s what I did. Music has been the only consistent thing that has been here for me and I will never abandon it. I will keep working on music until the day I die. I joke with my friends and say I will be 90 years old and still doing Eminem at karaoke. It’s not a joke, though. I’m serious. Mental “illness” is nothing compared to my love for music.

Today, I am off medication and instead do Reiki, meditation, exercise a lot, and have a fairly strict diet. I know I have to do a lot of extra work in order to not be on medication but it’s way better for me. I guess I’m medication resistant for the most part. It kind of just puts me to sleep. I have found spirituality. I’m not necessarily religious but I pray to a higher power and keep my mind and emotions balanced through deep thought.

Exercise helps my mania and depression and anxiety immensely. I’m working on music everyday whether it’s writing, recording, thinking of hooks, or networking.

You can find my music on all platforms including YouTube, Spotify, Amazon Music, Tidal, etc. under the alias “MPTH.” Website: mpth.co Instagram: @mpth.la

My main inspirations for making music are simple. I want to tell my story and I hope I can help someone like me feel understood. Thanks for reading and I wish you well with everything! I love you all.

- MPTH

*Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault

Most of my life was a lie. I stopped telling the truth when I was 13 when my cousin tried to molest me. He would go on to harass me for 4 more years before he pinned me to his bed and threatened to rape me. My heartbeat was in my throat. 

He let go because there were other people in the house and I told him I would scream if he touched me again. I would keep this all private, wondering if it was me. If I did something wrong. I felt dirty, ugly, and completely alienated from my body because of the amount of objectification he projected onto me from a young age.

But it wasn’t just me. This past December another little cousin came out, announcing he had sexually molested her. She was half his age. He is a sex offender now. 

It broke my heart because I know how hard it is to carry the weight of that burden. Sexual abuse is insidious. Incest is another monster altogether. My little cousin is 13. The same age I was when he began hurting me.

That experience shaped how I related to my body. I felt disgusted with myself. Ashamed of my femininity because puberty meant being sought after, lusted after, and ultimately controlled and exploited by men. 

During the years I was being abused by my cousin I began working and was also assaulted by a coworker. Although the assault was singular, it was traumatizing, because of its severity. In my naïveté, I was tricked into entering a coworker’s vehicle in the parking lot, thinking he wanted to talk. 

When I saw his genitals were out, I panicked. He forced me to perform oral sex on him. I did so in more of a trance-like state. Only knowing I wanted out, and I would do anything to be set free.

This would become my life’s narrative: doing acts for men until they allow me my freedom.

The relationship I entered shortly after that was abusive. He was manipulative, controlling, and exploitive. He saw me as a vitamin. Something that would up his life expectancy. I was being habitually raped and released.

I didn’t know how to get help. I was in a downward spiral. Between the starvation induced by my eating-disorder and the alcoholism that kept me reeling, I was achieving a state of numbness. I didn’t want to feel. I wanted to flee.

My parents were abusive. I couldn’t go to them for support. In fact, they made my life MORE stressful. They were clueless and angry. They didn’t know how to communicate and neither did I.

I still suffer from the depression my parents instilled in me. That I’m not “enough.” That I’m a mistake. A regret. That I’m broken. I have had to work so hard to pull myself out of that mindset because I lived in it for so long.

My recovery has restored my autonomy. I remind myself that I’m capable of making choices and my choices matter. I had to reach a low point. Before I could begin to heal.

I was deep in the throes of my anorexia. Routinely abusing laxatives. I was suicidal daily. A crying mess of a person. My self-hatred stronger than any other feeling I had. I was having nightmares every single night. I was in pain. Literally. Physically. Emotionally. Spiritually. 

It all began with choosing myself first for once. Resigning from work so I could get help from my eating disorder. I had doctors appointments every month, blind weigh-ins, re-feeding, therapy. 

I started an SSRI and an anti-anxiety medication. I was diagnosed with anorexia (AN) with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, PTSD, and major depression. 

My self-harming was perhaps the addiction I struggled with most, because as I let go of my other disorders, I craved a sense of control. Control of the body has always been my coping mechanism. I can control what I do to myself even if I can’t control what others do to me. 

So as an abuse survivor, self-harm is still something I participate in if I feel particularly vulnerable or stressed. I am working with my therapists now to reduce those urges but it is a slow extinction, because it is an old “survival” mechanism.

In some ways, the best thing we can do for ourselves is be gentle, open, and allow our truths a space to exist and be valid. It helps me to write down specific incidents of immense pain I’ve undergone. Writing helps me process it.

For you it could be spoken word. It could be interpretive dance. I also paint, if I can’t find the words to express what I am feeling. Having an outlet is so important because it gives you a voice. 

I owe my recovery to my husband who helped me to escape the abusers that were physically and sexually abusing me. I will be forever grateful for men like him who are good and strong and decent. It gives me hope.

Below are some of the art pieces I’ve done as part of finding a healthier way of processing my PTSD. They are all my original artwork. I’m including a photograph of myself in recovery as the photos of myself while being abused are very triggering. Hope these help

- Suzie Larson

You can follow Suzie on Instagram. She also recommends 7cups.com - a free mental health counselling website for people in a crisis or struggling to afford therapy.

*Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault, Abuse, Manipulation.

“Hope is everything for people facing mental illness. Continue believing to survive.”

It took me eight years to understand my mental illness; Panic disorder with severe anxiety, agoraphobia and depression. For that, I underwent numerous draining processes of psychotherapy to solve the mystery of my predicaments. The goal was to find out what were the root underlying issues that had caused these mental illness of mine that had been so challenging to deal with.  I had been juggling between surviving daily panic attacks, severe anxiety to do anything and everything that needed to be done, avoiding my agoraphobia of entering Singapore that could trigger panic attacks, and juggling with depression which is a totally different ball game. I am now living in Malaysia for the slower pace of surviving life.

And so, after 8 long years of:
- Consuming prescribed antidepressants on time without being stubborn
- Daily fights for survival from panic attacks
- Being a good patient, son and brother by taking medications regularly and not causing anyone who loves me to worry
- Having an open positive mind and perspective of mental conditions
- Being a good patient by quickly sleeping when suicidal thoughts arise
- Overcoming constant depression

Eventually, one fine day, I found the answer to the root of my underlying issues.  The main culprit who triggered all the madness of my anxieties leading to a disorder was non-other than my paternal aunt. I will refer to her as “The Ice Queen”. She used to doll me up as a girl when I was a child.  Whatever her actions and reasons were at the time, it did not matter because what she did had messed up my identity of a boy and misled my sexual preferences. I struggled with my sexual identity and had problems accepting it even now as a gay man and I get depressed over it.

I had been lucky and grateful for the fact that I had so much love and support from my direct family and my caregiver. However, I was amazed and very disappointed that when the underlying issue eventually identified and emerged, my direct family went silent, confused and lost. Everything I had to share became silence. Thy preferred to not know because the situation got too tricky. Well, I don’t blame them. They were in shock and they love me at the same time and dealing with the Ice Queen would be a nightmare for them.

I remember vividly the color of my eye shadow was a mix of purple and pink. Perhaps it was trendy in the 80s. The rosy cheeks and a flower clipped next to my ear. I was looking at the mirror and I was amazed by how beautiful I was as a girl. The Ice Queen would rush to wipe my face clean whenever she heard my parents had returned home. It was on several occasions that I was dolled up until I felt and thought I was a girl. I began to admire my mum’s beauty. My mum’s beauty accessories and high heeled shoes never failed to wow me. I would secretly open her drawers, holding her accessories like a gem. Fortunately, my desire to be a girl stopped when I reached puberty. I am comfortable with my male body and not feeling trapped in the wrong body.

Apparently, the Ice Queen had issues herself. She cried a lot when she didn’t win.  I suppose that was when a psychopath and a perpetrator was born. My dad worked so hard to raise the family and support her education till she attained a degree level. As such, I missed out on the fatherly attention at that time. I was raised in a solely female environment most times. Even though I was a child, the Ice Queen also had issues with my mum. She used to stay at my parent’s home and she had access to constantly manipulate my chain of thoughts. 

One day, the Ice Queen brought along a lesbian best friend she met to live at my parent’s home with the assumption that it was alright that her newly found best friend stayed with my parents. My dad was totally uncomfortable but as the youngest sister, she was quite a spoilt brat. Along the way, she tricked me with untrue facts about my mum day by day, and pretending to cry like a victim. She had so much tears to spare as her weapon. I don’t how my mum survived and was patient with her cranky and unacceptable self-pitying attitude. 

I remember her hiding me behind the closet doors programming my mind to hate my parents, especially my mum, where she succeeded. As a child, I believed her constant manipulation.  When she thought her wings were strong enough to fly, she was also ready to hurt my dad who was suffering with depression. After all the love from her brother, I remember very clearly what she said to my dad, making him cry so much. She said she was never happy living with my dad, the person who raised and loved her since their father died when she was young.

My dad was repairing a fishing net at that moment. He spent his miserable depression period fishing and repairing long fish nets. My dad broke down and cried like a baby. He was then admitted to a mental institution. That was the beginning of my anxieties. My aunt left the house as if she was being chased and cried like as if she was beaten. She bad mouthed my family big time to the other families till the rest saw us as a pest and disease until they themselves got manipulated.

She made the decision to leave herself. So as everyone does, it is very normal to return the spare keys as I would to my landlords, it was common sense. My mother requested her for the key in my presence and there she was, as a drama queen, she cried and cried making me believe that my mum tortured her mentally because she duplicated the key with her hard-earned money. Such a trivial matter made into such a huge fuss. It is so normal for anyone who would duplicate keys and return to the owner when it’s time to leave. Nobody chased her. It was her own decision with her best friend who deliberately used words like “tame”, which is normally used to describe animals, to describe my siblings and I to spite my parents whenever she had the opportunity.

The Ice Queen was then called by my dad’s doctor and she claimed she was also mentally tortured by the doctor. The words “mentally tortured” were frequently used to manipulate my mind such that she forgot she was mentally torturing me too. I suppose she deserved it for putting my dad in such a situation. 

My siblings were all too young to feel the outrage and sadness of both my parents, but I was very disturbed by her behavior then. She made me trusted her so much and then she abandoned me. She made me love her very much, yet she manipulated me time after time. I was so blinded by her manipulative words that I hated my parents which I realized was a huge mistake.

At the same time, during those moments of crisis, I was also silently suffering the anxieties of being constantly tailed by men, who are strangers, during my trips to music lessons at Yamaha Music School at Plaza Singapura. I was constantly being molested by unknown male strangers in the bus and public toilets. Those unattended traumas led to my other sexuality issue which is being gay.

