Contains topics of mental health, anxiety, and briefly mentions divorce.
Hello, all! First, I would like to say thank you so much for visiting my blog. I hope you will find reading as helpful as I find writing it. Before diving into the details of my life, I feel it is necessary to discuss this blog, its goals, its structure, and its topics. My idea to start “Mental Health- Unfiltered” actually stemmed from my aunt recommending that I start a blog after I posted one of my poems on Facebook. I thought about it for a few days before finally deciding to commit to it. This blog will be closely related to my diary. With that being said, this blog will contain some sensitive topics, such as depression, anxiety, panic disorder, and other topics related to mental health. On posts that may be more triggering than others, I will put a trigger warning at the beginning of the post. I fully intend to tag each post with the topics discussed so as to not accidentally trigger you in your own healing journey. Please also note that some of the posts will contain fake names that correlate to someone in my life in order to protect their privacy.
I wanted to introduce myself in a little bit more detail. (I encourage you to read my About Me page if you have not already!) Here are some fun facts about me: My family has four pets– two dogs and two cats– but one of those cats is mine. His name is Jack, and I will probably talk about him often in this blog because he is my favorite thing in the world. I love my family and friends with all my heart, and I love tattoos, animals, nature, flowers, and fairy lights if any of that tells you anything about me and my aesthetic. I am currently a college student studying English Education with a minor in Creative Writing. As you may be able to tell by now, English is my passion. I love writing, reading, analyzing texts, and basically anything else that has to do with English. However, writing will forever be one of my favorite things to do, hence this blog! One of my favorite writing genres is poetry. I absolutely adore poetry, and it will definitely be incorporated into my blog. Most poems will be my own, but others may be from various poets, especially if that poem fits the “theme” of the post.
As this post is more of an introductory piece, I will not dive into the details of my past, but I think it is important to give a little bit of an outline of my life and some of the most prominent things that have happened to or impacted me. So, here is a snapshot of my life:
When I was seven my parents got divorced, then my mom, brother, and I moved to an entirely different town with entirely different schools. According to my parents, I have always been an anxious kid, but it was at this time that my anxiety really started to affect my life.
There was a time in third grade when my mom wanted us to move to Florida, which, obviously my dad did not want. They ended up going to court over it, and my brother even gave a small testimony. Luckily, we stayed in Indiana, but that certainly caused some turmoil in the family.
Additionally, my mom started going back to school full-time, which eventually left my brother and me to essentially fend for ourselves, though I can not really complain because that allowed me to grow more independent. However, since my mom was a full-time college student again, we had very little money. We needed help from the government to buy groceries, all of my clothes were either from Goodwill or hand-me-downs from my brother, and my grandparents (who live in Florida) had to help my mom pay the bills.
As with most adolescents, my middle school and high school years continued to be difficult, but those are stories that I will tell later simply because I am not ready to face some of them yet. Yes, they were that bad. All of this is to say that life was– and is– not easy. Thankfully, through all of those hardships, I grew as a person, a daughter, a sister, and a friend. These difficult times ultimately allowed me to grow in ways I never thought possible. When I tell these stories, do not think that I am being hostile or hold any anger about (most of) these situations. I simply want to share my experiences, and hopefully, help others going through similar things. Life is all about lessons, and sometimes those lessons stem from incredibly difficult situations.
