9/24/2025
Personal
(This entry has a lot of mentions of mental health related topics as well as mentions of neglect, just as a warning if you don't want to read that stuff; this is essentially a big vent)
I’ve never been super great at getting close to people; I always feel like I’m taking up too much space, I always misread how close I am with other people, so I either overshare, or think it’s too bothersome to share about what’s happening. People having issues with me is too tiring, and when I do want to matter to someone, I find that being forgotten is too painful to go through. But, to tell you the truth, I’ve been going through things for a long, long time, and maybe it’s time to share. I don’t think I’ve adequately verbalized certain experiences I’ve had, so I’d like to take the chance here, if you don’t mind. At the end, I’ll explain how it ties to the terrarium, but there’s a lot of context that I’ll need to go over first.
I guess the long and short of it is every qualified person I’ve gone to about these issues has had no real answer as to what’s exactly wrong with me. To explain, I was informally diagnosed at 16 with a “chronic depressive disorder”. My symptoms include severe paranoia, occasional hallucinations (a patterning of psychosis as I’ve been told), episodes of suicidal ideation, night terrors, and long-term memory loss. I was “prescribed” (quotations explained later) with a supplement that my doctor said I’d have to take the rest of my life. That supplement was a larger capsule filled with essentially basic vitamins and stimulants, and if you can imagine, didn’t help. I’m no longer taking the medication, and all of these symptoms have subsided minimally throughout my life. I’ve learned to manage them best I can; sometimes it means I miss classes, sometimes I can’t talk to anyone. And sometimes it means building a terrarium.
I don’t think any family is perfect, nor do I expect mine to be, but I can’t help but feel isolated in their company. Most of what I remember is from when I was 12 years old then on, so anything I refer to from the past is what I can recall during that period of time til present. When I was growing up, my parents were fairly anti-healthcare, even more so with mental health. I was reported to the school as a high-risk individual for suicide, and my parents were given two options: I would have to be housed in a care facility where I would be watched over and medically evaluated, or I could be monitored at home with some time away from in-person schooling for a small amount of time. My parents chose the latter, virtually changing nothing about my life, choosing to not remove any potentially dangerous objects in my room of which I was forced to stay in for the majority of a week (however, I didn’t get out much at that time anyway). I was pretty consistently told that I was ungrateful for my circumstances, and that I was the failure between my brother and I.
Despite everything, my mom did try to take me to a doctor; she was a “homeopathic doctor” (for those who don’t know, homeopathic refers to the “alternative medicine” movement, or in other words, “the body can cure itself”). She essentially told me that all of my issues were caused by hypothyroidism. I assume she came to this conclusion after seeing that I was overweight, because I have gotten tested for hypothyroidism in the years of me trying to figure out what’s wrong and all have come back negative. I’ve even been advised by doctors to stop taking said stimulates as they can trigger different issues, such as hyperthyroidism and (unhealthy) blood thinning. Afterwards, though I was attempting to get help on my own, my parents told me I lacked responsibility so had to continously get therapy in order to stay on their insurance and in their home at age 18.
I guess I bring this all up because recently my mom has reached out and apologized for her neglect of me for the second time. I do accept them, and really only talk to her when it comes to my immediate family; my grandmother, the most I feel I resemble in my family, has always been supportive despite our long distance and her confusion when it comes to my identity. I can imagine that once I'm old enough, perhaps out of school, on my own insurance, and my grandma passes, I will probably never speak to any members of my family and become estranged through being forgotten. Not that I believe that's entirely a bad thing-- my deepest desire, my one true purpose if I had to choose, is to help people and write forever. But before I can do that, I have to help myself.
At the beginning of this post, I said I'd tie all of these events back to the terrarium. The hallucinations and paranoia I experience are usually based on speeding cars, home invaders/general breaches of privacy of people I can't recongize, and general dog noises, either being scratching at doors, walking on hardwood, or barking. I rely on a few things to ease these symptoms: one are my cats, which I know if something isn't quite what it seems if they don't react to certain events. Another is audio based-- usually people speaking that I recongize and put on, or I've found that more intrusive sounds to other people, like louder refrigerator hums and running water can help ease my paranoia. Another is touch, which I've found is only useful if people that I know and get along with are either too close to me or out of view (this is one that I almost never bring up as I don't want others to think I expect them to cut boundaries for something I can't control). The last one is plants. The only difficulty with plants is that I often find myself having issues with forming schedules, and I've long accepted that I could not own an animal or other living creature purely by myself. Which is where the terrarium comes in. I plan on having a running water feature in it as well, so not only will it be easier to take care of than a potted plant, but it will (hopefully) aid some of the symptoms I've been having recently, at school and at home.