I was always afraid to go to the toilet when I needed to pee. I was bullied in school and the army of guys were constantly eager and curious of my sexuality by rubbing their erect penises on my body in some disturbing occasions to checkout if there are any reactions from me. I always kept a blank face. Even at work, guys were making fun of me assuming my sexuality. These are so called straight men. Married and happily ever after, being accepted by society as being married. But, they have the most disgusting curiosity habits when they gather only to make fun of the weak. Most times, these men can be in the closet themselves, hiding their true sexual identity. By making fun, they become heroes.

I could not share all my troubled moments to any of my family members until I was 34 years of age, especially about my true sexuality issue, as they were too troubled themselves. So, I kept everything to myself and eventually created panic disorder within myself and constant depression throughout my growing up years. There were years I was stronger than other years. 

2010 marked the beginning of panic disorder. I had been a constant fighter. 2018 shall be my 8th year fighting.  My strengths seemed so apparent with my abilities to produce a music album entitled “Solitude” and self-publishing my book about panic disorder since no publisher wanted to publish my book. My book entitled, “Panic Disorder – The Choice and Willpower to Survive” is just a needle in a haystack. Mental health stigmas did not help either and I have no marketing team for support. It was difficult for me to always be a one man show, especially struggling with my illness. To me, even if it is just a self- publication, perhaps, one day the needle can be discovered from the haystack to help other people with my story and tips I shared in the book.  My website for the book is www.sufyanadlisupiani.com.

The music album was another tiny needle hidden in a haystack. My album production process was supported and funded very well only for me to realize that all the desperate support was just a publicity stunt to cover up for some political issue. Whatever I had to say to the media was closely monitored to my face and I felt pressured, not being able to express the truth. I felt disgusted and since 2014, I never had the desire to sing or even look at my music album. Many copies unsold and kept in the storeroom to collect dust. The music album was recorded, and the music video was filmed in Mauritius because at some point of my recovery phase, I did a music video on my own and won a scholarship to study a Diploma in Film Production. After one semester, due to the stress, I had a severe relapse such that I had to be warded in a mental institution. Nevertheless, while schooling, I did make friends with some international students.  One of my friends from Mauritius opened a recording studio and since we were on tight budget, I flew to Mauritius, fighting my biggest fear of being in a flight as I was claustrophobic. I even fainted prior to the filming of the music video due to a severe panic attack but because the album was important, I got myself up and the show must go on. Mental health is not all about how many times we fall, but how many times we get up no matter how hard it is.

Same goes for my book. I never reprinted as there was no demand for it. Even if there is a demand when eventually discovered, I shall not have any money to reprint the hardcopies of the book unless the books are purchased online via the amazon website.

Upon identifying that the Ice Queen was the root cause of my underlying issues that triggered chain of reactions to my anxieties, panic attack and depression, I thought it was only fair that I request monetary compensation since my family and caregiver had contributed a massive amount for my treatments over the 8 years. The amount was based on the 8 years of disabilities of unemployment, emotional damages and for me to perhaps start a new life by growing the money to start up a spa business. The amount is nothing compared to how much pain, sufferings and the loss of my pride.

The Ice Queen is a millionaire. Being single, she could afford the compensation requested so that I could make peace and closure with her and start focusing on my other underlying issues.  I was hoping to get the compensation transferred to my account by 12 January 2018 on my 41st as a birthday gift to feel reborn. 

Unfortunately, I was ignored and totally given a silent treatment despite begging her daily. I was highly suicidal on my birthday having to accept the fact that I could no longer afford anymore treatments. Here I am not in denial with my illness and struggling to get better, there she was, the Ice Queen with a cold heart and as hard as a stone. Due to desperation, I postponed all treatments till April 2018 to give myself 2 months to earn money to pay for my treatments. I even went to the extreme of wanting to be a male prostitute, but I was told that I was too old, fat and ugly.  Because I was depressed and desperate, I believed that I was too old, fat and ugly. It took me lots of effort to rise again.

The power of the magnificent Ice Queen to control and manipulate family after family with her self-pity attitude and often feeling victimized by anyone and everyone, paralyzed my family to be unable to assist me further to avoid any mental tortures from her end.

My dad and mum are both aging and not in good enough health to get attacked by the screaming Ice Queen. My siblings have had their fair share of mental tortures and I totally understand their dilemmas. As for the compensation, since I cannot afford a lawyer to sue her, I must let it go and find other options. I strongly believe God has bigger plans for me.

- Sufyan Supiani

In a perfect society, we would all come out unscathed. The trials and tribulations we face would roll off our backs like a spring rain and nothing would deter us from our potential. Sadly, this is not the case and often times we are dealt a hand that has nothing to do with our decisions but the decisions of those who have gone before us. I faced such a situation at a young age and as I grew I found myself standing on the cusp of a decision. Do I allow this revelation to continue to feast on my future, or do I dig into it, removing it from my life forever?

I was 5 when I met the face of fear. With its mangled teeth and sharpened claws it bore into my soul. A parasite building itself a home constructed of my DNA it moved into the neighborhood yet no one knew it was there. Hidden under layers of subconscious thought it cowered in the corner whispering from the face of every stranger. I was not shy- I was scared.

This monster haunted every dream, every thought in the back of my mind. It made my decisions…should I walk home or run? All it took was one look at his house and I would charge forward fueled by this anxiety rendering me a marionette in the palm of its hand. Alone, safe in my home I would see from my window as he walked down the street and I would lock the doors, shut the curtains and cower in my closet hoping he wouldn’t see me. Praying I would be hidden in the shadows behind old books and discarded dolls.

At night, my eyes betrayed my senses as I struggled to see past the black figures that stood by my doorway. Fear made manifest as every breath was a struggle until the dawn but even the light held its own ghosts.

“People who hate others go to hell.” This was my understanding so my fate was sealed before my life was lived.

A frantic knock on the door changed everything. Her words became a life raft to a drowning child. “They think he’s dead.” Urged to call upon our faith for the best possible outcome I ran to my room, folded my hands and prayed it was true.  Guilt and fear wrestled like Jacob and the Archangel and I couldn’t move until I knew the outcome. Glued to the floor putting all my money on the one that would take this fear from my mind as I felt the flames of hell reach up from my floor to claim what was theirs, but I cared not for the fire for the burn would be a welcome relief from the empty void that filled my soul.

I cried at his funeral but not for him. I cried for the loss felt by others for even as a child I felt their sorrow. Their heartache was palpable but not for reasons my young mind could comprehend, for they knew the monster that laid in the casket and each tear they shed was a silent prayer that his sins would be forgiven.

As I grew, my fear grew with me although its face changed form. From fear to anxiety my subconscious protected me from the vileness of parasitic infection as memories faded with every breath but the scars of torment tore open with every fresh worry or concern. I was being cut from the inside but had no idea who held the razor. An invisible source so much a part of me as my own flesh. Memories convoluted and broken. Two stories looped in my mind. One happy and smiling, with blonde hair shining in the southern summer sun as the warmth of the day sent beads of sweat down my brow. We climbed and laughed and played until the fireflies made lanterns out of mason jars. The other a dark story told to an audience of one. It must be my imagination.

I clung to my family. Their protection and love was all I needed. The four walls of our home was the safest place…until it wasn’t.  

18 years doesn’t seem like enough time but it was all I was allowed. Your covering, your protection was stolen from me and like a thief in the night it ripped my soul in two. Again, I hit my knees and cried out to the skies that you would come back. Like Jesus calling out for Lazarus I waited yet the stone did not move. All but abandoned on the verge of adulthood I stood drowning once again only this time there were no life rafts, no breaths of fresh air to save me

The next few days were a blur of emotion only a few details remain locked in my mind but there is one scene that plays out before me. Maybe it was the night air, maybe it was the sudden loss but I can still hear the words in my head, the bittersweet confession that reached into my subconscious and pulled from the depths the memories that were haunting my every decision. A death scene of my childhood as your face came back to haunt me. It was real- and I wasn’t crazy….and everyone knew but me.

The parasitic narrative that feasted on my life was full grown and ready to consume what was left of it.

Survival was all that was left. Shutting down was the only option. The next 18 years would be my wilderness journey. Running from the past never works for we must all face our demons if we are to overcome them but I had no energy to fight and the fear and anxiety that has been my companion has grown into a depression that wears a mask of anger and every living thing I touched from that point forward felt its sting.

There were moments of happiness. Snapshots of amazing times with amazing people but like my childhood the truth lay behind the smile at the teeth clenching so hard they break under the weight of memory. Everything was infected. My eyes could not see any good in myself for the mask of abuse shielded me from a clear view. The worst part of it was there was nothing that could be done. My abuser died while I was still young and the one person I wanted to talk to about all of it, the one person who did what he knew to protect me from it was now gone so I am left alone with the knowledge and scars of stories I cannot erase. I am left sitting in the rumbles of a war, left on my own to rebuild a city I never knew I lived in.

They say time heals all things but that is not entirely true for there is a big difference between healing and allowing time to numb the pain. For something to heal you must first recognize the source and work from there to find a solution. Anger, anxiety, fear and depression are mere symptoms of larger problems. We are all born with potential into a world of obstacles but it’s our reaction to these obstacles that defines us and realization is just the first step in a long difficult process. To ignore them in hopes they go away is to deceive yourself and it can slowly and systematically ruin your life and the life of those around you for everything you do will be subconsciously affected by these seeds of destruction. We must all look in the mirror and face the same choice…do we control the narrative of our lives or allow it to be stolen from our grasp. It’s about accepting your role in the narrative, knowing you are not the bad guy but also knowing that you have to take control even in the simplest of decisions and as the famed actress Jennifer Lewis once said, “Love yourself so love will not be a stranger when it comes.”

For some this is not as simple as it seems but you can learn. It’s not a lesson comprised of one and done it’s broken down into small moments of every day. For me, it’s confronting the panic I feel when someone hugs me, it’s defying the depression and acknowledging it when it hits telling myself this too shall pass and calling the anxiety out for what it is and demanding it has no place in the here and now.

Writing has helped me with the process of acceptance but that is my medium of choice. Look towards what brings you joy and run towards it with unbridled passion.  And when you find yourself there, on the other side of healing, share your story so that others who are in the dark can be directed towards the light. 

- M. J. Deskovic

You can see more of M.J. Deskovic's work via her Website, or on her social: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Hi, my name is Megan Johnson. I am the 40 year old mother of fantastic young men, my 16 year old twins Luke and Max Johnson. I unfortunately suffered a Brain Injury called Wernicke Korsakoff Syndrome (WKS) on June 30th 2016.

