PrincessForADay

Social Anxiety is a nightmare. Especially when you’re a person that knows deep within your soul that you have a calling in life to help people.

How do you help people when being close to them terrifies you?

Well, that was the question I was trying to answer when PrincessForADay was born.

My albeit short experience through life thus far has taught me some very valuable lessons, and I’ve dealt with some unique challenges. Looking back, I’m very grateful for the challenges I’ve had to face, because they have made me a much BETTER person in every sense of the word. Hindsight is always 20/20. In the moment, it just feels like you’re going through hell, and all you can do is just try to keep going.

I suffered through a great deal of mental pain and anguish through my very personal struggles with mental health. Years of my life, in my mind, have been completely wasted as a result of my poor mental health, and those years seem to weigh on me constantly, reminding me that I have so much wasted time and potential to make up for.

But even after I started my very long journey to recovery from my mental illness, I have struggled to shake this social anxiety, which prevents me from reaching out and accomplishing most of my goals. It clings to me like a shadow, a reminder of my “defectiveness” everywhere I seem to turn.

Towards the beginning of this past summer, as my intense depression started to lift, it was almost as if I was seeing the world through a whole different lens. It was literally as if I had been living in a completely different world, made up of pale shades of blue, gray, and black. Now, it’s as if the entire world is lit up with a rainbow of colors, and exploring the wonders of the earth have given me so much joy.

I started to spend more and more time out in Nature, because that’s where I simply felt the best, the most like “myself” than I had felt since I was in high school. But as a 26 year-old adult, I also have a completely new set of knowledge and experiences, and suddenly life was so RICH. Being around Nature began to ease my anxiety. I made friends with the trees. I’ve learned so many incredible lessons from their silent wisdom.

Wildflowers became the metaphor for my life: they withstood the broils of nature, they handled all the storms life threw at them, and they were beautiful. They flourished and they grew. They were WILD. They knew how to survive.

I wanted to be like my photosynthetic friends. I wanted to be resilient and beautiful and full of wisdom. The more time I spent surrounded by nature, the more comfortable I felt leaving the safety of my tiny one-room haven, and I soon began to spend as much time as I could surrounded by nature, in any type of way, Whether it was a giant grassy field, a dense deciduous forest, broad expanses of rows of cornfields, or my personal favorite, in a prairie heaven surrounded by tall grasses and wildflowers. Different types of wildflowers everywhere you turn. Soaking in their beauty was healing my soul.

One day, I thought, “These are just so BEAUTIFUL! I wish I could share these with the entire world!” And I started taking pictures. My amateur photography hobby has come only from being exposed to the beauty of Mother Nature herself; I just happen to be there at that moment to capture it in a photo.

As I began to share my photography, I wished I could share my experience with these wildflowers more tangibly, in a way that I could physically share my experience with others. There were just two problems: These flowers would only last for about a day without water/on a crown, and my tricky social anxiety was not going to let the human interaction part happen. I had to think of some type of way to share this beauty with people. I just HAD to share these beautiful wildflowers, who had impacted me and healed me so deeply, and I knew that they could impact other people so deeply, too, even if their beauty only DID last a day. One day is 24 hours worth of memories! That seemed worth it to me.

One day I decided to pick some flowers from the field behind my house, and I happened to come up with a flower crown! “Is this too ‘hippy’?” I thought to myself, as I completely embraced the beautiful feeling that wearing the crown filled me with. I had connected my healing wildflowers with something I could actually WEAR! My imagination was delightfully tickled, and I honestly felt special wearing that flower crown, like a true Princess of Mother Nature.

I don’t know what it is about these crowns, but I’m telling you, you can’t help but feel like a Princess as soon as you put one on! (I think there are many people by now who can attest to this). So I knew I HAD to share these crowns somehow. But who else besides my hippy/bohemian 26-year-old self would want a flower crown?

