Some people start describing themselves by telling what other people perceive them as. I have always seen myself as a person with a sense of humor, curious, creative, loyal and kind. I would like to believe that others also saw me like that - generally, it's just a nice thing to think of yourself, flattering. Throughout my life I tried to prove it - it went pretty well, I may say. I wrote poems, played guitar, read a lot, made jokes (I loved to get people to laugh), I stuck to my friends through best&worst, I was generous and always shared everything that was mine.
I was a good student, a good daughter, a good sister, a good friend, a good girlfriend - I'd like to think I still am, even if I procrastinate a lot, even if I'm not home a lot, even if I can't stop from bickering with my sister, even if sometimes I forget to respond to my bff or even if I feel that I should give even more in my relationship. I'm a good person. I stop to help those in need. I listen to those who need it. I go out of my way to make you feel better.
I don't know exactly when or how or why it started. I mean, I guess you should say that I had a bigger chance due to the circumstances, But I always had such a good connection with my inner self - analyzing others, analyzing myself with no end. I never thought I would be in the place where I am right now - hard to comprehend when you're a person who never lets in the negative stuff.
I met my boyfriend when I went to high school - we were in the same class, have been 'high-school-sweethearts' ever since. I was happy then, as I am now. He's my soulmate and nothing can change that. I know he wasn't the reason to feel sad/bad/anxious/depressed. Never. If anything, he was always the reason for me to feel better and safe.
I loved high school - I had friends, I went to parties, best time of my life. Well, sure, sometimes I felt a little bit scared of contact but I did it anyway - I learned that taking the bull by it's horns it's the best way to go and just forget of what is happening inside you.
At that time my father has been an alcoholic for about three years - nothing too extreme, he just came home wasted or drank in the garage, hung out for a bit in the kitchen, eat something, tell a monologue to anybody who was listening (most of the time me) and then went to sleep. It changed when I was in high school - there was a lot of yelling, screaming, curses, telling me and my mom to get the f**k out of the house, find some other people to care & provide for us. At some moments it was hard - I remember one or two times when I stood up for my mom or myself and I got beaten a little bit. I remember him throwing things in the kitchen. I remember him handing me a knife and telling me to just stab him in the back if we hate him so much. I remember when he threatened to kill himself, he took a gun, went to basement, I came there, saw it, ran away, heard a gunshot, screamed, ran out of the house. He fired an empty shot or fired it in the wall, I don't even know. I remember him running after me, apologizing, crying, saying he didn't want to scare me and that he will never do it. I also remember that my mum always had it worse - she had to fight him, be strong, protect us. She cried every other night, she took pills for her nerves, she was sometimes a wreck and she still had to go to work in the morning after fighting with him until 2am when he finally went to sleep. She's a teacher - puffy eyes don't just vanish but everybody knew that she was allergic. I only had to endure his monologues, sometimes curses and threatening me, blackmailing me and protecting and looking after my younger sister and brother. In the morning he would have hangover - sometimes he would stay in bed but most of the time he would go to work, he had his own company. Everyone admired him - he is a very motivated, hard-working person, has a good contact with people, he's creative and generous - he likes to brag that I am truly his child, we're so alike. I looked at people who were deceived by him - how could they be so stupid? But I was the same - every morning he would apologize for what he did or he would make us feel like it actually was our fault. I loved him and I still do - he's my father.
I chose to study psychology - some people joke that you choose it because you have a problem and you want to try and resolve it. Well, it was partly true - later I learned that I am an Adult Child of Alcoholic and I can work with psychotherapist to help me deal with that. I thought that it's the only thing that could bother me - it was only logical.
My father stopped drinking in my second? third? year at the University. It was a relief for me - I didn't have to worry so much for my mom and siblings. But he didn't stop being himself. He was still toxic - bullied everybody, made us feel bad about ourselves, started verbal fights. Whenever I was coming back home I suddenly started to feel nauseous, I felt my stomach churning and hurting. Later I learned that it was just my body telling me that I'm nervous. It sounds funny now - everybody always told me what a calm person I am, I was never nervous about exams or anything else. I ignored it and sometimes I could even tell my body to stop and it worked.
I thought that I will be a good psychologist - I'm finishing my studies now and I'm thinking of becoming a psychotherapist. During five years I learned a lot - I notice so much more now, I see potential illnesses that people deal with and hide it, I am good at listening, I guess what people think and many times I'm right. Recently we watched a document during the lesson - three professionals had to guess which person in the group has specific mental illness. There were 10 people, five of them had struggled with some form of mental issue, they knew what issues to look for, the only thing they had to do was to observe the group for longer time and guess. We focused mostly on social anxiety, the teacher said to us to write on paper our 'candidate'. I guessed it and psychologists were wrong - I felt so proud of it in that moment and my colleges asked me how did I know. I said that it just felt right, even though he was very good at performing a comedy stand-up I just felt that it was him. I thought it was just me being good at noticing feelings.
Every year throughout my studies, at some point, I would feel something odd. I felt less energetic, I slept bad, I was moody all the time, mostly sad. I would say it's because of the weather. Or my parents were fighting again (when WEREN'T they fighting?). Or I saw a sad movie. Or read a sad book. Or I had to study a lot. I never thought of mental illness - come on, I studied them, I knew how to look for symptoms, I had suspicions about others, I knew if you were anorexic, bulimic, depressed, agoraphobic. I knew all of it. And yet here I am and I finally have to face the truth.
I have depression.
I had it for at least 2-3 years and I never noticed.
It's not something that's with me all the time - bracing myself to read about it even more than I had to for my exams I discovered that it's a depressive episode. It comes and goes.
How can you be so oblivious to your own state?
You can, if you only offer support to others and rarely get it for yourself.
You can, if you're afraid to tell the others about your problems - I learned not to tell people about my alcoholic dad (because it complicated everything) so it was only a matter of time to not tell them about other problems I may experienced. You feel guilty - you're not even out of college but when people hear that you're studying psychology they start to spill their secrets and you listen. Because what kind of person would turn their back on people who need you?
You forget about yourself, because being in pathological family and being the oldest child taught me to think not about yourself but about others - they need you, you have to protect them and there;s no place in that for your own feelings.
You stop telling your partner about it - my boyfriend loves me very much, I trust him with all my heart and I care for him deeply and that is why I don't want to burden him too much. I tell him about my problems but it's like with an iceberg, most of it still inside me and you can see only the top.
People are helpless - they hear about your feelings and they don't know what to do. Why put them in this uncomfortable state?
You know how in some rom-coms the male/female lead finally understands that they have been in love for a long time and they didn't even know? And everybody else knows it, they tell them that, the audience knows, it's so predictable.
And yet I couldn't predict that after a rough childhood, my father being an alcoholic, being bullied and sabotaged, always looking after others and never focusing on yourself you would surely develop a mental illness. Better yet, you would not even notice even though you've been learning about it for the past five years and you aspire to help people with problems like these.
So the question for now is: how do I deal with all that.
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