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I’ll never forget the look of the early cherry blossoms when I started my new life in Japan. Moving here was a dream I held for years. I’d always been fascinated by the country, and for an artsy, socially awkward teenager, Japan seemed like a place I could fit right in. I wanted to leave my home country, the Philippines, for a number of reasons. I didn’t fit in socially; I didn’t like the strong influence religion had there; and most of all, I wasn’t happy with my dysfunctional family. So I looked for every opportunity to move to Japan. A brief visit as a tourist had only left me convinced that I’d be happier living there—everything was efficient; everyone was so nice and polite; and the quality of life seemed so much better.A year after that trip, I got my chance: I was accepted to study in Japan. I imagined myself living in Japan for as long as I could, not knowing the things I’d encounter here as a woman would break me off of that mindset soon enough.

Japan breeds a sexist working culture that leaves women at a major disadvantage.

I Quickly Learned That Japanese Culture Had a Widespread Sexist View of Women

When I first saw an encumbered Japanese mother in the subway holding a baby stroller with one hand and a toddler with the other, I felt bad for her. The situation didn’t seem right to me. Where was their father? Why wasn’t anyone watching the kids for her while she went where she needed to go? But since I was new to Japan and everyone else on the train seemed to view this as normal, I promptly tucked away those feelings and accepted it for what it was.A lot of my experiences during my first few years in Japan were marked by tucking away feelings and accepting things for how they were. I would go on dates and when a guy would mention he was looking for a housewife, I was told that it was because Japan was too “traditional.” At the post office with a guy friend, the staff addressed the man instead, even though I was the one who asked them questions. Similar things kept happening on different days in different places.The longest “it’s just the way things are in Japan” situation I endured was my first job here. When I was a student, I worked part-time at an advertising production company. I enjoyed it because every day was different. The company branded itself as being “international” and hired other foreigners like me. If anything was too difficult for me in Japanese, I had others who could guide me in English. They said I could keep working for them once I finished school, so I took them up on their word, starting my life as a working woman in Japan.

My Manager Harassed Me and Criticized My Abilities

Soon after, a lot of things changed. During my orientation, they told me I’d have different duties from my previous role and that I’d be working under a manager I’d never interacted with. I felt anxious over learning brand-new responsibilities. I sought out support from friends and family and was assured that this was just new-job jitters and things would get easier.It never did. Two months after I started, they fired the two people I worked with, giving me the workload of three people. My manager made things a lot worse. It was as if he saw this as an opportunity to lord his power over me. He gave me work I never received training for but also reprimanded me when I asked for help. He disallowed me from helping my colleagues from another department when they needed a hand and made it so that everyone had to ask for his permission before I could do anything. He criticized everything I did and belittled my abilities.Everyone knew how much he controlled me, so I would complain about how hard things were to the same colleagues I thought I could rely on. Every time I’d hear back, “It’s just the way he is,” and nobody stood up for me. I told my friends outside of work, too. They’d sympathize and bring up how it was another classic Japanese issue of power harassment. Yet again, I’d be told, “It’s just the way it is.” It wasn’t until five years later that I’d realize all of it—the struggling mom in the subway, the housewife-seeking bad dates, men overlooking me, the power-harassing manager—was connected to Japan's widespread sexism.

It was another classic Japanese issue of power harassment.

My Experiences Helped Me Contextualize Japan's Sexist Attitudes

I quit that job after six months, but the effects it had on my mental health lasted for years. I switched between jobs and moved a lot because nothing was stable in my life. Last year, I finally found a job that helped me feel appreciated and safe. At first, I was always on edge and had a constant fear I’d get fired at any moment. But all I got were reassurances. It made me realize I wasn’t a terrible employee after all.Once I realized I was in a safe environment, I started working on healing myself. I became involved in communities that put emphasis on mental health and the empowerment of women like me. I joined political circles that helped educate me on social topics I didn’t know much about. I started reading books by feminist authors, and the more I did, the more all of my experiences started to make sense to me. I started to understand why things are the way they are.This awakening drove home the notion that Japan is terrible toward its women, and I learned how underrepresented women are in positions of power. The issue of having an overwhelming majority of men with too much unquestioned power at the top has made power harassment commonplace. I realized that my experience at my first job wasn’t a case of just one bad manager; Japan breeds a sexist working culture that leaves women at a major disadvantage.

I'm Setting My Sights on Living in a New Country

I also learned that other things being excused as a “cultural difference”—like men expecting a housewife or mothers taking on much more childcare—sustains Japan’s systematic sexism. Women are reported to be paid much less, and for those who are working, they’re often shamed if they decide to take maternity leave. I’ve heard of complaints from friends with kids about how daycare here can be difficult to get.All of this results in lower salaries for women who have the double duty of being in the workforce while having unpaid care work at home. This makes it very hard for Japanese women to be successful and financially stable through work, so it’s become expected that women in Japan can only become housewives (and “birth-giving machines,” according to a former Japanese health minister). Without visibility in positions of power, nor the incentive to become self-sufficient, women are seen as an afterthought and can only be second fiddle to men. Whether it’s in the privacy of their home or in the public sphere of work or TV, we’re only there to smile and nod as the big men shape the country. And so, even if Japan is where my feminist awakening started, I’ve started to set my sights elsewhere. Knowing what I know now, I can’t continue living somewhere that’s built against my very being. I don’t expect the next country I live in to be a perfect feminist utopia because nowhere in the world is. But while I continue to learn about the things I deserve as a woman, I’m glad I already got to learn firsthand what isn’t for me.

I am writing this while high.This is not an attempt to flex that I am high, in the way that drunk people always talk about how they’re soooooo drunk. I am saying this because this is the first time I’ve been able to write since I first started getting high.Now, you’re probably thinking I’m on some hard drugs like cocaine. I don’t even really know many of the hard drugs that exist because I don’t take them. I only smoke weed because my boyfriend lends me his pen, not because I can actually afford weed—because I can’t. I am a broke college kid in Los Angeles (meaning my weed is legal, phew) majoring in writing, but I can’t write much now that I get high.Just kidding. I’ve been in a writing slump for years, but, for now, I’m going to blame the weed because hear me out: Even when I’m sober now, I feel high. But not like a full-on high, more like an I-can-feel-the-remnants-of-my-high high, so I can’t tell if my brain is naturally deteriorating or if the weed is giving me brain damage. And I know weed can’t really give me brain damage and I’m probably just experiencing the placebo effect, but come on: Can the placebo effect last for months? Because I smoke a weed pen? Can the placebo effect make me incapable of completing assignments I used to be able to do, albeit also in an unhealthy, procrastinating way but worse now? Or have I convinced myself that it's gotten worse as a result of the placebo effect? Am I behaving this way, missing words while typing and hammering out raging Notes app nonsense, because I think I have brain damage? That I’ve convinced myself that I have brain damage?

Even when I’m sober now, I feel high.

I Had a Great Time With a Friend the First Time I Got High

The first time I get high, I was with my friend carrying tacos back from a restaurant near my apartment. It was May and school had ended, so we were just trying to have a good time before we parted ways and returned to our separate homes across the country. On our walk back to my room, she handed me her to-go box, pulling a pre-roll and a lighter from her pocket. This wasn't the first time she’d done this around me, but it is the first time I successfully managed to get high with her. The first couple of times involved inhaling and exhaling the smoke before it could reach my lungs. This time, I allowed the fire into them, coughing it up as it burned in my throat.When we reached my room, my head felt like it was submerged in a fishbowl, everything within sight subtly morphing as if seen through languid water. I took a seat next to my friend, a seasoned weed smoker, and proceeded to unbox my tacos as she did. She played Dave on her laptop, and we watched while indulging in the best meal ever.It was awesome.And of course, it was awesome because I was with my friend, and we were eating good food, and we had zero responsibilities to worry about. I fail to remember these variables when I proceed to get high alone in my dorm room at the beginning of the next semester in August, hoping to relive the same joy I felt back in May. I have yet to capture that feeling.

I am unhappy, and I blame it on the weed.

Weed Has Exacerbated the Problems I Already Had

Alone, I dissociate in bed, the weight of my body so heavy against the sheets, sinking into a firm mattress that certainly cannot sink. When I am faced with an assignment I’d rather not do, I pull an edible out from my desk drawer, popping it into my mouth before heading to the shower, where I allow the weed to set in. Occasionally, I remember the fact that I am on antidepressants and an immunosuppressant, both of which probably shouldn’t be taken with weed, but I’ve been doing it for this long now, so what’s the point in worrying?I am unhappy, and I blame it on the weed. Of course, there are other factors like depression and the fact that I have no friends or family in the city, my weed friend has long since gone to New York City and my boyfriend is an hour's drive away—leaving me to sit in my room for days on end in complete silence, with no human contact or conversation. But it’s the weed. Or so I have decided because all these factors existed pre-weed, and now that I smoke weed, I am feeling worse than ever before. I know this makes no sense, and I should probably go on walks every time I feel the urge to take an edible or a hit from my boyfriend’s pen, but will walks fix my constant headaches and shaking, my poor balance and frat-boy-style terrible eating habits? Will going sober solve these issues that have cropped up in my weed smoking days? I really do not think so. Every time I try, I end up back at square one, turning to weed because nothing else is working.This is all to say, I guess you can develop an addiction to weed. Time to go get high again.

I recently drove down the main road near where I did most of my growing up. It’s not something I enjoy doing, though I hope one day I will associate it with happy things. This time, I noticed how short the distance was between my old street and my primary school. It used to feel like it took forever to walk there. My mom would do my hair, give me my packed lunch and we’d be on our way. I’d hold her hand and we’d walk together. As a small girl, it was like a hike, but it really only took ten minutes, maybe even less. I needed my mom every single school day to get me from A to B safely. Nothing could hurt me if I was holding her hand. When the time came for her to stop walking me to school, I was beside myself. Each walk felt impossible. She started by walking to the corner with me and watching me go. I got used to it, as kids do. I made it work. There was a time when she took me to school for the last time, and I didn’t even know it. When she did my hair for the final time. When she kissed my cheek for the last time. Hugged me. Rolled her eyes at me. Made me a cup of tea. These tiny, seemingly inconsequential things now feel so big. So important. Things I want to remember. But the reality is, I probably won’t. Not forever. My mom passed away in the summer of 2020, six days before my 21st birthday and ten days after her 49th. Her struggle with mental health and addiction had been long and complicated. It had been a ticking time bomb. After a few close calls, we knew this was the last go. I was in a constant state of anxiety. My brain was trying to prepare itself for the worst, the very thing that I had feared my entire life. But there is absolutely nothing to prepare you for something like this.

There is absolutely nothing to prepare you for something like this.

I Felt Deeply Connected to My Mother

Losing a parent isn’t how you picture it. It’s also not what the movies show. It isn’t some big dramatic moment where you fall to your knees and scream, even if that’s what you feel like doing. When we heard the news in the waiting room, I only remember frowning. Shaking my head. I didn’t even cry right away. My life changed completely at that moment, but my body didn’t catch up. If I moved, it would be real. The only thing you can do in these life-altering moments is lean on those around you. It’s a test for those closest to you. If your friends stick around through something like this, they’ll stick around for life. From that point, it felt like I was missing a limb—like someone had come along and stolen something from me. It didn’t matter that we were expecting this outcome. I felt cheated. I needed this situation to have a creator so I had someone to blame. I was entirely different but somehow exactly the same. A struggle I didn’t prepare myself for was the one with my own identity. This won’t be the case for everyone dealing with this, but my mom was my very best friend. It didn’t matter how much she put me through; I was aware that it wasn’t her fault. I couldn’t blame her for things out of her control. The biggest part of me still looked at her and saw Superwoman.I grew up around her, my dad and three brothers. We girls stuck together. We did everything as a pair, and I’ve grown up to be a lot like her. We used to joke about it. We used to say, “The apple never falls far from the tree,” except my apple was stapled to her tree. She gave me the best parts of herself. It had me worried that she’d given me the not-so-good parts, too. So much of me is what she gave me. During some of the worst times, when she was unwell, I was so involved that I couldn’t figure out where she ended and I began. It’s an impossible position to be in as a young woman.

As Her Illness Progressed, I Took on the Role of Being Her Mother

These years defined the first part of my adult life. I was almost in the role of the mother, worrying and panicking at every corner. Since her passing, I have had to spend a lot of time with myself—really spend time with myself. That sounds strange, I know, but it was important to get to know myself outside of my worry for her. It was only then that I was able to separate us—her from the woman she raised and only ever wanted the best for. I am like her in the best ways (and some not so good), but it doesn’t matter. I am me. I know this is something I’ll continue working on. I’ll still have days where I look in the mirror and think, “Bloody hell, I look like my mom,” but I want to be happy when I do. I’m reminded of when the nurse came into the waiting room afterward. She grabbed my face and said, “Your mom will live on through you.” At the time, I was angry and upset. But now, not so much. I hope she does live on through me. The whole five stages thing hasn’t helped me. They may help you, and I wanted them to help me, but they never did. I’ve always liked things to have a rhyme and reason. An order. I expected these five stages to make sense for me. But I was all over the place. Yet another thing you can’t prepare for. Yes, you’ll be angry. You’ll be sad. You’ll deny. You’ll lose sleep. But it doesn’t happen in a specific order. Sometimes, it’ll just be a little bit, and sometimes, it’ll be all at once. People around you will also forget. This huge thing that will be at the forefront of your mind for years will not be at the forefront of theirs. But even when it slips their mind, it doesn’t mean they don’t care about you. My memories hurt me the most. As I struggle with my ongoing mental health problems, that nasty side of my brain reminds me of moments that I don’t want to remember. But one thing I feel grateful for is that most of the time when I think of her, I don’t think of her looking sickly and weak. I see my Superwoman.

You’ll be angry. You’ll be sad. You’ll deny. You’ll lose sleep. But it doesn’t happen in a specific order.