That’s when I remembered being a little girl. I was the youngest child in my family, with four older brothers. Being particularly shy and sensitive anyway, I felt a lot of lonely moments as a kid, where I would get LOST in books about magic and fantastical things that could never actually happen in real life. But I always ALWAYS wondered, “What if!?” What if magical things really COULD happen in real life? Somehow that thought, that “hope” you could almost call it...was a friend during lonely times. Imagination and wonder and pondering were the foundations of my childhood, and no matter how much I knew magic wasn’t “real,” I still always sensed, back when I was little, that that MIGHT not be the entire story.

All of this came together magically itself. Suddenly the idea clicked in my mind, and PrincessForADayWashingtonIL was born, even if not fully recognized yet. I knew I had discovered a way to help people, and the most important type of people (in my opinion): little kids! I was going to be the person that brought magic to life for them, by placing this flower crowns around town in places where kids would be able to “magically” find them.

I was SO excited at my first attempt. I got up early and made the crown (which was still not a perfected/easy process at that point), took the fruits of my labor to the park, laid it neatly on a bench near the playground, found a spot to sit back and watch, and waited. I waited for hours! And not a single child showed up. I left the crown, my hopes a bit deflated, but hoping that someone would still find it after I left and have some fun with it.

The next day, armed and ready with two more laboriously-made crowns, I excitedly went to the park to see if the crown was still there. I was hoping NOT to find it, meaning someone had used it for its intended purpose and kept it to play with it! I looked around, and I indeed found the crown, wilted and sad-looking, on a pile of trash in the garbage can.

I was devastated! How could someone throw away something that was clearly intended for children to play with it at the park! But then I realized, maybe it wasn’t really so clear after all.

Before I left the two crowns that day, I luckily had some paper and a pen in my purse, and I was able to attach a note reading, “You have been chosen to be a Princess for a day!” to both of the crowns. I hid them around the playground, and again, found a spot to wait.

I was beginning to really lose hope after a couple hours went by, and still no one had shown up to the park. I was starting to think maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all. After all, they were only going to look pretty for a day, and if no one found them, what was the point?  I was just getting ready to leave, when a BUSLOAD of daycare children piled onto the playground. I excitedly watched from a distance as the kids eventually found both of the crowns that I had hidden. I saw the first girl’s confused face at first, then she read the note, and ran as fast as she could to her daycare teacher, with a huge smile on her face. The daycare teachers read the note, decided it was ok, and let the little girl wear it. I will never forget that smile on her face! I KNEW for a fact that I had just made that little girl’s day. Another girl found the other one not long after, with a similar experience. At that point, all the kids were gathering around to look at them. Those two girls looked and felt like real Princesses. I couldn’t have been more satisfied with the result!

I quickly made a facebook page so that people would know I was a legit source and not just some creepy person trying to lure kids away! I wanted to make it very clear that it was just purely out of love and wanting to brighten a little kid’s day. So PrincessForADayWashingtonIL was officially born.

Those daycare teachers ended up posting the very first pictures on my page, and I couldn’t have been more thrilled. IT WAS WORKING!!!!!! And I even got to see it sometimes when people were generous enough to take a picture when they found it, and post it to the page.

It became a very cathartic experience for me throughout the whole summer. Ups and downs with anxiety and emotions are always an issue for me still, but having something I could say I was doing to actually GIVE something back to the world after those wasted years of mental illness was a steadying force in my life. It was something I could look forward to every day, but it completely depended on my own effort.

I was forced to confront a lot of my fears. Sometimes, I even started walking directly up to people and offering the crowns. The confidence I felt from the plethora of smiles I knew I had caused gave me the courage to expand my comfort zone. I got so much more comfortable around people through this whole process.

Every single picture posted to my page means the world to me, but even when they don’t respond that they’ve found it, I can only imagine the joy and fun and imagination some little kid is having with it, and it has nothing to do with facebook or the internet. And that thought makes me just as happy!

I intend to continue this project as far into the season as the wildflowers allow. As with everything in life, Nature is seasonal. I have watched with awe as the flowers from early summer have died and the plants of late summer have started to take their place. It’s absolutely jaw-dropping to me that so much life JUST HAPPENS! Without any human intervention at all, the wild continues to be wild.  I’m excited to continue watching how Nature develops and unfolds as the seasons change.