My Brain Injury caused me to have to learn how to live again! I forgot how to walk, I forgot who in my life had died, I forgot my life! I am in the lucky 20% that somehow recover from this Brain Injury. Not that I am 100% recovered, but I am up and walking, talking AND living with my twins again in Huxley Iowa! I was addicted to opiates so to get off them I was on the methadone assistance treatment program and I did not stop drinking alcohol while taking methadone. And not eating properly caused me to have a lack of vitamin B1 in my body. My madness scramble my brain all up. 

In my twins short 16 years they have already been thru so much grief and hurt. I absolutely wish I would have handled finding their dad Chris dead and finding my own dad Ted dead better then I did! And losing my younger brother Adam to death did not help make life any easier.  I feel so embarrassed for the pain that now I've caused my twins. Max and Luke are insanely fantastic respectable young men and I am so lucky to get this fresh start with this new brain I've got!

First I was in an Iowa Methodist Hospital in Des Moines Iowa when this all first happened. The incredible staff at Younkers Rehabilation at Iowa Methodist got me up walking again, and remembering who was who. From there I was transferred to NeuroRestorative in Carbondale Illinois. That was an inpatient rehabilitation centre that helped me work extremely hard and retaught me so incredibly much. Very patient, incredible therapists and staff.  Lastly I got transferred back to my state, Iowa, to another Brain Injury Rehabilitation Centre called Community NeuroRehab. The staff there helped me to continue to recover and get ready to live with my twins again! And here we are!! All living under the same roof together! It's been a rough and crazy year, but we are all working towards what our new normal will be!!

I am still not the mother they spent their last 16 years with. My memory is non-existent, I forget everything constantly. My arms are always have a painful tingling through to my finger tips. I feel extremely anxious now, overwhelmed by anxiety. I drive myself crazy. With my twin’s hometown of Huxley we are slowly attempting to get back to life.

I am luckily out of rehab and my twins and I are finally living back in Huxley Iowa. Luke and Max had to go to Omaha Nebraska for their sophomore year in high school. They were living with my wonderful supportive mother. I caused our house and our vehicle to get sold because of my Brain Injury. We are living in an apartment now, but looking for a new house back in their hometown! Since we have been back in Huxley we have been welcome with such open, caring, supportive arms! We are all happy to be home(ish)! And I am somehow working again at Ballard High School in the lunchroom where my twins are Juniors. It is incredibly fun to be back at the high school, getting to be around all that fun young energy daily is extremely healing!

With my twins are trying their best, in the awkward teenage years, to readjust to being back in Huxley Iowa. And to live this new constantly forgetful mother they've got! I am also trying to get used to this new me, brain and body. It's crazy to have your hands and arms in a constant deep, tingly painful sleep.

Please keep my incredible loving strong twins in your thoughts and prayers. We need all the well wishes and support we can get! 

- Megan Johnson

If you would like to read more about Megan’s story, and support her and her twin boys, please consider donating to her GoFundMe

 Painful Days and Nights

I lie awake with my head throbbing like there was a marching band performing in my room, my body suffers from chills as cold as the Artic, my mouth is as dry as a desert, and the thoughts running through my mind are going as fast as Usain Bolt. 

I roll to my side in search of my liquor, a sense of despair looms; my bottle looks empty.  I grab the hefty 60 ounce bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin and pray that there may be just enough left for one shot. Thank God there is.  I drain every last drop of the alcohol in my mouth savouring the burn on my tongue and the brief feelings of relief that arise.  This was my daily scenario as I approached the end of my drinking career. 

Daily, I drank until I reached a state of oblivion. I needed to escape the insanity of my own mind, the torments of my past, and the anxieties of my future. Alcohol was my Lord and Saviour.  It relieved me of my sober state that consisted of suicidal thoughts and self-condemnation. Alcohol plummeted me into a world of numbness where the pains of my reality were nothing but an afterthought.  Sadly this never endured and ultimately the tormenting pain would return.

My addiction eventually granted me multiple trips to the psychiatric ward.  How could someone harbouring such immense pain free himself from the shackles of addiction and move toward a life of peace?  I never thought I would be able to live a life without the use of drugs and alcohol. Even more mindboggling was to be able to live my life with the wisdom and serenity I have now. However, I achieved this miracle with the love and support of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and many pivotal close relationships.  By way of observing my own flawed belief systems, dealing with my emotional pain, and surrendering to a power greater than myself; I overcame the seemingly impossible.

Growing Pains

I was always known as an angry and boorish person.  My marquee trait was the ability to hurt others with my words. Growing up in an alcoholic household created a lot of confusing emotions within me.  Watching a loved one choose drugs over quality time with me created a burning flame of resentment inside me. I always had a void in me that I just could not fill. 

My first addiction relied on feeling superior to others. I basked in the states I attained when making fun of people, followed by an entrenched obsession with video games.  I used my initial addictions to escape my own insanity and enter state of mind where I could be temporarily free from psychological pain. I had found a way to briefly fill the void in me. Then and there, a 20-year battle with addiction was born. 

 Throughout adolescence and adulthood I had increasing bouts of depression and anxiety.   I would stay up all night caught in my mind going in circles of negative thoughts like a hamster on a wheel.  The results of these anxious nights were suicidal thoughts.  My only avenues of escape were alcohol and marijuana.  Day after day I entered a state of oblivion and then woke up full of despair. I would trudge through life trying all sorts of materialistic outlets to feel better. 

I tried to cover up my emotional pain by using sex, success, and food but it never lasted; the heartache kept coming back.  Oblivion escalated into violent anger and outbursts that I would not remember.  I knew I was about to hit rock bottom, there was a constant concern that I would hurt someone else, or myself, if I did not get help.

Pivotal Moments

The night came where I was forced to make a pivotal decision: get help or face long-term incarceration.  I stood in the police station, feeling my body and mind aching after spending the night in lock-up once again. My entire life I had been dependent on my parents, and the time had come where friends and family wanted nothing to do with me. I narrowed down my choices to a single important question: did I want to live or did I want to die? 

I chose to live and I called our maid and family friend Donna.  Donna had always been a source of support for my family; she knew the extent of my situation because she saw the routinely dreadful state my room was in from my hellish drinking nights. I dialled her number and it was almost as if she knew what had happened. She came and picked me up without hesitation.

 My recovery began the moment Donna picked me up.  She showed no judgement of what I had done which was a critical moment for me.  She did not call me stupid, irresponsible or selfish.  She told me I was loved, that there was a good person deep within me, and that we would work together in my recovery. 

I knew that in order to stay sober I would have to look at the pain I had been trying to escape with my addiction. But how was I to recover? I had a parent who had attended AA in an effort to recover from their own addiction but they did not succeed. However, it was one of the only sources available to me immediately with no waiting period so I decided to give it a try.

Freedom From Pain

My first AA meeting provided a grand awakening due to the honesty and non-judgemental support I received from the older members.   Hearing the gruelling stories of despair turned into tales of hope to be revelled in evoked a deep sense of faith in me.  I knew that there was something in these rooms that could help me recover. I went to meetings everyday, but more importantly I started to work the twelve steps that were at the heart of the program.  These steps all had a focus on observing the root causes behind my past actions and addiction while teaching me to take responsibility for what I had done in my life.  Furthermore, the program taught me to be compassionate towards myself because I had no idea how to cope with my life-long inner void. 

Each step in the program built upon the previous one. With each meeting and each chapter read, I slowly started to heal. I dove into my emotional pain, questioned all my old beliefs, and began believing in something greater than myself.  Eventually, I began to chair the meetings, and assisting others with their own addiction recovery. I pushed myself each day to be honest and left no stones unturned. I found spiritual avenues out of my past pains that made the obsession to escape them with drugs unnecessary and nonsensical.  I was happy, at peace and finally at a point in my life where I could truly say that I enjoyed my own company. I was free from the handcuffs of addiction.

The healing process took time but I would not have had it any other way.  All the bumps in the road combined with the use of the AA program pushed me into areas of spiritual growth I could not have imagined.  One can heal from their tribulations if they have the support, honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness to look deeply within themselves and transmute their pain into peace.

- Ishaq Malik

"We have two stories for you.

The first is about a man who fell three and a half floors to his death and came back to tell his tale. He suffered from Brain Injury.

The second is about a woman who fell two floors and took a similar Brain Injury journey. Both of the stories focus on the greatest challenges during and after these accidents. They show that the same accident can manifest itself in different ways.

Our experiences show the diversity and complexity within the Brain Injured world."

Judgement (Paul McMahon)

When I woke up in hospital I felt at ease. People were there and everything felt calm, relaxed and docile. Life was relaxing despite my strange separate feelings inside my Brain. I immediately thought of how long I’d be out of action prior to the next life challenge, conquering to scale higher than I had previously self-imagined.

For three months in hospital I dreamt of my past life and thinking of how I would achieve better than before. I began to write a book as I was bored, but never imagined that it would become the journey it has thus far, to take me into another world. I thought I was ready for this world. I thought the world was ready for me.

I was wrong.

My first challenge was the judgement of employers. Interview after interview felt like a loss, where I spoke of my accomplishments in a world built by expectations too simplified for reasoning. A small A4 sheet of paper held the truly deep understanding of the role being applied for and the dreams or aspirations of every single person who could have ever applied for it. In many cases the opposite took hold where people working in related management roles had their eye on the exact style of human prize they wanted and you should have known that for working in such an exactly similar role for 20 years.

I met people with smiles but that was not always the facade presented to me. I met good people, I met sad people, I met angry people and I met frustrated people with a lack of understanding constructed through their simplified version of the world in a place of font stretched across computer screens, spreadsheets and university intelligence with a kindergarten mind frame. You needed the highest degree with the lowest ability to think individually.

This judgement of employers was simply a stage I assumed. It was basically at the beginning before they knew your talents and abilities. Before they knew the person inside of you displayed in the workplace and ready for the challenges a job can bring.

“Judgement is surely just for now. Judgement can’t be how humanity exists?!”

In the workplace I was met with fear. Not that the places were all too scary until a manager or colleague would yell and belittle you if the exact need they had was not met. At times there were things that I asked for. At times, my issues that I did not understand prior to them occurring at work with attention to detail came to increase the abuse of others. With time I began to see how I could overcome such issues, time was one of them. Time was frowned upon in the workplace.

On a few occasions I admitted that I had a Brain Injury years ago and this was the possible reason for my mistakes. I was fired. Nothing was written to say I had a Brain Injury limitation, nothing stopped them from taking action against this natural burden toward my existence. I was fired. Minimal time was required for my removal from the workplace. I was eliminated.

With time I began to learn the normal human condition in a new light. One I did not understand before. People with goals and achievements in mind do not always acknowledge that in a society, we are all working together to achieve the best outcome for all. We are together for security and well being. Judgement is the one thing that separates the humans from the parasites. Those who eat away at the emotional well being of others to achieve better and feel good for accepting their dominant role in society. Judgement I learnt became the fuel for displaying the true nature of a person. The kind of person they wish to be, when indeed assistance could include others in their achievements and goals in this world. Their judgement put them on a pedestal above but I saw that their pedestal was flimsy and bound by the praise of others, not those they could help.