The Grieving Process Is Your Own Process

If someone reading this is worried that they won’t be able to unsee their unwell relatives, you will. You eventually won’t remember how sick they looked. Eventually. I’m still working on this. I’m trying to get to a place where I can indulge in nostalgia without breaking down. It took me the better part of six months to look at pictures of my mom. It took me seven to put up a picture of her in my house. I want to get to the point of thinking about my life—the life before her addiction and struggles—in a happy way. The toughest part is that I still need her. I wish I could still call her up and tell her what I’ve been doing each day. I have moments where only her advice would suffice. I still need her to do my hair once in a while. Now the journey from A to B is different. It’s the journey from where I am now to the rest of my life. And it will be long. Worse than any hike you’ve ever been on. It’s forever without my mom, a seemingly impossible journey. If I look back to the corner, she won’t be there watching me to make sure I get there safely. She’s not holding my hand anymore. It’s going to take me a long time to accept this. As long as I need it to.If you’re grieving, do not let anyone decide how long you grieve for. This is your process and yours only. Progress is not linear, and most days will be bad. So bad. Some days will be OK. Some will even be good. You will never forget them. I think I felt that the more time was passing, the worse it was getting. I was further away from the event itself. I didn’t want those memories to falter. But they haven’t. I have them stored away safely for when I’m ready.

It can be hard to see the forest for the trees. Especially when your life is going down the toilet. That’s what happened to me in 2009. Economic collapse was looming and my family was in danger of losing everything, but I refused to accept how serious it was. That would have made it real, and I had no intention of giving this fire more air. My marriage was breaking down and every day felt like I was wading through quicksand, while all my husband wanted to do was talk about the economy and how close to the precipice we were financially. So, like a child, I stuck my fingers in my ears (figuratively, not literally—although I came close) and blocked him out. He took to following me around the house constantly with this ever-present need to talk about our situation, and more than once, I found him waiting outside the bathroom to continue his monologue. This behavior was new for him, but as a couple, we weren’t doing well, and despite my unwillingness to listen, I knew we were in trouble. I wasn’t ready to have it spelled out by him. So I began to spend less and less time around him. Once the kids were asleep I got into my car and drove. Friends became used to seeing me arrive on their doorstep late in the evenings, desperately in need of a reprieve from my life. After a while, he stopped going to work and began spending all day at home playing Sudoku and laying around in his pajamas. I spent all my time being annoyed by him.

Then the phone rang, and I heard the news that my husband had been arrested in Dubai.

I Realized Too Late That My Husband Was Not OK

When he finally announced that he needed to return to Dubai to attend to some business, I was limp with relief. I needed a break, as did he. He didn’t call when he landed, which was unusual, but his persona tended to change when he traveled to Dubai; he became solely immersed in his business affairs. Even when we traveled together, he had no time or interest in me once he was under the city’s spell. I was less enamored.Recently, he had been making noises about moving there, and I knew deep down that if he did, it would be without us. But still, as hours ticked by I began to worry. My texts and calls went unanswered, and it appeared nobody had heard from him since he had left Dublin. I called his brother, who also happened to be his business partner, but he too seemed bewildered by the whole situation. A day turned into two. I was starting to really worry. Then the phone rang, and I heard the news that my husband had been arrested in Dubai. I began to cry. Information came sporadically and made no sense to me. He had been arrested trying to enter the country after his passport had been scanned. A “complaint” had been made against him by a Dubai citizen regarding some financial irregularities within their dealings. To this day, I still don’t know if the complaint had any merit (he swore not at the time), but in Dubai, the process was to arrest and jail first, ask questions later. And by all accounts, Dubai jail is not a pleasant place to be, innocent or guilty. We hired a lawyer and, after some weeks, he was released with his passport confiscated until the entire matter was settled.

Seeing My Husband Having a Mental Breakdown Was Heartbreaking

A few days later, I kissed my kids goodbye and boarded a plane to Dubai to see him for myself. Our stilted phone calls since his release unnerved me a little. His manner seemed off and I was worried. Shaking with fear, I approached passport control in the Dubai airport, terrified that I, too, would be arrested by association, but I sailed through to find a man who looked like my husband (albeit a slimmer version) waiting for me on the other side. Three weeks in prison had certainly had an impact. His clothes were loose and his usually happy face seemed gaunt and etched with an experience I was sure he would rather forget. He was smiling, however, which I took as a good sign as he steered me through the terminal to a waiting car outside. I had a thousand questions and, as we settled into the journey, I thought about where to start. He was having none of it. He brushed off the experience as inconsequential and mumbled about how it had actually been a positive thing, giving him time to think and plan for the future. Everything was going to be OK, he reassured me, but somehow, I knew he was wrong.While I was visiting, we stayed with friends and it instantly became apparent that my husband was not OK. On the very first night, I woke at 3 a.m. to find he wasn’t in the bed beside me. I tiptoed down the stairs and heard him talking by the pool so I headed that way only to find him alone, drinking a beer and having an in-depth conversation with himself. The next night, he disappeared again. This time, security that roamed our gated community brought him back to the house. They had found him wandering around talking to himself again with no real idea of where he was. Talking to himself became a regular occurrence, as did scribbling notes in his battered notebook. Little by little, I began to notice so many changes in his behavior that I had no idea who this person was. He was manic, bossy, rude and dismissive, and I was confused by all of it.

It instantly became apparent that my husband was not OK.

My Husband’s Breakdown Upended Our Family

By summer, the kids had joined us and we had rented a villa to spend time with him, but in reality, we rarely saw him. His previous financial woes seemed to have evaporated, despite the fact that weeks earlier he was warning me how we were on the verge of financial collapse. He was driving around in a Ferrari, spending money like there was no tomorrow, yet I was not allowed to question his actions, financial or otherwise. When he finally had his passport returned, we flew home and I knew deep down that I would never be returning.Once home, his behavior showed no improvement and my pleas to get help went unanswered. I knew nothing, and he knew everything. After some months, I stopped trying. Our marriage eventually ended and although I knew he still needed help, I had my own struggles. Plus, he made it easy to ignore his obvious mental distress. Six months after his release from prison, he flew back to Dubai on yet another business trip and we never saw him again. He abandoned everything, including his family and his business. He conned and cheated his friends. His illness told him it was the right thing to do. He stole, lied, cheated and betrayed the trust of everyone he knew until, in the end, he had no one left but a raft of enemies who weren’t open to hearing excuses about nervous breakdowns or mental illness. On reflection, the consequences of the decisions that he made when he was very obviously suffering from a breakdown changed the path of his life and the life of his family. Years later, when he emerged from the fog and began to heal, we both finally said, “I’m sorry.”

I have agoraphobia. What started as low-grade fear of going outside after negative and traumatic experiences in my early adulthood turned into something much bigger. Something that dictates and structures my life in ways that are hard to even explain. It started when I was really too young to understand the connection between a physical or psychological sensation and what's actually happening to my body and in my surroundings—all these things that now I've come to understand as a somatic response to trauma.At best, it feels uncomfortable, like low-grade dizziness. At worst, it feels like I’m going to die. Like a full-body shutdown, “no one will find you on the street” type of panic attack, where you need to find somewhere safe to go by any means necessary. (To me, that’s my house.) I have a hard time leaving home. I’ve missed out on job opportunities, missed out on fun and I haven’t traveled or gone on vacation in years. It’s self-deprivation in the same way that anorexia can be. I make excuses about why I miss things. I don't feel like I can be honest because I have shame about it, because this is something I have been dealing with for so long and haven't always been able to address. That cycle continues: I feel there is a big part of my life I can’t share with people. It’s alienating.

I have a hard time leaving home.

Before I Had Agoraphobia, I Had Vertigo

Ever since I was little I’ve experienced vertigo, a sensation of moving when I'm not actually moving. I’ve been told a lot of different things over the years about where it comes from. Some people think it comes from a vestibular problem, some think it can be triggered by anxiety. It wasn’t super debilitating at first, but it embarrassed me that it was something I needed support with. As a kid, you’re always trying to push your limits. It’s nice to feel independent. I either needed to hold on to someone or if I was alone, I’d have a panic response. It felt very in the way of my building the autonomy that I wanted. At first, it was confined to particular spaces. Usually, I describe it as being afraid of heights. I associated the sensation of falling with vertigo or the feeling of moving when I wasn't. Because of that, spaces like a glass elevator—or walking along a bridge or walking along an area that didn't have a railing—would give me the sensation that I was going to fall. I started to associate that experience of vertigo with very specific types of spaces, which would then trigger a certain type of anxiety, and then I started to avoid those spaces as a way to mediate that experience.I started to avoid places like big museums that had a lot of echo, or airport terminals that were all glass and required navigating crowded spaces where there weren't railings—or where I could get easily overwhelmed. If I had to go to these kinds of places, I’d try to make sure that I could pull it together in one way or another, by making sure I had eaten enough or wasn't dehydrated or dealing with any other triggers like that. As I got older, I just started to avoid more and more of those experiences. Eventually, I began to experience a lot of explicit fear around even experiencing the anxiety. The problem got further and further away from what the actual space was, or what I was experiencing, and became more like a fear of the fear. Which I think is a pretty good way to describe the birth of my agoraphobia.

Getting Help Wasn't as Easy as It Sounds

When I was in my early twenties, I got this pretty bad fever, and sometimes when you get a fever you can develop an ear infection, which can cause vestibular balance disorder types of things. So I started to experience vertigo in a more debilitating way. It was everywhere. Whenever I left the house, I was like, what’s going on? I had no idea what was happening. I thought there was something wrong with my eyes. Am I going crazy? Why am I getting so dizzy on the train? Why am I so sensitive to sound? I thought it might be my eyes, so I went to the eye doctor and they were like, “You have vision stuff, you always have, but this doesn't seem like a structural eye problem.” Then I got my ears checked by an ENT. They told me that my hearing was fine, but that sometimes you can experience some kind of dislodging of the inner ear, and the sensation can stay even after the thing has healed. Then they gave me Valium to help get me through it. The Valium was great. I took it until I ran out, and then I ended up buying some off the street because, on top of still experiencing the vertigo, I liked it. At that point, I was basically self-medicating, but I wasn't trying to address the root cause of what was going on, which was that I was experiencing pretty intense anxiety, which I later found out was a result of complex PTSD. Eventually, I actually stopped taking the Valium, not for any particular reason except that I think I couldn't afford to maintain it. I go through a lot of spurts of being super active and figuring out how to mediate it through self-soothing, which I have learned in different types of therapy. Currently, I’m in a somatic, Gestalt-type therapy, where it’s very much about being able to make distinctions between what’s happening now and what’s happened in the past, and also your projection or speculation about what might happen in the future. But I’ve tried so many things, so many different modalities. One of the reasons why I think Valium was so appealing to me is because it was physically very hard to get to my therapy appointments because my agoraphobia got to the point where I couldn't take the train, it was so bad. And the truth was, I was really avoiding what’s underneath all of it.

That’s where all the shame came from.

What It Feels Like, and Where It Came From

The agoraphobia feels very low grade, compared to the vertigo, which feels very violent, like you are totally out of control. It makes sense to me that I experienced that because I have experienced so much that is beyond my control. A lot of people have. The first time that I experienced really, really bad agoraphobia around age 19 or 20, it kind of felt like I was in a dream where I didn't have any control over any of the external parts of what was going on. I was told by a therapist that agoraphobia is a form of PTSD, a logical response to having encounters that were beyond your control that made you more aware of how little control you have over your external surroundings. That it’s not necessarily your fault, but it really feels like grappling with the dissociation of living, like falling.As I’ve been in therapy, I’m only just unpacking what kind of particular situations tend to set off my agoraphobia, and why. Transitional spaces have tended to be more triggering. I started to notice I would get really anxious when I was traveling because when I was young my mom was living in the States illegally, and I was taught to lie to Immigration and Customs about why we were there. So I would get anxious and I started to associate the airport with that. So spaces that mimicked that sort of area, I started to associate with it, and it just built from there.I experienced a lot of instability around my parents in my early childhood. My dad left when I was really young, and he was in and out of my life until I was about 11, when I told him I didn't want him to be around. So I think that general instability in my life made me feel like I was bad, or had done something wrong, or that if I brought stress into people’s lives they would leave. That’s where all the shame came from.

Is COVID Creating an Agoraphobia Epidemic?

It's hard not to imagine that the pandemic is giving people agoraphobia issues that they might not even be aware of yet. There's been so much stigma and advisory by the government and public health systems to not leave the house or interact in certain ways that it just seems like, how could it not be having an effect? There’s been a lot of takes on personal responsibility in keeping COVID transmission rates low, but this is the same CDC that wanted to put people in camps during the AIDS crisis. I know that people feel like if they get sick that they did something wrong, as opposed to trying to spread some kind of compassion or other ways of thinking about what the spread of disease means. Sometimes it actually means there is compassion and intimacy in spite of difference and risk. I’ve had a lot of friends start expressing stuff to me that I really identified with. And while I don’t want anyone to experience what I have, it actually was affirming to hear that it’s actually normal and that anyone who’s been told they’re a burden by moving about will naturally respond by not doing so, or by being afraid to do so. In some ways, I think people should do what they need to do. If that makes you feel a little better that’s fine, but when it gets turned outward, I’m like this is so sad. Mainly because there’s such disparity and inequity and differences in access to safer materials. So you're just like, shit, when has stigma ever helped with any of these issues?

By no means am I an avid drug user. For most of my time as a student, my relationship with drugs has been like one with good friends—the occasional hook-up is OK, but never commit to a long-term relationship. Other than the occasional joint here and there, my drug life was quite honestly more than a little dull. I had a muted interest in cocaine, MDMA and ketamine. That was until my curiosity surrounding psychedelics grew, and my partner (having had a rather life-changing LSD experience of his own) encouraged me to try LSD. Little did I know that this experience would help me to come to terms with my own womanhood and set me on my path to understanding female empowerment.The whole “female empowerment” trope had never resonated particularly strongly with me before. I would call myself a feminist by definition, but my emotional investment in the subject was limited, to say the least. While I could see the issues of gender and misogyny in societal life, my own relationship with femininity and womanhood was not something I’d spent much mental energy on. I’d never felt particularly feminine, nor had I felt like I could celebrate my “woman-ness.” In the past, I’d even had experiences questioning how much I felt like “a woman,” unable to really connect with that part of me. I had in no way intended for this to be the purpose of my trip, and it hadn’t really been something to dwell much on. Rather, I’d set out on this trip with an open mind and relatively low expectations for any last impact on my life. But how wrong I was.

To this day I can recall just how damn powerful I felt.