I know the time is soon coming that the first freeze will hit, and all the wildflowers will be gone. I plan on making crowns until that day! And hopefully by the time all the snow melts and the sun starts to shine and grow and nourish new life again, those wildflowers will be back, and if I’m still around, so will PrincessForADayWashingtonIL.

To see SO MANY MORE of the beautiful princesses we've had this summer, visit PrincessForADayWashingtonIL on Facebook! :)

https://www.facebook.com/PrincessForADayWashingtonIL/

Love,

Jessi <3

Reasons NOT to Commit Suicide

If you are considering committing suicide, please read this entire list.

the ocean
the waves
the sand in between your toes
finding sea shells
watching a whole ecosystem develop before your eyes in tide pools
the moon
 how the moon is always there, night after night
the sun
 how it gives life to everything on this planet
the universe
the stars
a tiny little speck in the universe developed into a planet, which developed into a world populated  with people over millions of years, just so an even tinier speck (you) could live here
nature
trees
forests
 squirrels and mice and chipmunks exist on this earth...if they can survive living, so can you
  even insects and tiny little creatures
the rainforest
 the way you can see a single ray of sunlight shining down through the treetops
your pet
 how they care about you being happy and lick your tears or let you pet them when you are sad
sunrises
sunsets
puppies
kittens
 all manner of baby anythings
   the way their eyes are so big and they were evolutionarily designed to make you love them so that        you would care about keeping them alive
your baby
 your child who once was just a tiny baby, but you've watched them grow into themselves and          become their own person
  how you're going to continue to watch them grow
your niece
your nephew
your siblings
 watching your siblings become parents themselves
rain
 that kind of rain that just pours, and completely transforms your view of the world for a few minutes
   thunderstorms
 when they're not scary but they are just reminders that you ultimately don't have to control                    everything in your life
  the way the thunder sounds so comforting with the rain beating down on the roof, and you feel so        safe and calm knowing you're inside
lakes
ponds
rivers
the sun reflected on a body of water
the little ripples in the surface that remind you there's a whole different way of life underneath the  water's surface, different from anything you've ever known
boats
swans
 the way they glide over the water so gracefully and calmly
learning about different parts of the world
 different cultures and languages and people
  that live life a totally different way than you do
delicious food
 all the different types of tastes and flavors that are universally delicious
writing
words
 how you can use words to convey a message that was once only in your own mind
little kids
 how they are so innocent and don't understand anything
  how they are so easily entertained and easy to please
charities
 organizations that exist solely for the purpose of helping people
  people that genuinely are trying to make the world a better place somehow
airplanes
 how it's possible to get to any spot in the world
computers
the Internet
 how you can take something from your mind and convey it to millions of people all with the click of   a button, and never having to move from the spot you are at
phones
 how they allow you limitless opportunities for communication
  how they can entertain you for hours while you're just moving your fingertips
elephants
 how silly and playful and gentle and calm they are
rainbows
 how there's even such a thing as rainbows...where we can see all the colors altogether in one                  phenomenon
grandparents
 how they can be so kind and wise
  how they love to tell stories of their lives
    how they've lived through so much history
      sometimes they do stuff like this
history
 how it teaches us so many life lessons
   how people throughout time knew how important life was
     they recorded everything just so that we could know about it
for thousands of years, people have been recording their history so that YOU could know about it
people for thousands of years have cared about YOU, and thought about you
the future
 how you're thinking about it right now
  how not a single soul on this earth really knows how the future is going to turn out
    not knowing is kind of beautiful on a grand scale
music
 instruments and itunes and downloads
  how it can convey a message to you that you understand so well, that words wouldn't have been able     to describe
art
painting
 how one person can create something entirely different than another person
  the human mind is absolutely endless in its potential
softness
 puppy fur and pets and all sorts of animals. blankets and pillows and feathers. anything soft that            brings us so much comfort and relief, just by feeling something
people
 how we can talk to them and help them
   how they can help us
     how we as human beings are innately understanding and sympathetic, and how there are people             you don't even know that legitimately don't want you to suffer
baby rhinos
 because this
fishing
country air
 that fresh air where all you can smell is nature, nothing man-made or pollutant
love
 that feeling in your stomach like butterflies when you know you're in love
   when you know they love you back
validation
 when someone knows and understands your feelings, and why you feel that way
education
  the fact that we are infinitely able to learn new things
warmth
  that amazing feeling when you're super cold and you finally get warm and cozy
    having cold hands and wrapping your fingers around a warm mug of tee or coffee or hot cocoa
        hoodies/sweatshirts, sweatpants, warm blankets, bed, clothes straight out of the dryer
relief
 when you finally realize you don't have to worry about something anymore
colors of leaves in the fall and in the spring
pure joy and hilariousness of how excited dogs get over the simplest things, like a walk or some food
when you really make someone laugh or make them happy
Singing along to favorite music at the top of your voice
campfires and bonfires, the way they crackle, the way they spark like fireworks into the sky, and the way they inspire ghost stories, singing, and deep conversation; and bring a group of people closer together
total relaxation when you lay your head back, let your shoulders relax, and close your eyes while your hairdresser or barber shampoos your hair (I don't know why it's so relaxing but it is at least for me!)

