Content Warning: This post contains very personal and very real experiences from my life. It does not contain any updates pertaining to my books or my work as an author. Instead, I discuss my struggles with mental illness, anxiety, depression, and childhood trauma. I recognize that this is a departure from my usual blog posts, so if you find any of this to be triggering, my suggestion to you is to consider your own mental health first and skip this entry. Even if no one reads this post at all, it is enough for me to have written it and recognize how far I have come from where I started.

Be well, be kind, and as always: Happy Reading.

This morning, my cats broke something of incredible personal and collectible value. The item was a gift from my then-boyfriend, now-husband/partner, and holds deep meaning to many of the original interests that brought us together in the first place. As a collectible, it is so rare that I can’t find a price for it on eBay or anywhere else on the internet. And it’s not just broken, it is shattered. I can’t even find all the pieces of it, which means I can’t even make an attempt to put it back together again.

Past me would have shattered as well. I would have screamed, I would have cried, I would have yelled at the cats, blaming them for destroying something so precious. I would have collapsed into depression, hating not just my cats, but myself, too. My mind would have gleefully replayed all my failures, all my darkest moments, all the time when I had something beautiful and golden only to have it snatched away by forces beyond my control. I would have cried that it wasn’t fair. I would have used its loss as evidence that I don’t deserve nice things. I would have projected my fears of losing the best relationship of my life on the fate of that single fragile object.

I know that’s what would have happened because I’ve gone through all of this before. More than once. Countless times, in fact.

I suffer from mental illness. I have a diagnosis of PTSD. I have chronic anxiety and depression. Today, I am supported by medication, therapy, and a network of amazing people that understands my challenges. I have a set of tools to assist me when I feel I’m approaching the brink of a self-destructive spiral. And while sometimes all of these wonderful things aren’t enough, today they were.

Today, I gathered up all the pieces of that treasured object. I searched for the pieces I knew were missing while one of the furry culprits attempted to divert me, purring loudly and getting in my way. I took all the pieces I could find and sealed them inside a plastic container, then hid the container away. I allowed myself to feel sad. Disappointed. Angry. I reflected on what it meant to me, and I considered various ways to fix or replace it. I let it wash over me. And then I moved on with my day. Not long after this, I took a funny picture of the cats playing in a bathroom sink together.* I’m still upset that an irreplaceable item has been destroyed, but I didn’t let that fact destroy me. And that is a personal victory that would not have been possible just two years ago.

[* For context, central Texas is currently in the midst of a cold snap and to prevent the pipes from freezing, the faucets have been allowed to drip. This is entirely new to my ten-month-old cats and they can’t get enough of playing with the water.]

I don’t normally like to share personal details about myself in this blog, but lately I’ve been on an autobiography binge, and in his memoir, one of the celebrities I admire discussed his mental illness frankly, unapologetically, and even proudly. In his epilogue, he urged readers to talk about mental illness in order to help destigmatize it, so that more people can get the help they need as they need it. As he discussed his trauma, his struggle, and what he lost because of it, I found myself identifying with him on such a deep level that I broke down numerous times to simply acknowledge, understand, and accept parts of myself that I normally refuse to look at. As painful as that was, it was also cathartic. Liberating. Validating. And to honor him for sharing his struggles so publicly, I humbly submit my own experiences in the hopes of helping to change the conversation surrounding mental illness.

I bet a fair amount of people reading this right now think it’s stupid to get so emotional over a broken toy. If I’m being totally honest, I also think it’s kind of stupid. I mean, there’s a lot worse going on in the world right now and here I am crying over spilled milk. I get it. In fact, that’s usually a thought that occurs to me in the middle of my depression spiral and instead of putting things into perspective to help me feel better, it only makes me feel like a callous and shallow human being. But here’s what I (and every other judgmental voice) need to recognize: my depression isn’t really triggered by the loss of the object.

My depression is triggered by unresolved childhood trauma.

With the tools I’ve accumulated from therapy, I didn’t lash out at the cats–which is a rather unhelpful coping mechanism, not the least of which because cats don’t really care if you yell at them, and they’re not going to change or learn from it anyway. Instead, I recognized how irrational my feelings were and I looked inward for the source of that trigger, and when I found it, I reflected on the experience and FORGAVE myself for guilt I didn’t even realize I’d been carrying around.

