Internal chaos part 1

I know you’re all expecting a continuation of where I left off. However, May was Mental Health Awareness Month, and I felt this was a good time to touch on my own mental health. I know we are a few weeks late, but this post has taken some time to write and then rewrite.

To my family, close friends, or individuals who struggle with reading about mental health, depression, anxiety, suicide, and suicidal ideation, the next two posts may be ones you should skip over.

I rewrote this because the original version seemed too raw to post. Even now, in a space I dedicated to being fully transparent, I struggle not to sugarcoat my reality to spare others from feeling discomfort. However, the reality I promise is and was much more uncomfortable to live through and something I was not shielded from nor warned about. If you are too uncomfortable to hear someone else’s discomfort, imagine what that reality must be like for them. Sparing others the dark details has actually been one of the most detrimental parts of my mental health journey.

Surviving came with its own set of duties and responsibilities, both a blessing and a burden. I did it to myself really, posting that first TikTok back in the hospital. At the time, I didn’t realize what it would become. I did it to pass the time, make people laugh, and somewhere along the way, I became a beacon of hope, positivity, and resilience on a global scale, which will never cease to shock and humble me. Once you’re a beacon of light for someone else, it makes it hard to tell them how dark it gets for you.

The world fell in love with my humor and positivity while I cried myself to sleep, stayed awake for days on end to avoid the nightmares; little did they know that depression almost won a few times. This entire situation showed me how fake social media can be. While I touch on my mental health online and genuinely only put out authentic content, I also know you can’t talk too much about it online because the ridicule and stigma that follow are crazy. Because it’s only “okay to not be okay” as long as it’s not too deep or dark.

What would the world think if they knew how dark it really got? Would I be less inspiring to those who need it? Would I still be a role model, a good advocate, a good source of entertainment for those who need a laugh? Once you know your story is changing the lives of others for the better, it makes it hard not to think like that. That you always have to be “on,” so to speak. There isn’t time to talk about your crippling depression and anxiety when half a million people are waiting to laugh at your latest crazy video or when people are waiting to interview you for being so positive through an impossible situation.

While this makes it sound like my positivity was or is fake, that isn’t the case. I genuinely am and try to be a positive person and always show my gratitude, even for the small things. My earliest memory of waking up after the accident was, “Okay, this was real, but I still know who I am, they can understand what I am saying, and I maintained my own respirations without needing the ventilator last night. I am so grateful, thank you.” I just said thank you every day I was able to do more. Like if I showed God or the universe how grateful I was for the small things, maybe they would keep sending me more miracles. My positive outlook really kept me afloat early on and truthfully even now, despite the mental health struggles I’ve battled and continue to battle.

I have been wacky and goofy my whole life, so those parts came naturally. Early on, it was so easy to be positive and hopeful when I was given such a positive prognosis. It made it easy to joke about a broken body that was supposed to heal, about a rough situation that was only supposed to be rough for a little while. It made it easy to joke about peeing my pants, needing to be changed, and needing 50 different medical devices daily to live my life because it was all supposed to be temporary. Even then, there were hard days, days filled with frustrations and stress about the unknown, but again, it was only supposed to be frustrating and stressful for a little while.

Months and months passed, and despite daily physiotherapy that left me so exhausted I couldn’t even feed myself some days, or in so much pain even narcotics wouldn’t take the edge off, there were so many times I wanted to give up, and my body was, but I kept pushing. I worked so hard for the recovery I was promised… only it never came.

It was around the one-year mark after the accident when my mental health really started taking a turn for the worse. I had done so much work to return to my life and fought so hard, and it got me nowhere. I felt like I was failing and letting down my family, friends, and community as they all watched and supported me. I’ve never been good at failing things, and no matter how hard I tried, it just wasn’t getting better.

I was effectively a prisoner in my home, with no way to physically leave by myself, as my house is not accessible. My insurance has been one of the biggest, if not the leading, factors in the demise of my mental health, which will make more sense once I divulge their failures and negligence. They are the only insurance available to me where I live. It’s no-fault, meaning the man who caused my accident walked away and could not be sued. I paid my insurance to protect and support me should the unthinkable ever happen on the road, and when it did, we thought I’d have the resources I’d need to live a functional life. Well, we were wildly mistaken.

When the outlook of my prognosis started changing, and I was kept a prisoner in my home physically and mentally from crippling PTSD, feeling like a failure, hating my body, and what was slowly becoming my new reality, the first wave of depression set in.