If you have another reason not to commit suicide, please submit it in the comments section, and it could end up on this list! Let's grow this list so that anybody thinking about committing suicide will have to think twice. You could end up saving a life.

Local Mental Health Care and Suicide Coverage—A Peoria Problem

Yesterday (Monday, September 7th), marked the beginning of National Suicide Prevention Week. I was driving to work this morning, officially starting my work-week (since yesterday was Labor Day), and I heard a disturbing story on the radio.

A man had, ironically, tried to commit suicide this morning in our local community. He jumped off a heavily-used bridge.

What really shocked me, though, was the story they were reporting. It was not, in fact, about a man attempting suicide during National Suicide Prevention Week in our local community; it was actually about delays in traffic on I-474...the man attempting to take his own life was just the cause of the traffic delay. This suicide attempt was literally treated as an afterthought, as something that just happens sometimes and you have to deal with it, like a weather condition or road construction or something.

HOW, in the year 2015, is this STILL HAPPENING? Who in the newsrooms thought it was okay to treat a story like this as an afterthought? As just the reason to why traffic was delayed this morning?

I was absolutely appalled at the treatment of this story by the media. As I got settled into work later, I looked up the story online to see if there was any more coverage. There were 2 articles online that I found, and they were both almost the exact same thing that I heard on the radio. That a local 20 year old man had jumped off the bridge, causing delays on I-474. He was treated on the scene and taken to a local hospital. THAT'S IT!

There are even guidelines among the reporting/journalist community on how to treat stories about suicide, to prevent situations like this from ever happening. I did a quick google search and an entire website devoted to informing reporters of these guidelines came up as one of the first results. According to that website,

...Certain types of news coverage can increase the likelihood of suicide in vulnerable individuals. 

In a world where there are rules widely protecting the rights and feelings of minorities and people who are different than "the norm," how on earth do we get a news story with the headline of:

Suicide Attempt Stalls I-474 Traffic

??????

It's no wonder why the Peoria Area has higher levels of depression than the state average (16.6% to 15%). That statistic is from the 2014 United Way Peoria Area Community Assessment, and the ONE statistic that even mentioned mental health (in this case, it was depression), was from 2012.

This statistic has steadily risen since their 2011 Peoria Area Community Assessment, which stated, "People who reported feeling sad or depressed for more than 2 days, 2009 compared to 2004. Peoria County 29.1%; % change from 2004, +7.6%; Tazewell County 30.5%; % change from 2004, +10.8%; Woodford County 18.9%; % change from 2004, - 2.9%.

