One very important lesson I have learned during my course of therapy is that I am not crazy. I am not “disordered,” and there is no “chemical imbalance” in my brain. There are many reasons why I have acted “crazy” and felt hopeless, depressed, and suicidal. These reasons directly correlate with bad things that have happened to me throughout my life.

 My childhood was full of pain. The death of my mother when I was 6 years old, was the start of that pain. From that point on, my life just went downhill. I endured abuse of every kind. I was raised by a woman who hated me, and never failed to show it. I was molested when I was 9 years old by a family member. I was raped when I was 13 years old, by 2 strangers. After that, I searched high and low (sometimes really, really low) for someone to love me. I repeatedly put myself in extremely dangerous situations, involving such things as hitchhiking, running away from home and having sex with strangers, including grown men, some of whom were 50+ years old. I did drugs to try to numb myself, as this “search” for someone to love me didn’t quite pan out. When I was 17, I went into therapy, which I so desperately needed, but dropped out after a short time. It wasn’t that the therapy wasn’t helping, but at age 17, I thought I had more important and fun things to do. At 18, I had a baby boy, which was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me. I finally found that “someone to love me.” Then 3 months later, I lost my best friend in a tragic car accident when she was only 17 years old. She had a baby the same age as mine. We were going to raise our kids together. We used to joke about our babies having an “arranged marriage” someday far on down the road. Her 4 month old baby daughter was in that car accident with my friend, and she survived, only to become severely mentally handicapped. There were many other loved ones who passed away. Death, and obsessive thoughts of death surrounded me for my entire childhood, and still haunt my thoughts to this very day.

I am not writing all of this because I want sympathy, but rather because I need to express that the reasons why I have been so “messed up” have nothing to do with chemical imbalances in my brain. There is nothing “pathologically” wrong with my brain.