My LSD Trip Became a Perception-Changing Experience

As many other users of psychedelics will tell you, LSD has the capacity to completely alter your self-perception. Many report it giving them a “bird’s eye view” of themselves and their lives, and for many, it can be very helpful in overcoming issues of self-confidence and self-esteem. Although not the case for everybody, one thing people suggest is to not look in the mirror. The visual distortions that occur during a trip can be hugely unsettling when seen on yourself. Some people have even said they’ve seen themselves as older or visually repulsive. My experience, however, was quite the opposite. A quick trip to the bathroom rapidly became a drastic perception-changing experience—I looked into the bathroom mirror and I suddenly saw myself as this glowing ethereal being. My hair was flowing; my skin was positively radiant; and my breasts, quite frankly, looked fucking fantastic. More than that, I was somehow able to see an inner feminine strength, something that I hadn’t even come close to feeling when sober. But the most interesting part was the sudden connection that I felt to Mother Gaia, a figure that I had never had any affiliation with before, but now sat in my partner’s bedroom. It felt as though I was embodying her very spirit.As anyone who’s ever taken psychedelics will tell you, there are certain thoughts and feelings you have during a trip that simply cannot be communicated to anyone else, and unfortunately, this was one of those times. I felt like I was a divine being, not only in spirit but also as though my physical form was as omnipresent and far-reaching as a God’s. As absurd as it sounds, it was the single most uplifting and empowering experience of my life, and to this day I can recall just how damn powerful I felt.

I Felt Connected to Nature and Femininity More Than I Ever Had

I could now understand the interplay between Earth, nature and femininity, and, alongside feeling irrationally unsettled by the TV in the corner of the room, I held a deep appreciation for the natural environment. Don’t get me wrong: I’ve always thought that recycling was important and climate change is sad, but for these concepts to suddenly resonate on such a deep, personal level, as though it was a direct consequence of my femininity. It was enough to dramatically change my perspective of not only the world around me but the world within me.Suddenly, all those articles, podcasts and conversations about female empowerment made sense, as if the social coding of feminine weaknesses had been removed from my life and all that remained was the beauty of womanhood. It was like the curtain had been pulled back and I was able to see and appreciate the full majesty of femininity and everything it stands for.I realize that this article is at risk of falling into a narrative that seeks to define “women” in a certain way, or that I was only able to experience this because I am cisgender. In actuality, what I suddenly felt “enlightened” by was an understanding of what it means to be feminine, not female. There is a beauty in womanhood and a beauty in femininity, and although the two may cross over, they are not mutually exclusive. What my trip enabled me to see that day was my own, personal femininity, and to feel an acute appreciation for my being as a woman. As someone who is fighting an ongoing battle with anxiety and depression, it was a breath of fresh air to finally know what it felt like to have that self-love that millennials keep raving about.

Only time will tell what life revelations psychedelics might bring me in the future.

My New Perception of Femininity Remains Strong

Perhaps it was because I began my trip by watching Our Planet on Netflix, and David Attenborough’s soothing tones guided me along on my journey of self-empowerment, or maybe it was just that months of therapy had finally clicked within me that made this happen. Either way, the thoughts and feelings I experienced during this trip have left me in a much better place than I was before. Although the God-like feelings have sadly worn off, my new perception of my femininity remains strong, and the connection I felt with my inner feminine strength is present with me every day. As much as I would love to recreate this experience again, acid trips, unfortunately, don’t work like that. Still, I remain grateful that this was an experience I had in the first place. I doubt this will be my last time tripping, but only time will tell what life revelations psychedelics might bring me in the future.

I hear a lot of things lately described as “ugh, so cringe,” but have you ever really cringed? That full-body wince of reliving an experience that stops you in your tracks? There has to be a highly specific German word for the shame of a post-hypomania comedown. What unhinged screeds did I post online? Whose boundaries did I overstep when I was feeling gregarious but acting obnoxious? Oh, God, I went to open mics, didn’t I? Even now, years later, the memories still make me flinch, clench my teeth and shut my eyes for a moment. All these cherished memories and more come from the year I spent on the wrong antidepressant, making me perpetually hypomanic most of that time. But before those thrills came a long history of depression, starting in my early teens. Looking back at it now, I can laugh at how I used to shut myself in a closet to listen to Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” or Radiohead’s “How to Disappear Completely” on repeat in a very maudlin, very teenage way. Harder to laugh off were the persistent bouts of suicidal ideation I experienced or the all-consuming, debilitating sadness that kept dragging me to bed while the milestones of young adulthood passed me by.

Zoloft. My dearest friend.

How I Came to Take Zoloft for Depression

For many years, I self-medicated with alcohol. I know: Treating depression with a depressant? Groundbreaking. Alcohol never really worked for me, although not for lack of trying. Eventually, I discovered stimulants, and things got much worse. No one at the sex party where I was introduced to crystal meth warned me that I wouldn’t be able to sleep or eat for the next two days. I was convinced that this drug was going to kill me, but also that I never wanted to do anything else ever again. Thankfully this revelation scared me enough that I asked for help, and I ended up in treatment, getting sober at the age of 26. The depression that had plagued me for years followed me into sobriety, though, so I also started going to therapy for the first time. To finally talk honestly about my sadness helped, but the sadness persisted. The first professional diagnosis I got was major depression, which at the time seemed a little dramatic. “I’m fine, really,” I insisted. “I’m not depressed depressed—just a little blue.” After many months of deliberating my therapist’s suggestions, I decided to try a pharmaceutical solution. I was terrified of starting. In my newly sober state, I worried that I wouldn’t be myself anymore if I let this outside substance tamper with my brain. On top of that, I had grown up indoctrinated by my militantly New Age mother to distrust any medication beyond a spoonful of turmeric and honey. But I needed help. I went on Wellbutrin, which didn’t make a dent in my depressive episodes, so after a short stint of that, I tapered off and went on Zoloft, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). Zoloft. My dearest friend. You made it hard to sleep, and even harder to nut, but wow, we really made some terrible memories together, didn’t we?

I Ignored the SSRI-Induced Hypomania Symptoms

There were clear warning signs early on that things weren’t right, like the buzzing in my brain and the inability to sleep for multiple nights in a row despite being totally physically exhausted. I soon forgot about that, though. I was too busy enjoying my newfound fearlessness speaking in front of large groups of people. I was suddenly charismatic and able to strike up a conversation with anyone about anything, and I loved it. I had a lot of ideas that felt genius at the time, but that now flood my body with cortisol and shame when I’m reminded of them. For a while, I became fixated on being an amateur documentarian, infuriating my family by trying to film every aspect of our lives for a project I can’t really remember the point of. Once, at an open mic, I stripped down to my underwear for the punchline to a joke about terrible tattoos (of which I have many.) That artistic decision I actually stand by. I just hope to God no recordings of it exist. In those months I was also promiscuous in a way I’d never been before. Which I’m not against—I swear I’m not some sex-negative nerd. But my behavior sometimes led me back to sex parties and the company of active meth users, and brought me dangerously close to relapsing. Around this time I was promoted to the head of the tiny organization I worked for. I had a very forward-facing role, and I got an impressive-sounding title that inflated my already dangerously boosted ego. I thought I desperately needed all the energy I could get from the Zoloft. It wouldn’t dawn on me until much later that I never put any of it to good use.

The Antidepressant-Induced Mania Was Enthralling

What I remember most about my year on Zoloft is how intoxicated I was by what I imagined to be my limitless potential. It felt like electricity coursing through me that I could use to accomplish anything, if only I could get all that energy focused in one direction for long enough. But I never could. I had a dozen projects started at all times, rarely finishing anything. My fast-talking, and the crazed pep in my step, made it clear to my doctor that I was hypomanic, and she suggested I taper off the Zoloft. The thought of giving up this new life, and going back to the depression I had lived with for years, terrified me—not to mention the fact I was a very important person by then, and I couldn’t afford to lose this new charisma and electricity. I had things to do, new visions to pursue, a world to change!I convinced myself that what I was experiencing wasn’t hypomania, but just who I was when I was freed from the burden of depression. I was how I was always meant to be: unstoppable. At my doctor’s insistence, I went to a psychiatrist with whom I spoke for maybe ten minutes. I dressed in what I thought was chic, understated business casual attire. During our session, I deliberately slowed my words and dimmed my new charm just a little, and told him how seriously I had weighed my doctor’s words, but that I wanted to continue with the medication that had lifted me out of depression. He said great, you seem fine, let us know if anything changes. I had just shy of a year of sobriety at that time, and it didn’t enter my mind that I wasn’t being all that sober. I wanted to believe that by doing and saying only what I thought would convince that psychiatrist to let me stay on the meds, I was actually practicing self-advocacy as an informed patient. It felt important to have control over my own brain chemistry, despite the many years of boozing and drugging that proved I am the exact worst person to be in charge of that.

Turns Out, Zoloft and Bipolar Don’t Always Go Together

I continued to be unpredictable and unreliable at work, always brimming with grandiose, vague plans, but never following through on my promises. The thing that ended up getting me fired, however, was fostering a hostile work environment. I always thought I was cheekily toeing the line of what was appropriate, when in reality it was more like kicking down the door to tell explicit jokes that nobody wanted to hear. I had no filters. I learned too late that I was making everyone around me uncomfortable and cultivating an environment that wasn’t safe to work in. This is what I feel guiltiest about from this time, the thing I still lose sleep over.Losing that job is what finally snapped me out of it. I found a psychiatrist who I could see regularly, and he patiently explained bipolar II disorder to me. He gently suggested that this SSRI might be making me worse, despite how spectacularly un-depressed I felt. Besides, I really wanted to have orgasms again. Just as there needs to be a word for the post-hypomania shame spiral, there also needs to be a word for that first toe-curling, earth-shattering orgasm once all the SSRIs have left your system. As well as the brain-melting, I’ll-have-what-she’s-having grade orgasms, I also regained clarity. I could reexamine my behavior of the previous nine months in the cold light of day. My filterless-ness, my impulsivity, my near-total lack of executive functioning—at one point the power in my apartment got cut off because I wasn’t keeping track of anything in my life. (A little on the nose as far as signs from the universe go.) In hindsight, it was easy to see just how much of a mess my life was, and how mismatched I was with Zoloft.

I loved—and I mean really loved—being high.

The Complexities of Determining the Right Pill

I’m not alone in having this experience. Many people with bipolar II are first treated for depression, and many of them experience hypomania as a result, but they can feel reluctant to stop the mania-inducing medication. I forget where I first read that, but it was after I’d finished tapering off the Zoloft and I remember sobbing afterward. There is no greater relief than learning just how basic I am. Yes, I gamed the system. Yes, I manipulated a psychiatrist to convince him to keep giving me my drugs so I could continue my reign of terror as a charming, fearless, sleep-deprived and unpredictable egomaniac. But I’m not the first person to have pulled that kind of grift, and it doesn’t disqualify me from seeking treatment now. I was just doing the best I could with an imbalanced brain. I wish I could offer a comforting platitude—a promise that It Gets Better—but I can’t honestly say that it does. I’ve only recently gotten insurance again and regained access to mental health services. I have enough experience raw-dogging reality to know that I can’t talk or think or pray my way out of depression, so I’m once again faced with the decision: To medicate or not to medicate?How is it that this choice ultimately falls to me, someone with a long history of such famously bad decisions? I still feel like I don’t deserve help after making such a mess of my life. I’m worried that I can’t trust myself to honestly say, “Yes, this pill is the pill for me,” considering my history with addiction and how much I loved—and I mean really loved—being high. But I’m done with thinking that I’m too tragically unique to get better. I’ve met too many people with bipolar II who had similar experiences but eventually found a medication that worked for them. I’m scared about asking for help, but hopeful enough to try again.

My mother struggled with mental health issues all throughout my childhood. I grew up resenting her instead of understanding her.When I was 16, she was diagnosed with cancer, and the first thing I thought was that she was going to use this as an excuse. She was always making excuses—excuses for not picking me up after school, excuses for not wanting to work, excuses for her relationship with my father. The list goes on.Ten years after this diagnosis, I didn’t really understand the stem of all of these excuses until her oncologist told me: “The cancer can be treated, but it’s your mother’s depression that is killing her.” She told me my mother had stopped her treatments because she was depressed and wanted to die.When I asked my father about my mother’s mental health throughout their relationship, he said it started postpartum. The first time he realized she was having issues was while they were watching the news. A story broke about a woman who had pushed her car with her children strapped inside into a lake. My mother said that she could understand the woman’s pain of feeling trapped and in despair as a new mother. This was a huge mental health red flag. Thankfully, my mother never did anything like this to hurt us kids, but she internally struggled for years and years until it eventually took her life.

It wasn’t until I experienced my own traumas that I began to understand my mom’s pain.

Imbalanced Hormones Led to Cancer

My mother’s cancer was hormonal and not genetic. It was believed that her breast cancer stemmed from taking an early market form of a birth control pill. The irony was that she was taking birth control—not to control whether or not she could get pregnant, but to control her hormones and mood swings. It, unfortunately, caused her hormones to become more imbalanced, leading to the development of cancer. She needed a mastectomy, radiation, chemotherapy, the whole nine yards of standardized cancer treatment until she had no evident signs of disease.Ten years later, her cancer returned. The good news was since years had passed, there were new hormonal treatments in the form of a monthly shot that she could take for the rest of her life to sustain her. It was treatable.Three years went by using these treatments, and my mother’s mental health seemed to be getting worse. Her purses were often filled with at least five or six pill bottles of anything she could get her hands on. My father once told me that he was prescribed Valium when he pulled his back out, and she would take most of it and leave just enough for him. This became a lifelong pattern for her, and most of the medications her doctors would prescribe for her mental health seemed to often come with side effects or prolong her addiction issues.

My Mother Stopped Getting Chemotherapy

It wasn’t until I experienced my own traumas that I began to understand my mom’s pain. “Don’t ever take depression medication,” she would tell me when I would open up about my own dark emotions. Even she knew that there had to be another way to heal mental and emotional agony.I received a call that informed me of my mother ending up back in the hospital around this time. Her cancer had spread after she stopped getting her monthly shots.“I thought maybe you would come see me again or maybe I would die,” she said, in tears, after I asked her why she had stopped the treatments. “But I didn’t actually think I would die. I just wanted to see my children.” When going through a plan to save her, my mother had just decided that she didn’t want to put her body through chemotherapy again and she was instead ready to go.The cancer can be treated, but it’s your mother’s depression that is killing her.I couldn’t get these words out of my head, and so my mind began to wander.Maybe if we all took her mental health seriously we could have saved her. Maybe I should have been around more.How could I mother my own mother?

