It’s Okay to Not Be Okay

We all have our inner battles; mine just made it into the real world.

Trigger warning for mental illness and psychosis

People who are “going crazy” often have no idea they’re losing their grip on reality. Television and movies have a tendency to dramatize mental breakdowns, but they’re much more like a roller coaster, with upward turns and drastic downfalls, rather than a bomb exploding. When you think of someone “losing it,” you probably imagine a person who just “snaps.” And then bad things happen. The police get called. There may be casualties. Someone might be led away to sit in the back of a cop car before going to jail (or an asylum-like place, as we’re led to believe in a film like 2019’s Joker).

But that’s not how it happens. Or, at least, that’s not how it happened for me.

Every story may be different, but my battle with mental illness (which I rarely speak about in real life) was not a story made for Hollywood pitches and dramatic spins of filmmaking. If anything, it was like crashing and burning — but, unlike the phoenix, I did not emerge from the ashes all shiny and new.

My journey began on a chilly April day. My mother had just been taken off life support after suffering a series of strokes, and the only time I had cried was the moment I was…