Mental Health Friday #31

Today’s Mental Health story follows Lisa, who used to work as a therapist in prison, and her personal struggles with suicidal thoughts.

Firstly, I’ll say I haven’t had any intense suicidal thoughts the last few days. I’m trying to focus on- this is the Universe letting me know I’m supposed to go down a different path now. I’m telling you (my friends and family…and you too reader) who read this, so you don’t have to worry about me. But man, the day I was fired and the day after, I was thinking of suicide. I was thinking “I’m tired of this shit…” and I sobbed and sobbed. And I thought of how I would do it, and I thought of my furry babies and who could take care of them. And I would sob some more.

I REALLY would like a place of employment where I don’t have to worry about losing my job. The more I think about this past firing, they had NO reason to fire me. It all had to do with a personality conflict with my boss which sucks. I miss that job SO much.

After the first couple of days of suicidal thoughts, they disappeared. I spent the rest of last week depressed and not eating much (which is SO unlike me…I love to eat…I eat 3 meals every day). This week, I’m basically back to normal…I’m focusing on a test I need to pass.

Honestly, this is not the first time I have had suicidal thoughts. This is the first time I’m writing about it though. I don’t think it’s written about enough. More people need to know they are not alone in their darkness. That it’s scary when it’s dark. And I understand why people have thoughts of wanting to give up.

Mental Health Friday #29

Today’s Mental Health story entails the journey of Rahul, through growing up battling with a chronic condition- Vitiligo, in a stigmatising society, and its impact on one’s mental health.

“Ladki ka rang saf toh hain na ” (Girl’s complexion is fair, right?) – a question so often asked here in our country (India), even today, by so called well educated ‘to be mother-in laws’ of 21st century. Such is the unfortunate obsession for fair skin in our beloved country. But look at the irony of the fact, when your whole skin is about to turn white, you panic like anything because suddenly, you are being looked down upon for no fault of yours.

Well here I am, presenting my story (it won’t be sad & boring, I promise) spread over 13 long years of my struggle with a skin disease called Vitiligo or Leucoderma, which in layman terms can be simply put as a problem of white patches, whereby melanin pigment of the skin starts fading away and your skin colour starts turning milky white.

Irrespective of how deadly a disease is or for that matter, how adverse the circumstances are, you just need to hold on, you just need to believe that things will eventually turn better for sure.

The reason why I want my story to reach masses is not to glorify my successful fight with an incurable disease, but to convey that irrespective of how deadly a disease is or for that matter, how adverse the circumstances are, you just need to hold on, you just need to believe that things will eventually turn better for sure. Hoping against hope is basically the key.

Coming back to Vitiligo, well the disease in itself is not painful at all. There is absolutely no physical pain whatsoever, but believe me , the taboo associated with this disease just fills you up with so much of inferiority complex initially, that you almost start hating yourself .

The ordeal started one fine evening, when I was about 11 years old. I returned home after having a horrible cricket session with my friends (I was out for a Duck and went for too much runs while bowling, if I remember correctly). I was anyways, dejected because of the day’s proceeding, but suddenly my mom noticed a small white patch on my knees and she panicked –“It’s a white spot! Come here, let me see properly ”, she said, with her eyes already in tears.

“This looks like fulveri (another synonym for vitiligo) ”, she said with a heavy heart. And a pandora box of worries & uncertainties started from there on.

My life was never the same after that day. Every now and then, my mom’s panic stricken voice and fearful expressions on being asked by her friends about my white spots, were more than enough for me to know that something huge and something bad has happened to me.

Then started a vicious and unpleasant circle of countless clinic visits to all the dermatologists in the city and in the nearby cities including Delhi. For the initial few days however, I was unable to understand the gravity of the situation (I wish I had never understood, for ignorance is bliss sometimes) and I was more in a confused state but eventually I started feeling a little odd, I started to hide my spots. So much so, that I intentionally stopped wearing shorts at all and trousers/jeans came to my rescue.

I can still recall that extremely uncomfortable feeling of insecurity, that feeling of guilt for the crime that I had never committed, which stayed with me for next 3-4 years during school. After that, though the treatment continued (steroids & all), but this negative intensity started to lower down a bit, not because I made peace with vitiligo but because I changed my focus. I started preparing for IIT. –> #Changing the Focus does help!