The most daunting aspect of depression is that one can live a life that looks picturesque on paper while internally breaking down. It’s easy to fake a smile.

Depression Is Not a Simple Disorder

I know she must have had some joyous and fond memories, after all. When she passed away, I went through all of her photo albums—real photo albums, not digital ones. She kept them extremely organized and crafted them in order of dates, occasions and each of us kids. The most daunting aspect of depression is that one can live a life that looks picturesque on paper while internally breaking down. It’s easy to fake a smile. If someone has a broken arm, you can see that they must be hurting. If they have a broken heart, it’s harder to spot. We may do abnormal things that are part of our grieving process, but it is still considered less acceptable to cancel plans for an emotional toll than a physical one. The hard truth is that weak mental health can eventually manifest itself physically, but it can be difficult to pinpoint this as the cause.One of the most important things that I have learned from this experience is that when we don’t like the answers we are given, it doesn’t automatically correlate as an “excuse.” It’s deeper than that and beyond the surface level. Even when we think we have found mature and reasonable ways to work on the sufferings of humanity, depression will always linger. Depression is not simple. It is not just a feeling of writing off the day due to fatigue—in fact, it is far from that shallow of a laceration. It’s writing off an entire life, giving up on existence and reaching beyond the point of no return. Depression is undeniably real, and it can and will haunt you even after you think you have dodged it.

Grief is a strange, albeit commonplace, sensation that continues to overestimate my coping mechanisms. It overwhelms me and certainly leaves its mark. There are supposedly five stages of grief, but I challenge that. Grief is individual and unique in each instance. We must consider all of its forms. I am currently in the process of documenting my own experience of grief, which concerns the following stages: denial, pain and guilt, written expression, sexual curiosity. While the denial stage first occurred in isolation, the other stages I experience simultaneously. I lost my father to COVID-19. Born on a Friday in then-colonized Ghana, my dad was one of ten children who grew up in Offinso. Determined to build a new life, he left work in the Ashanti region to study on British shores. On January 29, he sadly passed away. Since then, I have learned that the sadness that accompanies loss cuts like a knife that leaves a gaping wound, easily reopened by the slightest thought. I’m rewriting the stages of grief to dress my wounds and carve out my own path to healing. The aim here is to acknowledge my suffering, make sense of it and lessen it. If you, reader, have experienced loss, I offer you my condolences. If you, reader, have not lost something or someone, then I merely offer you an insight into what the aftermath could be like. In the end, we all come out with thicker skin and a few lessons learned.

I’m rewriting the stages of grief to dress my wounds and carve out my own path to healing.

Denial

One of my first Google searches after the passing of my father read something like, “My dad died but it doesn’t feel real.” I felt as if he was going to walk through the front door of our house. I held onto that hope even though, deep down, I knew it wouldn’t occur in an earthly plane. This feeling makes up the first stage: denial. Simply put, it’s when you cannot grasp that your loss is, in fact, a loss. His death was hard for me to process. Once he was admitted into a hospital, I had gone from seeing him daily to not at all. I briefly adjusted to him not being around for some time but I expected him to return home. I felt robbed when that time never came. Symptoms:

Pain and Guilt

Coming to terms with not having said goodbye has been difficult. On the morning my dad left for the hospital, I was sleeping. You’d rarely see me awake before 9 a.m., especially as we drifted in and out of lockdown. He was meant to have a routine check-up but ended up needing urgent care with a heart-related issue. I often think back to our last telephone conversation on the evening of the day he was admitted, in which he told me not to worry and that everything will be “alright.” Laughable, isn't it? Is death a decent resolution to everything? Restrictions meant that we could not visit him, and when given the chance to see him in the flesh after his health rapidly deteriorated overnight, I was discouraged from doing so by the nurse and family members. My dad had been sedated during the week leading up to his passing, so he wouldn't have been able to speak to me. But at least he would have heard all that I had to say. He was pronounced dead not even 20 minutes after I gave up my final opportunity. I began to think about my relationship with my father. I felt as if I had not given him much during my 23 years of spending his money and living rent- and expense-free. He was the family member I felt closest to, the only one I called (weekly) when I moved away from home for university and lived abroad in Spain. We weren’t that close though. Through his death, I learned character-defining information about the man I thought I knew, which mirrored the way that he barely knew the real me. I didn’t say goodbye and, even though the funeral has passed, I don’t feel like I ever will. Symptoms:

I didn’t say goodbye and, even though the funeral has passed, I don’t feel like I ever will.

Written Expression

I write to address this lack of closure that COVID-19 and slight emotional unavailability robbed me of. I like to think of it as pain and guilt relief, along with the following stage. As a lover of words and creative expression, this stage had to happen. I find it easier to write than speak, so picking up my pen came easily. The benefits of creative expression are undeniable. Writing helps to bring feelings to the surface. Creativity helps alleviate pain by reliving and releasing it. I cried while I wrote sections of this but it’s all part of the process of healing—allowing yourself to feel at all times. I didn’t have a grief journal as such, but I have a notes folder titled “Dear Dad” with messages I address to him. I write to him about anything and everything, from the music I hear him in, to the times I’ve dreamed of him. My last entry was about a song he liked called “Working My Way Back To You,” covered by the Spinners. We sat on the steps in the hallway listening to it late one night while Spotify played my "liked" songs on shuffle. It brought up a host of feelings. Symptoms:

Sexual Curiosity

The sexual curiosity stage is self-explanatory but extensive. Let me be clear: My motivation behind this stage wasn’t to go wild by having various sexual partners. Much of my sex life had tended to my bondage-loving submissive streak. I’m not saying that my dad’s death sparked my sexual revolution, but it certainly intensified my desire to stray from the conventional. I simply want(ed) to satisfy lingering desires. Life is fickle, subject to constant change, and these latter two stages are my attempt to gain control and grow out of these changes. I ditched Hinge and signed up for a new app that catered to couples and singles. I created a profile under an alias (as instructed), uploaded three pictures and threw together a scanty bio detailing my height, my love for weed and music, and a few kinks.One of the first-ever encounters that I arranged using the app went like this: I got on the Northern line for half an hour, walked for seven minutes and ended up in the flat owned by a 31-year-old lawyer. Let’s call him Badger. Badger and I had been texting for no longer than a week or two. He wasn’t physically my type, but that's why I chose him. We sat and talked over a bottle of champagne. He only ever bought “the good kind” from small vineyards. In time, over about an hour, the conversation revealed an insecure man who overworked himself because he didn’t feel good enough. He was the kind of man who parades his self-hate with self-deprecating humor. Disclaimer: I’m not the type to reassure people, so his comments were often met with awkward silence.Badger had a picture of his father, who died when Badger was a teen, on the wall in his living room. He said that he had no family anymore—I sensed he was a lonely man. We spoke about loss and death; I questioned how he coped with it and he asked if I was actually OK. It was an unusual exchange for two strangers meeting in person for the first time. Not long after, I ended up being slapped, rimmed and rammed on an expensive couch. Oh, and in the recently renovated bathroom, too. He’ll never hear from me again. Anyway (yawns), now tired of single men because I find them sadly desperate, I’ve exclusively set my sight on sex-positive couples. Yes, I’m putting my submissive tendencies on the back burner to explore being a “unicorn,” someone who dates couples. I describe my sexuality as heteroflexible, mostly straight, but I may dabble in same-sex encounters. Sex with multiple people isn’t a fantasy of mine, but I’m intrigued by the couple dynamic. I think it‘s endearing to share a sexual experience with two people who are bound by love rather than lust, but I’ll soon test how true that statement is.Symptoms:Denial, pain and guilt, written expression and sexual curiosity are the stages I've been darting between. Although, it’s still early. Some stages may combine, multiply or cease to exist. I feel that I will be grieving forever, which is not to say I will never be happy. I will just always recognize the loss. I won’t be caught in a loop of these stages. Why? Growth. I question where my loss sits concerning the bigger picture of my life. I find that I've experienced greater luck since my father’s passing, even though times have been difficult, and I feel as though it is because I now have someone behind the scenes who is fighting in my corner. Lucky me.

Since my childhood, I’ve always been a somewhat silent individual, speaking only when it was most necessary to speak. Asking others for the things they owed me or raising my hand in class used to be nerve-wracking tasks. But as I grew up, I always liked hearing people talk about their feelings and their hard-to-explain thoughts. Maybe it’s because I used to be confused and uneasy with my feelings. Listening to others discuss theirs was a source of personal satisfaction.And during the COVID-19 pandemic, when everything went virtual, I was working from home, listening and talking to many people across the world for the length of each day. It’s not like I didn’t have my family and friends to talk to—but somehow, remaining continuously engaged with strangers was more relieving at that point in time.

Tech Advances Have Allowed People to Connect Online Anonymously

These days, there are lots of platforms to talk to strangers online. In August of 2020, four months into the pandemic, I first came across the platform 7 Cups, a website that provides online therapy and free support to people experiencing emotional distress by connecting them with trained listeners. The listener interacts with the person seeking help via an anonymous and confidential chat.At the time, I wanted to talk to people, hear from them—anything and everything. I just needed to remain engaged in some conversation. So I did. I talked to people all through the day—from 8 a.m. to 5 a.m.—with little breaks in between. I would often speak with many people at the same time on numerous platforms, such as Qeep, HearMe, Wakie, Whisper, Chatous and Omegle.On most platforms, users were trying to find people to talk about sexual stuff. But on platforms like 7 Cups and Wakie, most people wanted to just share their feelings, their struggles with family, their difficult relationships with boyfriends and girlfriends, their job loss during the pandemic. Some college students just missed going to school with their friends.

I talked to people all through the day, with little breaks in between.

Each Platform Offered Different Kinds of Conversations

On various platforms, I connected with people from different age groups at different stages in their life. They all had different things to share and talk about. A 22-year-old girl, who had gotten married just three months before the lockdown shared the difficulty she was facing with her husband’s family. A pregnant Italian high schooler had run away with her boyfriend and cried while sharing how much she missed her family. A young lady from the U.K. lost her husband during COVID-19 and discussed how, for the last five months, she had been spending sleepless nights alone. One older lady from Australia shared how her life was just perfect and peaceful and how good she feels talking to new people. An unmarried uncle from India was running his business and became tormented because of the absence from his life. Another Indian, an engineering student, shared his hope to drop out of college to pursue photography full-time. An American psychology student just wanted to genuinely listen to people and their thoughts. I liked getting to hear from all of them, mostly because I was engaged in continuous conversations, receiving a barrage of notifications and reading lots of messages. It was hectic but fun. Some shared how much better they felt after talking to me and letting their feelings out, and they relayed the struggles of finding an empathetic, non-judgmental listener around them.

My Mental Health Improved Through All These Conversations

At the time, I was working as a UX/UI designer. I didn't have any major projects on my hand and my workload was light, but I still woke up early to respond to people's messages—during breakfast, lunch, meetings, dinner and late nights. My brain was buzzing with a headache but I remained glued to my phone. Slowly and gradually, continuing conversations started becoming overwhelming, and I learned to know the reasons for my obsessive behavior.Continuous conversations with different people throughout the day were actually my attempt to run away from myself—from my thoughts, deepest fears, desires and insecurities. I wanted to erase my broken past friendships and relationships, my worries about my career and about my looks. Instead of examining them, I got addicted to getting a constant influx of notifications; they became the source of my ecstasy due to their dopamine hits. Because of my constant messaging, I was barely sleeping at night, which had started causing hallucinations. I started seeing people sitting in front of me, talking to me. Images of words revolved around me. I discovered that I was sabotaging my relationship with my friends and family. I was using conversations to channel the affectionate feelings inside me that weren’t allowed to be shared in the open thanks to the pandemic.

Because of my constant messaging, I was barely sleeping at night, which had started causing hallucinations.

I Eventually Broke Free From the Barrage of Messages

After continuing this crazy practice for some months, keeping certain feelings inside me, there came a phase of debilitating exhaustion. I finally decided to break free from this practice. I got rid of all conversational applications from my phone and deleted all of my accounts.I pursued a digital detox for ten days, in which I didn't use my phone or internet, and I also took leave from my office on the grounds of my mental health. It was very difficult. I focused on my diet, meditation, physical exercise and reading, and it worked. I felt better. Throughout this whole episode of conversations, notifications, strangers, hallucinations and sleepless nights, I experienced the perils of the internet and crucial insights about myself. They’ll stay with me.

I grew up believing that mental illness was something that happened to other people.When I was a child, my mum would sometimes refer to my dad as “mental.” She’d choke the words through tears when my dad was in “one of his moods,” and she had to tell my siblings and me to stay out of his way.There was no telling what would trigger Dad’s “moods.” After an argument with my mum, he’d often remain silent for days. The tension in the house would manifest as a twisting in my stomach, a feeling of impending doom. By the time I was ten, his silences would begin for no reason and last for weeks. The effect was like a dark storm cloud settling over the whole house.

The more painful memories continue to taint my feelings of self-worth.

I Inherited My Dad's Mental Illness

Unsurprisingly, I grew up shy and introverted, believing that emotions and feelings were not acceptable. I turned to food for comfort, feeding my sadness, and became ensnared in a cycle of shame and self-loathing.In my mid-20s, after two years of falling ill with every cold and infection I could possibly catch, my body finally succumbed and I ended up in the emergency room with chest pains and palpitations. I described my symptoms to my doctor as a numbness, as though there was an invisible screen between me and the world. I pushed away the nagging thought that my mental health might be the root cause of my deteriorating physical health.At the same time, I was having panic attacks that would wake me in the night, my stomach held a perpetual knot and invisible hands constricting my throat. And those were just the physical symptoms. A relentless script of negative, catastrophizing thoughts plagued every minute of every day. The doctor diagnosed me with anxiety and depression.My biggest fear was turning into my dad, so I railed against any hint that I was like him, even at the expense of my own health. I worked hard to be the opposite of him. I funded myself through two degrees, started a career and was the responsible one in my circle of friends. An overnight stay in the hospital as they monitored my heart finally made me accept that I had to change.Despite my dad’s behavior, I’d search for his redeeming qualities. I found just two. When he wasn’t angry or nasty, he could be funny. We’d cry with laughter at the '80s sitcom Only Fools and Horses. He bought my favorite perfume for my eighteenth birthday, which was unusual. All previous birthday and Christmas gifts had been the result of a few extra banknotes with the usual housekeeping money, passed reluctantly to my mum, which she turned into presents.When I grasp for these memories, they crumble beneath the sense of loss I have from Dad’s emotional unavailability. The happier memories are barely tiny stars in the night sky of my life. They’re not enough to sustain a real father-daughter relationship.

