My comeback story is really a collection of them, since growth is not linear.
I grew up smart, funny, and precocious, the eldest of three in a family of educators. Never unloved by my family, I still had the semblance of feeling a bit like a black sheep.
I garnered a lot of attention at school as a great all-around student and someone who eschewed the caste system of cliques, hanging with the musicians, the library kids, the Douro kids, and the jocks. I had been bullied in mean-girls fashion by some of the French Immersion lads from about middle school til grade 9. Basically, friendly one-to-one but loads of psychological abuse in the theatre of herd mentality. I was no Hamlet though, guilty of bullying sometimes when expedient. This climate of bullying that existed really took a toll, not so much physically - as the guys at the top of the pecking order weren't so much tough guys as borderline manipulators.
After subsisting horrendous psychological and *some* physical bullying in my grade 8 year, I entered grade 9 with a broken tibia from a soccer game at one of the Beavermead pitches, and in 6 of 8 classes with the bully kingpin from middle school.
I possessed an unshakeable optimism heading into grade 9, on crutches and handed an elevator key to get to science class. I took up with a coalition of once-bullied kids - who flanked empathic from their trauma - and ethical popular allies. I was kind of where these two groups intersected, along with a close friend who had lost his father around this time. We banded together, jamming and briefly forming a band. We also began to form friendships with girls - which aside from the puppy-love dating scene in middle school - had not been much of a thing. I dipped my toe in the dating pool by the end of grade 9, and found my footing - literally - after my tibia had healed.
I had my first brush with mental illness in high school, right around the time I had begun to feel secure. With the dwindling hours of daylight in the winter months of grade 10, I developed a mild case of insomnia and rumination, and was diagnosed with seasonal affective disorder. In that era, you couldn't just go to Shoppers and buy a light for therapy, so I borrowed an early-model light from the CMHA. I started talk therapy, and discovered the wonderful, indomitable spirit of a kind and hilarious social worker. I fought a battle against seasonal depression - a theme that would recur many times and manifest as a chronic mood disorder.
I truly believe that wrestling against the vulnerability of my own mind has prepared me for what many would consider to be the ultimate battle - cancer - a disease from which many of you know I am now in remission. In fact, I contest that in my own experience - and only speaking for myself - that mental health challenges remain scarier than the type of easily-curable cancer that I had. In fact, struggling and overcoming mental health distress has proven a suit of armour and resolve in any physical ailments that have befallen me.
"You know why I'm so funny? Trauma. " - some comedian, probably
***
The SAD would recur in grade 11, after my election to student council that I had achieved with a campaign manager who now serves as my spiritual counsel. I had put down roots as a household name at my school, and caught the performer's bug: acting, in music, and as a comedian. Like Icarus, I was kind of riding an undiagnosed wave of near-mania, involved in everything from football to choir. Like any human, I wanted love and decided about a day before the fact to pursue a pretty-kindred-fellow-actor-girl-who-looks-Polish-and-has-a-wicked-sense-of-humour. I didn't know her situation, and so I wound up in an hour-long situationship with her after she fawned when I tried to ask her out and our misanthropic French teacher did it before I could. Turns out she wanted to hang out, but was dating one of my jock friends. I hear she watches movies for a living. So highschool.
What in my adult life is simply normal was a tough pill to swallow at the time. Obviously, I don't blame any of our sixteen year-old selves, but I do blame the 40 year-old French teacher who poured-her- derision-over-anything-we-did. Short story long, I hit a wall and the productive near-mania receded into worse insomnia and a crushing depression. I dropped out of the school musical, left a lot of my student council work to my cohort, and missed about a month of school.
I fought a Plutonian battle, darker still, and for the astrology crowd that gets that reference, I remember my math class deskmate who was born on the same day as me (Virgo Sun, Scorpio moon) saying in that way that we both talk - in riddles: "you can have some of my water, but it's just less dynamic, less refreshing lately." I was picking up what my friend with the '
'ring was putting down. Very self aware, but deeply suffering, I clawed my way back - with the help of the legions of friends that surrounded me. For the first time, school community was genuinely caring and sticking by me in a time of trauma. I want to credit my school for being on the cutting edge of mental health literacy.
My comeback in the second semester was epic. I attained honour roll marks again and started doing some of my strongest writing. I picked up some selective extracurriculars, including a life-changing model Commonwealth conference with my best friend. I grew close with the Douro crew and firmed up many of the lifelong friendships I would establish from highschool.
As this strength, maturity, and fulfilment was finally developing, the cyclical nature of the Black Dog came back around - this time in the form of a full undiagnosed mania in the summer my maternal grandfather died. Raging hormones at sixteen and Catholic Woodstock taking place just down the road in Toronto proved to be my perfect storm for a first brush with actual mania. On the bright side, my charm and wit got me through a lot of sardine-packed bus rides across the city, marooned from my Peterborough delegation. I learned morsels of Spanish, Polish, Russian, Tagalog, Italian, and any other language remotely connected to Catholicism. I was picked up in Mississauga by my parents, for whom I was an absolute handful most of the rest of the summer.
It was about my seventeenth birthday and the start of grade 12 when things returned to baseline. I thrived during that school year, doing well academically, adopting vegetarianism, and getting in the best shape of my young life. I also got my first de facto restaurant job, cleaning chicken spits and eating big staff meals in a cavernous Swiss Chalet knockoff.
I boasted the highest mark in Grade 12 Drama, and won the Philosophy Award at graduation. I was accepted at Trent University for Political Studies, and stayed in town the summer entering first year.
Then came Frosh Week.
***
I was hyper involved in Trent's Frosh/ISW week, displaying a lot of 'rizz' both in that lane and on the job as a garde-manger at Fusion. I was hitting my stride for the first few days. Then came the insomnia - but this time it was late summer and I didn't feel I needed to sleep. I was so captivated by meeting people in the typical liberal arts university environment. By about day five, I was rhyming every sentence of normal speech. I was manic FOR REAL. I was completely over committed at this point, working at the restaurant, on political campaigns, starting a full course load, performing, and so I was committed.
I spent two weeks in a dingy, outdated psychiatric hospital, where I suffered trauma. But what I was heartened by were all of the friends who were unafraid to visit, including a grand coalition of one time popular kids, bullied kids, and even bullies. We had all gotten over "jackass hill" and were dignified adults.
Another positive was beginning medicine therapy, taking mood stabilizers that have helped keep me level for (most of) the intervening twenty years.
***
Today, I am a radio host, with a bilingual Psychology degree, fifteen years experience in both mental health and culinary, a rapper, comedian, cancer survivor, and multipotential human striving to live my best life.
More power to everyone sharing their stories of human fortitude and spirit. Thanks, Sarah-Jayne for the prompt. Wowza!
The comebacks never cease to come back, and as I grow wiser the battles get easier. I love my community and I love life.
