Mental Recovery

Sorry in advance for the long story. I have never shared it online before, so writing it was a little nerve-wracking.

After stumbling upon 7 Cups of Tea by accident, and seeing the support the community provided, I quickly decided that I too wanted to offer help to anyone that needed it. As a result, I am sharing my story, in hopes of helping people that may be going through similar situations to me.

I don?t have a childhood? according to my brain. I know from seeing pictures and probing my mother for stories that I had a very good one; one full of fun times and adventures, as well as the mundane. But my brain doesn?t recognize that any of the things I see in pictures ever happened. If it kept logs like a computer, it would say that my life began in May of 2008, not in January of 1992. This is the result of a severe head injury that I suffered from when I was only 16. It changed left me with permanent damage, and as time goes on, has been revealing more problems.

My brain injury took away my childhood, but that wasn?t the most difficult side effect. It damaged my sense of smell as well as giving me a near constant headache for years. It also gave me the gift of depression, anxiety and paranoia, and as time has progressed, attention deficit disorder as well. Dealing with all four at the same time hasn?t been easy. Taking the drug cocktail the doctors have assigned me often hasn?t helped and because my head is damaged, these problems will likely be with me forever, even if I attend counseling, take my medications and work my hardest to get through it.

Through living with this, I have come to realize that many people think depression is something you can fix with time, medication and counseling and that it will be gone eventually. I have encountered a lot of people unwilling to accept me because of my problems, as my brain continues to be unable to tolerate stress and my symptoms get worse.

I wanted to write this to tell other people that are suffering from trauma induced depression, as well as any other mental disorders, that they are not alone. 7 Cups of Tea helped me realize that I shouldn?t feel like a failure because I?m not getting better. I should feel like a success because I am functioning to the best of my ability, and because I am trying.

Thank you for listening to my life story! It means a lot.