My Dad Was Hurting, So He Hurt Us Too

The more painful memories continue to taint my feelings of self-worth. At 14 I’d been ecstatic about an upcoming Backstreet Boys concert, and how I’d finally see Nick, my favorite, in real life. My dad sneered and told me, “He wouldn’t look at you twice.” Dads are supposed to love you unconditionally, and when mine rejected me, I believed there had to be something wrong with me. I piled on extra weight as food became my only source of comfort.Despite the insults, I was desperate to find reasons to excuse Dad’s behavior, something that would disprove my suspicion that he didn’t love me. My mum told me that Dad’s dad had died of cancer when he was 13 and that he’d had a mental breakdown shortly thereafter. Dad’s family had called the doctor after he’d refused to leave his bed and had stopped the daily routine of washing and taking care of himself. Dad has always been scant with the details of that time, although he told my mum that he’d been close to his dad, and he’d vowed never to bond with his children.Dad’s mental breakdown had happened in 1950s Britain, when mental illness was something that was hidden away. In the early years, Mum had begged Dad to get help for his moods, but Dad denied there was anything wrong, and his illness remained untreated. It still does to this day.I grew up with the belief that Dad’s silence came from an absence of feeling. When anxiety took away my voice, I thought my silence meant I was like him. As I struggled with my diagnosis, I learned that silence isn’t the absence of feeling—it’s the very opposite.Dad’s flawed teenage logic was a way of protecting himself from pain, but it meant that no one was happy. In avoiding pain he’d become immune to love and joy. In denying me a father, he hadn’t saved me from hurt but created a gaping wound. As an adult, I realize that the payoff of love is grief and that when we love someone deeply, we understand that their loss will bring us pain.

I’d given my childhood trauma the perfect conditions it needed to morph into chronic anxiety.

I Decided to Break the Cycle

My dad was diagnosed with cancer, for the second time, in early 2020. Around the same time, a work colleague who I’d come to think of as my “work dad” died unexpectedly. It’s unsurprising that my anxiety flared up in response.Rather than worrying about my dad’s health, I imagined the freedom I might feel if he were to leave this earth for good. I felt intensely guilty and struggled with broken sleep as I fought with myself. Was I a bad person for feeling this way? But at the same time, how could I be sad about someone who was a father only in name?My spiral into anxiety and depression in my 20s had been a manifestation of suppressed and repressed feelings. My mum had always told me, “We don’t need him, we’ve got each other.” By denying my feelings then, I’d given my childhood trauma the perfect conditions it needed to morph into chronic anxiety.This time, instead of denying my grief and anxiety, I found the courage to face my feelings and started therapy. Talking helped me see that my mum had normalized Dad’s behavior and denied my feelings to avoid her own emotions. I now accept that it’s okay to say that I missed having a dad.I’ve only recently begun to accept that my mental health challenges are the result of emotional abuse and unresolved childhood trauma. I’m 36 years old now, and it takes daily acts of courage to heal. Every time I eat a healthy meal instead of overeating I’m choosing self-care over self-loathing. When anxiety strikes at work, I push through the fear, knowing that the judgmental voice is my dad’s. I’m constantly correcting old narratives and judgments that belong to my dad.I still struggle to make connections with others and to maintain close friendships, because I still believe I’m not worth getting to know. I’m taking tentative steps to allow others to see my vulnerability in an effort to build trust.My healing journey has taught me compassion for others going through similar struggles, yet I can’t forgive my dad. He made sure that when he suffered, his family also suffered. I can’t reconcile his undiagnosed mental illness with the emotional abuse he directed at his family.Although it’s painful to rake over old memories in therapy, I’m allowing myself to grieve for the dad I didn’t have, and I’m stronger for it. I’ve begun to shed the extra weight I’ve carried all my life and replace my negative coping mechanisms with exercise and an appreciation for all that my body has endured over the years.I understand now that I’ll never have a relationship with my dad. He’ll never take responsibility for his behavior, and after 60 years of denial, he’s not going to change. I no longer compare my mental illness with my dad’s. I’ve had the courage to face my pain and accept responsibility for my behavior and healing, while he’s built his protective walls so high that he can’t surmount them.I live with the understanding that my dad’s untreated mental illness means he will never be the dad I wanted or deserved. It’s a constant effort to show myself that I am lovable in spite of this.

“Stay in school!” It’s the least controversial and most cliché advice you can give. And nobody plans on not taking it. What little kid thinks to themselves, “You know what? Thanks a lot for the advice, Nicki Minaj, but school’s just not for me.” But, for various reasons, in various circumstances, it doesn’t work for some of us. I’m one of them. I dropped out of high school, and it saved my life. I am categorically mentally ill. I’ve struggled with depressive episodes, anxiety and a plethora of sleep disorder diagnoses my whole life. I was only lucky enough to get my ADHD and bipolar diagnoses relatively recently, but in retrospect, it is clear these two disorders have impacted my life since adolescence. I take all of this with a grain of salt, though, because to me it is the symptoms and the impact on my life that matters more to me than the specific label that contemporary mental health medicine seems to agree correlates with those symptoms and impacts. So rather than identifying specifically as a person with ADHD, I identify as a person who frequently struggles with focusing and motivation. (For instance, writing this very essay is possible only through the power of bribing myself with everything in my Etsy shopping cart.) But I also see myself as a person gifted with creativity, charisma and even, at times, hyperfocus (although it’s generally out of my control when that superpower chooses to grace me). Similarly, rather than identifying as a person with bipolar II, I identify as a person who needs to vigilantly keep an eye on my moods and energy levels, and be aware of how they inform my decisions and my interpersonal relationships, as well as my impulse control and tendency towards self-sabotage. And above all else, I identify as a person who can’t sleep like a “regular” person for the fucking life of me. (That symptom happens to be comorbidly congruent with both diagnoses—lucky me!)

Had I stayed in school, I might not be alive to write this for you.

High School Made My Mental Health Worse

Traditional schooling is hell on earth for someone who struggles to maintain a sleep schedule, can’t focus on things that don’t interest them even if you paid them, and whose reaction to trauma is informed by drastic mood swings (among them being to shut down entirely). High school for me mainly consisted of staying awake 48 hours at a time, in manic episodes during which I did everything I needed to maintain my honors GPA, interspersed with weeks at a time of depressive lows that caused me to miss well above the allowable number of school days. Since high school is famously not a paying job, the “stay in school” mantra—and all that was promised if I did—was all I had to keep going. And it was wearing thin.I could tell the administration had no idea what to do with me. I was not your typical “problem child” or “troublemaker.” The only detentions I ever received were for being late, never for anything behavioral. And my teachers loved me, at least on paper. I had good grades, I was bright and I had a lot of potential. In fact, my English teacher in tenth grade took it upon himself to write an entirely different curriculum just for me, because he thought tenth grade honors English wasn’t challenging me enough—and even with a more demanding syllabus than any of my peers I finished it with the highest grade in the entire sophomore class. All that being said, I was missing a ton of school, to the point where it became a joke among my teachers to not expect me on Mondays at all. It was obvious to anyone watching that I was falling off the deep end emotionally. By January of my sophomore year, I had missed more school than was allowed for the entire school year, and they threatened to fail me, despite my 4.0 average. I fought the administration on my missed school days and won, but somehow the process of having to advocate for myself so I wouldn’t get failed, despite my grades and the clearly positive opinions of my teachers, made something click for me. School isn’t about education; it’s about fitting into a mold and obeying the rules. An education is something I felt was noble enough to tough out this—for me—unnatural existence. But contorting into something I’m not to please a group of people I had no respect for? Compromising my physical and mental health to show up every day to an environment that was not designed to benefit me in any tangible way? Even with the voice of everyone I’ve ever looked up to saying “stay in school” ringing in my ears, I realized that it was only a matter of time before I stopped going.Before we go any further, let me clarify some things: I am a white person from a middle-class, college-educated family. I did not get pregnant in high school. I did not have a substance abuse problem. I come from a very progressive, forward-thinking family. For all of these reasons, my circumstances surrounding my decision to drop out are very privileged and different from a lot of people’s. I’m not saying it was all easy, or that the world has been handed to me since then, but it is worth noting that my life allowed for dropping out to be a positive decision for me. That is not the case for everyone, and I know that. But I also know that, had I stayed in school, I might not be alive to write this essay for you. I was burning the candle at both ends like it was my birth sign or something: I’m a candle sun, burning at both ends rising, and suicidal moon. (Oops, is that too dark?)

Leaving school gave me the ability to build a life.

I Dropped Out of School and Started Living

The three years after I dropped out did not go as all the after-school specials had warned. At first, I was consumed by shame and a debilitating depression. I felt like I’d made a mistake that would ruin the rest of my life. I had done the thing that you aren’t supposed to do. But slowly, alternatives started opening up to me. In fact, leaving school propelled me into a quality of life that would never have been possible for me had I “toughed it out.” I started taking classes online and at the local community college. Using scholarships and grants, I pieced together a transcript that would have never been possible at my high school. I also started working multiple jobs that I genuinely enjoyed, and making friends with interesting people. I took the money I was making at my jobs and—again, thanks to my trusting parents—started taking the train to New York City every couple of months to get cultural experiences that wouldn’t be available to me if I was still sticking to a high school schedule. Before I knew it, I had enough credits from my various classes to qualify for a diploma through a home-schooling program, plus an associate’s degree from the community college. By 18, I had “graduated” from high school and community college, and I’d been working full-time for three years. I had real-world experiences, and knew myself better than any of my peers seemed to. Most importantly, I no longer subscribed to the idea that I was broken.Leaving school gave me the ability to build a life around my own strengths and learn to handle my weaknesses on healthier terms. I was no longer forcing myself into a mold, or measuring my worth by conditions that didn’t resonate with me, or even make sense. By 18, I had learned the power of intrinsic over extrinsic motivation. I was building a life I wanted, and still pursuing an education because that’s what felt right to me, not because society would deem me worthless without it. I'm often torn between joking about being a “high school dropout,” and feeding into the pre-existing notions about that identity we all already have, and defending—or even advocating for—that decision. It’s true that my circumstances were less than ideal and there are things that could have gone better, but that’s often the case for big life decisions. I think that still would have been the case had I stayed in school, like all my favorite celebrities had told me to. If I ever find myself in the position to give similarly broad advice to a bunch of kids I’ve never met, I don’t think “stay in school” would be what I would say. I also don’t think it would be “drop out of school,” to be fair. My advice would be to listen to your gut and use the resources available to you to do what is right for you, period. You’re the one who has to live your life. It’s a shame we have a system that fails so many of us that gritting our teeth and surviving it is something one must even give advice on.My advice wouldn’t be for the kids, it would be for the school system itself: When a kid drops out, that kid didn’t fail. You did.

I used to joke about my mother’s obsession with health. We were the house that handed out raisins on Halloween; for special occasions, she would bake brownies supplemented with a can of black beans for nutritional content. In an instant, I can still conjure the memory of my friend’s pinched impression of her faint Long Island accent: “Don’t use nail polish in the house, or you’re gonna get cancer!”Cancer might be what kills me. But as I’ve discovered, it could also be a number of other things. If I make it past my 60s, I’ll undoubtedly succumb to Alzheimer’s like both of my mother’s parents, no matter how much I try to avoid cooking with aluminum foil. Or perhaps I’ll yield to a fatal cocktail of various ailments. My grandfather survived a quadruple bypass but diabetes landed him in the hospital, where his bedsores led to sepsis. And then of course there’s our family’s newest killer: COVID-19.Before the pandemic, I had been putting off plans to visit my only living grandmother. I’d spent the better part of my adolescence trekking back and forth between Philadelphia and New York to observe my maternal grandparents deteriorating at a glacial pace. The stale, putrefying scent of sterilized decay has been permanently imprinted in my nasal cavity. I was desperate for an excuse to skip the trip and, finally, I had one—a mysterious and vaguely dangerous disease, not quite the flu, but close in nature. My parents and I agreed that once the two-week quarantine period had passed, I would book an Amtrak to Penn Station.Except it never did.By now, you’ve heard about the way people die from COVID-19. It is a hideous, lonely, undignified death. I don’t need to tell you about the Zoom call where an overworked, visibly defeated nurse, a featureless mass of plastic in her PPE, held an iPad up to my grandma’s half-conscious body as we said goodbye. I don’t need to tell you about her rattling breath, how each inhale sounded like a knife tearing through paper. I don’t need to tell you about the grief of losing someone you love. And I certainly can’t tell you about the funeral, because I wasn’t there.She lived a long and robust life, raising three sons as a working woman while my grandfather drove trucks around the country. She was a powerful, cold and complicated woman. I loved her. I respected her. Yet, sprawled across a stark, white hospital bed, my grandmother had been reduced to a casualty of what would soon become one of the deadliest plagues in history.I’ve witnessed death from afar. Heard the nightmarish recounting of a person’s final moments; seen the muted veil of sorrow that looms like a cloud in the wake of their passing. As I observed my grandmother in her final moments, the vastness of my suffering was eclipsed by a visceral fear.I had imagined dying in a hospital countless times—it comes with the territory of hypochondria. But for the past year, it’s been all I can think about: If I, too, will slowly wither away in the company of strangers, an oxygen mask bruising welts into my skin.

And then of course there’s our family’s newest killer: COVID-19.

