The Rivers & Lakes Inside My Mind

Chapter 0: The Fantasy

Growing up, I thought that I was perfectly fine. I thought that I had quirks, but I was physically fine. I've only had surgery once (when I was five), and I rarely got sick aside from the occasional stomach bug and cold. I thought having seasonal allergies made me more immune to the other common sicknesses. That was my logic. I had loving parents, two loving sisters, many friends, and I was en route to become a red-carpet superstar. I was on top of the world, and I continued to feel that way for a while. In school, I made people laugh. When I started working, I made people smile. Nothing seemed particularly wrong. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was living in a bubble.

I also want to state that yes, I did have really rough days and I cried and I can seem pretentious by saying everything was fine, but by saying this, I mean that I never looked internally for answers. Anything that kept me up late at night or something that caused my lack of sleep would be deemed as "outside noise" or something I ate. Any voices I heard in my room late at night would be labelled as the TV in the other room or a vivid memory I'd have. I never took any obvious signs of mental disorders seriously. The fault was always on the outside world around me. I am fine, there's nothing wrong with me, I would often think. I mean, I never even had the flu! I was wrong. For a long time, I was very wrong. So, naturally, when I woke up from this illusion, it was brutal. That's kind of what this story is about. I want to talk about this illusion I had, and I want to try and articulate what really has been happening with my brain. Maybe if I start writing about the raw and gross traffic that travels at light speed inside my enigmatic brain, I might be able to find some answers... or, at least, understand myself.

It may not come to a shock if I told you that I didn't realize what's really going on in my brain in one day. This has been a long, gruesome and emotional process, and it's not even over yet. Not even close. I had my first anxiety attack that I can recall in summer of 2019. My first panic attack happened the next fall. This was years before I was diagnosed with anything, and had never thought of therapy. Then in the summer of 2020, I bit the bullet and scheduled my first session. Another year and a half later, I get referred to take some psyche tests. This process is still ongoing. As I'm writing this (Christmas Eve 2021), I am awaiting test results and there is still a lot of work that needs to be done, so hopefully you can join me on this journey.

It's a little hard to know where to begin, and I can't fabricate an appropriate way to say "let's start at the beginning", because it will put me at a decision whether I start in the beginning beginning, i.e. the entirety of my childhood, or, I have to start where I first started unravelling the web of my mind. Maybe it makes more sense for you to learn and realize my mind as I realize it.