My issues...

Hey all. I know it's been quite a long time since I've written a blog post. I felt like doing so today, as there is a bit of a lull in my work at the moment.

Yesterday was Bell's Let's Talk initiative about discussing mental health issues. While I agree we need to engage more as a society in taking mental health seriously and destroying the stigma associated with it, I just can't bring myself to support Bell. It's one of the worst telecom companies in Canada and I can't stand how much control they want over every show they run. So... I've decided to do my thing today instead.

As many of you know, I am very open on social media about my mental health struggles. I have been since my marriage fell apart when I was 30. The first time I really opened up was on a post on Facebook about how my marriage fell apart. I was very surprised to see that I got a lot of supportive messages from people I just thought were former work acquaintances. I kept sharing these emotional things on there ever since, as there are many times I require help or support, or just to get it off my chest.

I also share because I don't think there should be a stigma on mental health. That, and one of my personal heroes is Wil Wheaton, not because of his acting (though I am a fan), but because of his blog, and openness about his struggles. Many years ago, when I read his book Just a Geek, I was amazed at how similar some of his struggles were to mine. I mean, I wasn't a child pushed into acting by his parents, but I did have a "prove to everyone that [I'm going to be successful]" within me. It was the very first time in my life I read a book from cover to cover in one sitting. I also felt like I was no longer alone in my struggles. I mean, if someone as famous as Wheaton deals with these things, too, I guess I've got some company.

When I was a child, I struggled in school a lot. I recently went over my old report cards, as I was trying to identify if I have ADD, which is something I've suspected for awhile now, but I've never been officially diagnosed with anything. I had major problems with reading comprehension, and apparently needed a lot of attention or I would easily get bored. I saw a test in my folder in grade 2 of adding and subtracting. Simple stuff, but timed. I seemed to give up about halfway through the first 30 questions of addition, and just started writing 12, 13, 14... 30. The whole subtracting section answered with 1-30. After I saw that, I remembered what happened. I saw other kids in the class already finished the first timed section when I only wound up on question 12. I felt frustrated and under a lot of pressure, so I just gave up trying. Plus, I think I got bored halfway through the test.

There were a lot of comments on my report cards saying I needed a lot of encouragement and praise, because I lacked self-confidence. I also noticed that some of the teachers I thought "just hated me," actually were giving me lots of praise in the report cards and were very kind. I also had a difficult time doing my homework, apparently.

Reviewing my report cards wound up triggering me. I had a lot of painful experiences as a kid. It started when I moved away from Calgary to Strathmore, a small town 20 minutes away from the city. The early part of the year, I had switched schools in Calgary for some reason I can't remember, then the move to Strathmore, meant I had been to three different schools within three or four months of each other. I was completely lost in the curriculum. This town had a different one and learned things I didn't learn yet by the time I got there. That and my previously mentioned struggles with learning made it difficult to keep up. I wound up failing grade 4 and had to retake it.

The first grade 4 class, I was doing okay socially. There were some jerks and so forth, but I just thought they were the typical jerky boys that we girls have to deal with when we're young, and just dismissed it as that. The second grade 4 class was brutal. The kids I was in class with the first time made fun of me for failing. The second class was far crueller. Right away, I started getting called ugly.

I didn't understand what was happening to me, but I thought it would eventually just go away when they got to know me or something like that. It started getting worse and worse every day, every week, every month, every year. They would insult me, and even worse, would treat me as a social outcast. If there was a social gathering or party of some kind, they always made it a point to tell me to my face that I wasn't invited. Worse still, friends I had managed to make wound up getting teased or were told they would be more popular if they didn't hang out with me, so they wound up avoiding me completely, or even worse, joining the rest of the gang in making fun of me, which would hurt even more.

I wound up closing myself up. I would not let anyone get close to me ever again. I feared that if I let someone in to know the real me, they would use it to insult me, which most did. I kept my heart locked up and refused to let anyone get to know the real me. I also started getting depressed. After reading those report cards, I remembered the first time I felt depressed. It was in grade 6. Our class had a grade 6 camping trip at the end of the year, which we were supposed to look for rock samples for our science class as well. I was completely isolated. Of course there was a buddy system when we went on a hike, but that didn't seem to matter to the person I got paired with. I don't remember who it was, but the person I got teamed up with complained about it, then decided to hang out with another team instead. I felt very alone on that trip.

When I was much younger on a camping trip with my family, I wound up getting stung by at least 80 bees when we went on a hike. I was so covered in bees, I couldn't see anything. I don't remember feeling any pain, but that incident created a lifelong fear of bees in me. It's starting to go away, little by little at a time, but if I'm invited somewhere I know there are going to be many bees, I simply won't go to it.

During the grade 6 camping trip, the fear of bees came rushing back. Picture this: I'm alone, and there are definitely bees in the area, and the whole area smelled the same as the place I was when I got stung. I wound up going back to the group area in the campsite, where I sat on a long brown bench carved out of a log and cried. I was scared, yes, but the sting of being treated like I was the worst person anyone would want to be paired with hurt much more. Incidentally, I didn't wind up handing in my science assignment, which apparently brought my mark down.

Then Junior High School happened. Grade 7. In this small town, there were two elementary schools. Junior High School was the first school that opened in that town, as it was a seriously old building (and is still in use now as a Catholic School). The powers that be decided to combine the kids from both elementary schools, plus a couple of surrounding area towns or villages, together into one giant hodgepodge of a school.

