me in May of 2022 coming out of a major depressive episode
To the one who stay to love me Thank you, thank you, thank you I know I’m not always easy to deal with I know my brand of crazy doesn’t always bring out the best of me I know that my anger makes me a monster sometimes But you’ve stayed and dealt with it the best way you could Either calling me out when I’m dramatic or expressing your concern when I’m salty or impulsive The sense of community you’ve given me feels like my life’s remedy You’ve never asked me to change and really love and accept me
I think the news of Heather Armstrong hit me hard because well, looking on the surface, her life seems almost idyllic. This is a rich white woman who has all of the resources at her disposal to help her get to a much healthier state with her mental health and I’m like WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED? WHAT THE FUCK WENT WRONG? While I could speculate why or how this happened, I won’t. What I will say is that nobody could possibly understand why she made that decision or how much suffering she was in. This made me reflect on my own journey with recovering from mental illness.
I have battled depression and anxiety since I was a teenager except I wasn’t formally diagnosed with it until after I had my third child in 2012. It’s been a not so well kept secret in my family that I continuously tried to mask to seem well, normal to everyone else. For years, I’ve mostly kept my depressive episodes to myself because more often than not when I’ve disclosed I’m depressed, I’m met with the comments: “You need to get over it , we have no time for this” or “Think about your kids” or “But you have SO MUCH to live for”. I know the people making those comments thought they were being helpful but all it did was drive me further into a spiral of shame for having no control over my brain chemistry and being depressed. It adds fire to the fuel of my inner critic who tells me during this episode, “let’s add being a failure as a mom to your thoughts about being a worthless and terrible human being”.
The Elephant
The sun is shining Everything is green and bright And yet winter feels eternal In my heart and my mind I feel a profound darkness that Seems to seep and ooze everywhere Inside of me Is this what true loneliness feels like? Will I ever get rid of what feels like my forever depression? Or do I just learn to live with the elephant that lives on my chest? That I try desperately not to wake it up Writing, exercise, friends, tv- Everything to keep it calm But no matter what The elephant always seems To wake up
In a lot of my poetry, I’ve talked about the impossible pressure I’ve had to deal with in being a mother but I don’t think I talk enough about how this was modeled for me growing up. Growing up, I saw my mother as this larger than life woman who constantly worked hard and sacrificed for her family. She worked countless hours to provide for us. She was this superwoman who at one point had 3 jobs and still managed to keep a clean house and cook dinner. I remember her sleeping a couple hours after she got home from an overnight shift at her job and waking up to walk me to school in the morning. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I never saw my mom breakdown or cry.
me and my mami is 1988 when she was busy being superwoman
The message I received and perceived was one that in order to be a good mother, you have to be this superwoman who balances everything perfectly all the time. Being a good mother also meant being strong and resilient and if needed it was necessary to suppress emotions to continue to function. When I became a mother at 17, I had these unrealistic expectations of motherhood that I wanted to attain. And we wonder why I ended up with a diagnosis of BPD-lol. Honestly, while I’ve healed a lot from my past, I feel like it’s still necessary to share it because this isn’t just my story. It’s the story of other mothers who are still ashamed about having a mental illness and more often than not, don’t seek help and mask, mask, mask until they explode.