So in 2014, 16.6% of people living in the Peoria Area were struggling with depression. That is not a small percentage, people. And it should scare you that that number has been consistently rising for over 10 years.

If you peruse the Peoria County Government website, you will see a ton of links to health-related resources. With an increase in numbers like this, you would expect the community to be doing something about it. There is a long side-bar on the main page that lists a lot of different pages related to health, and not one of them has anything mental-health related. So if you go straight to the Peoria County website to try to find resources available for mental health, you will have a very hard time finding anything.

Are you starting to be bothered yet? Just wait...

In 2010, the county of Peoria released the results of its own Peoria County National Citizen Survey, a document of statistics that is over 12 pages long. There was only ONE mention of anything even related to mental health. And what it said absolutely astounded me:

The HIGHEST percent of satisfaction is 39%, and that's in the demographic of earning $100,000 per year.

So only 39% of people in the WEALTHIEST category are satisfied with Peoria's mental health care...and that's to say nothing if you don't happen to make over $100,000 year.
The lowest percent of satisfaction reported (29%) was in the $50,000 to $99,999 range...that's the everyday average person. And they are the most unsatisfied with mental health care here in Peoria.

That is ridiculously appalling. If 16.6% of us struggle with just depression (who knows how high the statistic is if you factor in every single other type of mental illness), and the average satisfaction rate (based on annual household income) here is 33.7%, there is a HUGE problem.

That means there is an enormous need for mental health care, and an even bigger gap in the QUALITY of mental health care services.

That is not okay. This is 2015. We have three major hospitals in the city of Peoria alone, and countless other health programs/organizations; we have state-of-the-art medical technology and beautiful architecture and millions of dollars that go into our healthcare system. And our average satisfaction with mental health is 33.7%. I understand that you can't please everybody, but when the vast majority of people are not pleased, it is a much bigger issue.

From my own experiences and those that I love, I have seen how decrepit our mental healthcare system is...but I never knew the actual statistics until now...and it's absolutely despicable. There is just no excuse for this.

The biggest problem here is awareness and understanding. This is why I am so passionate about this...because people NEED it! PLEASE share this with as many people as you can. We have to get this message out to our community. Most people probably don't even realize that our system is so ineffective. If we spread the message, think of all the countless people we can help to have better quality lives—not to mention the number of lives we can save.

I feel SO much sympathy for the 20 year old man who attempted suicide on I-474 this morning. Not only did he not have access to quality care that he deserves as a human being, but also for the fact that his biggest struggle in life was made into a headline about the cause of traffic delays. That is just not acceptable, and I, for one, will not stand for it anymore.

Mental Illness Understanding and Awareness

The moment I woke up in the hospital after I tried (and failed) to commit suicide, I only felt one emotion: anger.

I was so angry with the nurses who hooked me up to monitors so that I couldn’t move. I was so angry with my family, for calling an ambulance instead of letting me die. I was so angry with my close friends, for not caring enough. But most of all, I was so angry with the world for not understanding what I was going through, and for society’s subtle messages constantly telling me I was a freak—not normal—because I had a mental illness.

I was so saturated with anger that I couldn’t feel anything else for days. I just laid in that bed, heart pounding and head reeling, completely unable to acknowledge that I had just been given a second chance at life. Why would I even want a second chance when I failed so miserably the first time? The world had been telling me for years that I wasn’t good enough to deserve anything at all. I was weird, I was crazy, I was hyper-emotional…It didn’t matter if there was something legitimately wrong with me to make me behave this way. I couldn’t seem to control my emotions, and that made people scared of me.

It made me scared of myself. I lived my life with so much hatred for myself that I literally couldn’t even get out of bed some days. It was too much to look at myself in the mirror. It was too much to even see my hands or my feet in front of me. Every part of me was bad.

My stay in the hospital was absolutely excruciating. When I was finally released a little more than a week later, nobody at home really knew what to do with me. I felt even more like an outcast. What were my friends and family supposed to say to me, after I had literally just tried to kill myself? Most people just said nothing, so that they wouldn’t say the wrong thing. But to me, the silence was absolutely unbearable. It gave me a lot of time to think about how I had gotten to the point I was at.

