I wrote out everything that happened to me, that caused my mental illnesses, I guess I just want someone's thoughts about it who doesn't know me. &lt;3 I don't know if I should send it to some of my friends who don't understand, or what to do.  If anyone has any advice, I'd appreciate it.  I hope you all are doing well and staying safe.   


  
  

A few days ago, I did something to one of my best friends that I incredibly regret, and while we discussed and have moved past it, it lead me to realize there’s a lot I need to tell my friends that I’ve kept silent, and its time I come to light with it all. I don’t want to lose people close to me, all of you mean the world to me, so- here we go. Possible trigger warning, I really haven’t thought this out, I’m just sort of writing for now.   
 

It’s no secret that I have depression, but a lot of you don’t know about my mental health disorders pass that and I want to explain it all. Not to be an excuse—people who use their mental illness as an excuse are in the wrong, plain, and simple. It’s still me doing it, and I have the power to not do that, no matter how difficult it may be or feel. I just want to explain what’s going on with me, just so the people in my life I love and adore can better understand me. I argued with myself for a while about actually posting this, but I feel like it’s in everyone’s best interest, myself included, to be fully transparent with you all and let you make your own decisions. I don’t want sympathy, I want you all to know this about me so you can choose what to do for your own well being. I am getting help from an amazing psychologist, and he’s honestly the best I’ve had since the late Dr. Milby, as well as a wonderful psychiatrist who is working on balancing out my meds to make me be the me I want to be. 

When I was a kid, I was a social butterfly, always smiling and always running up to people saying “Hi, my name is S do you want to be my friend?” It didn’t matter who it was, how old they were, what they were doing if I saw them, I wanted to be their friend. The thought of doing that now gives me anxiety, and so I’m typing all of this to explain what changed in my life. What turned me from an outgoing extrovert, into a shy introvert who has severe manic mood swings and would rather sleep all day than have any human interaction at all. 

 Everything started in 8th grade, sitting in my room at my desktop, talking to some people on AIM when I was suddenly brought into a group chat with 3 people, M, J, and J2. I messaged them asking what was up, thinking maybe we were planning another sleepover as the four of us had just had one recently and we all had a blast, but that wasn’t the case. 

 M had been my best friend for 10 years up to that point. She was one of the first people I met when we moved to Arizona, and she lived right down the street from me so we hung out together all the time. I trusted her with my deepest secrets, and she was always my first pick when it came to hanging out with someone. J I had known for about 6 or 7 years at this point, another of my good friends and someone I loved hanging out with, I can still remember how much fun she and I had messing around on her keyboard, playing music, watching movies, and so on. J2 was someone I had just met the year before, but we clicked quickly, hung out a lot together with M and all 3 of us rode our bikes to school together every morning things seemed great.   
 

The words I read on that screen jarred me, and I was stunned into silence at first, thinking it had to be a joke, a cruel sick joke, but a joke nonetheless. “We were never your friends, you know. We used you for your pool, for all the things you had. I just needed someone to ride to school with so my parents would let me.” Was what M started out with, J and J2 soon said something similar. Telling me they were never my friends, that they hated me, that I was obnoxious and someone they didn’t want in their life, that they would be happy if on the way to school I got hit by a car. They just kept repeating those words, anything I said, anything I came back with. “We were using you, but we can’t stand you anymore.”   
 

I was devastated, I was crushed. I had never experienced such malice in my life before, it entirely shattered my view of the world, that happy little kid was starting to retreat, but they weren’t entirely gone until Monday at school. When I got there, someone called me a fag. I got confused, no one knew that at the time I was unsure about my sexuality except for one person. M. It turned out, M, J and J2 told everyone at the school everything I ever told them, and I mean everything. My deepest secrets, the type of things you would trust your best friend with. Soon, the entire school was on their side, seeing me as obnoxious, useless, someone the world would be better without. That little ball of sunshine I had been when I was a child was completely put out. I kept my head down, I stayed quiet, I only felt at home in choir.   
 

Eventually, I started to get very bad panic attacks, the kind that had me gasping for air, from there things started to look like seizures. I would fall to the ground shaking and trembling, and because of stress or anxiety my body shut down and made me ‘seize.’ My parents were terrified, things started to get worse at one point I would start to forget who I was, where I was, who my parents were and they had to switch the locks on the door just so I couldn’t run out. Test after test came back negative, I was in and out of the hospital for months.   
 

