August 10, 2019
When I was young, back before I knew what mental health entailed, what anxiety and abuse and depression really meant, I was convinced I was having semi-regular mental breakdowns. That was the phrase I used then, because I was unsure of what it meant to have a panic attack.
This was before LiveJournal, of course. This was before I was writing on the internet, or even really on the internet at all. This was before you.
No, it wasn’t.
Right.
When I ran away, my dad found my paper journal. I had kept it infrequently, as something about daily journaling to a seventh-grader felt dishonest, stupid. What could I possibly write about?
In the journal, I mentioned on a few occasions that I’d had a mental breakdown. My dad called me several times over the next few days after my mom found me, and in one of those calls, he yelled at me about that. “Do you really think you’re crazy?” he said. “Do you need to be taken to an asylum?”
I told him no. I whispered it. I murmured it. I wasn’t crazy. I didn’t need to go to an asylum. I just felt like time stopped for me and the world around me sped up. I just felt like I was holding on by the barest amount of friction on my fingertips. The whorls of my fingerprints providing my only grasp on reality.
That was me saying hi.
Blunt-force greeting?
I was quiet as a mouse.
I have the words now. I have the vocabulary. I can say derealization, depersonalization, dissociation. I can say panic attack and anxiety and depression and hypomania. I can say ah, this is what is happening now.
You have emotions now, is what you have. Those were your mental breakdowns.
Dad didn’t believe in those. Not for boys. Mood’s a thing for cattle and loveplay, right? Emotions are for women.
He was half-right.
I suppose he was.