I remember looking at one employer as she sat on the front cover of a magazine. She removed me within 10 minutes of discussion, 24 hours after I shared my plight to the windows of her soul … looking into her eyes to show what I needed, acceptance. I was fired.

I looked over at the magazine and thought of all that we seek from the external world from which we derive representation. She smiled, calm, together and with the achievement of her success bathing in the limelight that her parents money had given her. She had once joked with myself and another colleague about how she was one of the few children in her family without PhDs, without a doctorate, without another badge of honour and without displaying her privilege. I was fired.

Judgement is a hard thing to deal with because at times others who have gone through trauma offer it. Sometimes it is used towards you as a way to alleviate their own condition and to further escape from an internal battle against this world. Mental health was something I began to learn in all its facets and that sometimes people become blinded in the search for self preservation.

What about the guy walking down the street at 2pm with the tight shirt and the duct tape used on the strap of his backpack to stop it from breaking.
 
Why? Do you know him? Do you know his story?

Don’t judge him. That boy is me. Did you know the tight shirt is because my clothes are from before falling three and a half floors as I continue being fired and cannot buy new clothes as I gain weight? The strap on my bag is because I cannot afford a replacement.

Judging is so easy isn’t it?

- Paul McMahon is an up-and-coming author, who shares his journey through brain injury, as well as runs a travel blog. His main message is that “the worst accident in the world can still direct you into bliss and prosperity”.

If you would like to read more of his story, you can through his blog, or connect with him on social: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Acceptance (Jennifer Stokley)

My greatest challenge was learning to accept myself for who I am now.  

I fell two stories to the sidewalk below. I suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury, nine major broken bones, a ruptured bladder, a punctured lung and went into Cardiac Arrest for good measure. I was in a natural coma for three months at the lowest scale possible to still be alive, yet I survived.

I woke to being a total stranger to myself. My family and lover were strangers to me, which must have broken their hearts. I was a grown woman, yet I thought I was a child. In my mind I was starting from the beginning. Eating mush, being wheeled to the potty and someone there to keep me safe, being washed in bed, the works. I even had a stuffed monkey in bed with me that I cuddled, snuggled, cried on and sucked on as I drifted off to sleep.

After three months of that, I was finally released. Life, you would think, was about to begin. WRONG!

Any life I had going for me before was gone, wiped away in a second. I was released into a strange new world. I was confused, scared, angry, depressed and more. What was I supposed to do now? I struggled for years like that, until I said to myself “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!”

I can’t change what has happened, all I can do is try to do the best I can with what I am able to do now and work to do better, day by day. That changed my focus from “poor me” to “I’m alive, now what?”

I had to accept what had happened, even if I didn’t like it. Acceptance Is Key!!!

Once I accepted it, everything else began to fall into place in my world around me. I found out I was a real fighter and there was so much I could do and I keep finding that out, week by week, year by year, and it never stops, nor do I.

I finally found other survivors in Cyber-Space that helped me to find direction and passion in my New Normal life.

That passion was to help other survivors as best as I possibly can.  I created pictures with words, with such meaning. I created two community pages on Facebook for the world to have access to.

I have been a guest on a Brain Injury Blogtalk radio show for two years as a call-in and cheerleader/helper and guest four times.

I now connect to over 25000 people on a good week, worldwide. Blogs, Support Groups, Healthsites, Survivors and more through my one community page. I also share with over 50 brain injury support groups and have been made honorary administrator in many.
 

My life has become so full and satisfying since I accepted my new life, my new normal.

- Jennifer Stokley is a passionate advocate of Acquired Brain Injury Survivors, promoting acceptance and support.

She can be found though her support group “The We Team of TBI Survivors” 
and via twitter.

*Trigger Warning: this post contains adult themes, sexual abuse and adult imagery.

My mother and father were married and divorced within two years of me being born. They got married NOT because they had a child on the way, well I guess partially, but because my father was a Dutch citizen living in the states illegally.

I don't think he would have cared much about that either, but my grandparents had invited my mom and dad to visit in the Caymans and my father wouldn't have been able to get back home without a green card. Clearly THAT was a stellar idea, not. So they were divorced and had dual custody of me, before I had a chance to know what living in one house was like.

Dual custody, especially with very short visits like what was inflicted on me, especially with two polar opposite parents in each household, has a tendency to almost split ones personality. You learn to dress and act and talk a certain way because that's what they want of you. But still I pushed back, defiantly trying to hang on to what I liked, the parts that made me ME. 

 I got involved with the theater, that place was my home away from home. If people made fun of my black clothes I had a reason for it: I was a stage hand, among other things, and we needed to dress in all black so we didn't stick out like a sore thumb when rushing about on in a darkened stage doing set changes. The theater gave me confidence to deal with a chaotic home life, and a sense of family and community, at least while we were working on a production.

I may not have been the best actress, but fuck it I was 12, I loved it and I didn't care about being ON the stage. I loved being a part of those productions so much, it filled me up with a warm glowing feeling that I've tried to call love most of my life. It's mostly been a one sided emotion. I did it all in the theater, happily. I did makeup and costume design, stage hand, stage manager, set building, and yes I even acted. I knew I wasn't the best, but I didn't care because I loved it. 

At that point I just embraced the stereotype with everyone in our small town calling me "goth". I was morbid, I was sullen, I dressed in black with chains hanging off of me and thick messy dark eyeliner. I kept my hair in my face and I had atrocious posture. There was a reason for this as well. My mother had gotten a boyfriend whom she later married, that I know now was an abusive narcissist, but at the time he was another father figure I felt I had to impress.

He could be very charming, I'll give him that, when you were in his favor it felt like you could do no wrong, you felt like the golden child with all the answers. But he had an explosive temper and a hair trigger, it was nearly impossible to tell what set him off. For the most part he was a smart man, because his abuse was mental and emotional, or he'd shove/bump us into things and then laugh cruelly at how "clumsy" and "stupid" we were. He knew not to leave bruises or any physical evidence that he hurt us, but it didn't hurt any less what he did to our minds.

He tore us my mother and I both down, like a fragile house of straw. Because he'd been in the army for a brief stint, before getting injured and discharged, he fancied himself a drill Sargent and treated me like a soldier. Everything was: faster faster faster, go go go!! Why are you not busy, why aren't you cleaning?? You can't fight a war in a dress, you know you look like a stupid whore when you try to put makeup on.

And in regards to my theatre career path "don't quit your day job" He said that to me after going to see one of the plays I'd been in with my mom, everyone else is getting hugs and congratulations on a job well done, and I'm off in a corner trying not to cry because he said that to me. "Don't quit your day job" That phrase will never leave my mind. I know I pulled away from the theater at that point, convinced I wasn't any good at it and I never would be, because of COURSE he knew better than me, right? He was older and had more experience, so he MUST know better, right?! 

Around this time I had a growth spurt that made me one of three REALLY tall girls in school, I was 5'8" in the fifth grade, towering over our classmates and eye level with most of the teachers. My mother's husband apparently noticed the budding female form in our home because his tactics changed.

He wanted me to sit on his lap and he'd pull me close and cuddle me and wiggle around with me. I liked the attention because he wasn't yelling at or hitting me. He told me he wished I was older or he was younger so we could be together, as he stroked and touched me. If I would get tense because he touched my breasts, ass or pussy, he'd act extremely offended like there was something wrong with me and the "kind" attention would cease.  So I stopped calling attention to it.

Also his moods would turn on a dime. I spent a great deal of my childhood, sitting quietly in my room, barely breathing, listening for the screams that meant he was hurting her again. To hear that pitch in his voice that meant he was going to hit her. I got REALLY good at running down the stairs and to the back room he occupied.

"The office" they called it, but it was a glorified man cave. I would go and knock on the door and sweetly ask my mother for something, if it was a less serious altercation she'd usually use that opportunity to escape with me and focus on another task for a little while. Or when it got really bad I would pound on the door and drag her out, protecting her with my own body if I had to, getting between them to shield her from the blows. I was an only child, no one else was going to do it. I think this is when the "joke" that I was HER mother started, but it fit so it stuck. I still hear those screams when it gets silent, in my head, to this day.

So I was juggling my new found role as my mother's keeper, two households that were as different as night and day (my father also remarried to a quiet mouse of a woman, also extremely controlling and manipulative, but in a less insidious manner) and suddenly I'm accused of having a bad attitude and being depressed. Well no fucking shit!! REALLY?! Are you fucking kidding me??? You put all of this in the back of a child and you think "Oh yeah she's depressed, put her on some meds to shut her up and move on."

I was sad and sullen from the abuse I sustained in my home. I was tired and behind on my schoolwork because I forgot my school books at my moms or dad's house, or I was stressed from a long week of protecting my mother and I just needed to rest. I wore black baggy clothes to hide my body from the borderline pedophile who resided in one of my homes. I slouched and kept my appearance intentionally raggedy to avoid his attentions.

I learned very quickly that the four parental units I had all wanted very different things from me, be it my behavior or manner of dress. I learned at a very young age to use my empathic nature to pick up on what about me made other people happy and content and to accentuate those traits when in their presence. Needless to say I lost a bit of myself with that tactic.  

I thought a lot about killing myself or running away during that time, but there's a defiant streak in me a mile long. This got me in trouble a lot in school, mostly because I didn't have a problem asking "Why?" Of people who legally weren't allowed to hit me and had witnesses to stop them. I fucking knew they weren't allowed to hit me, so the defiance I felt at home was inflicted on my teachers. For this I am sorry, they didn't deserve my ire and hostility, they were just easy targets of a rage I had nowhere else to express.

They'd threaten me with the principal and I'd laugh, detention and I'd thank them for a few more hours away from home. I ended up being the chick that always skipped study hall, but they only said something if I brought other kids with me. I remember the exact speech I was given even: "We KNOW we can't stop YOU, just please don't bring other kids with you" This defiance made multiple people call me "contrary" in my life. Because I like the cold and the fog and the rain, I like snow and the Fall, the ways the leaves change color, and Halloween is my favorite holiday.

Back then I was a freak and a weirdo, I knew a few kids like me, but mostly I related to older creative types, in arts, music or theater. To this day I have a deep understanding and profound respect for artisans and craftsmen. But now I know I'm easily classified as an introvert, and with the emergence of the internet I know now that I'm rare, but not the last of my kind. 

