Midnight Blues
In elementary school, I would climb as high as I could to the top of a tree and think about jumping off.
The goal was to break an arm or leg.
For positive attention.
Chickened out every single time.
I was diagnosed with BPD by a therapist I saw for a few sessions after I left the psych ward during my freshman year of high school. My mom did not agree with the diagnosis, and I never saw that therapist again.
I saw a therapist through my job’s employee assistance program when I first got to NYC. I had five free sessions and I took full advantage of them. Desperate to stop repeating patterns of my past, for the first time, I was honest.
At the end of the fifth session, she told me that “regular therapy” was not going to help me, and that she was referring me to a trauma specialist for further treatment.
I certainly couldn’t afford the treatment.
But fortunately, through spirituality and plant medicine, I finally found myself.
At 27, I had a breast cancer scare.
All good—benign. Dense breasts are more prone to tumors and cysts.
I have two small scars on the right side of my right breast, from where tiny sensors were placed to monitor them. One sensor looks like Saturn. The other, a question mark.
I used to be on a drug called Topamax. I don’t remember why I was prescribed it, only that it was part of the cocktail I had to take after leaving the psych ward my junior year of college. Not long after, I started to lose weight. I looked up the side effects of each medication, and the only one that listed weight loss was Topamax. So I found ways to stay on it as long as I could.
But I was losing my memories.
I had to invent new ways to communicate what I meant because I couldn’t remember the words themselves—all while taking 22-24 credits a semester (still graduated early and in the top ten percent), tutoring the Michigan State football and gymnastics teams, and interning at the Michigan House of Representatives and Senate.
Two years living in a haze, just to be thin.
