Sunday, October 3, 2010

My Story: Suicidal

The story of my chronic health disorders, and why I no longer have them.








I've had four great upheavals in my perspective in my life thus far (as of January 2011, turning 22 on January 30th 2011).

The first major perspective upheaval I mentioned in part one; at the age of nine. I experienced the world becoming "real" in a sense. Almost like sobering up from a very long buzz.

The three other upheavals in my perspective happened at fourteen, seventeen and twenty-one.





At the age of fourteen an assortment of life-changing events occurred. The most prominent of these events was the house fire. While it didn't have a direct impact on my physical health, my emotional health was a wreck. While a good portion of my things were intact, much of my clothing and other possessions were destroyed by the water of the fire-hoses.

My parents opted to keep the house despite all the damage, which turned much of my life into an endless construction project. Seven years later my parents still live in that house, and there are still countless issues both functional and cosmetic leftover from unfinished projects that began after the fire.

And when I say it made my life into an "endless construction project," I really do mean that.

Social Ramifications

I was aware at that point in my life that many of my social issues stemmed from spending so much of my life being sick. While I was developing my creativity and learning how to keep myself occupied during the long hours alone in my bedroom, other children were developing friendships.

The lack of friends in my life made me passionately obsessed with finding love and continually disappointed. The lack of good health found me in sour spirits and quite depressed from the age of nine to fourteen. The house fire was like a final blow to my sanity, yet in many ways, it was a new beginning.

Driven by my reckless abandon, I started walking a lot more than ever before at fourteen. I was a sophomore that year, and the school I was attending was much closer to home than the school I had attended freshmen year. I rarely walked to school, but often I walked home. It was just enough to begin to build up some sort of stamina.

That year was the first in my life where I ever habitually walked seven blocks at a time. In the previous years, that same walk would have easily made me sick.

First Love

I believe that this change was brought about by two things. At the age of fourteen I was learning to avoid high fructose corn syrup, and also because I had discovered the power of romantic love. I was driven to become a better person for the boy I had fallen for, unlike the previous boyfriends who I had never reached a level beyond infatuation.

Sleep Disorder

After the fire, and falling fully in love for the first time, I spent each night talking with my first love in detail about anything and everything that came to mind. For a time, this caused me to sleep better and more easily than I had since before I was nine years old. Unfortunately, it wasn't a permanent fix, but only a five or six month reprieve from my difficulty falling asleep.

Social Distance From Peers

Between the new awareness brought on by love, and the realities I faced due to the fire, I grew even more distant from my peers.

Looking back on it, I don't think it was a bad thing at all. Teens should be striving to become successful, happy, healthy adults. They shouldn't be striving to impress each other.

Despite starting to gain a small level of stamina and a much higher level of awareness, that year was littered with strange health problems.

Extreme Fatigue

I was so severely fatigued for three months of that year that I came home from school and went to sleep and didn't get up until morning. I was getting over fourteen hours of sleep a night, and regardless of all other factors I was still tired during the day. It was like mono all over again except that my glands were not swollen, and my spleen didn't hurt.

What's strikes me as really odd is how often I couldn't sleep at night, but fell asleep so easily throughout the day. In this case, I was falling asleep directly out of school; sometimes immediately upon getting home, and sometimes within an hour of getting home after eating a snack, showering or whatever else I made myself do before giving in to sleep.

I have my theories about this, but at the time I was clueless as to the cause, so I'll leave this topic to rest once again until further along in this journey.





Dizziness

Often during this period of my life I was dizzy. Dizziness has always been something I have experienced in excess throughout my life, but generally only when standing up from sitting, getting out of bed, or otherwise trying to throw my body into motion after being still. While I was fourteen I started to experience it while standing in place or walking on a fairly regular basis.

Weight

I would not have been considered "obese" at any point in my life by general standards. But that doesn't mean I didn't have excess unattractive weight on my body. Here a couple of pictures I would not ever show anyone if it were not for the sake of the cause I'm writing this for now:





Notice the doubled chin. At the age of 14! That is not normal folks. I also think these two pictures show how unhappy I was. You can see it in my eyes.

Depression

One particular memory I have of this time period is thus:

I was standing in the hallway within the temporary apartment we lived in for the nine months following the attic fire. We couldn't live in our house while the construction went on daily, while the entire house smelled of smoke and rot, when all the wooden floors were warped and the drywall walls were crumbling.

My mother wasn't far from me, and I was trying to talk to her, but finding it difficult. Every time I tried to speak I felt a lump in my throat rise. I wasn't upset about anything in particular, but I felt like it took every part of my being not to collapse into tears.

Finally I stammered, "I don't know what's wrong with me. Lately I just feel like crying... All the time. I'm not even upset about anything... But I can't help but cry."

She looked me in the eyes with concern. "I can see that even now you look like you're going to cry."

I nodded. I remember how frustrated I felt in that moment, and also how embarrassed I felt to admit it. It felt shameful that I wanted to cry when there was nothing to cry about.

If you had asked me at the time if I was depressed, I would have said that I wasn't. Looking back throughout my life, I now know that I was depressed for much of it up until I was seventeen.

At the time of that particular incident I was so hormonally out of balance that I could have been prescribed a heavy-duty anti-depressant had I wanted one.

Yet I didn't want an anti-depressant. I knew even then that there had to be some other solution. Taking thirty pills a day couldn't be the answer. If ancient people and animals could live healthy lives without pills, then so could people. The question was, how?





My first love did a lot for me. He taught me to respect myself and a lot about self control. I learned that I could be valued by someone besides my parents. It was an enormous change in my perspective to get to know someone so deeply. We had no secrets from each other. We did not go to sleep at night until we had worked out our differences. Neither of us could sleep on an argument; it had to be resolved so that the next day we could start fresh.

Yet as mature as I was for my age, I wasn't yet capable of the responsibility that comes with a lifelong commitment. I made serious mistakes, and for those mistakes, my first love left me.

I was downright suicidal.

Yet, obviously I didn't let my morbid urges get the best of me: I'm still here to write this today. Over time I became even more determined to be the sort of person who would never get dumped. I would never be the one who got their heartbroken again. I would be the heart-breaker. That was the resolve I was left with. The resolve to become the best person I could be, the sort of person anyone would be a fool to leave.





October 4th, 2010
I edited and added to part one and part two yesterday and began part three. Today I've added quite a bit to this entry. Expect several more to come before I reach the end of the journey to my present day level of energy and health.

October 5th 2010
I've edited and added to part three, and am beginning part four now.

October 6th 2010
Added more information about several of the issues I faced at the age of fourteen.

January 28th 2011
Edited text for flow and readability. Added banners.

2 comments:

  1. This is quite interesting. Thanks for openly and honestly sharing your journey.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You're welcome. There is indeed more to come, but I've never tried to write it all out before. My aim is to cover every single health problem I used to have, and how each of them went away and what changes I made that brought about improvements. I didn't realize at first what a huge amount of writing it was going to take. It'll probably take several weeks to completely finish it. I hope my story helps motivate others to change and grow.

    ReplyDelete

What brings you here? What are you thoughts? Do you consider yourself a raw foodist? Approximately how much of your diet is raw? Do you consider yourself healthy? What would you like to see more of on this blog? Will you be back? Is this too many questions?