My Mental Health Journey as an Adult

by Brian Warriner

            In previous posts, I talked about my mental health journey in my childhood and adolescent years. Now I am going to discuss my adult years. Once I had a job, granted, the job I had was only 3 hours a day, Monday to Friday, until I became the assistant director of an after-school program. Then the hours were six hours a day. I made a little more money. But it didn’t stop the depression and anxiety. I found ways to hide it better. Now, at the end of that school year, I wasn’t rehired for the next year. But I ended up getting hired for a one-on-one position with the district. I was going back to the school where I had graduated a couple of years before. My charge at the time was a kid who had Cerebral Palsy, and everyone told me about his tricks. He would cry to get out of doing assignments, or wanted to sit in the nurse's office, thinking he wouldn’t have to be responsible for his work. But I was too much of a hard ass to let him get one over on me. When he pulled these tricks, I said, “Sit there and let me know when you are ready, but we aren’t going anywhere.” He stopped. I was one who committed myself to my work. The students in the class were also my responsibility. When my charge was absent because of being in the hospital. I was torn about whether I would be crossing a professional boundary. I didn’t visit him or send him a card. I’d ask his siblings to check on him when his mom picked up his work, and I'd talk to her. But when he came back, I was waiting for him. I said to him, “Don’t you ever leave me.” he just rolled his eyes like a teenager would. The following year, he went to a different school for high school. But I saw him the following year when my brother was graduating from the eighth grade. He recognized me, and it was great to see him.

            Now, most of you are probably wondering why I am talking about this. It’s because work became my escape from my mental health. It was something I pushed to the back of my head. I was in a long-distance relationship with someone I met on the Yahoo chat rooms. Yes, I am old enough to remember the chat rooms. We would talk on the phone, and we sent letters with our photos. I thought, how awesome is this? My first boyfriend and I were making plans to meet up for the first time. But nothing manifested, because he told me if I wanted to continue our relationship, I had to send him money every month. I ended it right there. I blocked him and got off the chat room. This hurt me a lot, and I was upset by this. I cried and cried thinking about the pain.

            Then, while in the chat rooms, I found someone else, and we talked and got to know each other. Exchanged numbers and would text each other. He was eighteen, and I had turned twenty-one. I found myself falling for him. But he lived in Dallas, Texas, and I was in New Jersey. He was emotionally distant, but then one night I called him. His best friend answered and told me that he was “busy taking it up the ass from a black guy.” I was shocked, and she hung up. When I called a couple of hours later, he answered when I asked, his response was, “Why are you asking me?” “It is what it is.” He ended things that upset me. What I didn’t know at the time was that for the next 18 years, we would be in and out of each other's lives. Now I am only telling things from my perspective. After all our interactions, I was hurt by him, and I may have hurt him. But the issue was that we could have been something great if we were in different places in our lives. There are things I found out, and yet I was crazy for him. The final interaction was a couple of years ago, when I told him that I couldn’t love him the way he needed, and I couldn’t be the supportive person he needed. I had to move on without him. Because I recognized this relationship was a toxic codependent relationship. Neither of us deserves that.

            In between that relationship, I fell for other guys, one of whom only wanted me when he was single. It was during his first relationship that he ignored my calls and disappeared. When they broke up, I was to blame, and that continued, and eventually, I ended things. Another guy I met on Facebook in 2009 caught my attention. We chatted and exchanged numbers, and I thought to myself, "He was the one." But our relationship ended when he started seeing someone else and ignored me. I have been someone who, if you don’t want me to be a part of your life, then fucking tell me. I kept asking him to talk to me so we could resolve our issues. I did some things that were also questionable. But that was what ended our relationship. Because I was scared of losing him, I got jealous, and it was a dark time. Then we cut communications. I saw he was in a relationship, it hurt me, from him it was like being stabbed, shot, and cut all in one. I was so depressed that I walked around even at work, and everyone saw it on my face. They would ask me, “Are you okay?” I would say, "Yeah, I'm okay," or something like that. I had to get over it. When he was single, I thought he might be interested in me, but then he was with someone else. I became a jealous and spiteful person. It was after he moved to Colorado that he emailed me, and things looked like we could be something. But things went south, and he blocked me. I know he got married to a guy, dealt with health issues, and he passed away in November of 2020. It was so hard to deal with his passing. I cried, and he appeared in my dreams.

            Throughout my adult life, I dealt with relationships ending, friendships ending, and death, and I achieved many things. There were a lot of endings and beginnings that happened in my twenties and into my thirties. I started a career in public education, which ultimately came to an end. Entered school for massage therapy, published my first book, and I eventually published 11 more, with more coming out. I tried and failed many times to start a business and developed my career as a professional psychic medium. Eventually, I walked away from my career because it wasn’t fulfilling, and life happened. My health, on top of everything, was declining. Which eventually led me to multiple hospital stays, four surgeries, three of which were toe amputations. To this day, my health is declining, and it's just going down.

            My mental health has been taking me through the ringer. My mom had two cancer diagnoses, both times I was her caregiver, which led me to get some help. I thought I was bipolar because of how my mood was. My first therapist sat down and explained to me that I wasn’t bipolar. But my diagnosis was Major Depressive Disorder and General Anxiety Disorder. Hearing those words was something that set my nerves at ease. I cried, and I felt like breathing for the first time.  In 2023, my dad almost died, and the family prepared for his death. I started school for my associate's degree in psychology. My family told me to focus on school and not to drop out like I was planning on doing. This changed everything, thank God he recovered from his medical issues.

            Now I know what you might be thinking, none of which I have been through, constitutes me having mental health. But it does. From the grief I experienced in my youth with my grandparents, to being bullied, and having my heart broken, my mind fucked with, and dealing with health issues, and dealing with family drama. All of this, along with the genetics for mental health issues. It’s no surprise that I have depression and anxiety. I am on medication for other health issues that also treat depression and anxiety. It has eased the disorders but does not cure or fix them. It makes me stable to be able to deal with my mental health. I am also in therapy, and I have access to my therapist when needed. The best decision I made was to go into therapy and seek help. Plus, I have journaled through my life, from when I started my spiritual journey. It has been my saving grace. It’s where I can speak frankly and use whatever language and express whatever I want. No one can tell me, “You aren’t allowed to feel that way.” “It’s not a situation that has affected you directly.” “You need to mind your business.” The old me would have thrown hands at these words. Now I journal about it and leave it all on the page. I have a hope chest filled with my journals. As well as my poetry journals. For almost three decades, I have taken to my pen to write and express. When I pass away, I ask that my journals be donated to the John A. Wilcox Jr Archive at the William Way Center.

            Reading about my life, one may say I wasn’t strong enough to handle the events of the past. But I say it’s one thing to read them, but to live them made me a stronger person, for whom the terms “No Fucks Given” and “Resting Bitch Face” have been coined. This is my story.