The Life of a Mourning Dove

I read and see a lot of stuff from parents that take pride in the fact that their children don’t have any mental illnesses and take that to mean they are superior in some way.

And if you are free of mental illness, that’s awesome. One less thing to worry about in a stressful world.

But if your parents or any of your family members have exhibited moral superiority for ‘raising you right’ because you don’t visibly suffer from mental illness, it would be that much harder to tell them you’re struggling.

It would be really stressful to admit that you’re not what they thought. And if your parents have this sense of superiority and believe that only crazy people take meds and go to therapy, that would make it even harder. But ignoring what you’re feeling will only make it worse.

Parents: mental illness is real and it is blind. It didn’t care that I had a healthy, happy childhood and it didn’t care that I have a loving family that has always supported me. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Do what you have to do to be well.

Kids (I’m 21 and I still classify myself as a kid): You’re normal. Maybe you’re struggling and for that, I’m sorry but it’s not a sin. You can take meds and go to therapy and if your parents make you feel like a disappointment? That’s a toxic relationship and I’m so, so sorry for that. Find help anyway – you deserve it. You deserve to live and be happy. 

(Alternate Title: I’m Basically Harry Potter and So Are You)

At least, not in the way lots of people think.

I am not boring or dull because I take antidepressants, at least not more than I was initially, because antidepressants aren’t dementors. They’re not going to suck out your uniqueness and there’s no martyrdom in refusing treatment you need and being depressed isn’t ‘artsy’.

I’m a really emotional person and that makes me incredibly empathic –  I really value my compassion and caring for others. The huge downside is that I don’t stop feeling things really deeply even when that would be awesome. My boyfriend broke up with me six months ago and I still feel that pain – my friends get a little frustrated that I’m still ‘hung-up’ on that relationship but I think it’s just because I loved him very deeply.  So yeah friends, family, strangers in an airport etc., I’m still feeling this heartbreak and it’s just who I am.

Much like Harry Potter – my greatness strength is love and compassion and my antidepressants have not taken that away from me. If anything, they’ve allowed me to love my friends and family longer and more completely and I think that’s a win. I am not less of anything because of my medication and you won’t be either. And if you are? You aren’t on the right medication. Antidepressants should make you feel more like you – it should pull you out of the depressive fog and back into the sunshine.

My meds were just decreased and my therapy sessions were pushed back from once a month to once every six weeks – I’m kicking ass ya’ll and it feels great.

Alternate Title: That time when a cab driver with a water bottle full of pee looked me in the eye and said, “f*** you” and then I cried for the third time that day

That title was a little too long but accurately sums up the experience, I think. Anyway:

I flew to Chicago this weekend to visit family for Easter and had a lay-over in LaGuardia. I sprinted through the airport to my connecting gate and must’ve just missed it so I had a brief panic attack (1) in the airport (mom sang to me until my body remembered to breathe) because I was alone, exhausted and did not want to argue my way onto a new flight.  There were no more flights on my airline to Chicago that night so my options were limited already and the delta gate agent was mean. I’d never been stuck in an airport overnight before, much less by myself, and cried (2) in front of the lady trying to help me. She booked me on the next morning flight and made her computer spit out a hotel voucher for me. I found the cab stand and told the driver to take me to the LaGuardia Marriott please. He refused to move until I found the address on my dying phone (even though I could see the Marriott from where we were), and then noticed the giant water bottle half-full of a suspiciously yellow-tinged liquid (remember the alternate title? That’s now). We pulled up and I told him I was paying with a credit card to which he said, looking me straight in the eye, “fuck you.” And then I cried again (third time!).

I felt like a miserably incapable failure and cried again because I was so terrible at handling things. And yeah, I could’ve handled a lot of those things a little better but I was sad and angry and tired so I cried instead. And that’s okay, I was feeling lots of things and feelings are apart of being human – with or without mental illness-y stuff. Sometimes when you do have mental illness-y stuff, you forget how real people function. And *spoiler alert* you are a real person! You react to stuff about as well as most people, sometimes you’ll over or under-react but you’ll figure it out. If you want company, I’m walking that path too.

And if a cab driver with a water bottle full of pee ever says, “fuck you,” you should say, “fuck you too.”

