Disordered Story Burb

Mentally ill weren't words I ever gave much thought to until they were linked to me. Bipolar disorder, it wasn't supposed to break into my life until my late teens but I guess I was one of the lucky ones who it attacked in childhood.

Since the beginning of my double digit years it was this routine my family did. We moved to another state, new town, new home; new life. My dad would help companies get on their feet or rebuild and after a year we would move on right before school started back up again. Every year I was the new kid and that worked for me.

The movers would come, I would hide in the closet and calm my racing heart every time one got near me. At school I would be the quiet one who never spoke, never caused trouble. My parents would bring me from one therapist to another and every year my life became more numb.

That was until this year, this year a lot of things changed.

A hospitalization, suicide attempt and a nice comfortable institution was a good indication of my life going downhill at a rapid rate. Not to mention my cocktails of anti-psychotics which made me feel like a robot, the fact that I no longer valued my own life and the stress I caused to the lives and marriage of my parents.

A year was easy, you got good at being antisocial and staying disconnected from people and by the time the new year could come and a couple people could maybe figure out that you were a freak... you were moving on to a new school and going through the same routine.

It was a lonely life but at least it wasn't filled with bullying and awful comments about a illness I couldn't control. Until now apparently. This system had worked for me but when my brother's dad died my mother moved to him instead of moving him to us. To be fair, it was good parenting. He was in his senior year and had gone through a horrible loss I couldn't begin to comprehend.

But that also meant that the bullying would start and if I wasn't careful, he would find out that I really was just the crazy freak he had been telling me I was all my life. He went from shoving as a child to belittling. It went from childhood pushing to psychologically damaging. No matter how hard I tried he hated me and the feeling became mutual.

Now we were about to be under the same roof for an entire year, something that's never happened. For the first time since I was eight I would have to attend the same school and he was clear about one thing; if I told anyone he would destroy me.

Just because he was stuck with me didn't mean I was entitled to ruin his senior year.

So I welcomed myself to the next year of hell being picked apart every day and forced to keep his dirty secrets from my parents in the interest of self preservation. School wasn't my own, therapy wasn't my choice and now I would come home every day to a house that would never be a safe place as long as he was in it.

Locks were removed so I couldn't even make my bedroom my own and no matter what I did I was never able to stay out of his line of fire. At the start of school it was like every other year but as it went on, secrets got out and life seemed like it was no longer worth living.

Have you ever picked on someone at school? Said they were a freak or would be better off dead? Have you ever made fun of someone with a disability or illness? Because tormenting a human being because of that is like making fun of cancer. It's despicable and horrible and I had to live it because of what?

If someone could just give me a reason for hating myself every time I breathe. If my dozen therapists could give me a reason why I fought to slit my wrists daily or just inform me why I panicked every time someone touched me... hell when they even got near me.

If I was raped or abused It would tell me why my own mother couldn't touch me and why the thought of human interaction sent me into a downward spiral of anxiety. But I wasn't attacked and my parents never so much as raised a hand to me.

If I had lost a parent, sibling, aunt, uncle or hell even a grandparent, it would tell me why I couldn't bare to make human connections.

But I lived a nice life with two parents who loved me, even if one had become controlling and overbearing; I guess I deserved that. My mental health care was top priority and I had a huge family who loved me. Four grandparents, countless cousins and quite a few aunts and uncles. Nothing bad had ever happened to me in my life and yet here I was.

Music and art became the only outlet I had to cope with the loss of control. Disorder after disorder consumed my life until it passed me past the breaking point, a scary thought since I had already attempted suicide at sixteen years old.

Life was this journey and mine was leading straight to a grave before the age of eighteen and no one could figure out how to stop it. Not my parents, therapist or myself.

It never occurred to me that human connection; the one thing I feared the most, would be the only thing in this world that could save me... as if my life was worth this whole long story. As if my life could be interesting enough to be put to words, chapters and bound in a story.

No one cared about mental illnesses in high school and they never would. I was simply just a crazy oversensitive girl with no future. Unlovable and incapable of making any kind of real friendships. People didn't stand up for you, they let it happen and took pride in themselves that they weren't the ones doing it.To them, if you're not the active bully you're a saint.

No one cared about the outcasts, disabled.. the crazies and the disordered