"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.

I had just started a new job a few days before and was trying to find a parking space in the employee deck. I noticed a couple of cars lined up but not running, and I didn't know what they were doing. A car was pulling out of a spot in front of the line of cars so I drove around them and parked.

After I got out a woman in one of the cars I had gone around (I hadn't even been able to tell someone was in there) rolled down her window and started yelling at me for being so rude to just pass the line of people waiting for spots like that.

It turns out the lot can get so overcrowded that people can wait for over twenty minutes for a spot, so they will turn off the car completely. I immediately said that I was sorry and that I hadn't realized that was what they were waiting for. I said that I would move my car and she could have the spot. As I turned to go back to my car I said that I was sorry again. The woman replied, "You should be." 

I have always been shy, self-conscious, and had very low self-esteem. After she said that, I felt terrible and guilty. My confidence was shot. Even worse, I couldn't get it out of my head. Almost every time I parked in that deck the memory would get triggered and I would feel bad.

It was over a year later when I had an epiphany. Something had caused me to think about that incident when a switch flipped in my head and I suddenly thought, "Wait a minute. Screw her." It hit me that I had made an honest mistake and as soon as I found out, I fixed it. I had no intent to be rude and she certainly didn't suffer any. If an extra ten seconds waiting for me to move my car ruined her day she had some serious issues. There was absolutely no reason for me to feel bad and she had no reason to say I should.

Professional Draw-er

In first grade, I loved drawing. In my heart, I truly thought I had a shot as a "professional draw-er."

But on my report card, my first grade teacher wrote (to paraphrase): "[NAME] loves to draw. She wants to draw for the rest of her life. I don't think she has what it takes to do that... but I know that she's going to be something big, somewhere big, and I'm gonna read about her in the news one day." 

This completely broke my spirit and discouraged me from pursuing this dream.

"Well, she can see you."

Between kindergarden and first grade, I started to put on some weight and developed into a quite chubby kid. My mom was very proactive when I started gaining weight, and enrolled us in many family "get healthy" programs. I was aware that this was an issue, but for me at the time, it was an internal one. 

After one of my parent-teacher conferences in first grade, my mother came home and reported that I got glowing reviews from all of my teachers. She also said that one of my teachers, a beautiful and very thin woman, mentioned to her that she was overweight as a child as well and that she eventually grew out of it. I asked my mom how my teacher knew that I was overweight, and my mom responded, "Well, she can see you". 

I have never forgotten this moment. It was an innocent comment by my mother, one that would be obvious to any adult. However, as a young child that was the first time I realized that others were seeing and discussing my weight gain. That was the beginning of many years of self-consciousness and self-hating regarding my weight and looks.

It is only in the past several years that I have come to accept and like myself and how I look.

I don't think my mom remembers this comment, or has any idea how it affected me.

"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.

"You are stuck up"

In the 7th grade, I befriended a girl who I became incredibly close with. But before we grew close, she told me that she thought I was really stuck up. I had never heard anyone describe me as "snobby" or "stuck up" before and it hurt my feelings very much because although I'm stubborn, I didn't think of myself in that light. It was a description that I associated with kids who had wealthy parents and spoke over their classmates with arrogance.

It was always in her character to be bluntly honest, so I put my trust in her because I thought she would always tell it to me straight. I started to think that other people may have the same impression of me but never told me.

In the end, we grew apart. I endured an emotionally-abusive friendship because I was a self conscious 13 year old and I wanted to be edgy and "fun." She took advantage of the fact that I was highly impressionable and I trusted her; she was clever, charming, and could argue her way out of any situation. I wanted so badly to be more like her and less of an uptight "snob." 

I don't think of myself as stuck up anymore. I am now 24 and much more confident than I used to be, but I haven't forgotten what she said.

"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.

One time when I was in high school my mother and I were talking about sex. My boyfriend at the time was an Evangelical Christian and because I loved him I had started to become one too. My mother kept trying to bring up sex and I kept laughing, insisting that we weren’t having sex - we weren’t - and to close the subject for good I told her that I was saving myself for marriage. She was stunned. She said, “But what if you’ve waited all that time and it’s bad?”

Always ready with Evangelical sound bites, I said, “If I have nothing to compare it to, how will I know?” I smiled. My mother looked me in the eyes, her face deadpan.

“You’ll know.”

“You’re really intense.”

It was an interview for a company and position I had dreamed about. I’d be studying for weeks. Met with three people in the office and was feeling awesome.

Then, in walks the VP. He sits down, spreads his legs out, puts his hands behind his head in a cocky manner, and asks me to tell him about my interests. I start talking and he almost immediately interrupts me with this statement.

He asks me to start talking again, then interrupts me again: “Yeah, you’re intense. Has anyone ever told you that? Like, really intense.”

Turns out, he was testing me. But I’ve never left a room feeling so unsure of myself.