Third grade, new school, same story. At nine years old I was already familiar with the mood questionnaires and mindfulness advice that came from every one of the therapists I went to. I’d been struggling with anxiety, ocd, and depression for a year. I was too young to know about the sitgma, that circled it and I wished I could’ve kept it that way because of what the stigma would do to me later, and how I would come to understand how tremendous it really was. There was always some kind of racket whether it be a ringing phone at the  scheduling desk or whispers between people in the waiting room. Back then, that noise meant nothing to me. I took it all for granted, and not once did it occur to me that I was somehow isolated from the rest of the world because back then, I wasn’t. All I knew was that, when December came around my life would change forever, when I wrote a short story for school about the people who lived in a snow globe. I sat in a brittle, rocking chair, my teacher standing behind me as she read my story as an example for the class. It was then I knew I would be a writer. It was then I knew that I could be somebody, and I would. So, my dreams began and after four years I was truly a new person. I was a romance writing, dreaming, thirteen year old, who had a revelation in which I fled from the darkness for good. Waiting for me, was in turn, the only sunlight I’d ever seen. It was heavenly, almost, and it changed my life forever. Still, there loomed a threat that would do just the same. I can’t tell you running from my shadow served me well, because it didn’t. All I can tell you is that the only reason there even was a shadow was because of the steetlamp overhead. Had it gone out, I might’ve realized I didn’t have to fear myself. But the misconceptions were too wide and the ostrasism was too tall. The stigma was the worst part of it all. I spent nights on my phone, reading articles I shouldn’t have been. It was either about how people with mental illness were just attention seekers or how it was all in thier heads and anyone could just snap out of it. For me, it came on gradually. First, it was just hearing noises in the background at school. Then, they became voices. Soon, I was seeing people all day long. I started to believe things nobody else seemed to take my word for. By December, I was out of school. There was a sudden influx of doctor’s and Therapist’s appointments; Conversation after conversation was exchanged when I wasn’t in the room or I was talked about as if. After a while, I just got used to it. I was too exhausted to feel tired anymore. They all said the same thing, anyway. I didn’t need to come in order to know that. I sat in their offices and just dared them to use the two words I’d come to despise. To them, I was either hallucinating or delusional. It was bad enough, nobody believed me when I told them it was all real. But I started to feel even more alone. I felt like the world, and it’s stigma was right in front of me. I was embarrassed to talk about what was happening to me, and because of that, sometimes I didn’t. I worried about what the providers would think of me, and if they thought I was the freak I felt like. The freak that the articles online said I was. It was a difficult experience made harder by the expectations of society. If I was supposed to snap out of it and collect my thoughts, why couldn’t I? If it was all so fake, why was my life beginning to be in danger? It was either seeing blue spots one minute, eyeballs on the sidewalk, or grass where a wood floor was. If it was all trivial, why did I feel like I was dying on the inside? Why were my friends asking me where I'd gone? If I could snap out of it, why was my life in danger? Finally, it was my psychiatrist who suggested that we go to the hospital. I was locked in that hospital like I was locked out of reality. I spent nine days and ten nights there, crying on the phone to my parents whom I loved my whole life. They were the same parents I’d felt guilty for letting down, because of what I knew. They told me to keep fighting, to get up tomorrow just to eat breakfast,  and I wanted to yell. I was sick of hearing about how I was supposed to fight, when all I could think about was the many soliders that died doing just that. War wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t something you always won. I questioned the reality of my struggle, thinking maybe I was just too attention seeking to snap out of it. Maybe because nobody could tell us what the diagnosis was yet, that I was making it alll up. I worried about what must be wrong with me, if no one could figure it out. I could never be a writer if they told me I had an official “mental illness” What if I didn’t want their labels and worse, the stigma that came with them? What if I was scared to get chained to a word I had to drag around like an iron ball? I peered out the window of my hospital room every day and looked down on the people outside. I didn’t know what they’d think of me if they knew about the last two months, and I didn’t want to know. How could anyone like myself ever be a writer? Anyone so confused by reality? I was “mentally ill”, as they put it. For some reason, it felt like the