But despite the likes of Irodovs & Resnick Hallidays around (my engineer friends can relate to these terms easily), I could not clear IIT and boom!! Vitiligo came to haunt me again, this time more ferociously. It was all over me, spreading like a wild fire.

See the thing is, vitiligo is someway directly proportional to your worry hormones. The more the anxiety levels are, the quicker is it’s spread. That was a horrible time – a career failure after 2 years of rigorous preparation & an incurable disease which I was battling for last few years – just too much for a 17 -18 year old to handle. I started thinking of ending my life. Yes, it is true, I was really low on confidence and was almost hopeless. Had my family not supported me that time, I would have committed suicide. –> #Family Support does wonders!

To find out how Rahul overcame his struggles and lived to tell/write his story, be sure to look for next week’s Mental health Friday post! 

Thank you very much Rahul for sharing your story with us. Do check out his blog at The passportsouls.travel and say hello. 

If you’d love to contribute and share your story on Mental health Friday, I’ld love to have you. Let’s join hands to talk about Mental illness and blur out the stigma associated with it. You can contact me on My email address: mykahani@yahoo.com

 

Mental Health Friday #11

People with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) are often thought of as manipulative, self harming attention seekers. Their lives are a mess … they aren’t able to function like normal human beings. Nobody would ever give them a job …

But, in reality, we really aren’t like that.

I was diagnosed with BPD last year. On 4th July 2014 I received a copy of a letter sent to my GP.

“Amelia is a 20 year old university student who lives at home with her parents.

Diagnosis: Borderline Personality Disorder with mood instability, self harm, atypical eating disorder, low self esteem, dysfunctional interpersonal relationships, and feelings of emptiness. Her mood is dysthymic and varies frequently.”

A week later I received another letter discharging me from the care of the Mental Health Services. Apparently there was nothing they could do for me.

The bottom fell out of my world. How could a psychiatrist label my personality as disordered?! How could they ditch me a week later? I have spent the last year trying to understand this big, scary, stigmatised disorder.

BPD is completely different for everyone. There are nine symptoms, and to be diagnosed you must fit at least 5 … so there are lots and lots of different combinations! Every day I understand it a little more, and for me it is a disorder of extremes.

I completely love my diagnosis and completely hate it in equal measures. Half of my life is so dark that I can barely drag myself out of bed. The other half is bigger, brighter, and more beautiful than you can imagine.

I can flip between the two in a heartbeat. Everything is black or white. I love you or I hate you.

I self harm. I have attempted suicide. I dissociate. I panic. I am impulsive. I can get angry. I am terrified of being abandoned. I don’t really know who I am. I have periods of feeling nothing at all. Everything is very very intense.

But I am human.

Having BPD doesn’t stop me doing stuff that ‘normal’ people do. Most people who meet me would have no idea that I have ever seen a psychiatrist, let alone been stamped with a diagnosis.

Believe it or not, I have a job. And I am a manager! Last week I went to a fancy works-do, and although I was struggling on the inside, nobody pointed or laughed or realised that I was any different to anyone else. Next week I am meeting with the CEO of the business. Again, it will be hard for me, but I will get the job done just as well as anyone else. I can be the ultimate professional.

My GP was so shocked that I have a serious mental health condition and a full time job that she jumped up and declared that I must be cured! She was so over-joyed that she immediately cancelled all of my mental health referrals (the sight would have been quite amusing if I hadn’t been so furious!).

Having BPD does not make me weak, incapable, stupid, dangerous, or a liability.

So many medical professionals have seen my diagnosis and treated me like an injured puppy. A crazy injured puppy. They have looked at me with pity in their eyes.

I hate that. I am a human being. I am not crazy.

One of the most empowering and helpful things for me recently has been starting my blog. Suddenly a whole new world has been opened up to me. I am getting to chat to other people with BPD and am privileged enough to read their stories. I am able to speak out about my day-to -day issues in a community where I’m not being judged. Finally, I am beginning to understand that I’m not alone!

I desperately want the stigma that comes with BPD to be broken down. I want it to be accepted that people can have a serious mental illness, and really struggle with it, but that doesn’t make them any less of a person. We aren’t all crazy dangerous monsters.

Today’s contributor is Amelia who blogs at Borderlineamelia.wordpress.com . She blogs about surviving the diagnosis of Borderline personality disorder one day at a time.