Somehow, and to this day I don't know how this happened, people I didn't even know were walking up to me saying, "Mellissa, you're ugly!" My only assumption is that perhaps the kids who picked on me in my school passed it on to the new friends they made. Now, imagine being a young pubescent girl, hearing on a daily basis, at least 20 times a day, that you are ugly. It seriously hurt. Since then, I've had issues with my self-image. I don't like seeing myself in pictures or videos. I feel terribly ugly every time. Grade 7 was the worst year I ever had. I decided to switch to the band class in grade 8, and that made a better fit for me, but certainly not a perfect one.

I wound up being very lonely. When I got home everyday, I just wanted to go to my room and stay in there, alone, blasting music or watching TV. Trying to drown out my pain anyway I could. I got obsessed with things. First, I really got into the New Kids on the Block. I never considered myself a boy band person, but I got obsessed with them. That got old after awhile, and I wound up turning to comic books. First the Archies which got old fast, but then I remembered as a kid I loved the superhero cartoons and superheroes in general, so I got into collecting DC Comics. Obsessively, I might add. I needed something to distract myself from my pain because I didn't want to deal with that pain. I always tried to push it down and pretend everything was fine, even though it wasn't.

I really was trying to be someone other than myself. I felt like I could pretend to be some of these characters, or would continue the story from what I would think would happen next. In fact, this created a fantasy world, filled with DC heroes. Only it wouldn't focus so much on fighting the bad guys, but more about their personal lives. I formed relationships in this world, who those heroes would marry, how many kids they would have, what careers they would choose, and so on. Then their kids' lives and what they were interested in, who they would fall in love with, etc. There would be occasional bad guys popping up here and there that had to be dealt with, but most of the time it was simply a "Game of Life" kind of thing.

That is a very difficult thing for me to talk about, because I still do that. I think it's called dissociation, and also maladaptive daydreaming. I would rather focus on these people's lives instead of mine. It's been a source of comfort, and also a source of despair. I needed it at the time I created it, because of being socially outcasted, insulted and feeling alone all the time, but I certainly didn't need it after that, when I went to college, or even today at 45.

It's funny how things like reading old report cards can trigger these types of memories. I'm now wondering if I might suffer from PTSD from all of those bad incidents I had. They are too numerous to mention, but each are painful in their own ways. When I remember some specific incidents, it feels like I'm there, and say out loud what I wish I would have said when it happened. In my high school Drama class, we were supposed to keep logs of what we did every class, and insights into the scene/characters, etc. I would just jot down what I did on what day most of the time, then type up the thing (with a typewriter - yes, I'm old...) and add more details or whatever in the report I would hand in.

One day in the class, we were getting a really funky smell from either the food lab or the gym, as the drama class was situated in-between the two rooms, but definitely smelled like B.O or sliced onions. I could literally hear people physically pointing at me, and laughing, making comments that it must have been me. Annoyed, I wrote a line in my log "I really can't stand anyone in my grade! They are so immature!" as a vent. Of course I didn't hand that in when I did my report, but I just needed to write it down at that particularly moment in time.

Fast forward to the end of the semester. Of course, not everyone kept their logs and someone asked to borrow mine to copy from it. I don't know why I never said no to these types of requests, but it is what it is. I lent it to them. A few days later, I got an actual confrontation from a girl in the class commenting on that venting incident I mentioned earlier. My mind at that time went to "OMG! She's upset about that?!! Seriously??!!! She would not last a day in my shoes if that offends her." I can't remember how the situation was resolved at that time (perhaps saying something about what incident I was referring to), but with my very recent memory about it, I found myself yelling that thought out loud.

Since my school days, I have struggled with my mental health and life. I don't feel like I actually have a life, and don't even know at this point how to change that, or what it would take for me to be happy. Most days, I'm okay. Some days, I can't even manage to get out of bed because the dark beast of depression is gnawing away at my brain. I've often described depression as a beast or monster, outside of my body, like a force that's trying to control me by telling myself everything bad I feel about myself. I don't feel like it's the real me, but an entity I'm fighting a war with. Sometimes I wish I would have done this instead of that. Sometimes I win a battle here and there, but there are times it feels like a hopeless and never-ending war. Sometimes I wonder if this is all there is to life. Sometimes I wonder if I'm going through a midlife crisis. Most of the time, I feel very lonely and isolated (even before COVID happened, which is why it's not affecting me as much as most people out there. I've struggled with this isolation thing my whole life. What's another year?) Sometimes I want to surrender the war. I'm not so much suicidal, but just the thought that I wish I never existed or would die soon tends to overcome me. I really just need to tell that depression beast where to go so I no longer have to feel like this, but of course that is easier said than done.

I had these triggering events on Friday last week that wound up opening the door to the depression beast again, lasting the whole weekend, and most of Monday. Thankfully, I had a therapy session later that afternoon. I really needed it, too. It does help to talk about things out loud to someone else. Of course with COVID restrictions, this session was on Zoom. I struggle with Zoom because of my self-image issues most of the time. I'm trying to get braver about showing my face, but most of the time it's hard. Anyway, with this session, she helped me by starting a new plan to fight the beast. I won't go into details about that at this time, because this is already a long blog post, but what I will say is that this plan has given me a boost I haven't felt in a long time. Hope has returned, a little, but at least it's back.

Anyways, I think this has covered most of my struggles with my mental health. I know I get messages from people saying they are there to talk to if I need to, which I do appreciate, but when the beast sinks it's claws into me, I feel like I would just be a burden or bum someone else down. I constantly think this is only my struggle and only I can deal with it. Also, I just don't like to bother people. Yeah, I know... I'm weird. But it's okay to be weird.