term mocked me. I wasn’t sick. If I was, I would be throwing up and passing out. So, yes I’ll hand it to the people out thier who don’t believe mental illness exists, because for me at least, it wasn’t like that. I was scared, broken, confused, angry, guilty, and tortured. But no. I was not sick. I was afraid of a diagnosis, and of people finding out, and of this being the rest of my life. Living with mental health issues is painful enough as it is. Anybody who deals with them, knows what I mean. If fifty percent of the adult population struggles with mental health, why is the scientific evidence proving it’s existence still minimized and misunderstood? I’ll say it once. I should not have to wonder whether or not I’m loved by the family I adore  because of a struggle I have little to no control over. Nor should I be forced to worry about explaining to my friends where I’ve been, and I defintely should not have to fear what name my symptoms are assigned. Since leaving the psychiatric hospital I’ve dealt with self doubt surrounding my dreams of being a writer, because of embarrassment for being thier but today I am here to conquer that, and settle this once and for all. There are more opinions in the world than there are living organisms, but in the end, I am just as scared of the world as some of those out there in it,  may be of me. Now, when I wait for therapy in a white walled waiting room, it’s only ever my mom and I, but yet, it’s still so loud and hard to ignore. I took for granted the people’s voices before, because I knew they were actually there. But now it’s different. Sometimes, I’m not even in the waiting room. Sometimes, I don’t know where or who I am. I thought I was weak for needing to go to the hospital but I realized that everyone who’s ever been there or who will be, are in fact, not weak, but the strongest ones of all, because it doesn’t matter what the stigma says about us. Every day when I was in the hospital I prayed to god to help me, and I wondered every night why he left me here for another day. But little did I know that God answered my prayers four years ago, when he sat me down in that rocking chair and made me a writer. It’s been four months since this all began and almost two months since I was admitted to the hospital. I’m still awaiting a diagnosis, and pushing on. I write today, to encourage anyone else struggling to do the same. It’s not a weakness to fall to your knees bleeding. It’s a weakness to hide it and pretend  it doesn’t exist when it doesn’t. I’m not okay, yet, no, but because god answered my prayers I know that soon I will be. He gave me the gift of writing the world, the universe, and so much more. He gave me that gift because I was not born to feel inferior. I was not born to feel stigmatized and I was not born to be taught to fear myself. I don’t know how long I’ll struggle with this. Maybe another month, and maybe another decade, but this much I do know. My tears weren’t worth all the attention in the world. Not when all I wanted to do was go home. When, on the phone, through my sobs, I begged to. I was a scared, seventh grade, thirteen year old girl. It’s not fake that I regret wearing ripped jeans the day invisible demons come out to scratch me. When I have to wear gloves inside because of it. When I’m woken up at night by the tortuous people that try to sweet talk me.  When I’m standing on the edge of a cliff or in a shoe store. When the people I see force me to take a pill that they say will put me to sleep, and I wait in fear to find that luckily it only makes me dizzy. If it’s in my head please let me know. If I’m an attention seeker please let me know. If I can snap out of that let me know. But I can’t play mancala with my sister if I can’t see the board right, and it’s even harder to play the game of life when you think your blue car’s green, and the action card’s the pet card. It’s funny how the game of life played tricks on me then, and it does even now, after the board is put away. You look like a fumbling fool to the players around you but they aren’t seeing nor hearing what you are. But even still, I play. I turn the spinner and get across the confusing, changing, board and make it to the end. And when I do, when the game goes away, my sister still looks at me the same. She looks at me like I’m the person she knew her whole life. The hopeless romantic, who loves writing romance and after living in florida for the first seven years of my life, and still doesn’t know how to swim. I was the little sister with an obsession for dance moms and hoarding stuff. The one who changed her mind every day and never cleaned up her messy room. The one with thirteen american girl dolls, and who listens to soulful music that her older sister calls depressing. I am the younger sister who complains about everything and wears snow boots on a sunny forty degree day when it’s nearly spring. And at the end of the day, that’s who my family saw me as. That was me who had nothing to do with the mental health stigma. And at the end of the day for any of those suffering, you are not your mental health struggles, and no society, no terminology, no diagnosis, defines you. We were born to be legends. That and so much more.