Healthy Mind, Healthy Body & Soul

A little more than a year ago. I decided to take steps I needed to survive and fly out of state with the hope that someone could help me. Luckily I found a place and my risky and quick decision ended up being a crucial and monumental part of my recovery process.

As a child, I was diagnosed with Depression and Anxiety. As the years have passed, I have expereinced trauma and delevoped a lifestyle recoccuring around all of these events and symptoms. It has been a very hard upbringing. From age 16 to 19 I was in treatment. The majority of that was really just hopistal stays and not beneficial to much more. I missed out on a lot of my childhood and relationships due to hospitalization.

With continous ideas of diagnosis, the labels kept coming: Eating Disorder NOS, Childhood PTSD, Boderline Personality Disorder. It came to a point where I felt like I was no more than these issues. Mental illness had me. I've gone through very dark stages of my life and found it hard to find means of continously fighting.

Last year, when I found out I was going to be an aunt, I decided I needed to find a way to be a better person. I truthfully believed I was just a "crazy" or bad person because I couldn't get a hold on these issues that were and still are in my brain.

I researched online, (of course I emailed Oprah and Ellen) and after weeks of deteriorating mentally I found a place called Timberline Knolls in Illinois. Mainly, I found it through reading about Demi Lovato and her struggles of similar expereinces. With not much expected, I called the treatment center. They were so easy going and went against all the stigmas that surround these huge named centers. I worked for weeks getting in touch with my insurance company and the treatment center (TK). It was agonizing and mentally draining. But I got approved to go. And it felt like a miracle.

Timberline Knolls saved my life or, in a better sense, restrarted it. There I was able to gain control of my eating disorder behaviors and understand the ideas that most people don't discover when they hear about self-harm and mental illness. I was feeling better, a lot better. I felt connected to the universe again, and it was a beautiful but very, very hard experience.

After almost two months there in what had become my sanctuary of learning and safety, my insurance company cut off my finances and I could not financially be accountable for any more time there. So, I had to leave. The great thing about it was I left in such a positive mind set. I felt that I was able to continue my life back at home. Maybe it was also fate, because soon enough I was home and my nephew Mason was born.

However, the thing about mental illness is it doesn't go away and, the longer it is avoided, the worse the symptoms get. Some brains are wired differently and some people get diseases that are visual and others get ones that are not.

This year, I began my college experience finally after years of uncertainty of whether or not I was able to do it. When I started college, I went in determined not to tell a single soul about the problems I still battled. I even wanted to use a different name.

However, the ability to share and find comfort in my friends has been a wonderful perspective shift of being vulnerable and sharing my story. The first semester was tough, and I didn't have supports for these things. But I succeeded, a few points away from Dean's List.

This past semester has been too difficult to manage, due to a now physical problem that put emphasis on my emotional problems. It took convincing, but I realized I needed to get better before I can try to do anything else.

I am writing all of this because I genuinely want to feel recovered and live a life worth living. To wake up everyday and feel emotional pain or to go to sleep every night and have nightmares and to have so much anxiety and thoughts that continue to remain there make me feel like I don't deserve to live. It is tough and not the way I want to continue my life. I want to succeed, laugh for no reason, be persistent and then help others succeed. But it has to start somewhere, and I think it could really begin with returning to Timberline Knolls for more treatment and a longer stay.

I'm hoping by this, I will have the chance to work longer in recovery and be able to process things in a more timely and effective manor. I'm aiming for a healthy mind, body and spirit.

If you got to the bottom of this, thank you so much for reading. And welcome to my personal journey. If you want to, please donate. If not, please take time and learn more about mental illness for the sake of world.

Thank you.
Tisza