History of my life

Believe it or not, a brief summary of my life to explain why I am on this path.

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of fourteen. Having two doctors for parents and being raised in an upscale city outside of Houston, Texas, this caused my relatively normal life to turn into anything but. I was put on depression medication in the seventh grade as a result of me cutting myself, and by the eighth grade I had begun to hear voices which after having my first "episode" as my parents called it, I was hospitalized for my first time and given my diagnosis. Growing up my parents were devout Christians and took me to church every weekend, I was waiting for marriage to have sex, I had never seen anyone use drugs much less done them myself, and I had no idea what was really out there. I remember the first day in the psych hospital we were informed someone had AIDS so we shouldn't be sleeping with each other which I remember being very surprised was an option for us. Afterward, I saw a girl pass out in the hallway from a heroin overdose, then after the nurses carried her to her room and put her in bed, I watched one of the boys I was in the hospital with go in her room and rape her. The other kids laughed at all of this and one of the other guys even proceeded to give him a high five once he returned. The same guy later came to me and pulled out a condom trying to convince me to go back to his room with him, me being a virgin at the time quickly said no. It was at that mental hospital that I tried a drug for the first time, visitors could bring in food and weren't searched when entering the building so the kids would have their dealers bring them in their drugs and the boys gave me some sort of pain killer that they were all taking. Meanwhile the staff read their magazines, and talked on the phone paying no attention to what was going on. We got no actual therapy, we couldn't go outside, and no one cared about us in anyway whatsoever. That is what our mental health care system is like in the United States, and no one is doing anything about it. After being hospitalized for my first time I was taken out of the eighth grade, luckily I only had a few months left of school and since I was a straight A student prior, they let me pass. My mom took six months leave off of work to take care of me because I was wildly psychotic. My doctor told my parents I needed to go to a residential treatment center. However, they called every treatment center in the United States for teens and no one would take me because everyone said I was too sick and not well medicated enough. There was only one place that said they would take me but it was $30,000 a MONTH. My psychiatrist could give my parents no other solution other than more hospitals and more meds. Hospitals made things worse, and my meds turned me more and more into a zombie. So over the next 6 months my mother patiently cared for me the best she could. My episodes would happen when the voice I heard (named Adam) would get angry with me and start screaming, in turn I would start screaming at him to stop and I remember he would hold me on the ground and send shocks of pain through my body that was the most unbearable thing I had ever experienced. All my mom could do was cry and watch me scream for about five minutes or so until he would release me and let me rest. During that time my behavior dealing with the constant mania and depression was very odd. I would get on what my mom called "missions" where I would decide all of a sudden that I was going to be a photographer, or a model, or an artist and would require the tools I needed for this and feel very passionate that this was my calling in life and beg my mom to get me what I needed. She would sweetly provide me with the things I wanted in the cheapest way possible knowing that I would get bored of it within a few hours. Every time I realized that that wasn't my calling in my life it would put me into a depression where I would be wanting to kill myself until I came up with something new I wanted to do. My parents took me to 5 different psychiatrists and multiple therapists trying to find someone who could give them a better solution because nothing was helping me get better. Doctors told them that if I lived to be 30 then I might be able to get a job at something like McDonalds and that I might get lucky enough to graduate high school, but that I would probably never go to college or live on my own. I remember even when I was at my sickest I knew in my heart that that wasn't my fate. I knew that I would be ok one day. When ninth grade started I wasn't mentally stable enough to go to a regular high school so my parents put me in this little one room school house for "troubled" teens. This is where I met my first boyfriend and lost my virginity which sent my parents over the top and caused them to decide that it was time to send me somewhere, ANYWHERE to get more help. My dad ended up having a conversation with a psychiatrist that worked in his office building about what I was going through and he told my dad about a boarding school called Excel Academy (the link will take you to an article a student wrote about her experience with the place just so you can get an idea of what kind of place this really was) where he was the psychiatrist and informed him that it was a place for troubled teens. According to him most of the kids were bipolar and he was positive they would take me. My parents thought this was a miracle and immediately went to check it out. It wasn't long before they got me in the car and drove me to this horribly deceiving place. The story of my time at Excel I won't get into but long story short, it was an extremely abusive place where I was unable to inform my parents of what was going on. Fortunately, the psychiatrist who knew my dad lowered my medicine which caused me to start having episodes and after three days of being manipulated, verbally abused, and threatened by the owner of the place she contacted my parents to let them know that she was transferring me to a wilderness program in Utah. Of course my parents immediately came and got me and took me to yet another hospital until they could get me somewhere better. I was only at Excel for about 3 months but I had nightmares about the place for the next 6 years. I went on to a treatment center in San Marcos, TX where they ran a number of tests on me including a IQ test on which I scored 156 much to everyone's surprise. Slowly I began getting more and more medicated and once I returned from San Marcos my voices were relatively controlled and I was able to function somewhat normally. When I returned home it wasn't long before my boredom and lack of emotions got me mixed up with the wrong people and I ended up on drugs. Ecstasy was the first real drug I was able to get my hands on and I remember