About The Blogger (ME)

It has been about 5 years or so since I have had a blog of this theme. I will be posting on this blog about my mental health issues that I live with on a daily basis and as well as any general happenings in my life.

Now to start this blog post off with something about me:

I was born and raised in the City of Toronto and for the most part up to I was at least 12/13 years old, my mother was a single parent, raising three girls pretty much on her own. I had a father 'yes' and he stuck around until I was about 9 years old and then he went back to his own native land of 'Denmark'. We ended up following him for a few years, unfortunately it did not work out much longer than that.

When I was about 12 years old, I was not a very happy child and had difficult time expressing myself around that time and even for many years before. My mother had no choice but to seek out some support for me and for the family with me. It was this time, that I was first diagnosed with a mental illness and then I was admitted into a residence for people with mental illnesses and stayed there for a few years, to be moved to a group home for girls/young women and lived there for just over a year.  It was tough to say the least not living at home and I understand that my mother did the best that she could for me and also for the family as for coping with my challenges in life. There were moments that I felt rejected, but it was not until later in life that I realized that what I was feeling was my own perspective of things.

When I was 18 years old I ended up on my own, my mother had found a flat for me. I had managed to find myself a good GP. It was he and a psychiatrist that I had been referred to at the time, that officially diagnosed me with 'manic depressive disorder'. The doctors tried to get me on medication and tried to get me to cooperate with staying on medication to help stabilize me. However, being the stubborn person I was at that time, every time things seemed to be going okay, I would stop the medications. I had allot of highs and lows and yes even moments of self-injury. I was hospitalized many times and even the doctors in these facilities could not get me to stay on medications.

I have had difficult time making and keeping friends most of my life and relationships were not working out for me either a lot of my life. I had been in and our of relationships, have often had a difficult time recognizing what was real in a relationship and not. I guess you can say that a lot of my life, I went into a relationship to feel wanted, to feel loved. For many years, it took being in relationships that were abusive both mentally, emotionally and physically and it is only in the past 15 years that I took more control of the kinds of relationships that I entered into.  I did not start to have difficulty in my relationships and friendships until I became open about having a mental illness. It is then that people used my mental illness to their advantage and would attack me mentally and emotionally when I was at my most vulnerable and as for the physical abuse, I believe that happened because these abusers did not feel that I deserve to have any better treatment than I was getting.

I was then re-diagnosed for my mental illness again in 1998 and at that time it was through a Psychiatric hospital in my region that I ended up spending 3 months in after a major breakdown and then I was diagnosed as Bipolar Disorder II and then in the past 6 years Bipolar I.

To this very day I still have to live and tolerate the stigma of having a mental illness, but I have learned in the past 15 years or so that it is okay to say aloud, 'No it is NOT okay to judge me for having a mental illness!' I then have learned to not let it concern me if I ended up losing friendships and/or relationships for standing up to people like this.  The year 1998 is the year that I finally took 101% control of my life and have remained on medications ever since and it has made a world of difference in how I function.

Stand up to people that stigmatize people with mental illness and instead take the initiative to raise awareness of all kinds of mental illness!