Mental Health Inspiration

The Tears of My Youth   I remember my very first encounter with depression. I was only five years old. My mother hit me with the belt that day. I don’t even remember what I’d done. She just got so angry and started hitting me the belt. I was so incredibly sad. It wasn’t the pain of the whipping but the fact that she blew up at me and I upset her so much that she had to go to the extent of beating me. She’d never done that. I never thought she’d ever be capable of hurting me in such an awful way because she was always a good loving and nurturing mother. She was my mother and father as my father died while she was pregnant with me. She always had a warm meal and took me to school. She is a woman of faith. She is a strong Catholic and taught me all about God. How could she do this? I felt so much agony within me. I went and hid under the kitchen table. I stayed under it for hours until the late evening, pressing my knees to my chest sobbing loudly. “How could my mommy do ...

My First Time in Heaven   February 2, 1999   Losing my mind was a slow process until one day it took over rapidly. I went madly insane. My family became worried. By now my brother Junior was stable. He went back to work and was on medication. His acne was clearing up and now he was the one reaching out to me. One day he said we had to go somewhere. We didn’t say anything to each other all through the car ride. It was silent, yet so loud. Everything just kept getting louder and louder and my world was spinning. It was the silence of the night that became so loud in my head. It was all the traffic lights that blinded me. I leaned my head against the glass window and tried to find peace. We arrived at the glass house and walked in through the automatic glass doors. I noticed that there was a dining room to my left. It was dark but the bright light from the hallway gleamed into the dining room and I could see the white daisies that were in vases on each table. T...

When I saw Britney Spears on the news on a gurney with paramedics, sirens blaring, a team of policemen, two helicopters, chaos, and a lot of paparazzi and she was placed on a 5150 my heart was breaking and tears filled my eyes. I said to myself, “Oh my God! Even a pop princess can have a mental breakdown.” Suddenly, I started having flashbacks of all the times I was strapped down on a gurney being taken to a mental hospital. I could still hear the sirens in my head and feel my heart being torn apart at the thought that my beloved pop star was going through the horrors of psychosis and depression, all while being in the public eye. I had been feeling manically depressed for months and just couldn’t get out of the cycle. I had thought about putting myself voluntarily in a mental hospital, but the thought of my freedom being taken away terrified me. I went out to a night club with my friend Joel and then came home feeling unstable, thinking that maybe I shouldn’t have had the red bull...