Context for Self Destruct (2024)

TUESDAY, AUGUST 15, 2023

My alarm goes off. It’s 8:00am. I’ve scheduled my dog to go to the groomers for a haircut at 9:00am.

“I need to get up because rescheduling would be a pain.”

A mundane thought. A mundane thought.

August 15 is the day I got my brain back.

JANUARY 2021-AUGUST 2023

Due to previously unprocessed childhood trauma, Spring 2021 saw a complete psychological breakdown. Your body will store trauma until it feels safe enough to feel it, and I felt all of it. I hardly got out of bed for 6 weeks. I ate chocolate and watched Community (2009-2015) like it was my job. I wouldn’t stop shaking.

Due to the semester (and high school) ending, I kicked it into high gear. I took some edibles to stop the shaking, then shoved everything down and finished strong.

I then spent the following 2.5 years in a similar state of “just getting through”. Pain and denial expanded and compacted and made me an incredibly fragile and selfish human being. I slept way more than I needed to. Going to a 1-hour class exhausted me. I became irritable, and extremely critical of loved ones, at times bordering paranoia.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 15, 2023

Waking up that morning was like that moment when you put on glasses for the first time ever. You realize how well everyone can see. You didn’t know your vision was so bad.

For the first time in 2 and a half years I woke up without a fight or flight response. My brain was quiet. I wasn’t afraid everyone was mad at me, my heart wasn’t racing, my stomach didn’t feel like it was in free fall.

“It’s like there’s been a little monster in brain, at the wheel, making all my decisions. And I was blacked out, tied up in the trunk.”

Fall/Winter 2023

Personifying my mental illness as a monster became an incredibly useful tool. I could distinguish what was me and what was my illness. I could understand its wants and needs without acting on them unconsciously.

Over Christmas break I visited my God family. My God mother talked to me about her daughter’s emotional challenges. She worded it in a way I hadn’t thought about before:

“You have to keep fighting it. Because the moment you stop, you may do something you can’t undo by the time you come to.”

That’s what I’ve been doing. That’s why I sometimes tire easily, why I feel like I can’t do as much as some of my peers do. I’ve been fighting for my life.

And my sister was too. My eleven year old sister has a little monster in her brain. And some days it wins. Some days mine wins too. I get it.

So what can I do to help her?