— 23 Comments

“When Good Grades Aren’t Enough: Mental Illness, Stress, and My Sexual Identity” – Coping: This is Who We Are Entry 15

Growing up I was taught at a very young age the only way to become successful was to earn a 4.0 GPA. A high GPA meant acceptance into the best universities across the country. So I pushed myself to earn nothing but the best grades so I wouldn’t disappoint my parents. Year after year I continued to beat myself up if I received anything less than an A. But then something happened that would change my life forever.

My mom had a psychotic break.

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Jacquelyn (Pictured far left), her siblings, and mother (Far right).

She was diagnosed with severe depression and bipolar disorder. Witnessing the acts of mania my mom exhibited scared me – she did things that I thought only a “crazy” person would do. My mom was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward for months on and off for a whole year. I was 13 at the time and remembered absolutely dreading going to visit her. Everything was locked and I thought that the patients were treated like prisoners. My mom’s doctors even made me sit in a conference with my mom and her psychiatrist asking if I wanted my mom to get better. That to me was scarring – of course I wanted her to get better but not in a place like a psychiatric ward.

It was all too much for me to handle.

Coping: This Is Who We Are
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Consumed (Anxiety): A Behind The Scenes Look At The Next Series

The Consumed project continued the other night with the focus this time being on Anxiety.

We worked for 6 hours as a team to bring to life and personify what anxiety would feel like as an external factor instead of an internal factor. I’m so proud of the team and effort and passion everyone involved brought. I couldn’t have done it without them. But while I’m working on the photos post shoot I thought I would share some of the behind the scenes photos taken. Take a look in the slideshow below.

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Find more of the consumed project here. And be on the lookout for more projects and updates as the fall continues.

PF

A Lens Into Our World Consumed
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Extinguishing the Invisible Fire: Changing the Conversation on College Suicide

Hey everyone.

First off, thanks for welcoming me. I’m so happy to be here. I’ve advocated for mental health for years now after realizing my own struggle and for empathetically stepping into the shoes of those who don’t quite know how to find their voices yet. Paul has done such a wonderful job with these things on Dear Hope. You all have done a wonderful job in fighting your own struggles and doing what you can to find your places and raise awareness. For this, I thank you immensely. Change starts with emotions and ideas. Fires start from sparks. The smallest seeds grow into the largest trees, and  you are all much larger seeds thank you actually think you are. Your potential is endless and I hope that we here at Dear Hope can help you realize that.

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On that totally hopeful and optimistic note, let’s discuss something I’ve dealt with lately-suicide.

Now, the intent of education is not to sugar coat. The world is unfortunately not covered in chocolate frosting. Negative and detrimental issues exist both in our society and on a global scale.

Suicide is one of these issues.

Article dear hope
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Mental Suicide

I brought my imbalances
And own self perception
Humidity brought the rain
And passion brought the drought

But that absence brought a thirst
That could no longer be felt
So belief is a word I have trouble believing
And the light in the dark I have trouble seeing

It’s always a cycle

I have trouble remembering what happened between hello and goodbye
The words that were oxygen became living parasites
We share our minds like we share our hearts
And my sleeve is stained while my head is apart

Body, mind, and soul all sold
For temporary calmness, distorted tranquility
By trains that run on a track they are stuck too
With power and potential, but only one way to go

Are you still the one you wanted to be?
The one you said would never change?
Am I the one I said I would be?
Or the one who got blurred out on paper lines

Believe me when I say
I don’t know what to say

The bulbs break and shut off
Maps of neurons start getting crossed out
What part of your mind are you trying to hide
What part of you has committed mental suicide?
PF

Want to submit to this site and share your story, art, or article related to mental health or mental illness? Email wemustbebroken@gmail.com

Creative Pieces dear hope
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1 in 4: How I Learned To Be A Survivor (And Learned To Live Again)

This piece comes from an extremely talented writer and close friend and I urge everyone to check out her piece about tragedy, despair, and overcoming mental anguish.

Trigger Warning: Rape, Suicide.

I still think about the day that I was taking a walk with my dad in early spring, and we were talking about rape. I remember saying, “I would definitely kill myself if I was ever raped. I don’t think I would want to live through that. It’s probably the only reason I would ever actually commit suicide.”

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It was a heavy topic for a nice leisurely stroll, but we were talking about a recent story in the media and had veered off into personal examples of people we knew that were rape survivors. I knew people survived all kinds of sad, traumatic experiences – cancer, loss of loved ones, car crashes, physical violence, child abuse – and I’ve gone through a lot myself. I lost my mom unexpectedly when I was eleven, and I lost one of my best friends to a car accident when I was eighteen. I came out as bisexual in middle school and went through a long period of intense bullying. But for some reason, I couldn’t shake the idea of rape as being the most horrible thing for a person to have to live with.

This was a couple years before the night that changed my life. I attended a college party at UMass Dartmouth with a friend, where others drank but I didn’t, and where I knew a couple people but not everyone. It was my first experience spending significant time at the school. When I woke up the next day, I realized I had been drugged during the night. I woke up in the afternoon, groggy and confused, and I knew then that I had to make a decision.

