When I was half-way through the year in Grade 6, my teachers, parents and I sat down to discuss my emotions. See, I’d been feeling sad a lot and I didn’t know why or how to deal with it. I mean, nothing was inherently wrong. I had a loving family, good grades, friends, and a strong passion for dancing, which I spent all my free-time training in. Sure, my 11-year old brain was beginning to grapple with the first set of changes we experience both in our physical and social lives – the oncoming puberty, moving to Junior High, the usual. But I didn’t understand why I was feeling so sad all the time, and I sure as heck didn’t want to feel sad anymore. This was, I now understand, one of the first of many encounters with borderline personality disorder in my life. As a youngster, however, I found my emotions were not taken so seriously. Depressed wasn’t the word to use to label an 11 year old – ‘Grade 6 blues’ was much more lighthearted and less alarming.
My struggle with mental health began to interweave itself into my life in a constant state of fluctuation like a bad ex-boyfriend who you just can’t get rid of. It’d always reappear just when I thought they’d gone again. I spent my junior high years trying to manage the turmoil of a mental health disorder you don’t have a way to name. Everyone’s response was the same – it’s just puberty, just the hormones, teenage hormones are insane, you’ll get over it. Yet, just like that ex-boyfriend, whether it was a fight with a friend, a failed test grade – I’d feel a surge of emotions washing over me like a tidal wave, followed by aching numbness. I did my best to hide it, especially when I moved schools. I was lonely, and wanted to make friends. I concluded that the beast living in my brain needed to be caged and sedated, I could never let him out. I began to find a way to cope with my feelings through dance. I turned to my music, and my movement, as a way to express what I was feeling inside. It felt good to throw my body and release the tension built up in my brain. After all, I still didn’t understand why I felt like this. I knew about depression but didn’t think I was ‘sad enough’ to be depressed.
As I moved into high school, my mental health became more pronounced after my family was hit with a particularly difficult bout of personal tragedy. By the end of my grade 10 year, I was hospitalized for suicidal ideation and spent two weeks in a youth mental health facility. My time was flanked by lots of Spiderman movies, grilled cheeses, and lonely nights. In my senior year, I began intense dialectical behavior therapy after my previous therapist had diagnosed me with adrenal fatigue, told me to quit dance, and transferred me to a different clinic. Losing dance, the one true form of expression I felt I had, was devastating to me. It felt like someone had chopped off both my arms. I was numb, helpless and floundering. My saving grace became the DBT skills I learned, and the poetry I would write in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep. However, I grieved the loss of my passion, and no matter what I tried, it felt like nothing could fill the void it left.
Recently, I have returned back to University after taking a year and a half off to try and cope with my mental health disorder. I have learned a lot of things, but the most important in my opinion is that mental health disorders unfortunately don’t ever fully go away, and this is okay. I’ve learned that life can still be beautiful, even when your mind is telling you it isn’t. I’ve taken up modelling as a way to meet people and build up my self esteem, and can say the process has been nothing short of beautiful. It’s taught me that beauty comes from imperfections, and that we all have our demons but that doesn’t make us less of a person. I’ve learnt the importance of a good support system, of trying new things (even though it can be scary) and the importance of a good cry every once in a while. And most importantly, I’ve learned to do what I love because life is too short to not. Since moving back, I’ve made a much stronger effort to get back into dancing.
"Nothing’s perfect, of course, but for now the light it brings into my life is enough to chase the dark away."
Megan
