I don’t remember exactly what had happened, but I do remember feeling like I was always constantly on the edge of another anxiety attack. Another day in which I had to fight the silly fears about me possibly having a seizure inside my head, another day where I worried about how good of a person I was, and the weirdest part about it all was I was 13-14 at the time.

It is more common than not in this day and age to develop mental illness symptoms in your teen years. Especially mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, and even new recently discovered conditions like CPTSD and BPD. For me, I had Anxiety, OCD, and Depression.

It started around when I was in the 8th grade, already isolated from the rest of my classmates and my friends making the most edgy and crude jokes they could possibly think of because someone had hurt them. Around that time, Disney actor Cameron Boyce had died from SUDEP, or Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy. I had an almost close attachment to Cameron Boyce as I saw him play multiple roles, from playing Luke in the show, Jessie, to Carlos from the movie, Descendants. He was not a role model to me, but obviously was a child actor who played a major role in my life and interests.

When I found out that Cameron Boyce died, first I was shocked, but then when I found out how he died, I was even more shocked. I didn’t know that you could die from Epilepsy, and I didn’t know that just about anyone can. Finding out such information was truly horrifying and jarring to me. So, I looked into it more. I found out that epilepsy is deadly, and that also SUDEP was common among people with epilepsy. I looked and looked further, and found out that people with my condition, autism, were more than likely to get epilepsy on average than people with other conditions.

This fear had carried on with me throughout the entirety of my 8th grade years. I spent the majority of my 8th grade years ruminating, trying to not ruminate, trying to find something to cling onto to get away from the anxiety, and because of this, I ended up doing the same thing for 2 years of high school as well, costing me my GPA and my high school life.

People like me fail to get taken seriously by numerous people due to the unreasonableness of our anxieties. In a way it makes sense since people who rely on logic to make decisions probably will not understand why a child is worrying about something that probably has a 1 in a million chance of happening. However, for people like me as well, these fears were really real, and deserved to be validated.

My household already wasn’t a place for emotional validation. People like my mom also suffered from major anxiety and had major mood swings. People like my dad were overly critical and were known to project their insecurities onto me and my sister. My grandmother could barely speak English and could barely understand any emotions. 

I remember one particular night when the anxiety got really bad.

I was really really anxious that night about getting epilepsy and dying from a seizure, and I remember begging my parents to let me sleep with them that night.

“Nothing bad is going to happen to you,” my mom said after I had complained to her the millionth time about my anxieties.

This obviously didn’t help me at the time, and I remember her trying desperately to get me out of the hellhole of my feelings. 

I don’t remember exactly what I said at the time, but I remember saying “please can I sleep here” in a very pleading tone multiple times.

“Nothing is going to happen to you” I remember my dad agreeing to what my mom was saying. 

I was still feeling quite anxious at the time, and I think I slept in their room that night because they were that annoyed with me, or maybe I was mad I couldn’t. I don’t know.

I do remember the feeling of feeling chronically invalidated for the good couple months that I suffered from this anxiety. 

I was also incredibly isolated during this time as well. I was feeling very alone and like no one would understand my anxiety, so naturally, I didn’t rely on anyone to help me. My own parents couldn’t be of much help either.

Naturally, I joined this discord server called “The Sanctuary”. I had found the server through a website called Disboard, and searched for mental health servers as I thought my mental health was declining, this was how I found “The Sanctuary”. A server I would leave and join for almost 2-3 years.

I joined the server and immediately went to the channel where I was supposed to ask for support. Naturally, I asked for support. A couple minutes later, I see someone by the name of “Cosmos” typing. I don’t remember exactly what they said, but I do remember them saying that they were a listener and here to help me with any concerns that I had. They were one of the first people in my life that taught me about grounding techniques, and how I could use them to soothe my anxiety. 

“Hello, I’m Cosmos and I’ll be your listener today”. Cosmos typed, with their dragon profile picture. We had typed and typed for a couple of minutes, with Cosmos listening to me rant about my anxiety, it was until I felt satisfied enough that the listening session was over.

For the next 2-3 years, I continued asking for support from the listeners on that server. In a couple of days I became a listener myself, and I continued to help others as they have helped me. I would constantly ask people how they were, and try my best to fix them and their problems. It was a stressful job, but I suppose it was worth it.

