Writing Is What Keeps Me Alive.
Sharing Your Story #5
The following post is part of Listen Louder’s Join The Conversation - a platform for individuals to safely share their experience with Mental Health online. Please remember everyone’s story is just that, their own. With that in mind, when interacting with content please be mindful with your response.
I was 14 years old when my life turned upside down: I was diagnosed with bipolar 2. They didn’t know what was wrong with me, why I was so violent with my family but so sweet with my friends. The bipolar diagnosis was a shock because I had no idea what it entailed. Are you sure it wasn’t just my teenage hormones? I didn’t know anyone who was bipolar nor would I ever think that’s what I had. I had an adult diagnoses given to me and I was very much alone in the sense that every kid in the hospital when I was there had depression or anxiety. I didn’t know what to do. So I just went day by day, fighting with the counselors and my parents, and stayed within myself during that time.
During every hospital visit from when I was 13 to 22, I always kept the worksheets we did in group, when other people would just toss them. I would hang them in my room at home or I would prop them up on my desk when I was in inpatient. I realized later on it was because I loved writing. I loved filling out dumb work book sheets with my messy scribble because I really enjoyed my answers. Even though we were writing about things that (at the time) I didn’t care about, it was a healthy release for me.
When I got alittle older, I started a mental health blog to share with everyone how I was and what my journey with mental illness was like. My story was a little unique and unknown to some: I had 16 electroconvulsive treatments done to my brain. Which means, in non-medical terms, that I had my brain shocked 16 seperate times in order for my brain chemicals to mix around and make me happier than I was. I wrote my whole process on my old blog and it intrigued so many people, not only my experience, but my way of writing.
Fast forward to when I was 24 years old. I shut down my mental health blog because I decided to turn it into a book. An autobiography. It took some time to put together but now at my current age (26 years old), I have my book self published and I’m so happy with it. The first part of the book is about my adventure with mental health and how bipolar really affected me. It tells of how my memory was lost because of those shock treatments and so much more about my life. The second part of my book tells about the happier times as essay chapters; each chapter is something different about my life.
My favorite part of writing my book was the mental release I got from it. Just like when I post on my new blog (which is so much more positive and happier than my first blog), I feel like I can express myself and not dwell on a bad mental health day I was having or I get lost in writing a post that distracts me from time flying by. Even when I was in art school, I never really created pictures, I created word art. All my pieces had words on them. I always got A’s in English classes. But now that I’m out of college and into the real world, writing is still what I turn to on my day off of work.
Writing is what keeps me alive.
- Megan Hubrex
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