I'm supposed to be at a small NYE party with friends (and I will be there shortly), but my brain has been nagging me for several days to show proper gratitude for the past decade. I love seeing the end-of-decade success and resilience stories on here. Here's mine... (thread)
My childhood abuse caught up to me in 2011 in a bad way. My coping strategy up to that point was denying all that happened and pushing it as far down deep as it would go. This did not work. If anything, it compounded the eventual mental collapse.
I was hospitalized that year for suicidal ideation, where I told a mental health professional, for the first time, that I had been raped as a child. I felt like a failure. I felt as though I hadn't tried hard enough to endure. I felt beyond humiliated. It felt like a mistake.
At the time, it felt like weakness. I wasn't the kind of person who asks for help because I had learned not to ask for help. Get the job done with what you have. Otherwise, you'll get hurt. I couldn't see that asking for help is one of the strongest things you can do.
It didn't feel like it at the time, but in retrospect, one of my proudest moments of the decade was walking into an emergency room six months after I was released and quietly telling the admitting staff that I was having strong suicidal thoughts and needed help. That takes guts.
As so often with mental health, the story doesn't end there. Another hospitalization followed the next year. Years of twice-a-week therapy. Several courses of ECT, electroconvulsive therapy, and lots of medication. Above all: rejecting stigmatization of all this. Rejecting shame.
I worked hard to get to the point where I was functional. It sucked. It wasn't easy. And on top of all of it: the incessant dark cloud of knowing I was transgender and not knowing what to do about it. Being afraid that everything I had earned would be taken away if I came out.
I spent years talking about my gender identity with my therapist before going down that road publicly. Not everyone does that or needs to do it. For me, it was the fear of what would happen, and in some ways, that fear turned out to be well-founded.
I had fallen in love with someone. For the first time in my life, I felt loved. We were planning a future together. Sitting in her car one night and coming out to her knowing it might end it all is one of the hardest things I've ever done. Years before coming out publicly!
And it did eventually end it. Her Trump-supporting parents learned about it and made her choose between them and me. She chose them. The planning, the trust, the hope, years spent with her and the promise of decades ahead, all of it went out the window in an instant.
Out of that pain came a period of growth. My friendships became deeper. My prioritizes and values became clearer. I came out of the closet and asking for help was no longer a last resort. I had to ask for help. I couldn't survive otherwise. From trivial to big, help was needed.
I've done some cool professional things this decade, but my proudest moments of the past 10 years were in being vulnerable. Admitting I needed help. Admitting I didn't know what to do. Admitting I was scared. Asking for help as a proactive measure. It takes courage.
Survival is impossible without the help of others, not in the way we deserve it. I wish I could back to that scared young adult in 2011 and tell her that the best thing we can do in moments of crisis is having the strength to tell another soul that we don't have the answers.
Those are the best things I've done this decade: the moments of having enough strength to admit I need help and ask someone for it. Lord knows I haven't perfected it, but I'm getting better every day. And I'm incredibly grateful to those who gave me that help. /thread