The server was quite large, with more than a thousand people on it. Every other day people were asking for help. I kept helping and helping numerous people, but unfortunately it got to a point where I couldn’t be a part of the server anymore. For separate reasons however. I left because of the members expressing controversial opinions, not because they were saying things that could potentially damage my mental health. 

After I left the server, I took some time off for myself, I think. Until I found myself in similar discord servers and internet spaces. During this time, loads of internet spaces were filled to the brim with people with similar political ideologies, people who united over shared disabilities or traumatic experiences, and etc. I was in a ton of these places and I left. Every. Single. One of them.

After a long while, I started venturing out into the real world. It was 11th grade where I decided I wanted to make real friends. It wasn’t long until I actually met one.

It was during our school’s “field day” event, Color Wars. There was this boy that I saw walking. He had black hair and a familiar face. I knew him since he had waited with us for my school bus the year before. I won’t reveal his name here but let’s call him Asher.

We talked about classical music. He told me about how various classical musicians had died early or young due to illnesses or diseases. It truly was one of the most memorable conversations I’ve ever had with anyone in my entire life.

After a couple months, we became friends, and still are friends to this day. We would often joke around, talk about random stuff happening in our lives, and just be silly with each other, and honest. We were happy around each other. We never wanted to leave each other. I think.

I remember one day, after our school’s every other day morning whole-school meeting called “muster”, I asked him “Do you hate me”, as me and him were walking out of the auditorium doors. He replied, and I remember this vividly, “No, I love you”! I then started thinking if anyone had ever genuinely loved me at all, because after that he asked “Has anyone ever said that to you before”? And then my head started spinning.

The thing is, I don’t know if anyone had ever said that to me before. At least not genuinely. I had thought about when people said they love me to me, and I wondered if they meant it or if it was a part of some game I had to play. 

The thing is, many people struggling with mental health find out later on that their mental health problems aren’t just in their own minds, but come about as a result of repeated long-term trauma in the past, that causes them to have unhealthy coping mechanisms that manifest themselves in the form of mental illness.

In my case, it almost felt like no one had genuinely loved me ever in my life. 

I figured out that, in fact, most of the love I had felt in childhood wasn’t really love, but it was fear. I was convinced fear was a way to love as it was a way to love my parents.

“Love is fear” might’ve as well been a repeated mantra in my mind.

I remember back from as young as I was probably 5, I was called many things by my parents. “Drama queen”, “crybaby”, I was even made to feel like an outcast from my family for having a fear of water due to me nearly drowning in a pool one time. It might’ve not entirely been their fault though. 

That’s when I started questioning what love really meant to me at all, what was love really, and was it really just being afraid of the other person being upset and doing everything to not make them upset? 

Was love a place of comfort, of safety, of protection? Or was that just an unattainable fantasy?

What was love?

What is love?

These were questions that I inevitably had to answer but honestly, I still don’t have the answer to even now.

I lingered on that question of if anyone had said that to me before for a large majority of the school day, and it made me feel a lot of things.

Firstly, when that particular friend said they loved me, it felt like love, it felt like genuine and heartwarming love. Even if my friendship with them hadn’t always felt genuine and heartwarming, they were always good with words. It felt like they wanted to make me feel better. Like they actually loved me.

When everyone else said that, did they mean it?

And had anyone ever said that honestly? 

I remember back when I was a much smaller kid than I was now, I was always acting out and being aggressive. I never really bothered to question why.

Looking back at those memories feels dark, feels lightless almost, which would make sense.

I remember in one of those memories I was acting out, my dad seemed like a condemning teacher waiting to punish a student for messing or fooling around. “What do you want, Princess Victoria?”. He said, not in an endearing way, but in a way in which it felt like it was bad to be in royalty. 

It didn’t really feel like love, because if it was love I would’ve felt loved, but I didn’t. I felt humiliated, shamed, spoiled. 

I guess that wasn’t love then.

Now though, at least with this person a little bit, I feel loved. And I love them. They are nice to me and have been supportive to me for almost a year now. They might not be the nicest person but they are definitely nicer than people I’ve met in the past.

To me, a feeling of being supported, uplifted, cared for, important, cherished, and feelings of laughter, honesty, and repair are what love feels like.

And perhaps maybe, that’s what I needed all along.