Kalyssa

The year was 1993, I was 13 years old and this was my first attempt at suicide but certainly not my last….l can still taste the charcoal from having to get the pills out of my stomach. Why did I do it? I knew I didn’t want to die, and I didn’t even want attention, what I wanted and needed was HELP. I was crying for help and that little vulnerable soul didn’t know how to ask for it. At that time children’s aid did not get involved, but times were dif erent then. At this time I still did not open up about what I was experiencing internally and externally, but instead, I began living carelessly and acting out promiscuously. The one thing I had in my favor was that my mom was always there for me and that safe space for my soul. Even though at that time she had no idea what her daughter was experiencing and had been for years through the abuse and battling her mental health, she was still there in the best way she could be at that time. She was the one and only person that loved me unconditionally. 

Through my teenage years my anxiety became worse and at 18 years old I sought out for professional help. I was hopeful that I was finally going to be able to free myself, matter of fact this was the complete opposite. I recall feeling so excited because I thought I was going to be able to speak to someone about what was going on and to unleash my trauma. I wanted to begin to heal, little did I know that my healing would not begin for quite some time, if not years later. My first session I was given the “magical pill” Paxil, in addition to becoming dependent on clonazepam. It was magical indeed, and it suppressed my every emotion! At first it was great, however, after a year I realized that I no longer felt like myself, I felt NOTHING! My psychiatrist was no help as anything we ever spoke about was medication, and that has also been my experience with every other psychiatrist I had ever encountered. I wish I could say that I had a dif erent experience, but that was just not the case for me. Over time my anxiety and depression would eventually affect me physically and I developed an eating disorder which has now caused me to have permanent stomach damage as a result. 

Mental health can be crippling to say the least, and there are days when it feels like I am suffocating. I recall as a young girl experiencing thoughts in which I had to battle alone. Dark thoughts that no child or human being should ever have to go through alone. Through learning how to battle and survive in my own head on a daily basis, I developed my OCD rituals that would consist of numbers and having to perform a task of some sort. For example, if I didn’t flick the light switch a certain way and a specific number of times I would have to do it over again until it felt right. It sounds funny right? It is by far anything but that, and for the individual having to experience this, it’s absolute torture. I would and still do my best to keep this hidden even from those that I am able to hide this from. It’s something I have felt ashamed of for as long as I can remember, however, it has also been my therapy and has assisted me through my most anxious moments. It is then when my OCD becomes worse, simply because if I do the rituals the voice in my head tells me to do then everything will be okay and work out. My mental health has existed for as long as I can remember, and I accept the fact that I will always have this a part of my life. One of the ways in which I have learned to cope is to embrace all these beautiful things about who I am and use them to my advantage. For instance, my music is one of the things that helps me through many dark moments. My writing comes from my own personal experiences, and while I am writing from a standpoint of my own experience I also do my best to write it in a way that other human beings can relate to. Not only is music therapy for us all, but it speaks a universal language that is just understood by those who are open to it. 

I often asked myself, did my mental health issues develop due to my sexual abuse, genetics, or both. To be honest I don’t think that is an answer I will ever know, but what I do know is that for whatever reason I was meant to experience my own traumatic events that took place from a very young age. I was meant to experience my mental health journey in the exact way I did so that I could grow into who I am at this moment. I have learned to accept my mental health as a blessing rather than a curse and embrace every emotion. This is how I am able to create the way I do deep from within, and to be able to do this through the power of music is something that is therapeutic to my soul.