me with my oldest when I was 18
I’ve often talked about how my children are one of my greatest motivators for continuing to move forward with my life, to try to continue with my self improvement; but what I have failed to talk about is how my children are a major source of guilt while I’m in a major depressive episode. If I had to be honest with myself and everyone else, when I’ve been in that really dark place with my depression, I’ve had thoughts about how maybe my kids would be better off without me, how my kids deserve a better mother than me.I’m coming from a very vulnerable place talking about this. I also want to add that I haven’t been in this dark place with these thoughts since 2021. It is a fucking scary place to be in and it’s something I would never wish upon my worst enemy. Thankfully, I have always been able to pull myself out of this headspace and seek help if I need to. However, once I start to get out of this head space, guilt over how selfish I was for not thinking about kids hits me and ooof I’m off to a shame spiral that almost loops back around to another depressive episode but nowadays I’m able to get a better handle on it. In January of this year, when I had another major depressive episode, my worst thought was, “I don’t think I’m doing enough to improve the lives of me and children ” which is irrational for many reasons. Anyways, I decided then and there that I needed to go back to therapy. It was hard to make that decision but in order to prevent my depression from getting worse; it was necessary. Some part of me felt like a failure because of how many healthy coping mechanisms I have now, how much emotional support I have from family and friends, and how much therapy I’ve had; I felt like I should be able to get this on my own. However, I’d rather be safe than sorry and get the extra guidance and help I need so I can get through this depressive episode before it gets worse. It hasn’t always been this way for me. For several years, I thought that the brave thing to do was to suffer in silence and try to get through my depression on my own. Journaling consistently since 2019 has helped me get through the worst of it but looking back on those journal entries, I’m filled with grief for the version of me who thought strength and being brave meant keeping it all in. I’m filled with grief at the version of me holding it together trying to balance it all and functioning at work when inside all I wanted to do was die or disappear. However, I hold compassion for that woman because she was doing what she knew best to survive. And sure at times that looked messy and unhealthy but at the end of day what matters is that I’m still here. Here’s a poem I wrote about my depression in 2020:
Darkness
The Darkness comes back with a fierce strength and takes over my mind I want to run I want to hide But most of all I want to die
The Darkness comes back like a hurricane and wrecks my body and mind and I don’t want to work and I don’t want to talk and I don’t want to breathe
The Darkness comes back and not even the promise of love keeps it away
Fortunately for me, I learned to work through my feelings of shame in getting the help I needed to get better. My mental health improved drastically after getting a BPD diagnosis and here’s the post about that:
I’m very fortunate that my meds, my therapy, and the strict routine and consistency I now have in my life has improved my mental health so much, my depressive episode and low moods are milder and my quality of life has gotten so much better. I know that even in 2023,there is still so much pressure on mothers to be superwomen, to be “brave” and fight their battles alone but it doesn’t have to be this way. I hope that any mother out there struggling with depression/mental illness who might happen upon my blog post understands that they don’t have to fight this battle alone. In this journey, it is important to understand that being brave can also be taking the first step to seeking out the help you need to get healthier. I’m lucky to have found my own village ( my support system, my therapists, my writing community) to improve the quality of my life; my hope is that other mothers find their own village as well to lead healthier and happier lives.
me and my youngest in May of this year-I’m way more present in and my other sons lives after getting the help I needed
I want to end this post with a poem I wrote in February of this year:
The Finish Line
I have yet to cross the finish line of my uprising, my marathon of healing- Sometimes I stumble and fall for a few days, a few weeks. a month when life gets overwhelming I dissociate and drive around aimlessly Forget about all the progress I made- but always get up and do the best I can Sometimes I mask well enough to fool the people in my life Sometimes, it’s not enough and they start asking what’s wrong but somehow I always manage to get back to a place where I move forward and evolve- listen to my therapist- healing isn’t linear-healing is messy and just because I stumble sometimes, it doesn’t mean I can’t cross the finish line
Below are some resources that helped me along my journey:
this was incredible helpful in explaining how unhealed trauma affected me
this book helped explain how ACE (adverse childhood experiences) are linked to different kinds of diseases
this memoir was the first that really gave me hope that I could recover from BPD
if you’re Latine/Latinx, I highly recommend this book, it validated a lot of experience as an immigrant woman and some of the racial trauma I experienced
DBT Therapy has been instrumental in my recovery
Back from the Borderline podcast episodes that have really helped me
One thing I want to add about the above resources I have shared is that I take notes from the books/podcast episodes . I jot down certain phrases, concepts, or quotes that resonate with me and/or I find helpful. I take notes on sticky notes and have a notebook where I taped them later in a notebook where I write about it as to why I related to it or why it was helpful. This method of mine works for me in finding understanding the book better or validating my experience. You don’t have to do this at all, of course. It’s just what I found helpful. Also, if you want more books or resources, feel free to contact me:
Overturning my right to choose feels like a slap to my face it is my american dream of liberty turned into a nightmare of reproductive imprisonment because of my 3 unplanned pregnancies, because of my 4 IUDs birth control pills and a patch because I am a woman scared for my niece, for my future granddaughters scared for the generations of women who come after me and I sit here at a complete loss for words and understanding at a loss for how this could happen a fundamental right ripped from right before our eyes while we were distracted with the modernity of society a fundamental right ripped from us that will take us back to the 1950’s
Happy Asian American and Pacific Islander Month! I wrote this poem inspired by my favorite Asian American, my oldest son.
