My Heart Beats On

“You know yourself, and if your close friends are picking up on that fact that you’re a little off, seek out guidance from someone. Your brain is the most important organ in your body. If you’re not going to take care of your brain, why take care of the rest of you?” - Yujia Alison, Class of 2014 B.A. and 2017 M.S.

My struggles with mental health probably date back to when I was a little girl, though they went undiagnosed for many years. I’ve been in therapy since 2014, and in that time I’ve come to realize things about my past, like, ‘Oh, this thing that I used to do when I was like 5 or 6 is totally a precursor for self-harm,’ for example. I would never let scabs heal. I would pick my scabs over and over, no matter what people told me, because I wanted a band-aid. I wanted someone to say, ‘Hey, you’re okay,” like here’s the attention and give that to me. It wasn’t like I’d do it a few times and that’d be it either; I still have cuts on my knee from softball when I was like 8 or 9 that I never let heal. I’d just peel them off because I’d get band-aids, and that’s how I got my parents’ attention.

My parents and I are a family of Chinese immigrants, and they didn’t understand what was going on with me. Working was their main priority, so I went to daycare for most of the day growing up. I was eight the first time they put me on a plane to China to stay with my grandparents. I got little more than a, ‘We’ll see you in two months, don’t lose your passport,’ before I was on my own. For many years I just felt discarded, and I still do. I feel like they didn’t care, and a lot of that insecurity stems from the fact that I’m not the son. While I was in high school, I remember my dad explicitly told me, ‘I treat you as my son because that’s who you should be, and I don’t want anything less.’ I held onto that, and even now it’s something that I deal with pretty much every day. I always feel like I’m unworthy, that I’m not enough, and it’s so hard to let go of even though I know that I’ll never be what he wants.

Despite these early signs, it wasn’t until high school that I unofficially started my journey of figuring out what was going on with me. My self-harming had moved beyond picking scabs by the time I was 14. One day I wasn’t careful in biology lab, and a friend saw my scars which got me sent to the guidance counselor. My counselor and teachers were actually a really great support system, and are still in my life to a degree, and by the time I graduated high school they encouraged me to continue seeking out help in college. They knew what I needed even if they couldn’t be it for me themselves anymore.

I started undergrad at UCLA, where sometime during my freshman year CAPS formally diagnosed me with major depression. They didn’t really say much else, just put me on some antidepressant that they didn’t even dose right and then never saw me again. I felt so sick from the medication that I took myself off of it. I transferred to Northwestern for my junior year and was again encouraged by my high school guidance counselor to continue to seek out help, especially since I was further from my support system back home. So I called and was evaluated by CAPS again, but it took them 6 weeks to follow up. Meanwhile I was sleeping too much, exercising way too much, self harming, and skipping meals. I was doing everything that I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t figure out what to do to myself. All that came out of that was a piece of paper with the name of someone else to see, who was very far from campus and did not accept insurance, so I was unable to get the help as I didn’t have money to pay for it and my parents didn’t support it.

I ended up on a psych unit before I graduated where I was diagnosed with major depression, generalized anxiety, and anorexia nervosa. I was also later diagnosed with PTSD from childhood emotional and physical abuse, violence in the household, and stuff like that. I’d had all of that going pretty much since I was 14, and I still struggle with all of it now, so it’s been a bit of a nightmare. I was ashamed of it for many years because there’s such a stigma around mental illness, but I’ve recently been trying to embrace it rather than hide it. It’s hard, but I try to be more honest about my feelings and share as much as I can so that other people know that they’re not alone and that they can overcome their struggle. I’ve had friends from high school reach out to me years later because I wrote something online, and they’re like, ‘Because of you, I’ve been able to talk to x, y, and z about my mental illness,’ and I’m like, “Cool, I’ve done my job.’ I know that it’s not actually my job, but I don’t do much in terms of activism and I don’t have the money to donate; sharing helps me understand my purpose and why I have this experience.

My advice, don’t run away from it and don’t push it away. I stuffed it down for many years, to the point that I would’ve done anything to hurt myself. If you don’t feel yourself, think about why you don’t feel yourself. You know yourself, and if your close friends are picking up on that fact that you’re a little off, seek out guidance from someone. Your brain is the most important organ in your body. If you’re not going to take care of your brain, why take care of the rest of you? The truth of the matter is that I’m probably going to be stuck with this for many years to come, but I’ve proven to myself in little ways - adopting religion, running marathons, my teaching fellowship -