This story happened thirty years ago. Yep, that’s right: I have been carrying this trauma with me for Thirty Years. It was my ninth birthday and we were celebrating it at my grandparents’ house in Connecticut. A bit of background information that may help contextualize some of this: Connecticut was a four hour drive from home, and while my mother loves driving, she abhors sitting in traffic. She hated traffic so much that she always preferred to start these four hour drives late at night. Now, if I was turning nine, that meant she was waking me, my sister (5yo), and my brother (3yo) up in the middle of the night, packing us into the car, and driving for four hours. I’m not a parent myself, but I imagine this to be a fairly miserable exercise. By the way, ma was not a single parent, but dad didn’t usually come with us on these family road trips. His excuse was that he had to work, and maybe that was true. I think he just preferred a simple staycation at home, drinking until he passed out in front of the TV without anyone around to judge him, but I’ll never know if that was the case or not.

So after four hours in a compact car, unable to sleep or read, we arrived at Grandma and Grandpa’s house and caught a few hours of sleep before breakfast. (Another note for context: Grandma and Grandpa were never home in the winter, so we had the house to ourselves.) Grandma had a beautiful earthenware dishware set patterned with red apples. I can still picture the set clearly today. The dishes were heavy and ma distinctly warned me not to break the bowl she served my cereal in. I can’t blame her for being distracted as she had two younger children to care for, and she was probably tired from the late night drive. But I was also young, tired, and deliriously excited to be celebrating my birthday later on. When I finished my cereal, she told me to go wash my bowl.

I dropped the bowl.

Mercifully, it did not break. My mother, on the other hand, did.

I was a failure. Didn’t I hear her when she told me not to drop the bowl? Was I stupid? Or was I incapable of doing something so simple as carrying a bowl from the table to the sink? What was the matter with me? Where was my head? Did I even think of how upset my grandmother would be if that bowl had broken? Did I understand how expensive these bowls were, and how hard they were to replace? Didn’t I know that I was the reason we couldn’t have nice things like earthenware dishes at home? Because I would break them?

After the screaming tirade, she sent me to go stand in a corner and think about what I had done. And I did. I felt awful. I felt worthless. And thanks to my Catholic upbringing, I believed I had committed a sin so grievous that I would burn in hell for it. I worked myself up into such a state that my nose started bleeding, a common symptom of my childhood anxiety. I remember drops of blood spilling down my white shirt, I remember sniffling and trying to stop, I remember blood on my hands and in my mouth.

I remember being too terrified to leave that corner and get a tissue. I had failed to follow instructions by dropping the bowl, the least I could do was adhere to the instructions to stand in the corner. This was penance, wasn’t it? I had done wrong and now I was being punished for it.

I have no idea how long I stood there, blood and tears running down my face. But I remember when my mother finally came to release me from the corner. She’d calmed down and while there was no chance she was going to apologize for her overreaction, she was going to soften it a bit with her patented blend of “I’m just disappointed” and “do better next time” speech. But when she saw my shirt covered in streaks of blood, she became enraged again. Why would I just stand there bleeding like that? Was I too stupid to go and get tissues? Why hadn’t I said something to her when it started? What was wrong with me? And so on, and on, and on.

It wasn’t my fault.

Not the heavy bowl, which didn’t even break.

Not the nosebleed, a manifestation of my anxiety and guilt.

Not the fear instilled in me by religion and parents who both demanded perfection while falling short themselves.

Not the general exhaustion derived from a long drive in the middle of the night.

None of it was my fault. It was never my fault. And yet, I have been carrying it within me for the past thirty years, claiming it as a personal failure, a sin, a mark against me as a person. I believed in it as evidence that my best would never be good enough, that I really was stupid, useless, and unworthy.

I was nine years old.

I’m now thirty-nine years old.

Today is the first time in a very, very long time that I have thought of this memory. It’s the first time I reflected on it and recognized it for what it was. It’s the first time I’ve looked back and realized how much that event has affected me over the years, not just in the impossible standards that I set for myself, but as the yardstick by which I judge others. And for the first time ever, I’m accepting it for what it was and I’m releasing responsibility for what should never have been mine.

Yes, I made a small mistake. It’s okay to recognize that and feel bad for it. But that mistake is not, and never should have been, the sum of my worth. I never should have been made to feel so guilty, so scared, and so unloved. That was not my failing.

This morning, my cats destroyed a treasured personal item. They will never understand what they did, regardless of whether I scream at them, shun them, or start sobbing hysterically. The item is still broken. Cats will still be cats. And do you know what I discovered just now? It’s so much better to accept what is and move on than to scream and cry and lay blame, because if I had, I wouldn’t have a softly snoring cat in my lap right now, warm, happy, and loved.

And isn’t that worth more than any mere object?

I think so.