So I did finally escape home with a train ticket when I was 17. I had some interesting adventures and a few failed relationships. I even found my own narcissist to repeat my mother's patterns with for a time, but HE left ME. I got REALLY thin because an extremely short term boyfriend said I didn't have the willpower to be anorexic. I was 110 on a 5'8" frame. Fuck you willpower, you have no clue the willpower I possess. So of course because of that I had a lot of people around me telling me to eat more and praising me when I DID eat.

When I finally got into a relationship with a man who had GOOD intentions for me, I didn't know how to react. I kept him at arms length for a while. He saw I wasn't eating so he'd bring me a covered plate of food when he came over to my house for a booty call. I wouldn't let it be more than that for a LONG time, my sense of self worth was in the toilet and I was waiting for the other shoe to drop again, like it always had in the past. In that way "food=love" started to become a thing for me. He loved to cook and feed me and I would eat it all, to be a good girl and make him happy.
 

Around this time I also made a friend who was a larger, some would say overweight woman, doctors called her morbidly obese. This woman had a tendency to tear down the "skinny bitches" in our midst, "eat a cheeseburger bitch" words that were on her lips frequently. So I guess you could say I GAINED weight because of peer pressure. She became my closest friend, or so I thought, until I had a child which she hated. She dislike children immensely and quickly replaced me with a younger, childless lady. For some reason that friend breakup, the subsequent finding of a new friend group, seeing myself in pictures and how large I'd gotten, coupled with no one giving me the time of day, and an abject hatred of attempting to dress my overweight body in flattering layers made me decide to make a drastic change.

I applied the advice given to me by a nutritionist when I was pregnant with my first. I cut my portions and started to lose weight. I went from 220 down to 125. I pushed past the fear of my youth and started wearing clothing that made me feel sexy and strong, not hiding the parts of my body I'd worked so hard to carve into muscle, not ashamed of my femininity. I wanted to try my hand at modeling so I started taking amateur pictures with my iPhone, improving with each photo shoot, not caring as much if I looked "silly" at first, and remembering when I used to do pictures of myself when I was a teenager, with film that needed to be developed, yes I know that dates me.

I remembered that I'd always loved to write and I started a blog on Tumblr with my short stories and personal essays. I hope to publish a book of short stories, that's a future goal that is actually very attainable for me currently. The point is what I've learned is you don't have to be perfect at something the first time you do it. Sometimes you'll do something just because you ENJOY doing it, just because you love it. Some things you'll get better at with practice, like dressing your body in a flattering manner or makeup, or what light makes a photoshoot more dynamic, or even forcing yourself to exercise so you can love your body more and feel better about yourself. I do body weight exercises (squats, crunches, lunges, push ups and such) to tone up the areas of my body that I was not particularly proud of in the past.

Never let anyone turn you away from anything that makes your heart sing, no matter how "silly" it is, as long as you're not hurting anyone. I spent far too much of my life waiting for someone to rescue me, when it was just about pushing a little harder and DOING the thing I wanted to do. Pushing past the invisible weight of depression, that would hold me down for weeks even months at a time. And the anxiety that tells me all the ways anything can go wrong. Or the voices in my head from when I was a child, telling me I'll never do anything worth while, that I'm worthless and a joke. Or the screaming that threatens to drown out all. The point is, your life doesn't have to end after child abuse, after a diagnosis of depression and anxiety disorder, after 30, or after kids. Find the things that make you YOU, find those things and cling to them, defiantly if you have to. 

 For the most part I feel like I handle it all fairly well. I have panic attacks that make me feel like I'm dying, but I know how to keep them at bay now. Unfortunately it's made me almost an agoraphobe, but I'm a stay at home mom now, so at least I have a reason to be there other than crippling mental illness. I'm purposefully not going to share much about panic attacks because I know personally that even reading about them can sometimes cause one in myself, so Id like to spare my readers that Hell. But suffice to say it FEELS like DYING.

My advice? Water, meds, exercise, and eat well. You have to take extra care of your body when your mind can turn against you. Yes it will be an internal battle, it's something I still struggle with daily. But I remind myself that I'm more critical of myself than anyone else ever will be again. Not every opinion expressed about you matters, to quote Rupaul Charles "Unless they paying your bills pay them bitches no mind." So yeah I might seem a little hard edge to some, it's because I've been fighting most of my life just to survive.

Defiance and confidence (even faked confidence) have become my allies again the depression and anxiety, and I fight this war every day in my mind. I defy the negative thoughts and emotions that live in me, I defiantly do the things I love even though I'm scared to death of failure or looking ridiculous. I may stumble a thousand times in my journey, but I'll pick myself up a thousand and one, dust myself off and wave defiantly to anyone laughing at my progress. 

I'm still happily married to the father of my two beautiful children, he still loves to cook for me, it's not always easy, but we do the best we can with empathy and understanding. These days I use my spare time (when the kids don't need me) to take pictures, write short stories (for my book) and I write on my Tumblr blog about my struggles with mental health and self worth. I reach out to suicidal or struggling strangers I see online and tell them the things I wish someone had told me: You're not a burden, you're not worthless, you are beautiful and loved and filled with so much potential it can hurt, but don't give up. Eventually someday I'd like to change "defiantly" to "joyfully" but I'm not quite there yet, I still have anger over what was done to me to work through. My defiance has kept me alive, even when my conscious self had decided to throw in the towel, SOMETHING inside always pulled me back. No, it's not you time yet, you're here for a reason. 

So one final point: if you want to do something, to better yourself or try something new, as long as it's not hurting anybody, just do it. Seriously I feel like a cliche quoting a Nike slogan, but really. Life is so very short, but it can be amazing, if you focus on the things that make you feel BETTER about yourself, not worse. It's tough to climb out of the hole of child abuse, a time that is supposed to be the best and most carefree of your life, so as an adult you have to rebuild your own foundation from the bad examples given to you and what you can extrapolate of how successful people live.

What I've learned is this: everyone is fallible. You know in your heart what's right and wrong, what's good and bad and it's solely your decision which path you take. Not everyone is going to "get" you and that's ok, when you find someone that truly does it's so much more fulfilling than people liking you because you censored yourself to please them.

Defiantly Yours, Invisigoth Killswitch

You can follow Invisigoth on: Tumblr | Deviant Art | Facebook 

Content warning: This article will discuss sexual violence.

My grandmother used to say to me, “Don’t ever worry about the things you’re already worried about, it’s the things you never thought possible that get you.”
I could never fault her with this quote, I still can’t.

 Everyone has an identifier in High School, we can’t help but label people, I know I still turn to my friends and say, “Hey remember that really sporty girl from high school? oh what was her name?” and in 2 seconds flat my friend will blurt out the name. The “Identifier” list can go on from that popular girl, that was the most beautiful person you had ever seen, the smartest person in your year level, that cute guy who had the most charming smile, the person who was an asshole, I could go on for ages.

My identifier was the girl that got raped.

Listed below are diary entries I wrote. I’ve never shown them to anyone, they sit in a black box labelled DO NOT OPEN.

I was 2 weeks off being 15 when I got my first partner. He had a smile that could stop a truck and beautiful big brown eyes with a tiny bit of green in them.
I was a plus one at his party, he had got a scholarship to a prestigious Melbourne High school.
I only knew my friend at this party and she informed me it was a “Dress to Impress Party”.

I remember running home and telling my mother about it I was that excited, I borrowed my aunt’s dress, she came and did my makeup and for the first time in my life I felt really pretty. I was so ready to go to my first teenager party, I was ready to go an hour before it even started. (I was so am lame)

Diary Entry 26th September
The party was everything I imagined and more, I met a guy! He is a few years older than me. I will let myself fall in love this one time. Cause I think I have found the one!
He is so handsome and he was so nice. I was such an idiot and didn’t realise it was his party, we talked about all kinds of stuff for ages. I hope I get to see him again.

The following Monday, my friend ran up to me, he had asked for my number, my friend had already given it to him because he was the most handsome guy. My friend had also invited him to my 15th birthday party. Cause what best friends are for.

Diary Entry 3th October
My birthday party could have not been more perfect! I now officially have a boyfriend! He came with flowers, and gave me a silver bracelet and engraved in French is “I love my beautiful girlfriend”.

I can’t wait to show everyone from school!!  Even my parents liked him!!! It feels just like a fairy tale.

Then on the 16th of October I made a decision that would change the course of my life forever.
I went into his room alone.

Diary Entry 22nd November
Who will I call, I have gone completely through my phone, no one will understand. I’m alone with my thoughts about him. He is a good guy, he made one mistake, just one. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I’m sick of school, but I can’t stand being in my room. Monday I’m going nowhere, I’m getting on a train and I don’t care where I go, I’ll just go. I want someone to call my mobile, I don’t care who just someone please call. I still love him with my heart, but now not with my head. I want to be a child again. If this is love, I hate it. I don’t know whether it’s good I can’t feel anything anymore.

I don’t want to talk about it with my parents anymore. I just want it out, I just want it to go away. I wish it never happened. Mum was right & God she loves telling me she is right. “I told you not to go into a boy’s room”. I am a fucking idiot. How am I going to tell my friends at school?

Diary Entry 23rd November
My best friend said, “Why didn’t you just try to enjoy it, you have ruined everything we worked for, he was so much more attractive than you!” Maybe she is right, maybe there is something wrong with me. Maybe I’m just over-reacting.

 Diary Entry 1st December
I can’t open my curtains, won’t turn on the light, I sit alone in the corner. Getting smaller, everything drains. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to hear. I really want this life to end, but I can’t do that. I can’t think what to do, there is no way out. I see there is no way out. I told my parents and showed my emotions, but look where that has gotten me now. I feel like as if everyone I love is getting cancer from me. I am toxic. I don’t know who to trust, who to tell, where to hide, where to live. Every bit of warmth is gone.

 Diary Entry 12th December
I just want someone to hold me and say its ok everything will be okay, don’t worry about it, I got you.

Kids can be cruel, you are absolutely fucking right. School was pure torture, now as an adult I realised a mixture of ignorance and youth came in the form of waves of in-person and online gossip about what happened to me. I got called everything you can imagine. I got told it was a lie, I had the counsellor tell my parents I was to stop talking about it and push it aside. I did confide in one teacher, a day after I told her she took 6 months emergency stress leave, I’ve never made that mistake again. Years later some people from high school have contacted me and apologised, some through texts, some needed a coffee or two and a box of tissues. After the 12th person I started to sound like a broken record, “It was not your fault, no one knew any better and you are such a brave person for owning your behaviour”.

While school was a battle ground every day, the relationship with my parents broke down, whenever I get asked the question, “Why don’t you fix the relationship with your parents?” to this I always answer,

“Kids are like wine glasses, some parents leave finger prints, some a crack and some parents smash the glass all together and I’m sad to say to this day, we have never been able to pick up the broken pieces”.

