My Journey With Mental Illness: My Beginning

 My Journey with Mental Illness: My Beginning

by Brian Warriner

The inception of this blog was intended to serve as a resource for mental health and wellness topics, grounded in research. But it's turning into something personal. It’s about my journey with mental illness. That’s what this blog will be like—a blend of my journey and research topics. From there, we will discover that we can break the stigma.

To my knowledge, my journey began when my family moved to New Jersey. Before that, I was a Navy brat from Philadelphia; I lived in the Carolinas. My dad retired from the Navy, as we were packing and moving, and I had to have emergency surgery. My appendix was about to rupture, which was scary and traumatic. During the surgery, just after it was removed, it was when it had ruptured. During this time, various family matters were unfolding. My grandpop was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer, and my grandmom was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. We were still looking for a house and were bouncing from one family member to another. Then, out of nowhere, my grandmom passed away unexpectedly and suddenly. After her passing, my great-uncle and aunt passed away, then my grandpop died. Now I was close to my grandparents, not really with my great-uncle and great-aunt. They were on different sides of the family. It was a lot to deal with.

I entered school, and I didn’t realize that I was dealing with grief-induced depression. Then you add on being bullied for being gay. At the time, I didn’t understand what that meant. The other boys would call me “Fag”, “Faggot”, “Gaywad”, “Homo” and it was brutal. I had a rock thrown at my head by a classmate. I was called names. I was just me, and people who didn’t know me were hating me. All because I was cheering on the teachers at the students vs. teachers’ basketball game.

Over the years, I was judged and bullied for something that others deemed me to be. When I was in the sixth grade, I started thinking about suicide. Again, a word I learned later, a word at the time I didn’t know. The thoughts were like jumping from my bedroom window, cutting myself with a steak knife. I said something to my school counselor. At the time, I didn’t know that by law, she had to report it. She told my parents and called me into a conference. The rest of the day, into the night, I had to be evaluated in the hospital psych ward. Then, subsequently, I had to see a child psychiatrist. After a couple of sessions, I was discharged.

Never given any mental health diagnosis, I went into middle school, where the bullying continued. And I officially came out as gay. I understood when I had my first crush on a boy. He was a junior in high school, and I took one look at him, and I was done. His smile, his thin mustache, and goatee. The way he walked, I was gay. From there, I started to notice other guys. And I realized that I was gay. I told my friends, who were supportive of me. The signs were there because I was trying to hide it. The more I tried to hide, the more obvious it became. When I told my friends I was gay, my hand was on my hip, my lunch pail daggled from my wrist. They looked at me and said, “Fucking duh!”

I will share more of my journey in the next post. So, let’s recap the lessons learned from this post.

1.      It started with grief-induced depression, and it grew into my current mental health disorders.

2.      I spent years upset with my school counselor, but I realized that she saved me.

3.      I survived being bullied for over a decade.

4.      From a young age, I have lived with mental illness that continues to this day.

5.      I came out to my friends in middle school and later to my family.

6.      This journey profoundly shaped me, which I’ll share in the upcoming post.

7.      Suicide is never the answer.

 

Me in the 6th Grade 1998

Me in the 3rd Grade about 1996