I had been raped. But I didn’t know if I wanted to make good on that promise to myself: to end my life if I became a survivor. I only knew one thing. I didn’t want to survive.

Article dear hope
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Insomnia: I Had A Dream I Fell Asleep

My entire body is heavy.

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My eyelids blink with the consistency of a frozen stream. The entire room is an object in motion with the lowest shutter speed from a camera a few decades old, rusted through the dust that collects on the outside of my pupils. I roll over in an attempt to make myself more comfortable.

3:40 A.M reads the clock on my bedside.

I sigh and roll back over, throwing my arm over my forehead with my palm facing upwards.

It’s been two weeks of this. Going on three. Why can’t I sleep? Please God let me sleep.

I’m tired but the sleep won’t find me. I remain invisible to the dust that needs to fall on my eyelids. It’s like I don’t exist. The rest of the world is asleep and here I am,

Awake.

Alone.

With only my thoughts.

Article dear hope Insomnia
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Coping: This is Who We Are Entry 3 – “From My Suicide Note to Now, A Heart Moving Outwards”

I don’t really know where to start.

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I didn’t really understand what I’m going through, and what I have gone through, until some point last year. After being informed that there was an actual name for everything I’d been experiencing, I began to take quite a different outlook on, well, everything. But I digress.

My name is Danny. I’m 21. I go to college. I have a job. I have friends. I like movies, music, sports, and many other things that normal people my age would enjoy. I smile like everyone else, I go about my daily routine like everyone else, and I have fears, just like anyone else. These are normal parts of my identity that many people know. But what I don’t broadcast is that I have suffered from Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder for as long as I can remember. After digging up some earlier stuff in therapy this past year, I can deduce that my earliest memory of these disorders was around 7th or 8th grade. I remember sitting in Science class, existing as an introverted adolescent, and thinking about how wonderful it would be to kill myself. This is a thought that would follow me for the next eight years.

332 Coping: This Is Who We Are dear hope
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TAAD: Elevator

The doors closed as I fell in.

I stood backwards;

With the future behind me,

And the past staring straight at my face

Like mirrors reflecting mirrors in a run down elevator

In the old motel just outside of town.

I was trapped.

In a cycle of endless space

Where time had frozen

And my body lay cold

Forever expanding.

Forever retracting.

I reached for my own hand

expecting warmth

I reached for anyone

But only found myself.

That’s when the power went out.

And I couldn’t see my reflection through the mirror clearly.

The elevator couldn’t descend any lower.

I broke the mirrors.

I faced forward.

I pulled open the doors

And I climbed out.

With the past behind me,

and the future staring straight at my face.

The doors closed as I pressed forward.

And now I won’t look back.

Creative Pieces dear hope
— 11 Comments

Coping: Entry Two – Depression and Faith, Finding Yourself Through Struggle

How do you cope?

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A few weeks ago I posted an article entitled “Coping” that detailed my own personal experience with mental illness and depression and received a lot of good feedback from it. Not only did people seem to understand what my depression was more, but people who also fought began to come forward and share with me their own stories. It affirmed my idea that these things need to be heard, and have gone ahead to decide to start a series of posts under the name “Coping”. In this series that’ll be published every few weeks, guest writers will share their struggles, coping mechanisms, their lowest point and more, allowing us into the eyes of those with mental illness. Reminding people who fight that they’re never alone, and those who don’t fight with a better understanding than they might of had before.

So here’s the first guest post from my great friend Haley, enjoy.

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There is no cure for depression. It will always be a part of who you are. But it’s how you accept its presence that determines the impact it has on your life.

It took me an extremely long time to accept my depression. As I was growing up, I was always the happy member of the family. I provided the laughs and made sure everybody was always having a good time. As I grew older, members of my family were gradually diagnosed with depression until I was the only one without this disease. And what did that mean to me? I was the only one that could always provide joy. I didn’t know what depression was: I took on the burden of making sure my sister and parents were in good spirits because I thought that they were unable to obtain it on their own. When I reached the point where I was unable to do this, I felt like a failure. I had let my family down.

Coping: This Is Who We Are dear hope
— 24 Comments

The First (Last) Step: Asking For Help

Help. For a lot of people this is something easy to say. If you’re struggling with something you should ask for assistance. Most people don’t mind an honest ask for help when you’re having trouble with something. But when it comes to mental illness this is one of the hardest words to say. It’s often the last thing that is said. Help from others becomes the last resort.

But why?

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For me personally, asking for help was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Was it pride?

My ego?

Fear of judgment?

Losing friends?

Being rejected?

Honestly, it was a little of all those things. Many people don’t want to admit they need help, I can attest to that. I’d much rather try and figure something out myself than have a crutch or someone else holding my hand along the way. But there comes a point when even you can’t help yourself in your life. Eventually you start drowning too fast and can’t tread the water anymore. So when the water started filling into my lungs, did I ask for help then?

No.

Because that’s when all the other fears from asking for help came in.

Article dear hope