2/25 Thoughts:

I've noticed that as I get older having a severe mental illness gets easier to live with. I've learned from my 20s that I can't tell everyone about it because it scares people off- thank you media for the growing stigma. People push away and are afraid of what they don't know. Heck, I tried to distance myself from taking my medication thinking that I could fix myself without it and that it was all in my head. If you don't take anything from this head this advice: don't stop taking your medicine nothing good will come of it. Trust me, I once stopped taking Lexapro when my dad was in the hospital and things got weird, like really surreal weird. I don't recommend it. 

I'm turning 40 this year and I think about the past 22 years of my life dealing with and then learning to live with my diagnosis. I was barely 18 when a doctor wrote me off explaining that my life was over, telling me that I'd succumb to my mental illness and it's difficult symptoms by the time I was 21. This young resident doctor told me that my life wouldn't be worth living, being a mother would make me evil, and my ability to live a normal life would never exist. For years I let her words rule my life despite trying to have a good life. When I dropped out of college the first time, I heard that woman's voice laughing at me for trying. When I tried and failed at anything I would think about that conversation. Eventually through therapy, cognitive therapy, and a supportive family I was able to let go of this negative self talk. And then I wrote my memoir naming it and this website 21& Counting. I didn't roll over and die, I kept going. I started celebrating every birthday when I reached 22. It started as a way to show that doctor but then became a way of motivating myself to continue doing what I wanted to do. 

You're life isn't over. Stay brilliant and blessed!

-- Jenny Lou