"In Waves" by Parris Swain
Mental health is a very serious topic that most people don’t acknowledge.
Whether you’re an outsider looking in or a person that struggles with it everyday, it
affects our society nowadays so heavily. It is nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed
about though, because just when you think you’re alone, there is always someone who
can relate.
I’m here to tell my story that I’ve kept in the dark recesses of my mind. I guess I
could start with saying my whole life I always wondered, “Why do I think these things?
Why can’t I just feel right?” I didn’t grow up in a bad neighborhood or with a bad family
or anything, so I often wondered, what is wrong with me? Why couldn’t I be like the
other kids? Why, no matter what I did, why was my brain punishing me? I never knew
that answer, but just ignored it until I got to my middle school and early high school
days. I was bullied for years just because I was different. I can recall numerous different
occasions where kids at my middle school would relentlessly say awful and nasty things
to me that sent me home crying. I hated myself, and I didn’t even know why. It was a
battle to walk through those doors at 7:30AM every morning knowing what waited for
me behind those tall, brown doors, hidden in a tall, disappointing brick building. I often
found myself trying to fight off these people, until I got to high school. The bullying
continued, but I had gone silent.
When I first walked down the hallways of the high school on my first day, it was
rejuvenating. New school, new faces, new energy, and a new me. I always found it so
funny that when you go quiet is when the world around you seems to get louder. As I
walked down the halls, I could hear people’s murmurs and giggles; however I did not
let this affect me too much. What my fellow classmates failed to realize was that their
words could no longer hurt me, for the biggest bully I’ve ever come up against was
already inside me.
I woke up everyday feeling like I wasn’t good enough, that I couldn’t do anything.
I’d often look around at people and think about their brains and their minds and just if
anyone else in this life thought like me. Why was my brain so different? How, without
even trying, did my brain have the ability to make me think and feel all these terrible
things? For so long I just wanted to be gone and stop feeling like I was messing
everything up. I didn’t want to die; I just wanted to disappear almost like I just never
existed. “Rock bottom,” I’d whisper to myself. I was wrong though, because just when
you think that you’ve reached your lowest point, there’s always lower: Hell.
I was now about to be a senior in high school at this point. It was summer
vacation, a break from all the hard times at school and just time to prepare myself for
my final year of high school. I remember it was a hot day in August; my mom had just
gotten home from a doctor’s appointment and looked drained. This was not like her;
she was always the one to light a room up. I knew something was wrong. She gave my
little sister and me one look and then called my dad.
“Uh-oh”, I thought. What could have possibly happened?
“I have cancer,” she said.
I never had the best relationship with my mom, but she was still someone that
always believed in me. I had spent the rest of that summer with her doing fun things as
she started her chemo. It inspired me to see her still wake up with a smile everyday and
just look at the world so positively still. I strived to be like her and still do. I remember we
had gone to my aunt's house to celebrate her 50th birthday in October. We all were
talking about her bucket list and what she wanted to do in the years to come. Some
weeks go by and we are still receiving bad news from doctors, but we all still tried to be
positive. After her 2nd long term stay in the hospital, they had told us that they were
going to put my mom in hospice. When she came home, it was almost like I couldn’t
recognize her. They had to drain fluid from her head twice due to how quickly the cancer
was spreading. She couldn’t speak, she couldn’t move, she could only squeeze our
hands ever so slightly and mumble. My sister and I always sat by her bed. We would
dance for her, talk to her, sing to her, and tell her stories. My dad would sit on the other
side of the bed and tell her how beautiful she still looked. A few days later, around
6:30AM, my dad bursts into my room, then my sister’s, and tells us that my mom’s chest
had risen and fallenl for the last time.
I had never felt so taken over by darkness in my life. My light was gone. I had
missed so many days of my senior year because nothing mattered to me at this point.
The pandemic around this time didn’t help either. I was just stuck in my room doing my
online classes. My mind was still at its tricks though. “Why didn’t you have a better
relationship with her when you could? Why didn’t you just stay by her bed? Why was it
her and not you?” I was completely spiraling. Graduation didn’t even feel exciting for
me. I thought, “How can I feel happy right now?”
I was stuck in this sort of funk for so long after I graduated high school. Nothing
mattered to me; I just did whatever I could to distract myself. I’d run away from home, or
whenever I was home I’d never leave my room. I was hanging out with the wrong
crowds, stopped taking care of myself, and couldn’t feel anything. I was just numb. I
kept running from my own mind. I didn’t want to process feelings whatsoever until a cold
day in the fall came. November 19th, 2023: my mind was the loudest it's ever been. It’s
almost as if my brain had overheated. With the freezing wind making my tears ice cold, I
put one foot out into the busy street and I whispered to myself, “I’m done.” The stoplight
had turned red. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or angry. I kept walking aimlessly down the
sidewalk in tears until this lady at a CVS nearby stopped me. “You alright honey?” she
asked me. I couldn’t even compose my words at this point. She had told me she’d wait
with me until someone picked me up, but I then realized I had no one to pick me up or
talk to about what was going on. Part of the reason why I hated myself to be honest, I
felt like I was poison. My self-destructive behavior caused me to wreck and or burn so
many bridges. I picked up my phone and called the last place I knew to call, my last
option, the Suicide Hotline.
Before I knew it I was in an ambulance on my way to a mental facility not too far
away from where I was. I remember my first day there; I was terrified and embarrassed.
I just kept thinking what if these people bully me too? They didn’t though, because they
were just like me. Outcasts, misfits, wallflowers, but that’s what made us all bond in the
end, how we felt and how we saw the world. Everyone was just a wolf in sheep's
clothing to us because how can you trust other people when you can’t even trust
yourself?
When I got out, I know people may think I was excited, but the truth was, I was
petrified. I was completely rewired at this point and just cut off from the outside world. All
I knew was vitals, food, meds, more food, more meds, then sleep. The outside felt so
cold and betraying. I was excited to go home and make things right with my sister and
dad again though. It was hard to get back into the groove of everyday life again. I felt
like I couldn’t do anything right but I had to get my life on track. My dad and my sister
helped me so much but what really turned my head around was the thought of my mom.
She wouldn’t want this life for me. My mom would want me to go on with life, the life she
gave me, not end it abruptly. I thought about how even when she heard some of the
worst news someone could hear, she still smiled and kept going, so I was inspired to do
the same.
I am now proud to say that I am here at 21 years old telling my story. I am now a
college student, have a relationship with my dad that’s stronger than ever, and I haven’t
self-harmed in a year. I’m happy to say that I gave life another chance, and I reinvented
myself and I now love myself, for the first time in my whole life. I won’t lie; it still gets
hard sometimes. I still have bad days, but I just tell myself it’s ok to have a bad day and
feel things. I believe that part of healing is giving yourself that time to just be upset, but
it’s not ok when you keep everything bottled in and let yourself become your mental
illness. You are so much more than the negative things your brain may tell you. Starting
my healing journey was the best decision I ever made for myself. It takes a lot of
strength and hard work to steer yourself out of the storm when you’re out there on the
ocean, but once you get to the calmer waters your boat becomes a lot easier to steer.