me and my oldest in 1999
I was young and so stupid a kid having another kid but with you I grew up and learned the meaning of love you’re everything a mother could want a wonderful and amazing son and while I’ll feel some grief the day you’ll your spread wings I’ll feel a special kind of pride as I watch you shine your golden light
I wonder where all of my money goes but then I go home to the bottomless pits that are my kids and then I go upstairs to my bedroom where my closet is exploding with clothes and then I look under bed full of shoes and then I go downstairs to my record player and looks at my various vinyls and we won’t even talk about my newly acquired furniture from Amazon now I understand my money goes to my busy life and my BPD spending impulsivity
your wretched goodbye brought a radical change within me left behind was the naive girl who fell in love with you left behind was the stupid bitch who made a home in you left behind was the insecure woman who made you her world the woman who stands before you made a 360 turn the woman who stands before lives life according to her own terms without apologizing, without accommodation, without toning herself down the woman you left behind no longer exists she turned into ashes and out of the ashes turned into a brave and powerful queen who learned that her love is the rarest type of jewel that she reserves only for those who love her and accept her exactly as she is
My heart blooms like a flower in the spring taking in the beauty of everything I’m no longer so angry and feel a freedom to just be I take things in stride and no longer feel the need to fight Is this what healing looks like?
el miedo de compartir todo demasiado pronto corre por mi entonces me hago la chica de tus sueños la que se viste sexy y se ríe de todas tus bromas la que da su cuerpo fácilmente sin preguntas o demandas la que no exige respeto por miedo de vivir el cuento de mujer dejada de nuevo
vivimos en un mundo de indiferencia pero continuamos fingiendo que nos amamos cuando en realidad todavía no me olvidado de él y tu todavia piensas en ella pero los dos tenemos miedo a la soledad por eso seguimos juntos en una existencia de falsedad
I hide the craziest parts of myself The parts that get sad, The parts that get obsessed The parts that lose hope I hide the worst parts of myself the parts that feel empty The parts that feel numb The parts that want to die I hide the craziest and worst parts of myself so no one else will leave
borracha, me encontré en una cama extraña desnuda y vulnerable tratando de olvidar el pésimo dolor en mi corazón cubriendome con el calor de un hombre desconocido cedí a mis deseos salvajes para llenar el vacío que llevaba dentro de mí
There are so many stories within me aching to get out every single one wants to be a priority but which one do I pick first most are dramatic, some are angry and sad, a few are happy and lovely every story is important in a life full of chaos and trauma I don’t know why I attract so much drama So I’m going to tell each story Because I own everything that’s happened to me Because I’m finally taking myself seriously
Sept of 1986-me blowing out a candle right before me and my family started our immigration journey-my aunt had a goodbye party for us
When I was little, I was often lost in daydreams about America It was beautiful and blue I pictured a celestial and warm ocean where the waves tenderly touch my toes I was taught it was a better existence than the one we were living in but no one told me that dreams sometimes don’t come true and the reality of America was filled with a hardness that even 35 years later I’m still processing indentured servitude, exploitation, depression, addiction,racism, mental illness were just a few side effects of going for the American dream
I wrote this poem in December of 2021. I was kind of angry. Lol.
performing this poem at open mic in October of 2022
Let’s hashtag the fuck out of our imperfect perfect lives smile for the camera but make it look candid this is for instagram after all- we want to present an image of authenticity Authentic needs to look put together and balanced there can be no cracks in our suburban realities no one wants to see tears and frowns let’s continue to act like modern clowns except our lipsticks presents a false smile that hides our misery inside and let’s add a witty caption that spells out live,laugh, love and hashtags about #momlife,#gratitude, and #bestlifeever depression, sadness, and anger has no room in our modern world where we pretend to be perfectly imperfect moms and wives with these amazing and perfect lives let’s continue the facade of authenticity even as we burn inside and want to die we are not just okay but we are fucking fabulous so honey continue to smile for that selfie even as the expectations of modern womanhood continues to burn us all up
Life on the BPD 