- I was a pretty happy child throughout
elementary school and stuff.
Grandparents always will come to every single one
of my sports events,
they'll support me no matter what.
- I remember I was really happy and
I just would go out and play a lot.
I remember a lot of fun times with my sister.
- I was really easygoing as a child.
Just had a really big imagination,
so I would just go out and play
and pretend I was an astronaut, a police man.
Barbies, I would just be in there for hours just playing.
- As a kid, we were a very close-knit do-or-die family.
If somebody messes with one of us,
they gotta mess with all of us.
We would get into fights every now and again but
in the end we would come out stronger for it.
- So I went to a Catholic and a Lutheran school
and all of my mom's friends are gay,
like, all of them are lesbians.
Fourth or fifth grade where they tell you
that all gays are evil and they're all going to hell,
I'm sorry, being told that the person you look up to
the most is going to hell?
When you're 12-years-old is a really big deal,
really big deal, really took me out.
- I remember being bullied as a young kid.
I mean, one of the biggest things of when I was bullied
was because of my culture or because of my race.
Stuff like that.
- When I was 12 was when I was first suicidal
and I told a middle school basket ball coach
and he said, "Don't worry about it,
"it's not that serious, you'll get over it,"
and I was like, "Dude, I just told you I wanted to die,
"like, you should have paid more attention to me."
But I wasn't actually diagnosed with anything
until I was 16.
- I actually started seeing a psychiatrist too.
And that's when I officially got diagnosed
with major depressive disorder, major anxiety disorder.
- Being diagnosed at the age of 12 with schizophrenia,
depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder.
- Bipolar disorder, rapid cycler with depressive tendencies
and schizoid manifestations.
- Serotonin syndrome, psychosis, and catatonia.
- Depressed and anxious.
- PTSD, bipolar, ADHD.
- The biggest thing that I learned
that was really important to me was that
it's the way your brain functions.
If you have a child that has diabetes,
it's not any different than a child
that has a mental illness, they're both diseases.
They just affect different parts of your body.
- My biggest issue always has been saying, "I'm bipolar."
But I recently have been able to learn to say,
"I have bipolar disorder."
People don't say, "I am cancer."
People don't say, "I am diabetes."
They have cancer, they have diabetes.
- It's like there's all this anxiety
that's built up and it feels like it just is,
needs to be somehow let out,
like I had no other way of dealing with it.
If I was in school and I felt like I needed to,
I would just take a pencil and scratch it against myself.
If I was at home, I just took dull nail-cutters.
It just has, over the years, progressively gotten worse
and so it's gotten to the point where it's
possibly needed stitches.
- Mainly, what I was thinking was
that people were after me,
maybe, like, kind of spying on me.
I almost kind of thought that they were actors
who were dressed up as my friends.
It was scary 'cause I was in a psych ward of a hospital
which I had never been in before
and it just, yeah, it just seemed totally...
A situation that I never imagined myself getting into.
- Come on.
- So there's the panic and fear
and this idea that I'm just going to be torn apart
from the inside and then the elation of
striding through life like I can conquer anything
and I'm invincible.
- [Woman] Come on, go, go, go!
Come one!
- Abandoned by pretty much everyone I cared about.
Got locked up in a place where people
didn't really care about me, multiple places,
which didn't give me a lot of reason
to do any constructive change.
'Cause, you know, if you look around
and nobody cares, why should you care, right?
- I thought my depression couldn't get any worse
when I left high school and then I went to college
and then it got worse
and I lost myself, for real, like actually lost myself in it
so, right now, I'm still trying to find anything.
Anything that used to be there at all.
So, mostly what I rely on
for any form of happiness is drugs.
- When I was seeing voices and everything,
I always saw them attached to people.
But whenever I looked at someone,
I saw a certain figure or a person standing next to them,
which always told me it was danger.
Like, I saw an evil shadow right next to them
and, I mean, it was always with wings
or the shadows would change with every single person I meet.
- And it really spiraled, I started self-harming a lot
and then, at that point, it was also,
I think the suicidal thoughts came in,
like, "I don't want to live anymore.
"What can I do to not live?
"People would be better off without me."
It was crazy, I attempted suicide, I think six more times
within seven, eight months.
- I think about suicidal ideation
almost every minute of every day.
So, I mean, the chances of me doing something like that
are very high.
- That second time I attempted suicide,
I was just telling my mom that, hey, I wanted to kill myself
and they agreed, I told them, "I want to be locked up."
I agreed, I told them, "I want to be put in a safe place,"
and at that point was the behavioral health hospital,
they thought that was the safest choice.
- There was a point where I couldn't get it off my mind.
I would be in school and I'd be thinking about it.
I couldn't let go of this thought of,
"Oh, I can just be gone, I can just disappear," you know?
And things would be so much easier.
- It's like every time I did anything,
I was like, "You should just die."
Like I would be biking to campus and I'd be like,
"You should just go in the middle of the street
"and just die," and it was awful and it's, like,
that's my rock bottom, is still living with that there,
at all times, 'cause it's not a passing thought
and it's every time I'll see anything dangerous,
it's like, "Oh, do it, 'cause you just die, just die."
- I was just like, I need to tell my parents.
I'm suicidal, I need to see somebody.
So they got me into psychiatrists and psychologists
the next day.
Right now I have an integrated healthcare system
where I have a psychiatrist, a therapist,
and a general practitioner and a case manager
who all work together.
And that's a really great way to do it, I think.
- It's been a long journey in a bunch of different hospitals
and all that.
Since I've taken a lot of different medications,
I know which ones work for me
and which ones don't work for me.
Yeah, the ones that aren't really as necessary
and the ones that are definitely, I need to take every day.
- This journey has been more of a me learning about myself
and how to cope and how to deal with things
through medication and counseling.
I've made a lot of improvement.
I've changed a lot and become a more happy person
than I was, for sure.
(laughing)
- I'm a firm believer that there are
things out there, people out there,
that would change my life for the better,
I just haven't found them yet or they haven't found me.
And I fully intend to look for them.
- Even if you don't have a supportive family,
you can always find a support system.
Groups, even maybe that one friend
that's willing to be by your side.
But I am blessed and lucky to say
that my parents have been really supportive of me
throughout this whole journey.
I always say I wouldn't be here without
what they've done for me, what they've sacrificed for me
and what they still give to me now.
- I just always remember feeling so alone
about my mental illness and about my headspace
and about all the crappy that happened in there,
about all the that sends me off,
triggers me, makes me go crazy.
I just want other people to know
that they're not alone, you know?
No one's really alone, no matter how messy
and complicated your emotions are,
you still deserve to talk about them.