Written by: Cloe Wilder
I was diagnosed with OCD when I was seven years old. I was terrified and ashamed of this diagnosis, mostly because I didn’t know what it meant. When you’ve struggled for all of your childhood, someone putting a name to what you’ve been experiencing feels wrong. I was entirely unprepared to embark on this mental health journey, as all of us are. What I thought would be the next few months of my life would really be the rest of my life, but I’m strangely grateful.
My thoughts and fears came out in the form of flipping a light switch a few extra times. I heard my own voice say things like, if you don’t do this, your whole family will be dead by tomorrow morning. I spent the first seven years of my life in a power struggle between me and my own mind, so I was deathly afraid of her. In response, my mom took me to therapy. I’m not sure which action let her know that something wasn’t right, but I’m so lucky that she noticed. If it would have been up to me, I probably would’ve continued with the light switch thing, because I didn’t really mind; of course, I thought I was saving my family, so it wasn’t a big deal.
In therapy, I developed many formative coping skills. I learned that I favored writing my thoughts and feelings down, rather than speaking them. I was informed that I would never be truly cured, but I was cool with that. As long as I didn’t feel it, I didn’t mind it being there. I thought that I was done. This weight that I had adjusted to had fallen off of my shoulders, but not really.
I was diagnosed with depression when I was 12 years old. However, I was completely aware of this one. I had transitioned to virtual school, I didn’t open my blinds, and stopped wearing any shade that wasn’t black. I was forced to tap back into my coping skills, but they weren’t working as well as they did when I was seven. I was older and angrier this time. I returned to therapy and I begged to be put on medication. Even with the addition of my struggles as a small child, I was always very happy, so this was a slap in the face.
I was 13 years old when my music career became more serious, but I hadn’t fully recovered from the past year yet. Looking back, I probably should have taken more time. I was so thrilled to have the opportunity that I didn’t consider the pressure that would be added. I was truly having fun and I fell in love with being an artist. Once social media was thrown into the mix, the stars in my eyes slowly burnt out. From that point on, I viewed social media as public enemy #1. We haven’t been friends since. Here are some of my thoughts that I recently shared at the start of Mental Health Awareness Month:
Social media constantly comes between me and my best mental health. It has always made me feel like less of an artist, less of a woman, and really anything I identify as. Our relationship with each other is jaded and I hate that. For me, social media is a way for me to share my music and interact with those who appreciate it. I lost sight of that. More recently, it got to the point where I could barely even open it. It felt like I was losing all of my humanity; all of the things I love about myself. Something useful to me as an artist had become harmful to me as a human being. So, I listened and I learned from this. I took my first break from social media in over two years. Don’t push yourself to your breaking point… don’t even bend.
I’m eight years into my mental health journey. I’m in a better place now. I still go to therapy every week and I still write every day. I have to work at it, but I’m happy to do that. I’m honored to have as much control as I do now over my mental health and I never want to lose that. We are fragile. Please take care of yourself.