I like to think I’ve been pretty open about my mental illness struggle and my path to recovery. I got to a place where I recognized that there are lots of people who are struggling like me and I wanted to add my voice to the fight for understanding and acceptance but not everyone is like me. A lot of people who are struggling don’t wear their hearts on their sleeves and don’t want to join the fight.

And that’s okay.

No one owes anybody their story – recovery is a deeply personal experience and it requires a lot of soul-searching. I’ve always (always) been an over-sharer so it felt very natural for me to start a blog and talk to everybody I’ve ever met about my experience. And we’re lucky to have such a loving community of people who want to share but just because someone shared their story with you, it doesn’t mean that you have to share back if you don’t want to. And it’s okay if you don’t want to!

Your recovery is yours and you don’t owe anybody (except maybe your therapist) an explanation for how you’re going through it. Do it however you have to and if you get to a point where you want to share, find whatever platform speaks to you. You never have to get to that point – every path is different.

I will love and support you even if you don’t want to share your story with me or anybody else. You don’t owe me or anybody else your story. I’m proud of you no matter what.

Sorry – I wish saying the words out loud was a switch you could flip too. Admitting you have a problem and need help is the first step but you’ve got lots of steps after that before you’re recovering

I’ve been in recovery for my eating disorder for two years technically but I haven’t actually been recovering every single day since I first admitted that I had an eating disorder. My sophomore year (when I’d been in ‘recovery’ for about a year) I started abusing diuretics (laxatives) in an attempt to lose the weight I was putting on from my recovery. Not only is the abuse of diuretics painful and ineffective, it’s also really really bad for you and your internal organs. I wasn’t restricting as much so I was still in recovery for anorexia, right? Except that’s not how it works – you can’t give up one kind of disordered eating for another. You have to change the way you think about so much stuff and it’s not easy.

I used to workout so I could earn food that day and finding ways to workout in recovery has been difficult. I have a mental block about exercise – exercise was a big part of my eating disorder and I’ve had to change the way I workout and the way I think about it.My eating disorder decimated my muscles and I want to be strong again so I’m working through it.I’m trying not to focus on weight loss but on strength.

I’m in recovery and it’s not easy. I find myself falling back into old habits because they’re familiar and sometimes I do. I’ve got lots of steps to go yet but being strong, healthy, and living for a long time should be worth it. Let’s do it together?

I’m serious. Cut them out. You know who they are. I know you do. Deep, deep down you know the friend, family member, or significant other who is bad for your mental well being. Mine was a boy. A very ordinary boy that told me things about myself that I wanted to believe but never really could. He and I never had a relationship beyond friendship but he claimed to love me and I fell in love with him (was it really love? Probably not but I was sixteen so it’s hard to know). He would text me constantly for weeks at a time them disappear for a month or two, he’d come back eventually but if I ever questioned his absence, he’d claim texting was a two-way street. It is and it was but for some reason the very idea of texting him first was terrifying. On the rare occasions that I worked up the courage, he didn’t respond any way. I kept waiting and waiting for him to want to be with me. We lived many states apart (theatre camp romance ya’ll) and eventually my family moved within an hour of him. I thought it was destiny. That love would triumph and I could finally be happy with him. In the five weeks of my winter break, he didn’t make an attempt to see me or bring it up until it was too late. I wasted the better part of two years believing he really loved me and that I was special. The summer after my downward spiral I decided, once and for all, that I could take no more. I had gone back and forth on him so many times and I was done. I blocked him on everything and texted him to never speak to me again. Two weeks later I met my most recent ex-boyfriend, a man who loved me and respected me and with whom I had been happier than I can remember. I had to pull the plug on my dependence to camp boy. I still think about him every now and again but everyday with less hurt (and he still tries to text me every now and again because he is manipulative bastard that used me to fan his own ego). I told him things I never dared to say out loud and he made me feel stupid, untalented, and unworthy of love. If someone you love makes you feel less than, they don’t really love you. Let them go. Cut the cord and break yourself free. It will be painful. I can’t tell you how much I cried. I wrote many, many suicide notes in the wake of the pain he caused me and no one who loves you should make you feel that way. People who love you build your confidence and cheer you on no matter what is happening in their own lives. My best friends and my family are all there for me no matter how they feel and they all work so damn hard to make me feel like a deserving, worthy person when I need them to (they are also highly skilled at knocking me down a peg or two when necessary – siblings!). I’m a little over a year out from cutting that boy out of my life and I am so much better now than I was a year ago. Do it for yourself and do it for the people who will replace the toxic in your life. You will be so much better off. I’m sorry that it will hurt. I’m sorry that you’ll probably cry a lot and hate everything and maybe you’ll be more depressed when you cut them out than you ever have been before but they say it’s always darkest before the dawn. Cut them out and bring yourself some peace. You deserve it.