I have always been a very outgoing person, very social, loved volunteering, being with friends and family. I loved my job and being surrounded by people daily. The day of the accident all of that went away. Covid did not help, but it was only about 4.5 months after I was home when people could come over, only they seldom did, if ever. My parents were obviously here all the time to help; it wasn’t just Ryan and me, but you know it’s bad when I looked forward to homecare visits so I had someone new to talk to. I knew people were terrified to get me sick in the state I was in, so again I do not fault them, but it didn’t help the boredom or Isolation.

A loneliness that I never knew before fell over me. Watching as my friends would go on adventures, have girls’ days, get-togethers, and parties while I sat alone in my house. Did I expect everyone’s lives to stop because mine did? No, absolutely not! But to still be included or even invited would have made the world of difference, even if I couldn’t go.

I have terrible FOMO as it is, so to watch that unfold was like a dagger in my chest each time. It got to the point that when people would come over, I’d thank them profusely for coming and taking time for me. Like if I thanked them enough, they’d see how grateful I was, and maybe they’d come back again sooner. To this day, I still thank people for inviting me out or coming over. It became a trauma response to the loneliness. The longer you are out of sight, the easier it becomes to be out of mind as well.

To them, it probably didn’t feel different at all because before this I was away in another province for school for years, or away during the summer for work to pay for school, so my absence became normal to everyone. I don’t fault them at all for not missing me the way I missed them. I know I also just missed the lives they were living and the fun they were having, knowing I’d likely never be able to do half those things again.

Your mind can play the dirtiest of tricks on you, and anxiety will feed you lies like nothing else before. My anxiety was a vicious monster and would tell me I was a burden to hang out with, I was too much to manage or handle, and needed too many accommodations, and that’s why no one wanted to hang out. My anxiety made me think people forgot about me and didn’t like me anymore because my life was too much of a Debbie Downer to be around. If you are a person who hates being disliked, forgotten, or gets raging anxiety thinking people are mad at you, then you know how crippling that anxiety can get.

That’s when I knew I couldn’t tell people what I was really feeling anymore. I couldn’t let them know how bad it was really getting in my head, because it would just give them more reasons not to want to be around me (the anxiety monster told me that). That’s when my dark humor and jokes really revved up. Like if everyone could see I could make jokes about my shitty life, being “crippled,” and make fun of myself enough, they would see I’m still the same goofy me. That I wasn’t a burden to be around because if I can make jokes about this, then so could they, and even if I was the butt of the jokes, at least I was still included.

Or I’d try so, so hard to “look” or act “normal” in front of them and push my body to do things I couldn’t really do yet, wasn’t supposed to or weren’t safe to do yet, to try and prove I wasn’t disabled, just recovering. (There is NOTHING wrong being disabled, just my anxiety monster told me it was a limiting factor in why I was still so lonely) There would be days after visits where I couldn’t move, and Ryan would have to give me a bed-bath and help feed me because my body just didn’t have the strength to do anything after, or I’d be in crippling pain which debilitated me all the same.

I became so good at telling people I was fine, that things could be crappy, but I was getting through it like always. That yeah, what happened sucked, but I’m still here and making the best of it! I became so good at masking and pretending to be “fine” that when I started really not being fine, and there would be moments I would slip and it would show, no one knew how to handle it or what to say. I got told a lot that “I was strong and could get through it.” People thought I was much stronger than I was because I displayed a strong, can-handle-anything attitude daily. This further perpetuated the idea that I couldn’t let people know I am not okay.

I had been putting all the energy I had into my social media to distract myself from the reality of my new life. It became an addiction, making others laugh, feel good, and being the joy in someone else’s day. Like even if there wasn’t much in mine, I got to feel something knowing someone else got to laugh because of me. When other people would tell me their stories and how much my humor helped them through their tough times, it made my own not seem so bad too.

The thing is, every funeral I have ever been to for someone who has committed suicide, the common theme is that “they were always the brightest in the room.” “Their laugh and smile filled every space they were in.” “They brought so much joy and love to those around them.” Knowing now, the reason they lit up every room and made others laugh and feel loved was because they were in places so low and dark, that they would do anything to make sure, even if only for the moment they were in that room, that others would not have to feel like they did.

My smile, though a beacon of light for others, became a dark cloud over me.

“If you have to sacrifice your voice to keep the peace, it’s no longer peaceful. You’re internalizing the chaos instead.”-Zara Bas

The internal chaos became a war zone, one I barely made it out of.

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