Not Your Toy, Not Your Victim.

The feeling of a deep suicidal ideation is difficult to escape, it’s a fog that settles over your mind in such a sickly-sweet way that the idea of clawing your way out sounds harder than just giving in. In that state, you are not able to see a world where you would be better off alive, just a world where you could disappear and everything would be a bit better.

It’s a painful place to exist, because while you can feel every negative emotion grating against you like a serrated blade, any form of happiness or joy is dampened by the fog.

I will not speak for everyone, as mental health is such a personal journey, and things like dissociation are a unique experience to the person in question. Because of that, please know that my thoughts here are mine alone, if you relate to them, I see you, and I feel for you.

Things can get better, it’s the hardest thing you may do in life, but I can promise you that it’s worth it.

I learned to dissociate as a small child. For a long time, my dissociation was done through reading. I was able to disconnect from my reality and any of the pain I felt by slipping into the story of a book and live in that world for a small time.

It’s partially why I hyperfocused on the Harry Potter novels, reading the first 5 books at least 10 times each. Yes, this is also a part of my ADHD and Autism, but this was something more.

My parents never worried, because I wasn’t being a menace, just reading constantly.

I was the child who hated being pulled from a book and made to go out, I was also the child who could spend hours pretending I was in the book and acting out what I imagined would happen if I were to jump in the story. Occasionally, this would lead to physical injuries.

Now I can see that this was a way to find peace in the midst of severe trauma, because a child’s mind, or at least my mind, was not able to comprehend that my father, who was my hero and protector, was also my consistent rapist.

This abuse caused my mind to change, as all trauma does, and I formed a dissociative wall between my memories of abuse and my conscious mind. Without even being aware, I put the abuse in a box and continued my life ignorant of the blank spots forming in my memories.

My teenage years showed the beginning of the negative effects of this consistent dissociation. Focusing during class, which was never easy, slowly became painful, and I began to make myself disappear amongst my peers.

I kept my two friends, but I struggled opening up, I had learned long ago that the best way to stay out of trouble was to conform and stay quiet, so that’s what I did. I worked so hard to stay unnoticed that even the bullies overlooked my existence.

I started to do worse in school, but I was still happy. I had to be happy even as I moved through the world like a physical specter, filling my role as the perfect daughter and church member.

Then came my religious mission, and the spider web of thin cracks that had begun to form on my ability to keep the role going widened.

I will go into my time on an LDS mission in another post but suffice it to say that this was a year of minimal down time, hard work, and uncomfortable moments.

It’s a situation that can easily lead to massive amounts of personal growth if done right, but to me? It’s when I first realized that I felt broken.

Things my companions could do easily took far more effort on my end, when I spoke to the people we were attempting to convert, my words just wouldn’t come out right. I truly hated trying to sell Jesus, partially because it felt so disingenuous, but more because everyone we tried to talk to was immediately irritated by us. Hell, I would have been irritated with us.

I stayed as present as possible, but it was also the beginning of me realizing just how isolated I had been in Idaho, both in terms of culture, and in thinking. Going to Michigan and seeing the people, spending time around those who were so different from those I was raised around, both ethnically and economically showed me a level of freedom I had never imagined.

These people were what my father would consider poor. They lived paycheck to paycheck, or did other things that would make them “less worthy” according to the standards I was raised with, and they weren’t miserable.

They laughed, they fell in love, they made dumb jokes, and they had families who loved them unconditionally.

I could not put a name to these emotions at the time, even if I really tried, I just knew I was absolutely fascinated by the people I met, and I loved watching their interactions.

Obviously, no one person is a monolith, so treating the entire world outside of Mormonism as being happy and free is incredibly wrong, but that is how it felt when I was watching it from the outside.

It truly didn’t help that missionaries were discouraged from having too many secular, or non-religious, conversations, so trying to connect with people based on similar interests was often met with a rebuke from whichever companion I was with at the time.

And then? I was back in Idaho.

I was still two years away from shattering all the beliefs and mindsets I was forced to maintain by my family and religion, but the cracks continued to grow, spreading across every aspect of my life.

I went to college, BYUI, thank you very much… Though I wouldn’t recommend taking my example here.

For those of you who don’t know, BYUI is a private Mormon College that offers incredibly low tuition in return for living a “righteous” life while attending. You had to keep your standards high enough that you were always able to enter the temple in order to maintain this low tuition.

(A temple is a holy building in Mormonism where only special and sacred ceremonies are preformed and only those who according to the standards of Mormonism are allowed to enter.)

This was a college where drinking and smoking was not allowed and it was encouraged to report women who wore shorts or a skirt that crept as high as mid-thigh to a professor.

I had never lived on my own before this, so what was I to do? I attended classes, I tried to do homework, and I wrote.

I found words in a time when it felt like my whole brain was shutting down, over the course of one college year I became more and more lethargic.

I stopped going to classes, even the ones I loved, and I began to lose any and all motivation to leave my bed.

But writing? It kept me alive.

This is when the suicidal ideation really began to rear its ugly head.

I understand I am rushing through my story, this is all happening over the course of several years, and I will be going into more detail in future posts, but this is important to know, because once I hit college, the dam broke.

It wasn’t the first time I had shattered in such a visible way, nor would it be the last, but this break stands out to me because it was the first time I had wrestled with my faith.

Writing the pain and fear I felt – but didn’t understand – helped. It allowed me to feel the emotions that would have been mocked if I brought them to my family.

As the days passed, I stopped going to Choir, I stopped doing anything besides sitting in bed, reading, and writing. I was barely alive at some points, but a single thought kept me going.

My death was not worth the pain it would bring my family.

In the past, my brother had been suicidal, there were times we thought he had gone out at night to end it, so I have vivid memories of sobbing on the kitchen floor, begging god to bring my brother home safely.

I saw how badly that had hurt my mom, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go through with taking the pills I would hold in my hands or using the knife I would find myself fixating on. I couldn’t do it.

Thank God.

I didn’t realize it then, but I still faced nearly another decade of this struggle, but this time I was learning to fight it. I had begun to do therapy. Most of that therapy was religiously driven and the constant inquiries of. “How’s your scripture reading going?” or, “I see you’re incredibly anxious, let’s pray now and ask for peace” about ended the whole thing.

And listen, if that’s your jam, go for it, find peace in Jesus and do your thing.

Personally, I’ve spent my life hearing platitudes of why we need to put Jesus first above ourselves, or that losing yourself in the service of god is how you find yourself. You can insert a great many scriptural life lessons here that I’ve often seen used as a method to dismiss valid distress, and shame those who are “lazy”. It’s unhelpful to me, so I don’t engage with it.

My relationship with the Mormon god was well and truly past any saving, even though I didn’t realize it.

I felt broken, but now I recognized that for what it was, it was mental distress. Where that distress what coming from was still a mystery, but I had spent my whole life caving in the moment I faced disagreement.

I destroyed my personality in order to keep the peace, and therapy was my way to push back, to learn to assert my boundaries and stop being the perfect daughter I had been until then.

It was painful and my relationship with my parents was damaged in a way that could never fully heal, but for once I tried to fight for myself. For once I stopped dismissing my own opinion the moment it was challenged.

This was the most difficult few years of my life, but this was the beginning of healing, and I will never let myself regret it.