Recovery - Blog Posts

Tabitha and Tonio's Galactic wonderland

By:Patrice Alhambra (My friend)

"My mental illness makes me funny" is SUCH BULLSHIT. When I was deep in my mental illness, I was the most boring,tiring,self obsessed person ever. All I could think and focus on was my suffering, I didn't care about people around me, I pushed everyone who tried to help me away, and I literally cried and slept all day. You think I could have been fucking funny back then?! My humour comes from how much I enjoy life now that I can participate in it, how excited I am about every little new thing that I can try and how much beauty I find in human connections and making others laugh (This is not to demonise people who are still deep in their mental illness but I'm just so tired of the way mental health is treated and portrayed on the interent. It's not funny or quirky it's important shit)

Nobody ever tells you the uglier side of recovery. Especially when your mental illness is stacked on top of other issues than cannot be cured.

Take dental hygiene for example. Say you've been deeply depressed for years, to the point of not brushing your teeth. Add ADHD and autism to that, making it even harder.

After several years, I've entirely fucked my teeth. Now that it's just SLIGHTLY better, I could start working on dental hygiene... But what's the point? The damage is done. It's irreparable without major, expensive surgery, and at this point, I might as well get a whole new mouth.

I'm left wondering, "what the hell is the point?" And I start to regret the miniscule amount of progress I've made and the fact that I survived this long.

It's wild how abusers will normalize things and use different language to make it sound okay.

"spanking" instead of "hitting" or "beating" unless they're threatening you. Once it's over, you got *spanked" and not "beaten."

I've known for a while that my parents were physically abusive when I was growing up, but I was afraid to call what they did "beating" until recently. I had a conversation with someone I grew up with, and that's what she called it. I was dumbfounded for a second before I stopped and thought about it. Then, I felt validated and heard.