Hello world,
You can call me Darling, and as the post title suggests I turned my nervous breakdown into a website. Why on earth would I do something like that? Aren’t I supposed to hide the ugly side of myself and pretend that never happened? To be socially acceptable, yes, but I’ve never been great with social skills, so I’ll also tell you I struggle with addiction and mental illness. I did my best to hide these dark things from the world out of fear, shame, and guilt. As you’ll read I tried to battle addiction on my own, as you can probably imagine that didn’t go so well. After a rough relapse, my emotions boiled over and I finally had a public (social media) nervous breakdown. I was taken to my therapist’s office for emergency vist and finally told her the truth, that I had been an addict for nearly a decade and that I really needed help.
For some reason, I decided to keep my nervous breakdown post up; I think it was because I knew what was coming needed to be shared. I started to get the help I needed, and have been on a rollercoaster ride of addiction and mental health treatment ever since. I shared my story in intimate detail on my private social media accounts; these were long posts filled with emotion and ugly truths about myself. Much to my shock, people enjoyed reading them! When I started, I thought I was essentially journaling to myself in a semi-public forum, but no, there was more interaction on my social media accounts than there had been in years. I got a variety of different responses (including the ugly), but they were mostly positive, motivating, and heartwarming.
Then I started getting the responses that really made me want to put my story publicly into the world; people started coming to me to confide their own struggles with me. Some just thanked me for being a voice or making them feel less alone; some asked me what treatment was like because they were scared to try it. I ended up talking multiple friends into and through treatment, and that felt important, I know some of my friends wouldn’t be with us anymore had they not gotten help. I had one friend apologize for taking so much of my time and said: “but you’re the only person I know who’s been through this and knows what it’s like.” I knew that couldn’t have been true; I was just the only one so blatantly open about it. My friend didn’t need to apologize, I wanted to help them. My story felt small and insignificant, at times I even felt self-absorbed writing about it, but I wanted anyone who was silently struggling to at least know they weren’t alone. Now, I want to share my story with more people. I would never wish the feelings of isolation, loneliness, guilt, fear, and shame on anyone. So, here we are, I’m posting my nervous breakdown and all that has come (and will come) with it to the internet.
I feel like adding a little disclaimer here:
- I am not a writer in the least, my spelling and grammar are terrible. I am aware and I’ll never get better if I don’t practice, so don’t think this will be written in published author quality, you’re getting high school drop-out quality.
- I’m not writing this because I think my story is some kind of amazing special story, I know there are far more inspiring people out there. I’m writing this because if my willingness to be raw and real could help even just a handful of people feel less alone, more able to understand a loved one struggling, or even just inform and entertain you; I’ll feel like I’ve accomplished something. This is just one girl’s journey through battling addiction and coping with mental illness.
Remember, as one of my friends said to me: “I told myself if Darling can do it, I can do it!”
Note: I’ll be backdating most of the posts so you can follow the story in chronological order. I will add some reflections on select posts and those will be tagged with “reflection”