Telling My Therapist Was a Necessary Step

Death anxiety, or thanatophobia, is the oldest form of fear, with existential death anxiety among its most powerful ranks. Denial of death is necessary in order to function. Philosopher Baruch Spinoza writes, “A free man thinks of nothing less than death; and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.” On the other hand, Martin Heidegger argues that we encounter the notion of death when considering the future. One must accept angst in order to welcome death as a mode of being. This perspective frames death as something meaningful, if not empirical—the process of Sein-zum-Tode, or “being-toward-death,” recognizes that death is finite, thus we can only live authentically by confronting our mortality and ascertaining the purpose in its finiteness.I would love to embrace my inevitable demise as much as I would love to disregard it entirely. But I can’t escape my body, and the lingering fear of when—not if—it will fail me. Of course, this type of thinking isn’t new to the pandemic era, but it certainly has been amplified. The threat of death looms in the mundane: a trip to the supermarket, a brief conversation with a stranger, a package in the mail. What were once distractions from death have become harbingers of my impermanence.It took me five months of sessions to mention my hypochondriasis to my last therapist. I did so in passing, attempting to diminish its noteworthiness by tacking it onto the end of my laundry list of woes and agonies.Weeks earlier, I’d noticed strange, dark tendrils suspended in my vision, curls of smoke that seemed to vanish as soon as I returned indoors. By that point, I’d brokered a deal with myself—I would never look up my symptoms online, lest it would lead me down the rabbit hole into a state of maximum crisis. But I couldn’t eat, and I wasn’t sleeping. In fact, I had only finally contacted an ophthalmologist after falling asleep at work in front of my manager.Later, I would learn that my eyes were just sensitive to light and I had developed floaters, which are irritating and ultimately harmless. But that afternoon, sprawled across the beige couch in my therapist’s office, where so many asses had sat before me, I was sure, as I explained to her, that my symptoms meant I must be dying.At first, she didn’t appear to acknowledge what I had said. Then, the proverbial lightbulb flickered above her head.“Oh,” she said, her eyes bright and wide. “This makes so much sense.”

He was alive, and then suddenly he wasn’t.

Anything Can Be a Trigger

I was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder in college, but it didn’t consume me until my junior year. My mother called with some unfortunate news: An estranged family friend had died. Time had long since washed away any memories I may have shared with him, but I asked, as one does, what had happened.“Well, you know, he was a smoker,” she said, and I nodded along absently, scrubbing at the purple nail polish that clung to my skin around my fingernails. Lung cancer, I figured.“No, no,” she said. “He just woke up with chills one afternoon and his wife took him to the hospital. He died a month later from septic shock.”I blinked, feeling my stomach churn. “Wow.”By the time I hung up, my cuticles were plucked raw. Thirty days. He was alive, and then suddenly he wasn’t.My entire body began to tremble, as though God had cranked an invisible dial delivering an electric current straight through my veins. My teeth chattered so hard that I bit down my tongue. I winced as the brackish tang of blood saturated my mouth. I curled into the fetal position, drawing in breath after shallow breath, my lungs shrieking for air, nails carved into the palm of my fist, whimpering like a wounded animal.For the first time in my life, I understood that I was going to die. It could happen slowly or instantly. Excruciatingly or painlessly. One day, my body would turn against me, just as it had then—and there wasn’t a single thing that I could do to stop it.

Trying to Regain Control

Over the years, I’ve only experienced a handful of episodes of that magnitude. Each one has been catalyzed by something benign, both literally and figuratively. Someone from high school was diagnosed with brain cancer and, suddenly, my headaches seemed to last for hours. I watched Muriel’s Wedding after sustaining a back injury and convinced myself that I had not only developed spinal cancer but would soon be paralyzed from the waist down. I had a one-night stand with an acquaintance and worked myself into a frenzy for five days before receiving a full STI panel. I heard a clicking noise in my throat, which an ENT determined was not thyroid cancer, but globus pharyngis, or the sensation of a lump in the throat caused by acute anxiety.COVID quickly became the defining factor in every decision I’ve made since. I’m immunocompromised, leading me to be deemed “the cautious one” among my friends. I dined outside this past weekend for the first time since the start of the pandemic. I still limit my excursions and, until recently, have requested testing in the rare event that I’ll be in close quarters with someone who does not live in my household.My parents and I received our second vaccine shots at the end of March. In two weeks, I plan to hug them for the first time since January of 2020. I can confidently state that being fully vaccinated has alleviated a significant portion of my day-to-day anxiety. My vaccine card sits on my desk in plain sight, where it serves as sufficient evidence to talk myself down from the edge of most COVID-related panic. The yellowing bruise on my right arm has yet to fade completely. I can only see it when I squint.For my birthday this month, I’ll be celebrating with a small group of friends in the yard. I even scheduled a tattoo appointment as a gift to myself—a Russell Woodard sculptura chair that once sat on my grandmother’s front porch. Of course, my wariness hasn’t disappeared altogether; cases are escalating, and variants have rendered the vaccines less effective. For many of us, it is difficult to envision life post-COVID, especially given the rigid dichotomy between people whose lives have been irrevocably altered by the virus versus those who have continued to operate as though COVID never existed in the first place. Either way, my brain will certainly waste no time offering plenty of reasons as to why I should live in a state of perpetual trepidation.My hypochondria is inextricably linked with my obsessive-compulsive disorder, and the past year has made me more cognizant of it than ever before. Our “return to the new normal” will mark a bizarre transitory period in which I must navigate spaces that have become unfamiliar to me. I imagine this going one of two ways. Potentially, in an attempt to fill the void that COVID left behind, other dangers could feel amplified, causing me to retreat further into the endless mine of anxiety. However, if I were an optimist—a mindset to which I find myself clinging more frequently these days—I would say that the alternative outcome may find me working to earn back the precious time and experiences that were stolen from me. As the weather warms, it’s fair to say that the world is beginning to seem a little brighter.There are few things I know for certain. Here are the two that matter most: I am going to die someday. Right now, however, I’m very much still alive.

The first time I said the words, “My name is Lucia and I’m an addict,” I was sitting on a folding chair in a church basement surrounded by 20 other young-ish queer people who, for one reason or another, were all called to the same basement. For me, I had, by the time I had turned 24 years old, come out as gay, come out again as transsexual, dropped out of college in New York City to move back to my hometown, entered the throes of an undiagnosed bipolar coke spiral, went to Thailand to have bottom surgery, and ran for state representative and then dropped out when I re-entered another coke spiral that nearly ruined my life. Eventually, after being sexually assaulted, I crawled my way back to therapy with my hands in the air. I knew that something that needed to change. Otherwise, I was convinced I’d end up dead in a gutter somewhere. The only logical conclusion at the time was that I had a serious and out-of-control substance abuse problem. And when my therapist suggested I check out Alcoholics Anonymous, I was so exhausted by the chaotic trajectory of my life that I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Sure.” So when I found myself sitting in that church basement surrounded by a group of people who all identified as alcoholics and addicts, I decided to simply surrender to whatever higher power may exist and to the philosophy of the 12 Steps. This led to me sharing the traumatic events that had brought me to this basement meeting where I decided that I should get sober, or at least try to get sober. That’s the thing about Alcoholics Anonymous: The only requirement is the desire to be sober, at some point.

I was convinced I’d end up dead in a gutter somewhere.

Being Diagnosed as Bipolar With Substance Abuse Problems Was Too Much

I was no stranger to addiction. Two of my uncles have struggled with an on-again, off-again heroin addiction since their neighborhood was ravaged by the drug epidemics of the 1970s and '80s. My mother always made sure that I was extremely aware that addiction runs in our blood, and raised me to be conscious of the likelihood that I would have an addictive personality. Yet she never told me not to do drugs or to drink, and as a teenager, I had free rein over my social life and was empowered to make decisions that felt right to me. As a result, I was a pretty heavy pot smoker and occasional drinker in high school, but I didn’t touch a hard drug until I was 20. It would be another year after that before hard drugs became a regular part of my life. The first time that I was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder, I was so incensed by the idea that I had any kind of mental illness beyond depression that I yelled at my therapist and stormed out of our session, vowing never to go back to therapy again. This was at a point in my life where I was once again in the throes of a manic coke bender that had tipped over into a full-blown coke spiral. In all honesty, my visceral reaction to my therapist’s diagnosis was because I knew that it was true. Not only do I come from a family of people who struggle with substance abuse issues, but I also come from a family of those same people struggling with bipolar disorder. Acknowledging that I had a substance abuse problem and a mental illness was simply too much to bear. It was like I was being told that my destiny had been predetermined for me.

Sobriety Doesn’t Address the Cause of Substance Abuse

Despite how overwhelmed I felt, I found myself thriving in Alcoholics Anonymous. I love structure and talking about my emotions in a safe space, two things that are essential parts of the program. AA gave my life order and purpose, two things that hadn’t been in my life since I had dropped out of college (which incidentally was one of the things that led me to spiral and start abusing substances). Going to meetings twice a week was like being back in college. Suddenly, I was staying up the night before meetings thinking about what I’d share, which new friend I was most excited to see and what outfit I should wear when we went out to Shake Shack after. I finally found something that I was really good at, somewhere I fit in and resources to start making my life manageable. Even to this day, though I’m no longer sober, I still find myself using the skills I learned in AA to navigate my life.Over time, my feelings toward AA and sobriety became more complex, and I began to feel like I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. It wasn’t as though I was suffering from imposter syndrome; I was just beginning to see the little cracks that exist within the program. In AA you are encouraged—pushed, even—to open up about what you’re struggling with regarding your addiction, but you’re rarely ever encouraged to talk about what led you to abuse alcohol and drugs in the first place. It’s as though there are two, and only two, realities: the reality where you were an addict, and the reality where you are still an addict, but one who is now in recovery. How does this foster an environment where you as an addict can really begin to heal from the trauma that led you to where you currently are? In my opinion, it makes true healing impossible. Sobriety quickly turned into a competition with myself. How many days could I stay sober? Could I get to 30? What about 30 more? Could I continue being a party girl and staying out all night as a sober person? And so on and so forth, until it became a game I was trying to win, instead of a process I was engaged in to help me get healthy and develop a sustainable relationship with sobriety. About four months into my sober journey, during which I was going to AA meetings twice a week and NA meetings once a week, I was once again diagnosed as having bipolar II. This time I accepted the diagnosis and elected to go on medication to treat it.

Distinguishing Between Bipolar Disorder and Addiction

A few weeks after the medication kicked into my system, I had an awakening. As I started developing more impulse control and was able to carry out simple tasks that at one point had debilitated me, I began to understand my substance abuse issue as a symptom of my mental illness, rather than a full-blown addiction. Basically, I began to reframe my relationship to substances and to understand that I could possibly exist as someone who did drugs without it wrecking my entire life the way it had before multiple times. By month six of being in AA, I decided to start using substances again. Shockingly, the world didn’t crumble around me. I didn’t implode. Instead, I was able to simply continue living my life, while reintroducing substances back into it in a way where I felt like I had control over the situation. Two years later, I still feel this way. It was while I was camping with friends in the middle of rural Tennessee that things began to unravel a little bit. I introduced psychedelics back into my life, with the support of some friends in AA, and I mostly felt good about that decision, but another part of me felt like I was betraying my promise of sobriety to myself. When someone passed me a seltzer one night during the trip, I took a sip, and by the time I had swallowed it, I realized it had been spiked. The person didn’t know I was sober, because I hadn’t told them, but that simple mistake made me absolutely lose it. I went for a walk and sobbed for an hour, feeling like a complete failure for not better protecting myself. Eventually, morning came and when I woke up I was shocked that the world hadn’t come crumbling down. From that day onward I began slowly introducing drugs and alcohol back into my life and I, for the first time since touching a substance at 14 years old, felt totally in control. If I felt myself getting too drunk, I stopped drinking. If I felt myself feeling fiendy for more drugs, I went home and put myself to bed. I’m still not sure if it was maturity, healthy coping mechanisms, or my meds, but I finally felt OK with partying. I don’t remember exactly when I completely stopped going to AA, but I remember that it was gradual, rather than a sharp exit. I felt like I was taking up space in a community that didn’t have room for someone like me, who just wanted to continue using drugs healthily without spiraling out of control. So I left with some sadness, but mostly with an appreciation for a space that helped me get healthy.

I don’t regret anything about my journey and I especially don’t regret going to AA.

Sobriety Isn’t a Cure for Being Bipolar, but It Was Part of My Solution

When I look back at my time in AA, I am able to acknowledge the ways in which it helped me grow up—how it forced me to look inward and reassess what I wanted my life to actually look like and feel like. It did radically wonderful things for me. The most important thing I learned, indirectly, was how to have impulse control, which isn’t a lesson they teach, but something that being sober for a few months helped me learn. I learned to really open up emotionally, not just to others, but to myself, in ways that are both honest and loving. For me, AA was just one piece of the puzzle that led me to get stable, happy and thriving again. Being in AA while in therapy and then adding medication to the mix gave me ways to start healing. The shame spiral from partying that led me to AA still persisted after I left, and I’m just now beginning the process of unpacking where that stems from so that I can fully rid myself of it. Sometimes when I am out doing cocaine or drinking a little bit too much, I feel like I’m doing something wrong, even though I’m not. That is the unfortunate hangover that comes with at one point identifying so strongly with being a sober person. I don’t regret anything about my journey and I especially don’t regret going to AA. Many of the people I met in that community are still friends of mine, and from time to time when I feel despondent over something, I find myself in a church basement at an AA meeting. These days I just listen instead of sharing, because I see myself as a guest and not a community member. The mildewy scent of the basement, the taste of burnt coffee and stale donuts, the welcoming smiles from people I don’t know—I still feel at home. Life ebbs and flows, and often the most overwhelming part of the process is facing yourself and forcing yourself to do the internal work to heal. I’m lucky enough to be on the other end of the process, to be able to say that I am recovered with—and without—the help of a community of recovering addicts who taught me the right way not to be sober.

For many of us, parental problems aren’t unusual. In fact, “daddy issues” has become a colloquialism, and it probably won’t be long until a similar term is coined for mothers. However, when you’re a brown child with brown parents growing up in South Asia, none of that applies to you. I was born on the small island nation of Sri Lanka, where culture is stereotypically oppressive. My childhood years were spent in Japan and Europe, but once we got back, I remained connected to those cultures with the just-expanding internet. My home country’s mindset is limited, and tradition is nothing more than a looming threat overshadowing anything you want to do. People keep their heads down and do what is socially acceptable. I did not. Not because I particularly wanted to be a rebel. I didn’t realize it made me a rebel. Parents of brown culture are totally alone. A girl goes from being absolutely forbidden to even see a boy to being married off and expected to know how to manage a family. A boy gets away with everything he does, and expects the same in his marriage, believing they have to stay cold and emotionally unavailable but also provide for the family. That’s the extent of their obligation. Most of all, our culture does not ask for help. Is it any surprise that domestic violence is so common then? Or that mental health is such a taboo topic?