It sounds so melodramatic and I hate, hate, HATE the clearly pointed but annoyingly vague, ‘toxic people don’t deserve my time…’ posts. In general, I try to avoid vague social media posts of any kind but to each his own. ANYWAY.

I know I’m lucky that the ‘toxic’ person in my life was an easy fix. I’ll never see him again unless I actively try- we didn’t grow up together, he isn’t related to me or anyone I know and he is not apart of my daily life. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to cut out a parent, a sibling,  or any family member really. It would take a lot of strength to do that and I hope if that’s something you need to do, you find it in yourself some day.

Coping is hard and there is no one right way to do it. And, sometimes, you need different methods for different states of mind. My mom took me to some work out classes over break and I was inspired by some of the teaching methods – they each reminded me of something a little different.

Barb: I’m proud of you for doing exactly as you can, you are good enough just as you are. You’re doing the best you can and that’s enough. Keep going.

Mariana: You are better than you think you are! If you push yourself, you will achieve so more! Do better and you will be better – don’t stop!

Brook: Infuse every fiber of your being with positivity and you will amaze yourself with the results. Do something that the you two minutes from now will be proud of.

Sometimes you need Barb to reassure yourself that you’re doing the best you can and that’s enough.

Sometimes you need Mariana to push yourself to be better – it’s easy to settle for what you think you are but maybe you can be better than you think.

And some days you need Brook to remind yourself that positivity is a strong as hell sword – with it, you can fight the monsters in your head.

I’ve needed Mariana recently. Who do you need?

I’m trying to be healthier of late so I can get stronger physically and maybe mentally too. It’s highly possible that I will never enjoy working out but it’s a thing I have to do so I can be strong again.

I’ve started listening to Christina Perri’s  Human during my cool down (I can handle twenty minutes so far!) and I like it’s message. I think it was intended to be about a bad relationship (as lots of songs are) but I decided it’s about the expectations I’m setting for myself.

I am capable of a lot of things. I can pretend that I’m okay when I’m not and I know how to survive on my own. But I don’t want to. I’m only human and it’s okay if I fail and it’s okay if I need help.

I’m not as strong as those girls at the gym who look perfect in their yoga pants but that’s okay. I haven’t been working as long as they have and maybe one day I’ll be as strong as they are. But I’m only human and some days I’m doing the best I can and somedays I’m doing a little less than that and that’s okay too. I’m twenty minutes stronger today than I was yesterday and that’s something!

I’m writing when I can – when my depression gets particularly bad, small things like this seem like far more than I can do. Love to you all – we’re nearly through the first month of the new year. We’ve made it this far!

My mom looked at me and said, “that [unimportant detail] was like seeing the old Morgan back again.” And that sucks because it makes you realize that where you are isn’t as good as where you used to be but you can’t run from that. It’s the truth – mental health wise, I was better than I am now.

I haven’t been able to write much of late because I haven’t been taking glorious steps forward and I can’t seem to get out of the set back I’m living in. Sometimes I feel crazy and when I feel good I don’t feel Great. I wanted to get off meds in the next year but I haven’t felt right in months so the step forward I was looking at isn’t something I’m going to be able to do.

I’m on academic probation at my new university and I’d only ever gotten below a B in math.

I’m a registered student with a disability and I used to pride myself on my independence.

I’m not sleeping enough, eating anything with a semblance of nutrition, and my body is  much closer to couch potato than fitness queen.

It sucks. I’m trying to get better and it still sucks. I have some hope and some faith and I know I’m not doing this alone even though sometimes it feels like I am.

I’m trying to be honest with myself about myself and accepting the consequences as they come.

I hope I’ll be able to write again soon – it helps when I can.