For context I'm a woman, age 21. Looking back, I always knew I had mental illness.  
I recently made an appointment with a mental health clinic to get the help I need.
Bare with me, this is story is gonna be a bit all over the place and long.

Story begins:
As a child I would have outbursts when angry; destroying my room and self harming (scratch and hitting myself, some other things but I won't go into detail). As I grew into my middle school years, I was bullied, that's when my depression began to show. The outbursts turned to breakdowns and overall the depression got worse. Some days it would go away and other times it would linger for days. The depression still here til this day.

One day when I was in middle school, my mother and I were talking and subject of bullying came up and I broke down, crying. The first thing she said was "she always does this when people comes around" aka "you're looking for attention." I never once broke down in front of people before that. She would say other things over the years like "no one does anything to you for you to feel like this" and "you're bipolar/schizophrenia" without even realizing how it affected me and added onto everything. We would talk about it a few times throughout my teenage years. Now that I'm older, our conversations about my mental health has gotten  better. Recently I brought up why she didn't get me help when I was a child, she said she didn't wanna believe I was "like that," meaning having mental health problems. 

I'm glad that I made the step to get the help I need but sometimes I think about the words my mom said and it bother me.