Not an Exception
If I had to explain my experience with mental health in one sentence, it would probably have something to do with me cracking jokes while in the midst of a full-blown hyperventilating/panic episode.
BUT, Lucky for you, I get 750 words! And instead, I’m going to tell you how it all started.
Hi there! My name is Addie, and I am currently in my first year of College (or University if you’re outside the USA bubble). My mental health journey has to do heavily with perspective.
There was the world, and then there was me, somehow I just didn’t seem fit into the equation. In a sense it was as if I lived outside of natural laws — I was the “exception.”
My entire life, all I have wanted is to love everyone, to be there for everyone, to make everyone happy. When I was little this was selling lemonade to send money to Haiti and in middle school that translated into trying to piece together the brokenness that was closer and more tangible — my friends.
This is where I decided I no belonged belonged in the equation. My inability to save my friends from their struggles made me inadequate and unworthy of love. I remember it like yesterday — Standing in front of the framed mirror, in tears, wondering why it wasn’t me that was hurting — hoping, praying, that I could bear their burdens, that I could take their suffering and hurt. That is the day my friend depression started hanging out with me, whispering negative harmful things all the time, and later he was joined by anxiety.
It’s been an odd journey full of highs and lows over the years, but like I said — perspective has played the most important role. Once anxiety and depression got a hold of me, I started to believe that I was worthless, and inadequate — that everyone was somehow created for a purpose that I somehow lacked. I saw my life and existence as a mistake.
The only mistake.
I found ways to blame issues as extreme as world hunger on myself. Obviously some part of me knew that that was irrational, but a part of me believed… because I was THE mistake.
And I believed that I was outside of the “everyone is beautiful”, “your life has purpose if you’re breathing”, mantra that I recited to many struggling both online and off. My life felt like a pencil being sharpened from both ends.
And once again, this continued for awhile and bled into other aspects of my life. I wasn’t excelling in school, I was the worst on my colorguard team, I couldn’t sing in key, I couldn’t even touch my toes for goodness sake, surely I was a mistake. Nothing else explained it.
But that’s where I was wrong.
I wish I could tell you the moment it all changed, but i think in fact, that it was a serious of small events, but the end product was like the first day I got glasses. I was sitting in the passenger seat as we drove on the street I’d lived on for 10 years, and for the first time I could see individual christmas lights — I had clarity.
Nothing, and nobody lives outside of the equation. We are ALL equals, none more valuable than the next. All beautiful, and wonderful, and WORTHY of love.
Having clarity brought a new perspective to my life, I was able to see the lies that I had been allowing into my head. The fears of being good enough, outweighing my drive to see happiness as achievable.
I’m not by any means saying a new pair of glasses will fix your life, some days anxiety is still debilitating. I have to fight my head to order coffee or make small talk with a stranger. Everyday presents it’s challenges, but I know that I’m not an exception, that this isn’t the english language — there are no exceptions.
Both of our lives have meaning, and I’m proud to say that I believe those words now.