Our culture doesn't ask for help.

My Parents’ Issues Made Me Go Through a Rebellious Phase

Growing up in an abusive household, my father was rarely home. When he was, there would often be fights. Little me thought the sun rose and set with my mother, and she could do no wrong. It was all my father’s fault, I thought. Twenty years later, I look at them as one looks at two children who couldn’t set their petty problems aside and stop squabbling. When children squabble, it's a relatively harmless affair. When it’s adults who never learned how to properly deal with issues, then you have other lives being affected. Mostly the rest of the family.I considered it normal that parents fought when I grew up. I considered it so normal that I didn’t give a second thought to the terrified nights, the screaming and the smashing. I assumed that beneath everyone’s smiles at schools, the same situation lurked. Love was as made-up as the fairies in stories, a thought so deep-rooted that it would take me 15 years to realize I was wrong. When I started acting out (when the depression originally started to manifest) at nine years old, my parents didn’t know how to deal with it either. I wasn’t a teenager, and I was already going through my rebellious phase. And I, at the time, had no idea how to tell them about the raging churn of thoughts in my head, the perpetual headache I carried around without even realizing it. I had no friends, I shut my family out. And every time I disagreed with them on what to do with my life—such as not going to the classes they wanted, not taking the subjects they wanted, staying out late (by which I mean 7 p.m.), speaking with boys (the horror)—our fights escalated. Throughout this, they had no notion of checking if there was something wrong with me. I only knew about mental illness from Tumblr. “At least these people are really sick. What’s my excuse, that I’m a pathetic human being?” I thought. The lack of education was so much that I never connected the dots and determined I might be showing symptoms. My friends were the ones who got me through my school years, but even they didn’t know what they were doing, how much they were helping. It never occurred to me to tell them, because I assumed everyone was dealing with the same thing at their homes. During the next few years, I would learn that a lot of what I considered to be normal, was in fact, not.

Friends Helped Change My Perception of Love

As I was finishing school, my best friend (a guy, much to the further consternation of my parents) started dating, a concept I did not understand at all. I thought love meant giving each other presents until you got married. Then I saw how utterly in love he was. And how it actually looked like the books described it. I started questioning a lot of things in life. The internet helped. I spent hours browsing through coming-of-age sites, and comparing them to what I saw at home. My conclusion: I was right. Why were my parents so bitchy? When I went to state university and decided I didn’t want to put up with the ragging (which Sri Lanka is notorious for), it sparked further dispute. Finding work, I stayed out of home and managed for months on end. And yet, despite all the dots I connected, I never thought the never-ending burning weight in my head was anything more than proof of me being a failure.It took a few more months, and a near-suicide attempt, for me to finally relent and seek out a counselor. Not a psychologist, or a psychiatrist, mind you, but a therapist. Because even at that point, I didn’t believe I was sick. Before going to see said counselor, I had weeks of panic attacks and self-doubt because I thought, “What if they tell me this is actually all in my head?”

I started questioning a lot of things in life.

Visiting a Therapist Helped Me Understand My Upbringing Much Better

They didn’t. In fact, they took me very seriously, and within weeks, I was referred to one of the best psychiatrists in the country. Through these amazing people, I started learning exactly what mental health was, the stigma in the country, the lack of education. Eventually, I made up with my parents. Eventually, they came to accept everything that went wrong. We collectively realized a lot of things, and I even moved back in with them last year. I have come to the point where I understood that they didn’t know any better. That they are learning about mental health as much as I. That they’re struggling to adjust and understand. They’re very supportive. We all regret the things we didn’t know, the help we didn’t know to get. They blame themselves for what happened to me, and what almost could have happened to my little brother.Deep down, despite everything, I blame them, too. I understand. But I don’t know if and when I can forgive and forget.

It was about 10 p.m., black outside and even darker in my walk-in closet. I had shut the door, flipped off the lights and was on the floor in my formal black gown, glittery heels cast aside, sobbing my heart out. The problem? Well, I didn’t even really know what the problem was, to be honest. All I knew was I felt lost, purposeless and completely hopeless. And so tired of feeling this way. Again.That scenario has been, until recently, a fairly common one for me. You see, like everyone else on this planet, I’ve had my ups and downs. There was one crucial bit of knowledge that I didn’t know, however, that turned out to be rather simple: I wasn’t taking care of myself.

I wasn’t taking care of myself.

The Effects of a Lack of Self-Care on Mental Health

One thing I did know is that my little marketing business was turning out to be a nightmare rather than the entrepreneurial experience of my dreams. I didn’t feel like I could charge decent money for the hours upon hours of work I put in for my clients—not to mention the sleepless nights and stress that went right along with it. My solution was to push myself to do more, to work harder and earn more money. No time for rest and reflection—I kept hustling. That’s what all the gurus say, right? Hustle 24/7 and you’ll be a millionaire in two years!Meanwhile, my mind kept feeding me these lies: You are a terrible business owner; people don’t even like you, they just feel sorry for you. You have no purpose. You’re crying on the floor of your walk-in closet and don’t even know why—talk about first-world problems! What is wrong with you? Why can’t you just be normal for (bleep’s) sake? And, what’s worse, I believed every single word of that soul-crushing voice. I was defective. There had to be something severely wrong with me. After all, I wasn’t making a full-time income from my business and I felt as though I had no idea what I was doing. Therefore, all of those thoughts must be true. It took a while, but I finally began to learn that all those stories I was telling myself were not, in fact, the truth. I made them up—no one else. And it’s a pretty good bet that my anxiety and depression had a big hand in helping with that.

How I Discovered the Power of Self-Care

After years and years of negative self-talk such as this, I finally picked up a book, Crash the Chatterbox by Steven Furtick, which a dear friend recommended. I distinctly remember tearing up several times as I devoured the messages within those pages. It was the first time I caught a glimmer of hope. It was the first time in my 30-plus years of living that I dared to think that maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t actually defective. Perhaps I was simply human. Pretty soon that book led to another, which led to dozens more, which inevitably paved the rocky, up-and-down path of my journey into self-care. I never intended to set out on this journey. Actually, I avoided it and wielded that as a badge of honor. I was never raised to think highly of myself, and my parents expected a lot from us girls. Combine that with my intense perfectionist nature—my Type A personality, my compulsion to people-please—and you have a toxic formula that could only result in paralyzing fear and, ultimately, failure. This is pretty ironic, considering I have been striving to succeed and to be perfect for as long as I can remember.

Accepting the Fact That Self-Care and Mental Health Are Connected

I’m not exactly proud to admit any of this, but I feel it’s an important topic to discuss. I never shared the extent of my internal suffering with any one person because I was so afraid of being judged. I was terrified that I was the only one in the world who felt like this. How could I admit that I didn’t have all the answers? That would be career suicide and no one would ever talk to me again, surely. Fortunately, I have a supportive husband with inhuman levels of patience. Over the years, I’ve also accumulated some amazing friends who I gradually realized I could open up to. They assured me I wasn’t crazy and that I wasn’t the only woman who ever felt hopeless and useless. They let me in on their similar experiences so I could see I wasn’t alone. Some of these women even shared with me that they themselves had been to counseling, which gave me the push I needed to make my own appointment.I resisted for a long time, but going to counseling is not nearly as uncommon as our inner critics want us to believe. I’m still working through the monumental task of dismantling and rebuilding my entire thought process, and I’ve got a long way to go. But counseling allowed me to begin the healing process I so badly needed after decades of neglecting myself. I was able to put a name to some of my anguish (the twin diagnoses of anxiety and depression) and embark on this newfound mission to take care of myself and—gasp!—even love myself.

There have been hundreds of small changes that initially I resisted wholeheartedly but have since fully embraced.

Why Self-Care Is Important for Mental Health

I can’t say that there was some grand “a-ha” moment that led to the realization that I was neglecting my mental health. Rather, it was a series of experiences and finally having enough of making myself so miserable. There have been hundreds of small changes that initially I resisted wholeheartedly but have since fully embraced. I also had to overcome my opinion that people who practiced self-care for depression and anxiety were cheesy wimps. Now? Call me cheesy if you want, but I take time for myself in the mornings. I exercise, I read a devotional style book and I journal before ever logging onto my computer. Sometimes, I even meditate. My mood improved, my mental health improved, I pivoted my business and I can function infinitely better. I’m not in a puddle of tears every other day, sobbing on that closet floor.Mind you, I still have a ways to go on that self-care journey. But everything is oh-so-much more bearable now because I’m choosing to prioritize taking care of my mental health. And in the process, I’m a better wife and friend because of it. I’m a better, albeit imperfect, human.

I was born and raised in a commune. After leaving, I quickly discovered most people would characterize it as a “religious cult.” While life there was normal growing up, it was turned upside down when I left in my mid-20s. It was the most intense uprooting of my life, and I hope never to experience something like it again. I lost my whole support system, my whole world, everything that I’ve known since birth.After the first cult-free year (and once the initial novelty of my freedom had worn off), the full weight of depression, sadness and loss hit me like a ton of bricks. Those dogmatic beliefs had been beaten into my head since birth, and yet, I was thrown into a whole new way of living, and I had to survive. I felt stuck between two worlds, fitting into neither. I was lost, traumatized and broken—I was pushed immediately into survival mode figuring out how to function in society, and I didn’t have the chance to process the years of emotional oppression. I lost my support system and part of who I was. However, I was determined to find a way to cope. I was going to get through this.

The cult didn’t believe in depression; rather, it believed demons caused depression.

The Cult Made Me Deny My Depression

The cult didn’t believe in depression; rather, it believed demons caused depression. Even though I inwardly scoffed at that notion, living there for almost three decades indoctrinated me in a lot of unhealthy beliefs. Even today, I’m surprised at the ones still left, waiting to be uncovered.For this reason, I completely denied my depression. I lived on autopilot, making myself so busy to cover all the pain. I was hesitant to see a therapist, afraid one wouldn’t be able to help me because I’d been told my whole life that “therapy wouldn't cure the demons that caused me to leave.” And I desperately needed a therapist. After seeing it could be hundreds of dollars per hour, I knew that wasn’t an option. I barely had the motivation to work enough to make ends meet, let alone afford half a session per month. Not knowing where to turn, I consulted my current, affordable version of therapy: cannabis and watching Hulu—anything to escape my reality. I relied on cannabis to give me an appetite because I lost my hunger drive. I felt unsupported, shunned and abandoned by the same people I dedicated my life to. The anxiety made functioning in “normal” American work-life unbearable. One night, as I consulted with my usual edibles and watched Guy’s Grocery Games, I wondered: How can I benefit from therapy and heal my broken soul within my means? Why is it so expensive, and how can I get around that until I’m in a place where I can afford it?

I Reached Out to Artists and Actors Who Inspired Me

After contemplating, the conclusion for therapy’s high price tag is that, by law, therapists are required to keep one’s secrets. They are sworn to confidentiality, so it’s no wonder they are expensive. But how could I get around that? I just wanted someone to talk to and help me process. As I zoned out into the world of Flavortown and watched Guy Fieri joke around with his contestants, I was so touched by how great of a dude he seemed to be. I was so overwhelmed with thankfulness and joy that I did something unthinkable—I reached out to him like a trusted friend, and sent him a DM on Instagram saying how much I appreciated him. Almost as a joke, I opened up to him as I would a friend. I didn’t feel rejection or shame, mainly because I was pretty sure he would never see my message. “Who cares?” I thought, “He’s never going to respond anyway.”And that is when it hit me.Celebrity therapists. I could open up to them. I could be authentic, something I craved so badly. The best part—the DMs would (most likely) never be opened. Plus, it often ended up in humorous territory. So, it was therapy and medicine—if laughter actually is the best medicine.

Sending Messages to Celebrities Became a Cathartic Practice

While I knew my grief and sadness weren’t being heard, the depths I felt were so intense that even these small moments were healing. I know it sounds strange, but at that stage, I didn’t want anyone to tell me, “You're going to be OK,” or “It could always be worse.” I just wanted to release the pain in a private way, a path unique to me.Explaining my trauma was a challenge in itself. On one hand, I felt liberated. But it’s hard to explain to society how I’m undoing a lifetime of brainwashing—messages warning me against the very life I now lived. I didn’t fit in and felt caught between two worlds, neither of which resonated with my soul.From then on, a celebrity helped me through many difficult stages in my journey of recovery. I’d send one a message to thank them and open up about what I was going through. All filters stripped away, I would just be myself in those messages. If I was watching a movie, I’d text the actress and tell her “great job” and thank her for helping me through a particular challenge. If I read an article about something, I’d text the author to let them know my thoughts on the issue. If I heard a song that cut to my core, I’d tell the artist how they changed my life for the better. It was a beautiful thing, allowing this slow unveiling of myself, my core, my opinions and thoughts, in safe spaces.

I felt, for the first time in my life, that I had permission to be authentic.

I Finally Had an Outlet to Be Honest

Growing up in a cult, I was never allowed to be myself. If I was caught voicing things that weren't in line with its doctrine, I would be told I was “lost,” had demons and I would be shamed for being too free-spirited. Celebrities, on the other hand, don’t give a flying fuck if I tell them my theory that I think God may be a mushroom and the portal to talking to him is by taking shrooms. Not only will they not tell me I have demons, but they also won’t tell me that I’m wrong. It didn’t matter to me that no one ever read my messages. What mattered was that I finally felt I was allowed to be honest about what I was going through. I felt, for the first time in my life, that I had permission to be authentic. And it was great because no one ever responded. Well, except once. But that’s a story for another time.

