Connection Brings Hope, Part Two: My Struggles

A six-part blog on my journey through life with a mental illness and how my peers,
plus mental health professionals, gave me a new outlook on life.

By Dionna Riccio

My struggles with mental health clung to me when I was as young as twelve years old. As I mentioned before from Part One: The growing up segment, I was sensitive and I took everything to heart. 

From the clashes of my father’s substance use disorder, and the aftermath of his emotional abuse and his death, I thought my father was doing the things that he did based on him not loving me. I realized years later in therapy, that he suffered through his illness. I struggled with anger, depression, and intense guilt after he died, not just thinking that I was responsible for his death but that I knew that I was a bad person hence, I needed to be punished and that the world is better off without me. I didn’t just think this, I thought I knew this to be true. A social worker at the hospital, when I was supposed to say my last goodbyes, said to me, “Not saying goodbye is doing nothing wrong, it’s okay.” I didn’t believe her, nor did I care to. 

Weeks later, I began to feel as if I was evil, and I needed to end my life, thinking: “It’s for the best, people will be happier without me.” Hence, thinking that my father didn’t have a terminal physical and mental illness that cut his life short in his middle-aged life - it was me, his daughter who plugged the plug. Not until I was in my mid-twenties did anyone know I was feeling like this. You see, my mental illness made me think I was guilty of the possibility of all bad things when in reality it was my brain that was sick too. It wasn’t until years later that I realized that what I was experiencing was guilt delusions.

Throughout grade school, I suffered through a deep depression, which wasn’t just feeling sad, this unbearable guilt as I mentioned before consumed me, I eventually felt the need to punish myself just by being alive, and I started to engage in non-suicidal self-injury known as self-harm behaviors. This lead to the forms of an everyday battle with constant suicidal thoughts and urges to non-fatal attempts. I only thought of myself being depressed, but I had a lack of motivation to see the light in anything but death. I went days without proper hygiene, and non-stop thinking of suicide. I struggled with the constant thinking patterns of black and white thinking: “There is no hope for me, why am I alive?” 

Tragically my first attempt to end my life was when I was twelve. I went on to make fifteen more attempts throughout my life. I never understood why anyone cared, why anyone would want me to get help, I just knew that the world was better off without me. 

I wasn’t diagnosed yet, I just thought it was me. This bad person is who I truly am. I went to counseling, but it wasn’t enough.

I felt this way for as long as I could remember, but then high school came, and everything I felt back in my youth vanished, until a week before I was set to graduate with no reason to live or any plans but ending my life. I was stunned that I felt like this again, not knowing what to do. I began to fall back into all my old habits, with no hope. I did indeed end up graduating and going on to a two-year college without any purpose of why.

Unfortunately, the older I got, the more my symptoms turned to the extreme. I had no idea why, I had started getting flashbacks of trauma when I was younger, and of traumatic events that would hinder me from doing any of my work.  Therefore, to have feelings of paranoia that God was out to get me and everyone I knew because I wasn’t dead yet. I thought all the bad news there was because I haven’t ended my life like I should've when I was twelve years old. I started having grandiose delusions - that I was the ‘devil, an evil spirit, nothing good can come from me,” to these euphoric scenarios where I would think and be happy knowing if I was dead, the world would be at peace.” I never knew how sick I was. These were the scariest moments of my life as I was so ready for death. 

In the depths of the last two years of my life, I was hospitalized almost every six months for attempting suicide due to these rapidly unbearable symptoms. I struggled the most with learning that I am not a bad person and that these things simply aren’t my fault. 

It hasn’t been easy, throughout my struggle journey, I was faced with ignorant comments as people thought that they were helping me. In reality, people don’t understand mental illness unless they deal with it themselves or know someone who has. I was told by a former manager at a job that taking time off wasn’t unacceptable and when I tried to explain when I was hospitalized due to constant suicidal thoughts - it was that everyone has problems and everyone is tired of this, and telling people this is wrong. You need to be a big girl and grow up. This spiraled me into a deep depression. I have been told all my life, that because I struggle with suicidal ideation, I am selfish and don’t care for anyone, when in reality, my mind is telling me that everyone would be better off if I wasn’t here anymore. But I thank those who are willing to take the time to understand that it’s not entirely my fault for being like this, dealing with a mental illness - your mind plays tricks on you. I ruined a lot of good things in my life due to mental illness: Jobs, relationships, good friendships, opportunities to go further in life - all because I thought I didn’t deserve any of it. But actually, I most certainly did. 

Throughout my struggles, I am so thankful for all of those who stood by my side and let me get the help that I needed to be here today to share my story.