I am the child of mentally ill people and addicts.. alcohol, drugs, and twisted behaviour, all colour branches on my family tree. Do I carry anger toward them? Yes, but not because of who they were, not because of what I feel was done to me, but anger that there are some scars and wiring I can not outrun. There are behaviours and thought patterns that I can fall into so easily if I am not on guard. While those around me are aware, and aware of some of the triggers, other than just being humanly mindful I expect no one to walk eggshells or manage this but me. I have an anxiety disorder that in the past has immobilized me, can make me paranoid, distrustful, emotional, rash, very angry and dark. I rarely trust my initial reactions to emotional based situations. So I breath and wait it out. – If I am in a decent headspace this serves me well. However if I am in an already anxious state and I let myself overthink too long, then the risk of past negative behaviours rises. I react big, dramatic and suck the oxygen out of the room. It is over the top, overwhelming to both myself and the recipient. Or I don’t react, I let it slide, I don’t state how I really feel, I ‘maturely’ move on. This second reaction leads to more paranoia, I second guess my assessment of people, their feelings and their intentions toward me. I then slide into a mode of distrust and I get so sad, the monsters tell me I am being used, I am made fun of and disrespected behind my back, my mental health issues get used as a scapegoat for judgment. This is what makes me angry, that even this far into adulthood, every relationship I have is shaded by what I witnessed growing up.

My father was a quiet man when sober, gentle, loving, encouraging, smart, funny and artistic. When drunk? Loud, brash, cutting, mean and often would try to tell others in the room about how nuts my mother could be, and that I was cut from the same and would never amount to much more than a whore (he told my first real boyfriend that, we were 14, ). If it were only the child- me bearing witness then I was privy to the conversations of the horror he was raised in. Listened to tales told by the monsters in his head. How the bloodline needed to end with me….. If we were weathering his deeper seated mental issues along with a run ‘off the wagon’, then out came the guns. From this I learned to be quiet, observe, look for warning signs, how to tap dance and soften the world around as to not bring the danger to me. I learned very early not to trust that things are as they appear.

My mother was a strong, funny, opinionated woman, she had my Nanna’s Irish wit and a temper to match. I do not really know if she drank to cope or to keep up with my father, so her world could be more tolerable. She did her best to shelter and protect me, until she couldn’t. The truth about my mother’s cancer was never fully told to me until I was older, even then, my older sisters and I have never had an open discussion about it. Back then, some information came as an after thought, filtered by accident to me, most of the four years she was sick I was only told she had a sore back. I know looking back, all of them were trying to protect me. Amongst other things, including the loss of my Nanna, one of the biggest things this has left me with, is a fear of loss for the good in my life and the need to have a strong circle of women around me. Some of the other things this has left me with is deep anxiety about betrayal and being thought of as unstable, (other than the crazy of my known anxiety monsters which I will mostly own).

Recently, some commentary about my communication abilities, read that, as my dramatic flare for imagery, description and feeling, have been misinterpreted and twisted around, used to justify another’s action. This happens, I put a lot out there (umm, blog?!FB?! IG?! General conversation) and I need to be prepared that this is a risk. When this came to light, I did what I do. I breathed, I waited, I weighed, I did the mature, be the bigger person thing. Be subtle, and move on. Only, it has kept a low hum in the back of my head, it’s taking up space. It’s trying to creep out more. For the most part, I detest this paranoid wiring, but there have been times where it has proven to be correct. I think this is in part why I have not been able to make any consistent changes to this behaviour. So now what? Well, I think I’ll wait a bit longer before deciding what to do, I’ll meditate, write, breathe. Measure what I know to be real against what I am now unsure of. Try to keep this state of uncomfortable from blowing any more into a full fledged state of anxiety.

I am well aware that being publicly up front that I have some form of mental illness will leave me open to others thoughts and opinions. These things really only hold sway in my head coming from people who know me, that I trust. I know I risk that ire now. Who knows how many of you that know me, will read into this and wonder if it’s you. If you have to wonder, than it isn’t. Trust that.