2012: Paranoid thoughts, unbelief, and forbidden love.

On journeying back in time through video journals as I write my book.

May 04, 2024

I’m currently writing a book of essays about my life experiences, mostly as it pertains to mental illness.

Every time I say that I can’t help but grin like the Cheshire Cat because it feels so surreal. But I am here. I have a working manuscript, and I’m taking my time to make it a great body of work I’m proud to have out in the world.

I’ve kept audio, video, and written journals since 2012 and I’ve begun going through the video entries again to transcribe some of them for my book. Having these journals has been helpful for my writing process because it allows me to find details I may have forgotten or misremembered. I know exactly what I was thinking and experiencing because I was seeing and hearing it all from my mouth. And, it has also been such a gift seeing my growth in so many areas.

Cheesing through one of my breaks as I was watching back to back entries for a few hours.

Yesterday I took myself on an artist date to one of the cafes in Baltimore that I love. There, I finished transcribing all my video entries from 2012, and what a ride it was. That was the first year my mental health started to deteriorate in a way that I could no longer deny and considered that I may have bipolar disorder.

In the entries from that year, I talked a lot about feeling like my mind was under attack. And I wasn’t speaking only of spiritual warfare, but I truly felt as though my brain was betraying me and that I was losing it. It didn’t help that all my thoughts were constantly negative. I talked of being paranoid that people were out to get me or do me harm and feeling like my friends hated me. It’s wild because six years later intense bouts of paranoia is still one of my most prevalent symptoms.

On the social side of things, I spoke about how lonely I was all the time.

I was away from all of my family and even though I had friends, I was constantly feeling othered and like I didn’t really fit in or belong anywhere, with any group, and that I was better in solitude. I also wanted to be desired. I did not love myself or my appearance and wanted external validation and to know that somebody could want me. Because of this, I began a friendship that I shouldn’t have that quickly transitioned from platonic to romantic and it complicated things even more for me at the time.

2012 was also when I began to struggle with doubt and unbelief as it pertained to Christianity. And because my mind was compromised, I took that as a sign to “strengthen my relationship with God” by being majorly involved in religious life in college and going to church almost every Sunday. I wanted to be “on fire for Christ” to show Him that I was worthy of relief. I wanted desperately to believe in all that I was taught to believe so I was all in. That same year, a friend came out to me and admitted that they struggled with their thoughts and wanted me to help hold them accountable. Little did they know that I was having my own internal battle of thoughts and desires in the same way and I’m happy that even though we are no longer friends, we’re both out and proudly living our lives.

I’m now wishing I had a therapist to help me unpack relearning so much about myself. Overall, I’m grateful to myself for starting these when I couldn’t be consistent with writing.

This book-writing journey feels so real now and I’m excited to document the process along the way!

Me in 2012. A religious, bible study-teaching, purity culture follower at a conference for just that. I think she’d be both amazed and disappointed by our life right now.

Thank you for reading ‘here comes the sun.’

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