One doctor had a hunch, and his hunch was right, it turned out to be conversion disorder. ‘A mental condition in which a person has blindness, paralysis, or other nervous system (neurologic) symptoms that cannot be explained by medical evaluation. It causes distress and cannot be turned on and off at will. The physical symptoms are thought to be an attempt to resolve the conflict the person feels inside.’ Basically, my stress became physical, I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t handle stress on an emotional level anymore. 

 My parents found an in-patient facility to treat this in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin and that was where I stayed for 30 days. Working on getting better, and it had helped for a while. Then, 9th grade rolled around. 

At first, things were going incredibly well. It was sort of a fresh start to things, because while M and J2 went to the same school High School was so big I never saw them, it was my chance to put everything behind me and keep going forward, to heal and go back to being that happy extroverted kid.   
 

Things didn’t last, though. My friends at the time boyfriend, M2, betrayed my trust, he and I were hanging out, we were close, and I enjoyed his company. He had always been sweet, and there for me. This small group of people was starting to help me rebuild all those shattered pieces, but they fell apart again when M2 raped me. His logic was that I had kissed his girlfriend, C, so obviously that meant he got to do what he wanted to me too.   
 

I started to fall back to square one, I was back to being introverted, I hid what happened that night until my senior year, something I still regret to this day. Repressing it that long and continuing to hang out with M2 and that group acting like things were fine only made my depression and anxiety worse, and soon enough my want to get people away from me became diagnosed as Borderline Personality Disorder. 

 ‘Borderline personality disorder is an illness marked by an ongoing pattern of varying moods, self-image, and behavior. These symptoms often result in impulsive actions and problems in relationships. People with borderline personality disorder may experience intense episodes of anger, depression, and anxiety that can last from a few hours to days.’ BPD is the cause of my mood swings and uncertainty about myself and my role in the world. I am terrified of abandonment, I get angry over the stupidest things, it’s hard for me to trust people. The worst part is when I get in one of these episodes, I don’t even realize it until it’s way too late, and I’ve already snapped and tried to push someone away, and sometimes, by that point, I lost a friend.   
 

Fast forward to 2011. I was on Yahoo! Messenger, when I got messaged by someone, G, who rped Vile from Megaman X, I was on Zero, and she and I clicked instantly. We started to rp daily, and we got closer and closer. Eventually, I realized I had feelings for her, and I asked her out, much to my surprise at the time, she said yes. 

As the days went on, she started to get me wrapped around her finger, but I didn’t notice. Days I had to work the next morning, she would guilt me into staying up all night, when I wanted to go hang out with friends I had to keep my phone on me at all times, and if she messaged me I had to go home right then to make sure she was okay. I became distant to everyone, I was so controlled by her. She got mad at me constantly for nothing, she would always make me feel awful any time I didn’t want to write with her, or anytime I tried to sleep when she was upset. There’s still a ringtone that if I hear it I go into a full-blown panic attack because anytime I heard it in the 2 years I dated her, I had to get on immediately, or she would torture me the next morning. 

2013 on February 9th, I was at the zoo working my shift, I got a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize, but the area code was Prescott, so I thought it might have been a new number for Britney. I went outside to answer, and it was Britney’s grandma, she told me Britney died last night, at 3 am, she killed herself. I’ll spare you all the details, but she went into excruciating detail to me about how she did it, how her grandma found her. It’s an image that still haunts me to this day.   
 

Her family started to blame me, to the point that they were threatening me, telling me that I should have been dead, not Britney. That they’ll kill me themselves to make up for losing Britney because I didn’t deserve to be alive. I got threatened constantly, and to make matters worse, my girlfriend told me that I had a week to talk about losing my best friend and soul mate, and then she didn’t want to hear about it anymore, at all. 

It wasn’t until July when I went to my brother’s wedding that I realized G was abusive, that I was wrapped around her finger so tightly and what I thought was love was fear. I broke up with her that weekend. She threatened to kill herself, she kept saying no wonder Britney killed herself, that I was a terrible person—the list when on and on. 

 

Relationships terrified me, they still do to this day. It’s hard for me to trust people, it’s hard for me to accept someone actually likes me no matter how long we had been friends. It’s one of the reasons I need constant reassurance, why I get so paranoid about people talking about me behind my back. It’s why no matter how much I love and adore you I will try to get you to leave me behind.   
 

I promise you all, this is something I’m working on, and I’m going to continue working on it because none of you deserve to be treated like garbage, none of you deserved to deal with my anger over something trivial.   
 

I don’t want to lose anyone, at least not consciously, you guys have all been such incredible friends to me.   
 

Anyway, I just wanted to let you all know all of this, to let you get an insight into my head, into why I am the way I am.  To let you make a choice for your own wellbeing.  
 

I’m going to get better, I’m going to fix this.