#seriousmode

My take on a lot of the “kids these days want/romanticise mental disorders” is that the kids who are doing it actually do have the disorders. I mean, the alternative to believing you are disordered is just that you are worse at coping with things! And I think that is quite undesirable, especially for a child to think that there is something wrong with them like that, that they are pathetic and wrong in a new way rather than in a community with support. For me, this is exactly how it went. This is getting personal now, but I think from my blog it’s evident anyway. Anyway, as a young kid I often struggled with a lot of things that other kids didn’t. I didn’t talk to people besides those I was already close to, like, at all. I was functionally mute a lot of the time. I struggled with schoolwork too, when I had to do any homework I would freak out. I hated myself and the only future I could imagine was one where I was, essentially, entirely different. Sound familiar? From that brief description obviously it’s not enough to make any diagnosis, but now that I’m older and have pursued actual mental health support, I’ve been diagnosed with lower levels of autism and a lottt of depression. I’m doing a lot better now that I understand! Anyway, my point is I think that if a child thinks they’re sick, or doing badly, they probably are, in some way! No one wants to feel ill, it’s a way to rationalise existing feelings.

scrolling through the unsent project searching for all the names I’ve ever used… I wonder if any were about me..? Unlikely, but it’s such a strange feeling seeing words like that addressed to “me”