Cleaning Out the Closet

My depression and anxiety have been a part of me for much longer than I could have ever foreseen. In the present day, I like to constantly remind myself that I have more control over my emotions than I have in the past decade. But if were being completely honest with myself, I know this isn’t a fact. What I do know to be true, is that my mental illness has seriously redefined – permanently – who I believe myself to be. And no cliché positive affirmation about “not letting your mental illness define you” could change this fact. I am a victim to mental illness. Whether I fully recover one day… doesn’t really matter. The mark that it has eternally imprinted on me will be there until I die.

My mental illness stems from my experiences coping with my parents’ divorce at a young age, and also dealing with my repressed homosexuality for much of my adolescence. Though I believe both of these traumas to be significant, I would certainly conclude that being in the closet had a much more profound effect on my psyche, and definitely contributes to my currently present social anxiety.

The baggage that comes with my parents’ divorce seems to affect millions of people around the world. What I’m talking about specifically is the longing for the feeling of what my life would have been like with a father figure when I was growing up. The absence of my father in my childhood has led to me predominantly experiencing not only one viewpoint on life from my mother, but also a gender specific viewpoint. In today’s politically correct climate, one would be hesitant to admit such a fact, but there is no denying that only growing up with a female’s perspective on life, especially a broken female who had been cheated on by a male, has definitely caused a bias towards my view of the world.

My repressed sexuality has caused me to develop serious social anxiety that I still battle with every second of my life. In high school especially, the constant feeling of having to put on a façade about who I really was as a person exhausted me very much so mentally. The feelings of dread and fear that I felt at every social gathering… about possibly being outed… still haunt me and affect the interactions I have with even my family members. My overall trust in other people is still extremely low. The knee-jerk reaction in social settings I experience of needing to make sure I talk “like a straight guy”, act “like a straight guy”, sit “like a straight guy”, etc. still take a toll on me.

Since high school has ended, life has only been brighter. I fully came out of the closet, and I had the opportunity to move much closer to my father and develop a stronger bond with him. I’m still young and have a lot of life ahead of me. But the fact that much of my adolescence and early adult life has been plagued by mental illness will definitely continue to shape who I am as a person. I am still constantly battling my old habits. I can only hope for a future where I truly feel like myself. I can only hope for a future without mental illness.

~Anonymous