Sacred Fireflies

Content Notice: This story contains references to Suicide.

I felt like I was floating down a desolate river with no one to save me. I felt entirely alone.

As a child, I was diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder. Little did I know that it would turn into a full-blown personality disorder in my adult life. As a child, I experienced traumatic events—abandonment by my father, domestic violence in my mother’s home. I learned to be afraid when I was a child. I also learned that people who are supposed to stay in your life leave.

As I grew older, I had a defiant personality, and I struggled with my self-image. In middle school, I struggled with anorexia. I was under the doctor’s strict watch and was warned that I’d lose my hair if I didn’t start eating. But still, I’d throw away every meal my mother made. Every now and then I’d nibble on a thin slice of cheese, bread, or a small handful of Rice Krispies—foods that I felt wouldn’t cause me to gain weight.

After graduating high school, I lost my first loved one. My high school boyfriend passed away in a tragic car accident, and my life took another emotional spin. Through all the turmoil, I worked full-time, took college prep classes, danced on a team, bought my first car, and juggled many other responsibilities.

A few months after graduating high school, I attended a concert my cousin’s band was playing in, and I met the band’s bassist—my future husband. I moved in with him, we lived above a garage on his mother’s farm. We had no running water, no basic necessities—we lived like that for six months. Eventually, it was time to find a home that had what we needed.

I purchased my first home at the age of 20 while I was working as a housekeeper at a local hospital. But, while working there, I also started to develop some obsessive traits: endless handwashing, constantly sanitizing my shoes, washing the inside of my car every single day, washing my house each time I walked through it. It all became very debilitating, I had begun fearing germs intensely. OCD became a frequent cause of arguments in my relationship because I set my standards of cleanliness extremely high, both in my house and life in general.

In 2018, I got married, but towards the end of that year I noticed my mental health starting to go downhill, and I had no idea why.

In 2019, I experienced my first visit to a mental health institution—in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I spent a week there. The whole time, I felt like a lab rat. I was constantly observed. The shower didn’t even have a regular knob—I had to keep pressing a button to release water.

I did meet a few friends there that I still keep in touch with today. I realized that all of us in there were from all walks of life—it made me feel better to know that I wasn’t exactly alone.

At the time, I was working full-time at a doctor’s office. I had to decide to resign because I couldn’t show up without either having a panic attack before my shift or having a panic attack while on shift. I remember calling a family member on the way to work, crying uncontrollably about how I just couldn’t do it—it was at that point I decided to let the job go. I was then placed on disability, but it took a long and complex process before I received any funds. With the panic of my mental illness, and then adding financial anxiety on top of that, I was a complete mess. But I held on for the ride.

While alone at home I started to become anxious that I was going to die, and that I was going to die alone. My cousin passed away in 2019 from heart complications—I don’t know if that is what triggered my intense fear of death, but I know my phobia emerged shortly after that. Life just felt completely uncertain. I remained on the couch, barely participating in life and feeling utterly distraught. I had multiple visits to the emergency room—whether I was being taken by police officers because I was threatening suicide, or being taken by a family member, it was all very traumatic. I sat on a bed, constantly watched by security guards, or I was locked in a room, wrapped in hospital scrubs. It wasn’t exactly that I wanted to die, I just wanted the pain to end.

During one of my mental health crises where I felt I couldn’t at all be alone, I moved in with my grandmother for a few months. I spent a lot of time walking, and also began writing. I typed my first memoir, Healing the Light Within Me: My Inner Child, on my phone.

When I moved back home, I remember questioning what I would do with myself while staying home all alone. I became afraid to drive, so I barely left the house. I watched the sun come up and go down, and then come up and go down again—and I became sick of that endless routine. I started typing my second book, Chasing Fireflies, which was inspired by my grandmother’s backyard. During my stay at my grandmother’s, I remember sitting in the backyard after dark, watching fireflies light up the sky—and somehow I didn’t feel so alone. I felt free in that backyard, and so the protagonist in my book treasures her backyard as her sacred space. Increasingly inspired, I created a children’s book, There Isn’t Any Monsters Under The Bed, because I felt that anxiety and mental illness could affect individuals of all ages.

I did a lot of hard work, all on my own, researching how I could get my story and my message out there. I had my first book signing event at a flower shop down the road from where I live. I didn’t think I would sell a single copy of my book, but I ended up selling six! The owner of the flower shop told me that I would touch a lot of people’s lives with my story. I created my website and started creating mental health-inspired hand-poured candles to further spread my story and hopeful message.

In 2019, I was also finally diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, agoraphobia, PTSD, and major depression. I then started to pinpoint where my emotional difficulties were coming from. At one point, I felt so overwhelmed by all of the diagnoses that I started to believe my name was OCD. But during my healing journey, I came to realize that those labels were a part of me, not all of me.

Healing is a unique process for everyone, there is no cookie-cutter approach to it. There are setbacks—there were definitely days for me that weren’t peachy—and I still have days where I want to just throw the towel in.

But I’ve started to develop some passions which have helped me in recovery. I don’t push religion on anyone, but a big piece of my healing journey was a spiritual awakening. I started noticing signs that my soul resonated with—signs that I felt were messages that I wasn’t alone and that I was going to be okay despite the very hard times.

Alongside sharing my story and hopeful message through my writing, I am currently working to get into a speaker training program through NAMI, and working on setting up a mental health event in my area where I will be speaking about mental illness and my story.

Sharing my story has given me a purpose in this world — I find that others can relate to parts of my story. I feel it gives them the courage to open up about themselves. This gives me hope because I feel that there is an enormous stigma related to mental illness—I feel that most people would probably feel comfortable telling someone they went to the hospital because they broke a bone, but not because they were depressed.

I think that so many people are unaware of mental illness — but I am hopeful because I’ve found that telling my story and getting information out there can really open people’s eyes to a better understanding.