---

If you’d love to contribute and share your story on Mental health Friday, I’ld love to have you. Let’s join hands to talk about Mental illness and blur out the stigma associated with it. You can contact me on My email address: mykahani@yahoo.com . For more information, visit  this post.

IMAGE CREDIT: HealthyPlace.com.      

Mental Health Friday #24

I had a pretty good childhood until around the age of six, that was when I was raped for the first time. I was a kid, I didn’t tell anyone and I didn’t know how to handle the trauma. I turned to smoking at that young age. We had a security guard in the estate and he introduced me to it. The assault didn’t stop at the age of six and by the time I turned ten, I’d been raped two more times by different men. 

We moved from that area to a different state, but I was already hooked to smoking (I went on to smoke for about ten years); maybe it was a coping mechanism for me.
I was ten. I knew I was depressed and became suicidal as well. I tried to kill myself but didn’t go through with it; I guess, despite it all, a part of me wanted to live.

When I got into grade 10, I had a really bad time there, which forced me to look within myself. I realised, my life was a mess but I wanted to be better; I felt that I could do better. I overheard my parents talking about a colleague of theirs who was a psychiatrist, so, I stole his contacts and called him. We talked on the phone and he fixed an appointment for me. All of these, I did, without the knowledge of my parents.

I was diagnosed with depression and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He put me on medications but I never took them; Compliance to medication is not my strong suit.
Still, I kept on seeing him once every week. It was liberating, talking about everything without feeling like everything that happened was my fault, the rapes were my fault. I was fortunate to have a great psychiatrist.

My parents didn’t know I was seeing their colleague as my Psychiatrist, and so, one time, we met in public and my parents introduced me to him as their daughter. We exchanged greetings and he pretended he didn’t know me. I loved that he did.

I kept on seeing him secretly until I graduated from high school, I never went back after that. (I’ve been thinking a lot about going back now ). Although now, I can say that I learnt what I need to do for myself and how to take care of my mental health.

Still, I have so much anger bottled up inside about our attitude towards mental illness, molestation, child abuse and just things like these- I mean it is right there, happening before our eyes, but we just don’t see it. People think that if you are depressed or traumatised, there’s this somber image you fit into- but I wasn’t. I was the noisy bubbly child, the people pleaser and did not fit into “that image” at all. We are so self absorbed that we never pick up on the little things.

I find it brave of people who put a face to their mental illnesses and the trauma they’ve experienced.
So, this is it, my story. The journey of a child victim to an adult survivor and warrior.

---

This week’s Mental Health story is about someone who requested to remain anonymous and I respect that. Thank you very much for sharing the story of your bravery and for reminding us once again- Rape is NEVER the victim’s fault.

To everyone who showed up every friday to read these personal stories of our journey with mental, thank you very much for supporting this; with your stories and your emails and your likes and comments and shares. It is a blessing.

If you’d love to contribute and share your story on Mental health Friday, I’d love to have you. You can contact me on My email address: mykahani@yahoo.com.

 

One more day-

It doesn’t always take a rope,
To end a life.

Its the breakfast you skip,
For the fear of gaining pounds,
The lunch you nimble at,
For the fear of being judged
By the crowd.

Its the road you cross,
Without checking twice;
The nights you spend,
Without shutting your eyes;
The body you push,
To its brink without regards;

Some deaths aren’t sudden,
Its in the little trivial acts;
Hoping no one would notice,
Thinking- none would miss your departure.

You have survived this long,
And your Lord wont leave you stranded,
If there’s one thing i’d say-
Pls stay alive,
the earth needs your presence.
One more day is all I’m asking,
Always- one more day.

Facebook page: words of a random.

Writer’s Quote: Gwendolyn Brooks

Welcome to another writer’s quote/poem Wednesday, where I share some of my favourite poems written by other authors. Today’s poem is titled “to the young who want to die”. In all honesty, even though this poem was written by a truly spectacular writer, Gwendolyn Brooks, it’s not among my top favourites.

The reason I am sharing it today is because, it is a poem this generation needs to read and ponder upon. It talks about an issue, which although we shy away from, it is prevalent all around us. Thank you Miss Gwendolyn for speaking to the young.

On the note of gratitude, I just want to give a shotout to fellow blogger Michael Medlen(Flawed masterpieces), for reblogging a poem of mine yesterday. It was very decent of you to ask if you could share it, and then reblog it. I appreciate it.