It all started with a self-diagnosis of General Anxiety Disorder (GAD). When I started noticing my symptoms and looked them up online, I was surprised that there was a name, an actual condition, describing exactly what I was going through. I had never even known anyone with a mental illness before, though, so I didn’t really know what to do about it.

Months later, I went to the doctor because I was having trouble breathing. I mentioned to her that I had been feeling the symptoms that I read online about anxiety, and she immediately told me that my solution was to get counseling. She sent me away, with not even a referral, expecting me to go out and find the help I needed. Obviously, I didn’t.

I continued trying to live my life the best I could. I had just gotten married, and I was trying to finish up college. Being on campus was a huge struggle. I was scared of loud noises. I felt like I was under a spotlight every second of every day. I stopped eating because I was so scared of making a sound with some sort of wrapper or plastic baggie, and bothering everyone around me trying to study or have conversations. I tried not to even move, because I was so scared of people looking at me, and being a nuisance.

I was utterly exhausted all the time. My heart was constantly racing, and I often thought it would beat right out of my chest. My legs felt so heavy; even walking to class was almost more than I could physically manage. I had such a hard time breathing; I learned that yawning helped to open my throat and get a slightly larger breath, so I started subconsciously yawning a lot. That made me even more tired…So I eventually couldn’t even leave my apartment.

Once I missed one class, I just KNEW that everyone in that class would notice what a horrible student I was. If I showed up to class the next time, I couldn’t stand sitting there, feeling like everyone was judging me and wondering why I wasn’t there last time. I felt like I was no longer worthy to be in the same classes with all of my successful, ambitious classmates. It became absolute torture to just sit through a 50-minute lecture.

I dropped out of college right at the end of my second to last semester, and things continued to worsen. I sought help from my ecclesiastical leaders, but—not being trained mental health professionals—they could only do so much for me.

I went through a phase where I was constantly scared for my life, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for almost a year. Imagine the feeling you get when you watch a really scary movie…now imagine feeling that every single minute of every single day. My life was literally a nightmare. I stopped sleeping at night because I was so scared to close my eyes, and the little sleep I managed to get during daylight hours were interrupted by more nightmares. Sometimes I was so scared that I literally couldn’t even move. My body was paralyzed with fear, and I couldn’t speak or get help. I was utterly useless.

The worst part was probably the crippling depression that came along with my anxiety. I was doing absolutely nothing with my life, and I hated myself for it. Everything I had worked for up until that point had all been washed down the drain, in my mind. I had ruined everything and there was no hope for me, or my future. I was hopeless.

Finally, I moved back home with my parents. I went through a divorce and was on my own every day. I laid in my bed in the dark every day, only moving if I absolutely had to. I slept as much as I could to escape the horrible thoughts taking over my head, often interrupting my own nightmares with sobbing. I couldn’t get along with anybody—nobody could say the right thing. Even if they tried so hard to be nice, everything hurt my feelings. I didn’t know it at the time, but my father used to sit in the living room right below my bedroom, and just wait to hear footsteps above him, so that he knew I was still alive.
I was in and out of the mental health clinic, trying different medications and therapy. I tried really hard to force myself to go to therapy, but it was so hard. Nothing seemed to work. If anything, the medication they gave me only made it worse. One scary thing happened when I started taking one prescription: I started cutting myself.

I had horrible scrapes and scratches all over my face. I hated it so much that I literally tried to scratch it away. The infections from the cuts made my face absolutely burn, adding to my misery. I cut song lyrics and depressing phrases into my arms, shoulders, wrists, and legs. It was oddly comforting…It felt so much better to feel the physical pain, because I could control it. As soon as I put a wet washcloth over a fresh cut, it felt instantly better. The pain was still there, but that feeling of relief was absolutely blissful to me at that point. I became addicted to the fleeting feeling of relief.

