My journey with a mental health disorder

When I was 5, I used to spend hours focusing at the window pane talking to myself, calling myself special, my mother used to tell me that mad people do that. I was always a notorious kid and knew no limits, not much has changed since childhood for I grew up thinking of this as my superpower. I was brought up in a middle class family by very ambitious parents. From childhood taking care of myself felt very foreign to me, and I always chose to challenge myself instead.

Everything was going fine apart from the anxiety attacks, which became frequent during my teenage years. By then, I went through a series of inhumane events and I learnt that not everyone needs a reason to hurt someone. Day by day, I turned myself more and more into a recluse. I never had a lot of friends because I feared getting rejected by them for not being good enough. My mental disorder gained its gravity by my late teenage. I was always a sharp student, but having brought up in an environment of insane competition took away my interest in studies. Now all that was left of it was endless negativity that suffocated me day in and day out. Everything I liked, from reading novels to sitting idle for hours was a sign of my incompetence now. The colder I appeared the more severe my symptoms were getting. Anger or physical injury did little damage when compared to the fear of abandonment I infused in my blood. Nobody had any idea what I was doing to myself, they just saw me as another girl with low self esteem.

After reaching college, something inside me changed, I saw the new environment as an opportunity to break through the negativity and start afresh. I fought my paranoia, made friends and finally started liking myself again till I got my first major setback after 2 yrs. This time I was stronger and more aware, I decided not to fall into the trap of self hatred and seek mental health support instead. I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and was clueless of what it meant. Later after a lot of research I found how a lot of things in my life make sense because of it. What I want to highlight through this blog is without knowledge of my condition I always felt agony by the enormity of what I felt in comparison to others. Among all the endless reasons for self hatred this could have been avoided at least with the awareness.

Till date many symptoms remain true, but I no longer force myself into hiding just because I am not like everyone else. I have accepted that few things that come easy to most will always be challenging for me but maybe I can use it as my superpower someday.