TO THE YOUNG WHO WANT TO DIE By Gwendolyn Brooks

Sit down. Inhale. Exhale.
The gun will wait. The lake will wait.
The tall gall in the small seductive vial
will wait, will wait:
will wait a week: will wait through April.
You do not have to die this certain day.
Death will abide, will pamper your postponement.
I assure you death will wait. Death has
a lot of time. Death can
attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is
just down the street; is most obliging neighbor;
can meet you any moment.

You need not die today.
Stay here – through pout or pain or peskyness.
Stay here: See what the news is going to be tomorrow.

Graves grow no green that you can use.
Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.

Facebook page: words of a random. Let’s connect!

Writer’s Quote: Nick Flynn

Something horrific happened recently. I hear you say, “which one?”, because sadly, every single day brings on a new horror story. The incident in question is the suicide by an 8 year old boy Gabriel Taye, after he was brutally assaulted in school by some students to the point of unconsciousness. A video released showed Gabriel lying unconscious on the floor being beaten and kicked by other students.
His mother had no idea about the incident, (which I believe the school should have called and explained the situation to the mother because, her kid was assaulted to the point of unconsciousness), and after Gabriel got back home, he killed himself.

I am saddened by his death and the incident surrounding it. It is stories like these which remind me that I cannot stop writing. Something needs to be done, kids with anger issues need to be taught ways to express themselves and an 8 year old kid should be playing with dolls and toy cars and not be tortured to the point of not wanting to spend another second on earth

It’s due to this I’m going to share a poem by Nick Flynn called Cartoon physics Part 1 as my writer’s quote/poem Wednesday submission. It Better expresses what I want to say than I can. Thank God for poetry.

Cartoon Physics, part 1 BY NICK FLYNN
Children under, say, ten, shouldn’t know
that the universe is ever-expanding,
inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies

swallowed by galaxies, whole

solar systems collapsing, all of it
acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning

the rules of cartoon animation,

that if a man draws a door on a rock
only he can pass through it.
Anyone else who tries

will crash into the rock. Ten-year-olds
should stick with burning houses, car wrecks,
ships going down—earthbound, tangible

disasters, arenas

where they can be heroes. You can run
back into a burning house, sinking ships

have lifeboats, the trucks will come
with their ladders, if you jump

you will be saved. A child

places her hand on the roof of a schoolbus,
& drives across a city of sand. She knows

the exact spot it will skid, at which point
the bridge will give, who will swim to safety
& who will be pulled under by sharks. She will learn

that if a man runs off the edge of a cliff
he will not fall

until he notices his mistake.

I apologise for my absence, will try to Get back on track with my writing and blogging ❤

Mental Health Friday #22

Hi. I’m Angela and I’ve been diagnosed with bipolar 2, borderline personality disorder, binge eating, and general anxiety. I can’t remember how old I was when I realized I had a mental illness. I know I’ve always been suicidal. I think my mind uses it as a coping mechanism. I know I was at least fifteen. It wasn’t until I turned seventeen that I sought help. The catalyst was I went from being suicidal to homicidal. I wanted to stab a kid in my class and it terrified me. I went to the counselor at school and started therapy. Still no one recognized my true diagnosis.

It took me twenty two years to finally get diagnosed properly. I had to get a psychological evaluation for myself. After being treated for depression off and on and then general anxiety with meds that didn’t help, I now have a good mix of medication and therapy. Most days I’m good and for those off days… Well I take one moment at a time.

One final thought… Always self advocate. I wish I had sooner. It took me almost being imploding to realize I need to be picky in my doctors and to get second opinions. We need to take care of ourselves before we can others.

---

This week’s submission is by Angela who blogs at I am my own island , do pop by and say hello. She writes about life in general, living and improving despite mental issues.

As always, The goal of Mental Health Friday is to break the silence, talk about mental illness with the aim of blurring out the stigma one story at a time. If you’d like to share your story, I’d love to have you. You can contact me at my email: mykahani@yahoo.com . For more information, visit HERE.

Mental Health Friday #10

“Seeing my ex-husband handle himself so well with my mother leads me to believe that maybe if he had more understanding of my illness, my invisible illness, he would have reacted differently to me.”