I was so frustrated with my doctors and counselors. Nobody seemed to really understand what I was saying; it almost seemed like nobody was really listening to anything I was saying. One of the biggest struggles when you have a mental illness is just trying to deal with the system that is supposed to help you, and make you better. Our mental health care system is so antiquated—if you look at it next to physical medicine, there is no comparison.

There’s also no comparison in the way people treat you when you have mental illness, as opposed to a physical illness.

If your friend had cancer, you would feel overwhelming sympathy for them. You would watch them slowly deteriorate after chemo and radiation treatments, you would do anything you could just to spend time with them and get them to smile. So why is it, then, when somebody has a mental illness, nobody knows what to say?

People watch those afflicted with mental illnesses from the sidelines; we see someone deteriorating in front of us due to a mental illness, but in our heads, it is somehow their own fault. The schizophrenic on the street is homeless because he is crazy and refuses to get help or hold down a job. Our prisons are filling up with criminals who refuse to take their anti-psychotic medications. People are committing suicide because they are cowardly and shallow. People like me—the people you grew up with or went to school with—we are lazy and silly for not finishing school or getting a job. These are the stereotypes that people with mental illnesses face every single day.

You wouldn’t judge someone who was born with HIV for his or her parents’ mistakes. You wouldn’t judge someone with cancer as being lazy after his or her chemo treatment. You wouldn’t laugh at someone with a broken leg for not being able to walk. So you shouldn’t judge someone with a mental illness as anything other than a regular person with a serious medical condition. Mental illnesses do not make any person weird, lazy, crazy, or freakish. When a person has a mental illness, it only means that there is a chemical imbalance in their brain, which needs to be fixed by a medical professional, or that person has gone through something so traumatic that it literally damaged their brain. It can be just as genetic as cancer, or it can be just as environmental as someone breaking his or her leg. Mental illness is legitimate—it is more than feeling sad, angry, or scared all the time. Until you have experienced it for yourself, it is hard to understand the difference, but it is definitely more than just what you see on the outside.

Eventually, I started a new medication that actually worked for me. I very slowly started feeling like I could do more things. I got a part-time job, which led to a full-time job, which led to me feeling like I was a normal person again. I still struggle dealing with all the things I know I have lost due to my mental illness, and it still hurts to experience the memories from that part of my life. I will always have to deal with this issue—it’s a chronic illness. But at least I now know that I can manage it and still live a normal life. I now know that it is possible to feel happiness again, and I appreciate that happiness so much more when I feel it; I know what it is like to feel its absence for years at a time.

If you know someone with mental illness, gently encourage them to seek help from medical professionals. Tell them to stick with it—the mental health care system is extremely hard to navigate, but we need it. For the sake of your friends or family with mental illness, and for people like me that you don’t even know, please help us fight the stigma of mental illness. Please help us reform the mental health care system. Please help us—there is so much we cannot do alone.

My purpose in writing this article is to promote mental health awareness. So many people who have struggled with mental illness cannot talk about their experiences, simply for the fact that they are not here anymore. If I can reach even just one person with my story and that person changes how he or she looks at mental illness, then I will consider myself successful. Next time you see someone struggling with a mental illness, listen to them, be a friend, care about them, encourage them to get help, but most of all, please do not judge them.

I want to hear about YOU! I want to hear your mental health stories, whether about you, or someone you know. Share with us in the comments of this article at HealthyCellsMagazine.com/specific URL here, or email me personally at jessi@limelightlink.com. Shoot me an email/leave a comment if you have any questions about mental health issues, or if there is a mental illness-related topic you’d like to see more about in this magazine. Together, we can get people talking about mental health issues, and increase awareness and understanding! 

Central Illinois: About Me Post in a Creative Way

Central Illinois—I wouldn’t choose to live anywhere else. Every region has its own unique kind of beauty and splendor. The rolling fields that change from green to golden when you look at them from a different angle, the bright vivid green of the grass and trees all around you; the sheer density of color is astounding when you stop to think about it. It is easy to take the majesty of central Illinois for granted, until you’ve lived other places and realized how much you need that green surrounding you.

