Consider Me Cured, oh Ye of Little Faith!

I have suffered from at least depression since almost as long as I can remember. My parents, at the behest of my school, took me to a psychiatrist or psychologist when I was in second grade. I wouldn’t talk to him because I knew he would repeat whatever I said to my parents, and I was terrified of them. Although I may have had some behavioral issues, most, if not all of my depression and acting out then were direct results of both of my parents’ physical, emotional, and psychological abuse.

I have always been criticized or mocked for my problems; by my parents and their respective significant others, by my mother’s family members, by my ex-husband, by others who knew, and now, by people I truly believed would know better. Just because they don’t want to believe my problems to be genuine does not mean that they’re not. It seems certain people I believed in prefer to think that my problems aren’t real, although everyone else’s are. Would they criticize me like that if I had diabetes or needed a heart transplant? I feel the reaction I received from someone I truly thought I knew exemplifies the problem with the stigmatization of mental health issues in the United States. I thought I could talk to that person, and that that person not only knew my truth, and me but understood. I am so very sorry to have had the contrary smash me in the face. Obviously, I was wrong in my beliefs and assumptions.

How I feel and the mental health problems I have are NOT matters of a bad or “woe is me” attitude. I am dismayed that someone can be so understanding of other people, yet so critical, judgmental, and downright wrong when it comes to me.

I haven’t always made the best choices, I know. But nobody knows, yet, what all I have gone through and survived to get to where I am, even if it is nothing to other people’s eyes.

You aren’t better than me. I am not better than you. Nobody is better or worse than anyone else. Nobody is below or above other people. We are all just people. We all have faults. We all make mistakes.

Maybe if I drank or did drugs, then my mental health issues would be more real, more relevant, or more worthy; is that what I am hearing? Is that it? Since I don’t drink or do drugs, I can’t possibly have the difficulties that I do????

You know what, I should never have confided in that person, and I won’t again. I can control that much.

Similarly, my daughter will be 15 years old next week. She isn’t a baby, or a 7- or 9-year-old. I think one of my mistakes in raising my son, and in general, is not being open and honest about the things that are not right in my mind and my feelings. I have tried not to commit that same mistake with my daughter, and to stop covering up the truth, in general.

I haven’t called my daughter since Easter Sunday. She didn’t want to talk to me, anyway. I am not going to call her, because she has asked me to give her space and time. I don’t even want to talk to her right now. I didn’t want to see her during her spring break, although I did do so. She isn’t the daughter I raised anymore. She seems to have lost her compassion and her amazing ability to empathize. She is overly critical now, overly judgmental, and utterly unwilling to see things through my eyes or give me the benefit of the doubt that everyone else deserve. It’s sad to say, but right now, I simply feel that my daughter is more of a disappointment to me than her brother.

I feel certain people are telling me to shut up and pretend that there is nothing wrong. So that’s what I’ll do. Consider me cured. Those people won’t hear a negative word from me again.