that was the first time in the past year I had felt emotion. It was then that I decided I wanted to try more drugs so that I could feel more emotions. That was the start of my drug abuse which eventually led me getting caught with an eight ball of cocaine and an ounce of weed and putting me in juvenile. I remember that knowing that I had to be sober was the most devastating thing I had ever felt. I was put on a year of probation which made me want to kill myself, yet again, and I felt like it was the end of the world. However, that year of probation only taught me self-control. I managed to pass all of my drugs tests while still using and knowing what day I needed to stop so I could pass a test. By the time tenth grade came along I was prescribed to 23 pills a day and was still using street drugs. I attempted to go back to high school but by this time because of my medication I had gained a huge amount of weight. At fourteen I weighed 110 pounds, and by the age of 16 I weighed 200. My high school was full of gorgeous, stuck up rich girls and I was bullied to the point of tears every day. I was overweight, strung out on drugs and extremely weird, also everyone knew that I had been going to mental hospitals so everyone made it a point to let me know just how much of an outcast I was by calling me a "fat bitch" and a "freak". After coming home crying to my parents every day for a couple months and more threats of suicide my parents let me be homeschooled again. Eleventh grade I tried to go back again only to receive the same horrible treatment except this time the senior boys in my AG class thought it would be hilarious to throw me out of my desk and laugh. So again, I became homeschooled. Over the summer of eleventh to twelfth grade my parents got me weight loss surgery because they felt so bad for what I was going through. I ended up spending my senior year at an alternative school where I managed to graduate and because of my weight loss, was not bullied and made a few friends. However at this point boys became interested in me again and after all of the bullying that caused my self-esteem to completely disappear I ended up in some pretty awful relationships where I was abused and manipulated. I became pretty promiscuous in the attempt to feel good about myself, which of course in the end only made me feel worse. After a couple failed attempts at going to community college my mom met a guy at a medical meeting who owned a farm in upstate New York and invited me to come out and work on his farm. My mom thought that might be good for me and decided to send me for a couple weeks to see if I would do ok. At this point I was almost 21 and had no direction in my life whatsoever. I immediately fell in love with the animals and befriended an 600 pound pig named Ralph who I would take naps with and read children’s books to. I ended up returning to the farm after my couple weeks were up and later on decided to find another farm to intern on which led me to Oregon. I interned for this old hippie couple who didn’t believe in western meds. I remember the woman of the place telling me that she didn’t think I would need to be on medication forever and that was the first time that thought had ever crossed my mind. Upon my arrival the owner of the farm told me he needed a new calf and took me to a cattle farm to pick one out. I picked one that had only been born a few hours prior to my getting there. I named him Texan and it was my job to bottle feed and raise him. After a couple weeks Texan got very sick and needed antibiotics, however because the couple didn’t believe in western meds, wouldn’t give him any. There was a baby lamb who had the same illness and while the lamb died with no special attention, I was able to nurse Texan back to health by giving him an extensive amount of love. I held him and sang to him, talked to him and slept with him. I refused to leave his side, and over time made a slow but sure recovery. It was then that I realized the healing power of love. I decided that if I could love myself enough, I could heal myself and be free from my medication. When I returned home I got off all of my meds cold turkey without telling anyone and began a five month long process of withdrawals that included vomiting, fever, chills, and extreme lack of appetite. I made a whole new group of friends and stopped coming around my parents so that no one would know what I was going through. Then finally, after a long grueling five months of constant illness the withdrawals stopped and I felt like I had awoken from an eight year sleep. I was finally alive again, I could feel everything and I was ready to be led down whatever path was presented in front of me. After a slight detour in the wrong direction and getting pretty heavily back into cocaine for a few months, I met who is now one of my best friends who introduced the idea of “finding yourself” to me. I sobered up and took my life in this new direction. I spent the next year traveling to music festivals and being on the journey of figuring out who I was and what that even meant to find myself. I began the process of the opening of my mind. My beliefs and opinions and the way I saw the world began to change, my spiritual journey and my path to enlightenment had begun. I slowly started realizing that I wanted to do something that could make a difference in the world and the idea of wanting to build a self-sustained farm school for mentally ill children started to form. I presented the idea to my parents and they loved it. They offered to support me financially so that I could everything I needed to. I did some research and found a bunch of internships and was soon on my way to building Earthships. So this is where I’m at now, on the journey to make a difference in the mental health world. People don’t realize how messed up our system is and I am determined to do something about it. I am so grateful for my diagnosis and everything I went through because it brought me to this beautiful path I am on today and I have a pure form of happiness that a lot of people will never experience because they are chasing after it in the form of material items, money or drugs. The happiness that comes from having found purpose, that comes from doing something for someone knowing that you will receive no benefit other than the joy of seeing them smile,  that comes from knowing you are contributing to something positive, from being surrounded by uplifting people in a positive environment where you can express yourself and live a healthy lifestyle, that is the happiness I get to experience every day and my dream is to create a place where other teens that are going through what I was going through can have that too. So this blog will document everything I am learning and the adventures I am having along the way on my path to turn my dream into a reality.