So I made the 2nd biggest decision of my life, I took what happened to me to the police, then a year later on the 10th December to court.  

After the court case was finalised, living with my parents became so toxic I knew there was no place for me in my family anymore.

So I made the 3rd biggest decision of my life, at the age of 16, I moved out of home and was legally/financially independent.

My final years of high school pushed me beyond what I thought of my limits.
I slept on a yoga mat on the floor for 6 months until I could afford a bed.
Every day I would get up, scrub my skin raw in the shower and say to myself,
“If one more thing happens, I’m giving up”.
I continued to say this until I graduated high school.

Half way through year 12, when I was a frightening frame of 49.2kgs, smoking a pack a day and drinking 2 cans of V, I went on a Legal Studies trip to the magistrate’s court in the city.
On this day everything that happened to me became worth it.

I was paired up with the popular girl from my high school. She was beautiful, she had long brown hair and skin so delicate, I thought if I touched it I would leave a mark.
Due to the location of our names on the roll call we were paired together.
We were walking through security at the magistrate’s court when I turned to ask her something of no importance, and tears were streaming down her face, she was shaking so violently she could have been on a roller coaster.
She whispered only this, “I can’t be here again”.

For the first time in what felt like a long time I understood.

I hugged her, took her hand and turned to the teacher and said, “We aren’t going inside, fail me, I don’t give a fuck, we aren’t going in”.
We sat out the front and smoked my entire deck that day.

We never spoke about what happened that day, she went back to ignoring me in the halls and the first time we spoke about it was 5 years later. I bumped into her catching the train one day and she said something that changed me forever, “You don’t understand, you understood, you listened to me and said all the right things and for the first time I didn’t feel alone, thank you for that day, you saved my life”.
I found my silver lining in what had happened to me, cause if it hadn’t have happened, it doesn’t matter how kind a person I am, I would have said the wrong thing.

I know this probably doesn’t apply to anyone other than me, I know this probably won’t make sense to a lot of people, but if you have read this far maybe you’re willing to read a little more.

When I was a kid something terrible happened to me, and it was something I never thought could possibly happen to me, but in a fucked up way it taught me so much. I spent a long time wishing it didn’t happen, wishing I never went to that party, but you never understand until it happens to you or someone you love more than you love yourself.  

I am not faultless in all this, I’ve made many mistakes, I’ve hurt a lot of good people and for that I will never forgive myself. I’ve lied, twisted the truth. I told the truest thing that’s ever happened to me and I lost my family. I’ve lived many years trying to live a fake life behind lies, my want to be “normal”. This is no one’s fault but my own. It has taken me years to begin to piece myself back together, the person I was before and after it happened have nothing in common but a face. This has lead me down many dark paths to substance abuse, self-harm and self-sabotage, I took all the wrong roads to get to the acceptance stage of what happened and proud to say the dark days grow further apart but as my best friend jokes to me, “Next time can you please give me at least a two-week notice period for your next break down schedule? So I can have the pizza and ice cream already stocked in the fridge, Jesus you’re so inconsiderate”.

I will never say I’ve gotten over it, time doesn’t heal everything, but it teaches you how to manage your pain. I am one of the lucky ones though. On the 10th of December 2010 I won my court case. A lot of people don’t get that kind of closure. I forgave him, I felt sorry for him, no one is born a monster and he was unwell to think what he did to me was an act of love. I also made one other good decision, I started self-defence through Boxing, Thai Boxing and Jiu Jitsu and I got some of my confidence back. It continues to be a daily struggle to have anyone touch me, but with self-defence you are in a safe environment and slowly it’s becoming less jarring.

I am extremely lucky, I’ve had friends who took on the roles of mother & father, who took me bra shopping for the first time and taught me how to drive a car.
If you work out who I am, please be kind, I am only keeping this anonymous to protect people I love as it still hurts them. I know them watching me suffer for so long broke their hearts. They are truly the brave ones, they never failed to cheer me up, to come into my bedroom at 3am after I had a nightmare, to listen to me cry just one more time, even sometimes when there was nothing they could do, but sit there, they saved me every day.

I guess I needed to write this more than you needed to read it, but if you take anything from this.

Please just be kind to one another.
- Erin Mahoney

Sexual Assault Crisis Line (Victoria, Australia) 1800 806 292

So, I am to write a small autobiography under 2000 words. No pressure! And since I am going through one of my ever so frequent insomniac nights, here I am, essentially, being honest and raw. Something which I don’t practice often these days…

Being gay, in my bold opinion, is a gruelling task. It consumes said person’s whole identity and from the moment they came out of the ‘closet’, they will forever be surrounded by that identity and that identity alone. Politicians will use such identity to define a whole subset of people to push their own “progressive” agendas. Society puts all people of such identity into a cluster with no mercy. Essentially you become a number in a labelled cluster, and all your individuality is henceforth erased, so you could earn some “victim points” for being a part of the LGBT… “community”. You whole life will be defined by that one label and nothing else, because, apparently being gay is the only thing that matters in the eyes of said politicians, activists, and society. In short- being gay is a full-time job, with no room left for any errors.

Although being gay is slowly becoming a ‘normal’ thing that happens in human evolution, living life as a gay man has certainly not been easy on my behalf. Set aside the society’s rulebook for “how to be a good gay”, there is still a lot of stigma and prejudice surrounding homosexuality and homosexuals, and just being a homosexual is a great and grave sin in all of the religious scriptures; in many countries being homosexual is a crime punishable by lashing, jail, stoning, public beheading, execution and the Muslim extremists’ favourite- throwing gays off roof tops. And the ever so lovely companionship of major depression, anxiety disorder and a variety of different mental illnesses. Being gay is not as glamourous as social media and gay parades has painted. Sure, given that sparklers and drag queens is a perk of the LGBT… “community”. But often, being gay is not steaming hot sex in the shower like many of the generic progressive TV shows are portraying on the screen.

A little history lesson about me. I am a 22-year-old Asian male, who is the eldest of five boys, from an Islamic household. Unfortunately, the concept of homosexuality is limited to non-existence in both Islam and China. Therefore, growing up I was your average feminine boy who liked girly stuff a little too much, and trust me when I say that my father hated the fact that his eldest son turned out to like dance more than soccer. And like any religious Asian gay boy, I found out about the truth of homosexuality through a very enlightening experience of pornography. My little 14-year-old brain was not equipped to handle the truth, and just like any “good” religious faggot, I was repulsed by my very certain arousal at the concept of homosexuality, and of course, the pornography itself. Which resulted in extra few years of denial, prayers, and my new-found hatred for homosexuals.

My second confrontation came to me when I was 16. I had just started year 9, in my first English class, our new teacher assigned the class with the assignment – “Australia Should Legalise Gay Marriage” a class debate. To my horror I was allocated to the “for” group, and for the next week we were tasked to do relevant research on the topic. To add to the horror, the more I researched the more I realised that there are very few arguments supporting the issue, while I could find mountains of evidence stacking against the issue at that point in time. Which furthermore reinforced my distaste for the subject, but at the same time planted a seed of doubt in my mind. A seed which grew to the full realisation that I am a raging homosexual. An Asian gay man who also is a Muslim?! Yeah, like I said, my realisation hit me at a very chaotic time.

In addition, for my second semester I moved to Sirius College (then Isik College), an Islamic private high school, under the “very convincing” persuasion of my father. In retrospect, I am glad for that drastic move which, my parents hoped would help me strengthen my relationship with their God, but as it turned out, Sirius laid the foundation of me moving away from religion and coming to an understanding of my sexuality. Which in turn lead to a very interesting 3.5 years of high school experience and home life.

Teenagers and high school don’t mix well, period. But when you put a sexually confused Islamic Asian teenager inside an Islamic private high school … well, that is a whole disaster of its own. I hated the decision of transference to a religious high school, as a migrant, I just got accustomed to my old high school and then out of nowhere, my lovely parents, whom before this point were never “strict” or “doctrine abiding” Muslims, suddenly decided to send their children to a religious school, so that they could learn more about their religion, which also gave my parents the “right” to brag about how “Islamic” their children are.

Honestly speaking, my first day at Sirius was probably the best experience I have ever had as far as “first day as a transfer student” goes. The welcoming sense of belonging I felt that day, was something I tried to chase down again, but I never felt it to the same degree again. Within the first month, I got a pretty great sense of the modus operandi of the school’s curriculum. As an obedient son, who thirsts for his parents’ approval and his peer’s appraisal, I followed the rules to a T. I prayed five times a day, I tried my best to learn the Arabic version of the Holy Koran. I tried to become a good Muslim.

The whole school had a hive mind mentality, conformity was the norm and any question about the religion, the “civil” conflict between the different sectors of Islam, the Turkish culture, its politics and even barracking against the favourite Turkish football team was shunned upon. Any differences or individuality was called into question and disregarded. In short, it was a very us versus them mentality, in which anything that does not fall into the “us” category was neglected, intellectual debate in of itself was a controversial thing, no matter the debate topic. It was almost always the motto of “our team is the righteous, the others are wrong”.

Surviving a quicksand of regurgitated information and ideology was a prolonged nightmare that ever so slowly sucked away my energy and motivation. However, even in the school full of echo chambers, there was a teacher that dared to defy the “norm”. It was those teachers that dare to challenge the regurgitated ideologies and beliefs, that helped me to come to term with my sexuality. Ironically, it was this tunnel visioned religious school and its narrow minded and bigoted students, that helped me understand who I really am – GAY!

I came out to my entire class full of religious young men in my year 10 English oral test, unfortunately, almost all of my classmates decided that I must be either sexually confused; I am just bi; or a guy who likes threesomes. Within 24 hours, almost all the male students in the boys building had heard the rumour of me coming out (it was a co-ed school but the boys building was separated from the girls building by a football oval and carpark). Henceforth, I became the very outsider that they simply neglected. If they avoid the controversial topic, my sexuality will be ignored, and I can be ignored.

However, I still hide into my closet whenever I am home. The household I was brought up in was a constant war zone, whereby I was stepping on eggshells most of the time. Afraid of setting off the ticking time bomb that is my mother, and of a father that hides behind the excuse of his job and money and never shows an ounce of emotional affection towards his three older sons. I guess in the end, assimilation was too difficult for my parents, their beliefs of what a success should look like, or how men and women should behave, and what good parenting involves was already melded into their core by a very traditionalist ideology of both Islam and Communist China. Therefore, the contradictory values set by Western society was foreign to them. For this reason, I guess my parents were good parents. And me coming out as gay would result in me getting the short straw, which was something I was not willing to risk at that point of time.

