"I don't care what they say!"

Last year I was dumped by someone I was madly in love with. I was sure he was my soulmate and we'd end up married.

After he broke up with me, I fell into a deep depression and I messed with my hair. I turned my long brown curly locks into a turquoise mohawk. 

Everyone told me I looked ridiculous. No one knew why I was depressed or that I even was depressed, so they didn't understand why I'd done it.

One day in the car, my mom was going on and on about how bad it looked. Suddenly, my four-year-old old niece looked up at me and said, "Well I don't care what they say! I think you look cute!" 

I almost cried on the spot.

"Welcome to this life."

My mom has always had mental health issues. I've stopped her multiple times from committing suicide. I was always supportive and caring.

One day when I was around 13, I spilled my heart out to my mom. I told her everything I was feeling. I told her of incidents in the past that really took a toll on me. I told her things that happened to me that I was too ashamed to talk about, and how my world was just falling down around me.

I NEVER cry in front of people. But at that moment I did. I cried in front of my mom because I was at such a loss. 

his time, for the first time, I was the one who needed support. 

She didn't console me. She didn't kiss my booboos. She didn't pat me on the back and tell me everything would be okay. 

She kind of rolled her eyes and said, "Welcome to depression. Welcome to this life. How do you think I feel? Now you know what it's like." And that was it.

I am now the COMPLETE opposite with my child.

Children don't ask to be here. You bring them here. The least you can do is show unconditional love. 

"You don't know what "Rape" is..."

Three years ago I was date raped.

I went out for drinks with a guy I'd met online. Had two beers, was far, far from drunk and decided to go back to his place. Things start to get heavy, he wanted to have sex, I asked if he had a condom, he said no, and neither did I, so I said no.

He begged.

I said no.

He said it'll be fine, I still said no.

He eventually said, "it's fine" and we kept kissing. Then I feel him penetrate me; I shoved him off me and leave quickly after.

After six horrible months, being depressed and suicidal, I finally decided to report him. I lived in Jersey so I saw a Jersey based rape crisis center who then helped me report it in NY. Once in NY I was bounced and forced between 4 different precincts. The first said they couldn't help me. The second said the rape happened in a different jurisdiction, the third (which was the correct district) wouldn't take me because they didn't believe me, so I went back to the second, they said they'd help. They took my report and sent me to the Special Victims Squad. 

The Special Victims Squad didn't believe me. They called me desperate and said, "You don't know what Rape is, if you think Date Rape is real Rape." They claimed I was just pissed and "trying to get back at him" for him not wanting to date me.

As they shooed me out the door they added in, "Don't worry honey, you'll meet someone eventually. Just stay away from online dating."

Thanks for the advice.

"You're hurting ME and MY family."

Said by my biological dad, after I told my therapist about a fight my family had that caused me to have a panic attack. 

I have been diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, anxiety, body dysmorphic disorder, and major depressive disorder.

Through years of family and individual therapy, my therapists and psychiatrists have concluded that my eating disorder, anxiety and depression were partly caused by my family dynamic. Fighting, lashing out, aggressiveness, hostility, hatred and anger filled my house throughout my childhood. Or this is how I perceived it.

In 2014 my dad lashed out at me, saying that I was hurting HIS, not OUR, family, by making up these stories about how painful it was for him to live through this. According to him, I've overdramatized my family's problems for attention, and I lie to my therapists and psychiatrists. I was making HIS family seem like monsters, and ME as the poor little victim.

I haven't felt part of the family since he said those things. I've been the outcast. The insane one. The crazy one. My parents love me, our family dynamic is better now, but because of that comment I've truly come to the realization that my parents' support through my recovery is all an illusion.

They are ashamed of me and wish I were different.

Expectation.

My husband left me when I was in my first year of graduate school.

I had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder years before that, and I was so heartbroken that I knew I was going to break the f*** down, I knew I couldn't make it as an academic, that a PhD program was no place for my broken ass.

I tried to tell my adviser that I was going to drop out. He just looked at me confusedly and said "No you won't. You can take time off to rest and heal some if you need, and everything will be right here when you're feeling well again."

WHEN you are feeling well again. Not IF. 

With a mental illness/disability label attached to your identity, the expectation is that you will suffer and be less capable as others of both enjoying life and thriving in it. This expectation may be realistic and may be supported by diagnostic criteria or your own past experience.

But when the world has low expectations for you, you can end up with low expectations for yourself, and therefore meet those expectations.

He expected me to surmount what I was facing, and I will never forget the strength that gave me.

Challenge the holes your identity categories have pigeoned you into.

"You're too miserable."

Said to me by my best middle school friend, who would often sit me down and confront me about all of the things that were wrong with me. 

Before I met her, I was a happy-go-lucky kid. If she perceived me as being miserable, it was only because her presence made me miserable. 

Of course, at the time, I couldn't recognize this, and I took her comment to heart, thinking that this was just another part of me that was inherently bad or inadequate.

"Are you manic?"

A competitive high school acquaintance asked me this very bluntly, and in a very cutting way.

It was one of the first times I realized that my depression was apparent on the outside.

These words still echo in my head any time I hit a really high high, or a really low low.

I don't even think she'd remember asking me that, but it's one of the cruelest things anyone has ever said to me.