“Do you need the toilet before we go?” I ask my six-year-old stepbrother before we head to the park. He shakes his head: “No, I’ve just been.” I’m about to ask if he needs to go again—what if he needs to pee when we’re out?—but then I remember: Don’t project your anxieties on him. Once you’ve had a phobia, especially one as obscure and intrusive as toilet anxiety, it’s hard to ever rid yourself of it completely. I was diagnosed with OCD when I was only two years older than my little brother. My condition was first flagged by one of my teachers, who noticed me repeatedly touching and sniffing random classroom objects. My mom, a nurse, managed to find me a counselor, and I used art therapy to uncover and cure my unknown fear of the numbers two and four, apparently triggered by my dad walking out on us when I was two, and again when I was four. After 12 sessions, I felt like my OCD was cured. Little did I know it was lying dormant, ready to strike again.Puberty is hard enough without having to also juggle a mental illness. Right at the time when I was supposed to be navigating relationships, alcohol and the emergence of Snapchat, my OCD came back stronger than ever. Instead of fearing certain numbers, I developed a debilitating fear of needing to urinate.I recently learned that the technical term is “toilet anxiety,” and it’s a phobia of being too far from a toilet, using a public toilet or wetting yourself. It predominantly affects older people or pregnant/postpartum women, who have weakened bladders due to age or childbirth. None of this information seemed to exist when I was suffering and, even if it did, I probably would have felt even more alienated as a teenage girl with a healthy pelvic floor.

My phobia was deeply distressing, inconvenient and confusing, all in equal measures.

Life With Toilet Anxiety Became Unsustainable

My phobia was deeply distressing, inconvenient and confusing, all in equal measures. I couldn’t go to the cinema out of fear that I’d need to pee during the film, and it was a similar story for concerts, public transportation and long walks. House parties involved alcohol, which meant more people fighting for the coveted bathroom, which meant a higher likelihood of me wetting myself. I even restricted what I ate, as I once read sugar could trigger bladder movements. So, anything sugary—from fruit to Haribo bears to carbohydrates—was off my plate.Everything became difficult, to the point where every time I left the house, I would have to pee between three and 16 times. It became ritualistic—the OCD voice in my head told me, “If you don’t try again, you’ll wet yourself when you’re out,” and I believed it.I would pee so many times that the inside of my body became a desert, and yet I would still push through the sand to try and find one satisfying droplet of water. I was severely dehydrated all the time, and yet the constant anxiety persisted: What if I need to pee? What if I can’t find a toilet? What if I wet myself? What if? What if? I’d worry so enthusiastically that my vision would blur, my stomach would knot and I’d think I could vomit at any moment.

My Isolation Provided One Silver Lining

Aside from avoiding any scenario when I’d need the bathroom, my second biggest priority when I was ill was to convince everyone around me that I was fine. Part of this facade involved getting my first job stacking shelves in a supermarket. It doubled up as an easy excuse to say “Sorry I’m working” when I was invited to parties, the movies or drinks in the park. It wasn’t a perfect plan, as I still felt sick with nerves when I was put on checkouts for four hours without a break, but it was better than the alternative. On the first of each month, I would get paid, and for the other 30 days, I would be turning down social plans. Whether it was rejecting party invites on Facebook or never returning my consent slips for school trips, every time I said no to a social occasion, I was simultaneously saving money. The same happened when birthdays and Christmas swung around. “Spend this on something nice,” my relatives would say, handing me notes, without realizing that when you’re ill, nothing is nice. Although on the inside I was breaking, there was an obscure silver lining inside my wallet.

I can’t believe I worried about the person I’d be after therapy.

Therapy Finally Helped Me Recover

After three years of sitting in a shadow of depression and embarrassment, I reached out for help and started using cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). There, I quickly learned that physical expressions of OCD were really common. People with emetophobia perform ritualistically to avoid being sick; people with germophobia obsessively clean to prevent coming into contact with germs. These people were like me. I wasn’t as alone or as weird as I thought. In our final sessions, my therapist told me we needed to start looking towards the future. “What plans do you have for summer?” she asked in the faux-motherly way that therapists do, but I couldn’t think of a single thing to reply. It had been so long since I’d accepted an invitation or organized an event. It was like I’d forgotten how to have fun. That evening I went home and devised a budget to work out what I could afford to do before I went to university. And that’s when I realized that the money I’d be squirreling away over the years due to my accidental agoraphobia amounted to £10,000.I’d never wish OCD or toilet anxiety on anyone and, if I could exchange the money for good mental health then I would. But it does feel like fair compensation for the trauma that my brain put me through. It’s ironic, and perhaps dark, that I had to suffer to prosper now, but the money I was too ill to spend has ensured I have a brighter future. I’ve traveled, been to university, moved to London and, ultimately, have enough leftover money to buy myself therapy if I feel my thoughts turning against me again. When I was unwell, I worried that having therapy would change my identity: Would losing my phobia make me less interesting? Would people still like me? Of course, now I know that my toilet anxiety was actually hindering my true personality and social potential. I can’t believe I worried about the person I’d be after therapy, when in fact she’s sunnier, calmer and, ultimately, £10,000 richer. So maybe money can’t buy you happiness, but it’s bought me a reason to not resent my teenage self and the taboo phobia that came with her.

Some of us picked up the bottle last year to cope with the pandemic. We began drinking more because there was nothing to do but stay inside with our thoughts and feelings. For me, that led to far darker thoughts and feelings than I had ever experienced. Without a “purpose” to my drinking—at a social gathering or at an exciting event—the purpose became an unknown existence and how short it might become. This led to many nights and mornings with higher than normal anxiety and immediate adverse health effects. Finally, I decided enough was enough. Since then, I’ve been on a journey to put down the bottle forever.

I decided enough was enough.

We Tell Ourselves Lies About Alcohol

The first steps for me were simple: Take a break, because I couldn’t function properly anymore. I have a very sensitive stomach and alcohol exacerbated those issues. That first break was more of a gastrointestinal reset because I immediately went back to drinking once I was OK. My second step was trying to cut it out completely after a long night of drinking and crying over how much I hated myself. This was long before I realized that alcohol triggered my anxiety. That lasted for about a month, and then I started up again because I had a feeling things would be different. I had gained so much confidence around the ability to quit at any point that I thought dancing around it wouldn’t hurt. A few other attempts happened before I got into “Quit Lit” and realized just how badly I was lying to myself. My adventures into the genre taught me how many lies I had been fed and believed were facts. They’d even started far before I was considering drinking. The lies we tell ourselves about alcohol are the lies we are fed by the media. We want to think that it makes us cool, but it really makes us cognitively slower—and that makes us uncoordinated and slurred. We think it makes us confident, but we never remember the “ballsy” things we say because alcohol limits our ability to create memories even after we stop drinking. We also have fallen for the idea that if you can’t drink alcohol, then it's a personal fault, instead of it being acceptable to not drink poison. These books set me on a path of anger and terror, for me and for my friends, mostly because I work in two booze-heavy industries: food and stand-up comedy.Many stand-up comics are known for either becoming sober after addiction or dying from addiction. But no one really talks about how easy it is, in certain industries, to fuel an addiction just by your circumstance. As a comic who also bartends, I can tell you that getting a free drink or free drugs basically comes with the territory. Your access is endless and your nights are, too. Once you're awake, you see people day-drinking away their anxiety with the thing you know is causing it is a nightmare. But there isn’t much you can do when every fiber of your life is tied into something you no longer agree with. I remember some nights—barely—where I ended up in places that I hadn’t intended. Mornings where my bank account was in the negative because I spent everything on shots that were promptly thrown up. Even waking up once beneath a couch surrounded by pink throw-up and completely naked. This particular incident, in college, should’ve scared me straight, but I was told, once again, that I needed to “learn how to control my intake."

I remember some nights—barely—where I ended up in places that I hadn’t intended.

It’s Important to Cope in Healthier Ways Than With Alcohol

These "Quit Lit" books made it seem so easy to just change your routine, pick up a new habit and boom, no more alcohol in your life. But my life is in bars. If I left, I would need to start an entirely new existence, and as a young person in the middle of a global pandemic, that entire idea made me want to say “F-it” and just start binge-drinking again. But the stubborn part of me had a feeling there could be another way to be a part of the scene, just not in the scene. I needed to create a way out without setting myself up for failure.This may seem obvious, but if you feel like you may be drinking too much, then you probably are. The easiest way to fix this is to create a new habit to replace that one. I think that if we learn to cope in healthier ways then we wouldn’t look at alcohol as an escape. The lot of us—the restaurant workers, the struggling artists, the minorities—can’t afford things like sober retreats or therapists like the books suggest, so we do what we can. We go on walks and do yoga classes from our apartment living rooms. And if we fall back into the same habits, we forgive ourselves and try again. There is no honor in silently suffering because you feel like you’ve failed at something that is incredibly difficult to do. You’ve become codependent on an incredibly destructive substance. It doesn’t mean you’ve failed and it doesn’t mean you’re broken. You are functioning exactly as one would, and every single day will get a lot easier. Be gentle with yourself, love yourself and treat yourself and your body with the respect that it deserves.

My brother killed himself in early 2019. My last memory of him is us saying our goodbyes through my closed bedroom door after I had just come home on Boxing Day morning after doing a 12-hour night shift on Christmas. I received a text from him later that day letting me know he got home safely. He asked me if my kids liked the gifts he brought them. The presents he brought when he visited were always my kids’ highlight of his visits. “They like them,” I briefly replied. The presents are how they continue to remember him today. I still have that text message on my phone. He took his life less than a month later. His suicide rocked my world. I am a Registered Nurse (RN). I’ve been one for 13 years. I work in mental health and substance use services and my career has encompassed all kinds of roles, from direct care nurse to clinical educator. I’ve been a mentor to my nursing colleagues and students, and am vocal in my opinions about patient rights, the anti-stigma of mental illness and substance use, and equitable access to health care. One thing I am not vocal about, however, is my own experience with mental health and substance use issues.

I have had my own struggles.

Mental Health Has Always Been a Challenge for Me

I have had my own struggles. In my early 20s, I lived with undiagnosed depression and alcohol issues, the latter of which ended shortly after becoming a nurse. After I graduated from university at age 21, my life stalled. I ran away to New Zealand with a man that abused me. I returned to Canada four months later unsure about the direction of my life. I moved back in with my parents when I was 23. I applied to nursing school on a whim because I needed a job and didn’t know what else to do. Shortly after applying, my dad’s decades of heavy alcohol use caught up to him. He died of liver failure weeks after I accepted a spot in school. I made it through my education despite struggling with the grief of his death, remedying it with excessive drinking to feel closer to him. My life took a hard right when I moved to another province with my partner to start fresh. I began to shift towards what I identified as adulthood, and my partner and I decided to start having children. My mother’s health began failing after my dad’s passing and I became her caregiver. Months before my brother’s death, she received a cancer diagnosis. This was stressful, especially for my brother, who I do not think ever recovered from our dad’s death over a decade earlier. One morning, after a tough night shift, when I was giving my colleague a report, I started crying. I felt like a failure, professionally and personally. I felt overwhelmed. My colleague was kind enough to take me aside and ask me what was wrong. I knew I was deeply impacted by caring for my mom through her cancer treatment. I shared this with my supervisors and managers at the time. I received radio silence. Was it lack of caring? Or did they just not know how to approach this with a co-worker instead of a patient?

The First Sign of a Toxic Workplace

In late November 2018—the middle of my mother’s cancer treatment—my brother visited to take her to chemo. She did not get chemo that day. He was overwhelmed by her frail appearance and instead took her to the emergency department. Not one nurse or doctor asked my brother how he was doing. I imagine he wasn’t well. That night we ended up fighting because she missed the treatment. I saw him one more time at Christmas. It was an impromptu visit. The last time I said goodbye through my closed bedroom door, it didn’t even cross my mind that I would never see him again.I will never forget the moment when I saw two police officers at my door. I thought they were following up on a call I had made earlier that day about suspicious people in the neighborhood. When they asked to come in, I knew something was wrong. When they told me my brother was dead and it was an apparent suicide, I was in shock. My memories of him were as a jovial, positive, overly optimistic person. A decade earlier, he’d broken up with his then-girlfriend, two days before my wedding, because she was “too negative.”My world exploded. It was only when I was in the thick of it that I realized the “generous” five days of bereavement leave at work was nothing. I had to go to a different city in a different province to do all the things that I never thought that I would have to do—like make funeral arrangements for my sibling, close his bank accounts, clean up his apartment. It was surreal. I was overwhelmed and scared to go back to work caring for another youth who had recent suicide attempts and ongoing suicidal thoughts.

My world exploded.

There’s No Support for Nurses With Mental Health Problems

Upon my return, I emailed my supervisors to request accommodation because of the nature of my brother’s death. I did not hear anything back. In those moments of desperation and despair—met with nothing, not even an email to acknowledge my loss—I realized that working in mental health did not foster a psychologically supportive work culture that prioritized the mental wellbeing of the staff. I felt alone. I felt like I failed my brother. The shame of not knowing, of not seeing the signs, tormented me. I felt guilt that I did not save my brother. But, at the same time, I understand the decision he made. His death helped me understand the anguish and pain that people struggling with the choice of life and death must have experienced, the silence, the determination, the desperation. My shame is ongoing. I feel it when someone asks me if I have a sibling. I have that feeling of dread, waiting for them to ask how. I feel ashamed that I have lied. I have said, “accidentally,” to avoid having to give them that upsetting information. It’s the same fear that I experienced a decade ago when someone would ask me about my dad. I am older now, so it is not as unusual that my dad is dead, but for now, it is unusual that my sibling is gone.It isn’t a secret that my dad died of health issues related to alcohol use and that my brother died by suicide, but that doesn’t mean that I feel any less uncomfortable when someone asks how they passed. I wish I didn’t feel like I caused the person asking to be upset when I unleash that answer on them. At the same time, I’m not sure what answer they want. Or what response I want.

Being a Nurse With a Mental Illness Shouldn’t Be Difficult

The lack of kindness and empathy in my workplace leaves me unsure that anything can change if we cannot even make space in our workplace—a community of mental health clinicians—attuned to the mental health needs of our workplace peers. It took a great amount of bravery for me to disclose my brother’s cause of death, and I received nothing. When I requested bereavement leave it was as if nothing had happened to me. There were no kind words to acknowledge my loss, no sympathy from my work organization. There was no flower basket or sympathy card like the one I received from my youth care organization when my dad died. What does this mean? Mental health workers often pride themselves on being person-centered and trauma-informed, but we are not as attuned as we think. The line that divides us is arbitrary. The line that divides us is based on someone’s reaction to a crisis at a moment in time, the people who they have in their life, the weight of the world that they feel that day, and the factors in their life that help them keep going or cause them to need professional support. The line between my patient, their family and me as a clinician is a boundary we built to keep us apart. I am not sure we will ever be able to extinguish the stigma of mental health and substance use issues if we keep treating them like they live in a particular kind of patient—in a particular kind of situation that divides us and them.