As time progressed, I met more and more open-minded people within the echo chamber, more and more support. I began to become a thick skinned, big mouthed faggot who came out to his entire class at least 3 times throughout my education at Sirius. The more I talked about it, the more tolerating my classmates became about my sexuality. At the very least, they were more tolerating in front of my face, although I was always the ‘freak’ in the class. My classmates distaste for homosexuality was always clear as day, but at the same time, over time, at least my sexuality was no longer the major controversy.

What I experienced at school regarding my sexuality was not the horrid stories of physical or verbal bullying/abuse, but, it was also not an experience of full acceptance and support. No, what I experienced in that school was the cultivation of Eastern background and upbringing, but also the teachings of a very outdated and dangerous ideology. My high school life at Sirius College helped me accept my sexuality but, at the same time, helped me to realise the damages that religion causes and the tunnel visioned echo chamber it produces and how this affected all the followers of the religion. But in the end, I am grateful for all the experiences I had through my time at school and at home, for they helped shaped the man I am today.

As of now, I have moved out of home, I’m learning to become more independent, and self-sufficient, and learning to juggle university, social life, financials, and work life. Currently, I am still learning how to be myself, through new experiences I am experiencing every day in my new life. And although I have no more association with Sirius and my ex-classmates, the lessons it taught me is something I will cherish for the days to come.

- Rinat Nur
You can follow Rinat on Instagram here

It was a gloomy September morning with the most perfect overcast sky and slightly chilly breeze. My favorite type of weather. There's something about the rain that has this relieving sense of calm over me. It allows all the needless overthinking to dissipate and give me a brief moment of clarity. 

I had just turned 15 the July before and had quite possibly the best summer of my life. It was the first time I got to feel like a kid. It was the first time in my life I had actual friends. I had my first sleepovers. I went on crazy adventures and had your quintessential coming of age summer filled with drug experimentation and alcohol use. 

I felt alive. 

I was riding this high of, just being. No substance could compare to the relief and joy I felt that summer. 

On May 8, 2015, I was released from my fourth and final mental hospital. I had spent over half a year in them during the age of 14 due to self-harm and a suicide attempt. After two years of being put on God knows how many high dosage medications, it felt like my doctors and I had finally cracked the code. 

I knew it had less to do with the medication, more so me realizing I needed to make a change. I had to quit the pity party and stop dreaming of someone or something to come and take away the pain. And it worked. I was stable, rational, even happy. After a whole lifetime of being depressed, desperately anxious, self-loathing, and feeling like I'd never belong anywhere or be worth anything - I was free. 

I was free from the bonds of my mental illness. I had finally torn down the psychological wall I built and fortified for years. I was allowing myself to grow and experience life as it should be. I finally felt like something mattered. I mattered, and I wasn't just waiting for the end. 

I look back at that summer with a loving nostalgia. Though I didn't always make the most responsible choices, I was able to get a glimpse of who I was and who I could grow to be. 

But like all great things, they do have to come an end. 

So now, I'll take you back to that gloomy September morning. 

In that moment of clarity, I realized I was falling again. My seasonal depression hit hard and I didn't know who I was anymore. I lost touch with the confident, happy-go-lucky girl that was constantly cracking cheesy jokes hoping to put a smile on someone's face. The girl that'd do anything in her capability to help someone and make sure it was going to be okay.  

I felt helpless and lost. After all my growth and finally making my family proud of me, how could I tell anyone? All this progress, only to have it crashing down within a few months. 

I had failed. 

I felt so ashamed of myself. I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but I didn't expect this so soon. 

That "high of being" I experienced over the summer quickly turned into withdrawal. I yearned to be the person I was before so desperately. I was so scared of disappointment, I lied. I kept up the acts. I put on a brave face. I did what I did for years like it was second nature and no one suspected a thing.

I suffered. 

I hated that I didn't have the courage to seek help again. I slowly drowned in my emotions until I became the numb husk I was before. I went back to pinning my curtains to the wall and draping towels over the rod, as to not let any crack of light in. 

I spent my days in total darkness. I laid in bed all day, trying to sleep it off and get away from myself. My anxiety came back stronger than ever. I could no longer handle being in public. The panic attacks ensued quickly. I felt sick to my stomach and like I was going to vomit any time someone looked at me because I felt absolutely disgusting. My nightmares returned, fuelled by PTSD. I could no longer sleep. I stayed up 3-5 days a week, only sleeping about 12 hours total. I lost my appetite and my eating disorder controlled my life again. With the return of the eating disorder, also came body dysmorphia. My judgement was so clouded, I couldn't see I was slowly killing myself. 

My "withdrawal of being" affected me greater and so harshly than anything I had ever experienced before. 3 years of alcohol abuse, 4 years of self-harm addiction, 2 years of high dosage psychiatric medications... none could compare to what seemed like the inescapable valley I had found myself in. 

After all my work, I didn't want to end things. Even if life seemed meaningless and I lost all sense of worth of myself.  I tried filling the void with different things. Though usually, drugs. It was easier to acquire than alcohol at that age, as there was none in my house due to my parents' own strife with alcoholism. Weed worked better than any combination of medication I had been prescribed before, but I couldn't afford it. However, pills were free for me. I started drowning in a mesh of Percocets, Vicodin, Adderall, Valium - you name it. None, obviously prescribed. 

Thankfully, I came to my senses quickly and stopped my drinking and pill use. I saw the effect it had on my friends and acquaintances. I couldn't let that happen to me, because I knew I'd never come back. 

So, it was time to detox. Not just from the drugs, but from the clouded version of myself lost in the darkness of my depression. I had to realize it was not too late. I could find that sweet, confident, bright eyed, happy-go-lucky girl again. I just had to work for it.

And that brings us to today. Almost 2 years later, I found her again. Two years of hard work from hitting rock bottom yet again, but I came back on top. I stopped living for everyone else and hoping things would change. I worked for it and made them change.

I opened those curtains up and let the light back in. I started to let myself enjoy things again, without feeling like I was cheating my depression. I started to focus on myself. I learned to process through my irrational thoughts and mood swings again. I became active and started eating fresh and healthy foods. I became social again and started spending more time with friends. I even started meditating and doing yoga too.

I was relearning to love the things that once brought me joy. As well as trying the ones I always wanted to do. I used to feel guilty for abandoning my interests or aspects of my lifestyle. Like I could never return to them. I had to learn that it's easy to lose sight of yourself and environment. Too easy, really. And it's okay to do so. We’re never ever as far gone as we tend to think. Sometimes we need to lose touch to regain the focus on what truly matters.

I learned that this was just part of the process of living with mental illness. It's a lifelong uphill battle that will have plenty of detours, pits, valleys, obstacles, and setbacks. And at least in my experience, it does not get easier. It's all about finding your strength and holding onto it as best as you can, and knowing your worth and who you truly are. Being your most authentic self will always allow the clarity to find the light and happiness inside all of us

Today, I feel a lifetime away from the girl shrouded in her own darkness. Though, I know she still lingers. Even as I write this, this week has been unusually harsh and this day even worse. It's just another reminder how vulnerable mankind is to its own emotions. But it also shows the worth in the journey itself.

“Nothing in this world, that's worth having comes easy.”

Everything I've said here is a small fraction of the adversity I've faced in life. Within the month, I'll be 17 and though life hasn't been the most pleasurable experience in my short time; I can see now that through all the hardships, I am prepared for a life full of success, happiness, and love.

I'm a weird, quirky, insanely supportive, kind, humorous, intelligent, beautiful, and overall crazy girl that either rambles for centuries or doesn't speak at all, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I've been through hell and back time after time, just to realize all the things that I love about myself and make me special. And I can still love all those things about me, knowing I have a mental illness that will continue to affect me my entire lifetime. It took me awhile to figure it out, but it has only made me stronger.

I hope sharing my story with you all, makes it clear that it is never too late. It is never too late to make a change, better yourself, find who you are, or to get help. Even if you feel like you've given up, you are never too far gone. We all get lost along these crazy journeys that are our lives, but with work, time, and support you can always find your way back.

- Sam Wilson
You can follow Sam on Instagram here

Green eyes.
Beard.
Enchanting smile.
Handing out bubblegums to children.

My earliest memory of the molestation doesn’t even begin with unpleasant events. I was 8. Young, carefree and spending my summer vacation at my father’s relative’s place. This man, who was introduced to me and my brother as “Uncle” showed keen interest in children. Or maybe this is what I feel now. But at that time, I remember, all of us (there were four of us – my two cousins, younger brother and I) were vying for his attention because he was carrying candies.

The evening dissolved into the night and we decided to sleep. Mattresses were laid down on the floor of the living room, despite my female relatives asking us kids to join them on beds. I wanted to sleep next to my dad, and grandfather. And so I did. Next thing I remember is, a hand on my thigh. I open my eyes to find my dad sleeping a good few feet away from me. I couldn’t even call out to him, because a heavier hand closed my mouth.

I turned to find this “Uncle” with his vivid eyes signalling me to shut up. I was terrified. His hand moved to the places that I knew weren’t supposed to be touched. I wriggled and had tears streaming when I ran out of the blanket to the bathroom.  I was safe. He hadn’t managed to touch me that way. I ran to my mother’s room and slept next to her. I couldn’t sleep though. I felt like I had just been made party to a dirty secret. Next morning, I tried to speak to my mother, who shushed me after listening to me, and said, “These things are common. Don’t tell anyone. And don’t sleep next to relatives.” 

The way she said this made me feel like I did something wrong. Eventually, when sexual advances kept coming from various “relatives”, I learned to fend them off, but constantly felt like there was something wrong with me. The brushing aside of increasing emotional instability, and the feeling that you are dirty for “letting” people touch you, twisted my approach to life. I’ve constantly fought with victim mentality and thanks to a lot of support from many people, I have become a bit conscious when I do that.

Finding love became tough, and other people's benign touch always terrified me. I am coming out of that slowly, considering my dysfunctional family had made the process really slow, but I am growing. I am married today to the love of my life who is sensitive and understanding.

I’ve forgiven myself for the sexual assaults and have moved on, but mentally, the fight continues. I believe, we are our own heroes. We are winning each day!

Dio ti benedica! (God bless you)
- Amour

I was two years old when my mother first abandoned me on my father’s doorstep, and five years old when I began to notice my mother’s abusive behavior.

She would ignore me for weeks, pushing me away from her when I tried to hug her. The abuse seemed to grow stronger as I grew older. She would steal drugs from the nursing home she worked at and combine them with Captain Morgan and Diet Coke.

There were nights when she would throw my belongings out in the yard and take her guns out of the cabinet. She described her plan to shoot me or drive me to the bridge and push me off before ending her own life. I would pray for her to pass out before she fulfilled her promise.