I was born in northern California, raised in Illinois, and went to college in Utah. I also lived in the state of Washington for a little bit. No matter where I go, I always end up back in Illinois, surrounded by forest and fields and green.

Growing up with four older brothers (and being the youngest, only girl) gave me a lot of time to myself when I was young. Instead of playing with siblings, I played with willow trees. Instead of dolls, I nurtured cobs of corn. Instead of a gymnasium, I ran in fields. Nature was my first family. My real family was almost second place in my heart. It’s not that I didn’t love them…I just connected with my surroundings more than the surrounding people.

Intuition is my first method of understanding the world around me. Sometimes, I just feel connected to things that I know understand me better than people do. Nothing feels more comforting than a wise, giant tree that has seen more than you ever will. The storms that it has weathered, the leaves it has lost, the branches that have been stricken down…it understands your struggles on a very fundamental, instinctual level. Nothing will ever get you as well as a tree does. When you are struggling and no one can say the right thing or have the right look behind their eyes, you will find the deepest understanding and comfort within your soul when you sit underneath a selfless tree.

A tree will never judge you for how tall you are in comparison. A field will never laugh at you for how far you can run through it. A flower will never look at you with pity for the lack of beauty you possess in its presence. Grass will never challenge you to grow faster than you are able.

While I love to experience new things, travel to new places, meet new people, and see life through different eyes, I will always return to central Illinois, where the green and the fields and the trees will welcome me back into their leafy arms. Expanding my mind will always be a priority in my life, but comforting my soul and easing my burdens will always be left to nature—my friend, my family, my majesty, my peace.

The Magical Upstairs

To preface this story, all you need to know is that we live in a basement apartment, and the people that live above us also have a dog. Dux happens to be obsessed with this dog (his name is Charlie). To Dux, upstairs is this amazing, unobtainable place wherein lies all of his hopes and dreams. He knows that Charlie is there, and his past experiences have taught him that there will ALWAYS be bones there. And probably food. And really nice humans. I imagine him looking like this whenever he thinks about it:

So anyway, there's this little hallway between the upstairs and downstairs where we come in and out that separates the two living spaces. EVERY time Dux comes inside, instead of going immediately down the stairs to his home, he goes out of his way to run UP to the neighbors' door. 

There's probably a ghost or some other magical creature living in this hallway, because on occasion, both or one of our doors won't close all the way when we think they are shut (it probably just has to do with air pressure or other scientifical things, but I like to imagine a ghost pushing the doors open).

 To Dux, this is the most amazing thing that could possibly happen. Because when this happens, he has free access to upstairs. We never even notice when the door isn't shut, so if Dux by chance is near the door when this happens, I'm assuming it looks something like this: 

 







I'm sure that he tentatively sniffs around for a minute, testing to make sure we don't know what he's doing. When he's sure we can't see him, he bolts.

He frantically runs up the stairs, knowing that this is his one chance and it won't last for long.

So we're just sitting down in the living room chillin like this, until we hear it.

Above us, chaos is happening. "Ummm, do you see Dux?"

Our neighbors tell us that whenever he gets up there, he immediately runs for Charlie's food bowl (what a well-mannered dog I've raised). He frantically eats as much as he can. At this point, we've usually registered what's going on and are on our way up the stairs to retrieve him. But not before he finds and steals one of Charlie's bones.

I'm pretty sure that he can sense how close we are and how much time he has left to cause as much destruction up there as possible, because right when we get up there, he casually walks out, bone in mouth, wiggling his butt like he's the happiest puppy in the world, looking like this:

"Can I keep it???? Can I can I????

Obviously, we're not impressed by his antics.

Oh, and cooincidentally while I was working on this very post, this happened at ONE in the MORNING. That was a first. I can only imagine what our poor neighbors were thinking as they were probably woken up by Charlie and Dux's joyous reunion in the middle of the night, when we all least expected it. Well played, Dux. Well played.