The above is an excerpt from my last post here. My mother had just passed away from bone cancer. If my ex-husband had been more understanding of my illness, maybe I would not have been in the state that I was in at that point. It was just a year before that my ex-husband had asked me why I was doing so well and when I answered him that it was because I was doing it for myself, he got very upset and yelled at me. He couldn’t seem to understand the concept of doing anything for myself and so, I gave up. At this point, I already knew that nothing I ever did was good enough and so, rather quickly I had shut down. The chronic pain I was experiencing did not help and my defiant nature brought me to a point of being unable to eat. On the outside our marriage looked good, but only because I questioned him on nothing.

My physical state was sad at best. My muscles were weak and I did not trust my legs. I had problems with depth perception, balance and coordination. I had vertigo and severe cramping in my muscles. I was over medicated and still not sleeping. I was having trouble swallowing and due to a Barium Swallow test it was found that my wind pipe was not closing correctly, causing me to choke on my food.

My husband and I decided at this point to quit smoking and we went to our doctor for a quit smoking aid called Chantix. We did quit smoking for three months, but I became suicidal. One weekend in August, my husband took the five boys to Six Flags and I stayed home alone. I knew no one would be by the house while they were gone. That night, I had myself set up to sleep on the couch, where I always slept at this point, with my medications on the table beside me. I figured I could go to sleep and never wake up. I was all settled in when one thought came to me. I would die on my son’s birthday and my two sons would be the first two to probably walk into the living room when they came home.

At that point I decided it would have to be another time, somewhere away from home. The time gave me a chance. I had been telling my psychiatrist that I was depressed, but he just said it was because I quit smoking and I would stay that way for a year. I knew I wouldn’t make it a year, but I did not tell him that. Now though, I decided to make a switch in doctors and the day I walked into my new doctor’s office he changed every medication I was on. He looked at my list and the first thing he said was that I would not be taking Ritalin anymore. I didn’t move in my seat. I thought if I protested he would know I was abusing it. The drastic change in medications saved my life. Within days, I was no longer suicidal, nor was I having thoughts.

It was during this time that I remember a conversation between my ex-husband and one of my step sons. He was saying to my ex-husband, “You say she is miserable in the morning, but it is you I hear yelling at her everyday.”

Within a month of that conversation, my stepson was out of my life with no explanation other that my ex-husband telling me that he was angry at me. I was devastated and lost 27 pounds in a week. Six months later one of my other step sons and his wife and baby where out of our lives again, with no understanding by me of why.

During the Spring of 2008, my husband and I started to smoke Marijuana. We smoked a few times over a period of six months and then my husband stopped. I went on to smoke another six months before my husband realized and we then went back to the program of A.A. We originally met there when I was three weeks sober, May 25th of 1996. We had not abused alcohol or drugs since then and saw Marijuana as a relapse. The twelve steps of A.A. can be applied to more addictions than just alcohol and we both knew that.

This started a new period of our lives. More losses and a new way of life through the steps. To be continued…

---

Guest Writer: Trae from (TripleClicka.com). I’m honored to have Trae who’s been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, participate, help spread mental health awareness and blur out stigma by sharing her story, here on Mental Health Friday. She’d be back in two weeks with another insight
P.S, her blog link is above, let’s spread some love :). IMAGE CREDIT: HealthyPlace.com

If you’d love to contribute and share your story on Mental health Friday, I’ld love to have you. You can contact me on My email address is: mykahani@yahoo.com . For more information, visit this post.

Poem- Richard Cory

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
                   By- Edwin Arlington Robinson

April A-Z challenge is over even though I am three letters (x,y,z) behind which I will get back to. I’m back to my usual Unalphabetic blogging. The above poem by Edwin A. Robinson is my favorite ballad poem. The first day I read it, it struck a chord with me. I even copied it down and pasted the poem on my wall- that’s how much I love it.

It is sad how we keep extending our gaze to the possession of others and we think that they have everything going for them- all glitters and gold, but that’s not the reality. Some truths aren’t written on the collar of clothes and some battles aren’t matched with the wealth a person owns. Richard Cory shows the story of a man who was envied by all when in reality he was just a tormented being. Looks aren’t everything and wealth doesn’t guarantee peace. 

This is one of those poems that “got to me”. If you know of another Ballad, please feel free to share. Have you read this poem before?