When she wasn’t black-out drunk, she was asleep. She never fed me unless she had a man to impress. I could visit my father once or twice a week, but she always made me feel guilty for leaving and would feed me lies in attempt to make me hate him. When I was twelve years old, she decided to move us out of the state. I hoped my dad would forgive me for leaving. I knew if I left her, she would hurt both of us.

I grew into my teenage years, learning to avoid her and mind my business to stay safe. I would wait to leave my room after she passed out in the bathroom almost every night. The guilt of leaving my father overwhelmed me. I knew at this point I had no one. People at school would say I looked anorexic because of how thin I was, and they weren’t wrong. I took comfort in wasting away and carving my thighs, feeling just as empty physically as I did emotionally. There was a time when I was in the shower, my vision grew dark and I fell to my hands and knees, unable to stand or see. I crawled down to the kitchen and felt for the fridge, drinking the first thing I grabbed and laying on the floor until I was revived. I knew I needed help.

When I was seventeen, I met a boy who was very family oriented. His mother adored me and his sisters would tell me I was beautiful. I spent every day after school in his home, longing for the feeling of having a family of my own.

After going to his house one evening, I went to my grandmother’s to help her with laundry. I laid on her couch to rest, and the next thing I know, I’m screaming for an ambulance. My brain felt like it was melting. I had no control of my body.

I learned that night that the boy I was seeing had drugged me, and I almost lost my life. The police told me they could not find him, and later decided they did not have enough evidence that he was the one who did this to me. My family told me to accept it and move on. I began to believe the world was full of evil people who wanted to hurt me, and no one cared. Not my family, not my friends. I was terrified to leave my room. I would lay in my bed for days without moving, terrified to live. I realized I was wasting away. I realized no one cared.

            I noticed at times I had troubles breathing. I would lay down and feel my heart beating out of my chest. I had been visiting a doctor weekly to check my vitals after being drugged. He suggested that I was experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

At this point, I was so afraid to be alive that I didn’t know what to do with myself. Immediately after school, I would drive to my friends house out of fear that I would hurt myself if I was alone. I told my friend that I was afraid to continue living. I told him I couldn’t stop thinking about suicide. I asked him if he thought I would ever recover. He stopped answering his door.

With nowhere to turn, I was forced to be alone with my thoughts. The idea of leaving the world permanently scared me, but I had absolutely no one. Every object was now an instrument of death. Driving turned into a mental battle of convincing myself not to turn the wheel into a telephone pull. Trips into the city became a constant fight to not walk to the bridge. I had images of myself drowning in a bathtub filled with blood corrupting my thoughts. I desperately tried to avoid ropes and knives, sometimes slamming my head to the wall to quiet the constant pleas, begging for an end to the vessel of terror my body became. I could not trust anyone, not even myself.

It wasn’t long before I was hospitalized. I paced the hallways and sat in my bed, realizing even more how alone I was. No one came to see me. The pants I was given still had a drawstring. I broke plastic cutlery and jammed them into my arms. I considered collecting my medication that was given to me and attempting an overdose. I looked in the mirror and saw myself for what felt like the first time in years. I did not recognize myself.

It felt as though I had left my body and I was staring at a walking corpse. Her face was pale and bland. Her eyes were empty and hollow with dark circles around them. I wanted to be dead, but it seemed I already was.

 A strong voice overcame my thoughts. “This is what the world has to offer you. This is what you are without me.”

It felt like the spirit I was lacking slammed into my body. I knew that I had no one, and no one could save me. I couldn’t trust anyone, not even myself. But in this moment, I realized God had never left me. He was the only one who could save me.

I met a woman named Brenda who also had PTSD, along with dissociative identity disorder. She would tell me how loving and sweet I was, and how I would do great things. She gave me a copy of the New Testament. I prayed that God would change my life.

A few months later, my mother had beat my sister into a bloody pulp. We both escaped into the snowy night with nothing but the clothes on our backs. We never returned.

My father picked me up the next morning. Like a refugee, I began a new life in his home. I started going to a church filled with loving people who treated me like their family. I knew that because I called upon God, he pulled me out of the fire and into loving arms.

I still struggle nearly every day with my diagnoses of major depressive disorder, PTSD, and social anxiety disorder. Now I know that I can get through absolutely everything, if I stay close to the Lord, my light in the dark. In a few months, I will turn twenty one. I was certain I wouldn’t live to see twenty. My life is beyond imperfect; it’s messy and stressful and I constantly make mistakes. There are still days when I don’t want to leave my bed. But my God delivered me from my darkest hour, and I know He will never give up on me, even if everyone else has. It took me eighteen years to learn to trust Him. No matter who you are, I can promise you it is never too late.

- Sabrina Copeman

You can follow Sabrina on Instagram here

Back then, I was paralysed by anxiety and depression, staying awake all night unable to sleep the pain was unbearable. I kept on going, if only for the sake of what my family would go through if I were gone.
Aching from the inside out, even my skin hurt. I talked myself through each step to get through the day: one foot out of bed, open the blinds, open the door, walk to the kitchen, left foot, right foot. I lied to myself, promising if I could get through the day I could fall apart at night. Instead I found distractions to stay awake to the point of exhaustion until eventually I’d pass out, waking again the next day to repeat.

Weakened by destructive relationships and encouraged to binge drink, the cycle kept going.
I was living in a home of fear and alcoholism, surviving on caffeine and little food. Soon my weight began to dwindle along with my joy. The natural progression could have very easily lead to death, but that's not how my story ended.

What lead me from unbearable misery to a life of love and wonder? Rebuilding everything.
My mind, body, relationships and surroundings needed to change. First, I had to hit breaking point.
When you're that sick, people start to notice and will sometimes intervene, in this case it was my mother. With assistance from others and being fed up with the pain, I finally surrendered.
I thought I may as well try something new, ‘what's the worst that could happen?’ I was already in hell.

After the initial surrender, my resolve grew stronger and I became dead serious about healing myself. I knew it was possible for people to heal, I had seen these transformations in others.
I attended psychologist and dietician appointments and researched techniques every day, listening to philosophers, doctors, scientists, life coaches and spiritualists. Hitting it at every angle, these practices poked and prodded at my old beliefs, until my world began to mould into something new. With each toxic thing that was removed, I began to breathe easier. I became my true self, this pain I was experiencing existed only as a symptom of not living this truth.

I began to see myself as the opposite of what I once believed; a beautiful miraculous creation, and because of this I wanted to fuel my body and make every cell shine with light, to have every interaction nourish my soul.

Confidence began to build by educating myself every day. By practicing: meditation, yoga, eating healthy food and testing my anxieties. Each day, month, year that passes I carry out these practices and they have arranged themselves into who I am now, changing my world.

Now, my life and education is based around nutrition as a path to healing. I believe in its power to rebuild the body and mind, what you eat and why you eat eventually becomes who you are. Nurturing the body back to health, all the way down to the cellular level. Quality nutrition plays a vital role in mental illness, but I didn't need to dive into the research to know this, I've lived it.
Nothing functions on its own, I adopted many practices around this concept. Even so, the way these nutrients have fed into all aspects of my life, have empowered me to continue on this path.

I'm not here to give advice, but if I could say one thing it would be, ‘do not give up, your body and mind will fight against the changes you're trying to make.’ Some days have felt like I'm back at square one, but the next day I get back to ticking the boxes with the hope that the hard times will become fewer. They have and continue to.

I will never know where a life without mental illness would have lead, to imagine one without the magic that fills it now is too overwhelming to comprehend.
What I do know for certain, is that breaking apart has set me free.

- Lana Burns

My parents had just gotten divorced and I was heavily into escaping it all by playing computer games late into the night and sometimes until 2:00 am in the morning. One particular weekend I had opted to stay home with my elderly grandfather who had the beginnings of dementia, instead of going away to the city with my mother. I remember my mother asking the next door neighbours to keep an eye on the place before she pulled out of the driveway. 

Before going to bed that night I walked out of my room and pottered around the house, finishing up a couple of chores. I had a strange feeling that someone was in the house even then, but brushed it off, thinking that I'd just heard my grandfather get up.

I went back to my room and thought I might stay up just a bit later and sing. Maybe record a Youtube video? The song that came to mind for some reason was an old hymn I'd heard back in my parent's old church. Some lyrics in this song kept circling in my mind, "God in the three person, blessed Trinity." I thought nothing of it, and decided not to record a video but to go to sleep instead. 

I switched off the light and was just about asleep when I heard a knock on my bedroom door. Assuming it was my grandfather, I said, "Oh I'm going to sleep now Pop". The knocking didn't let up after that and I said, "I'm off to sleep now". The voice at the door suddenly said, "Let me in".

I sat up slowly and I could feel the adrenaline starting to kick in and the hairs on the back of my neck were raised. Just to clarify the next move I should make after that, I asked him the simple question, "Why?".

There was no response from him. 

I knew for certain now to trust my instincts and that it wasn't my grandfather asking to come in and for some reason, just like Trinity in the Matrix when she ran away from the bad guys and fell down into a big warehouse. I told myself, "Get up, get up now!".

Full of adrenaline I had to quickly and very quietly make my way to the bedroom door. I couldn't just stay on my bed, assuming that the door was locked. I'd just gotten up in time and the bedroom door was no more than four meters away, but it seemed far. My door was unlocked and just as he was opening it a couple of inches, I threw myself against it as much as I could being only forty-five kilograms at the time. I swore and yelled at the man to go away several times. I didn't know it, but he had tools trying to remove the door handle. 

My grandfather stirred and called out from his bed down the hallway, this must have disturbed things and the man walked out of the house quite slowly. I still didn't stop pushing against my bedroom door. I heard the man's footsteps out on the front deck but was too afraid to look out of my window. My grandfather came to check on me but I stayed in my room and screamed and swore at him. I was so confused and shocked.

When I phoned my dad at 1:00 am that morning, I wasn't even going to call the police because in my mind, nothing had happened, but my dad urged me to call and a police officer came and questioned me. 

Later that morning when detectives came around to take photos, they had discovered that every lock in the house had been wrecked. It was then that I saw the tools sitting outside my bedroom door.

As the case was coming together, police broke it to me that the fingerprints and the rest of the evidence was pointing towards my next door neighbour (who we later found out had a history of assaulting girls).

When I finally received help from a Social Worker specialising in trauma, she told me that I chose to fight in my situation because of the trauma I had already experienced trauma as a child, I only have broken memories of these events. What was about to happen that night could not happen, I wouldn't let it. 

Years later, I still have triggers from time to time and I avoid watching the news. I can't talk about rape without it angering me, and so it should.

The close call as a twenty-one-year-old, though terrifying as it was, has made me more sensitive to injustice and I want to do my part to stand up against it.

I now strive to do little things in life that make a large impact in the world to end poverty and other injustices.

-Em