# The Not So Great *You were warned on the way in. This is the part I don't put in the highlights reel — the part Christina and Bre know about, the part that lives in the dark. Read at your own discretion. I'm not liable for what your head does with my head's contents.* --- ## The thoughts I don't show There's a commit in my own repo history that says it better than any bio ever could: > **"Add homocidal thoughts — Christina and Bre are the only two who know. Thoughts, not actions."** I have thoughts that would end friendships. Violent thoughts. Intrusive, unwanted, horrifying thoughts that show up at 3am when the paranoia is loud and the world feels like it's closing in. I have thought about what it would be like to hurt the people who hurt me — in vivid, cinematic detail, the way a broken brain does when it's trying to give you power back from a world that took it all. They are **thoughts**. They have **never been actions**. I have never hurt anyone. Not once. Not even the ones who deserved it. The people who know me best — Christina, Bre — they know the full inventory, and they're still here. That's the line, and I have held it my whole life. The thoughts are the illness talking. The line is me. --- ## The instability I know what it's like to fall in love and then watch your own instability ruin it. I know what it's like to be told you have to leave someone **for their own good** — not because you don't love them, but because you're a hurricane and they're standing in the path. I did it with Thomas. I did it with people I cared about more than I cared about myself, because the alternative was letting the storm take them too. The bipolar swings, the schizoaffective breaks, the borderline fire — they've cost me relationships, jobs, years, and more nights than I can count. When the depression hits, I slow down until I can barely move — the psychomotor thing — and the world interprets "can't produce output fast" as "doesn't understand," and the isolation gets deeper. And then the mania comes and I'm building three operating systems at once and texting everyone at 4am, and people see the fireworks and think that's the real me. It's not. The real me is the one who survives both. ## The abuse There's a story I almost never tell, and it starts with the person who was supposed to protect me. My mother's anger was a car. She'd slam it into **go** and **park**, go and park, go and park, because *she* was angry — the transmission of the rage, rocking the whole car while we sat there terrified in the back. And when that wasn't enough, she'd **speed** — to terrify us, to make the point that she held our lives in her foot. She said the words out loud, the ones burned in forever: **"Stop crying or I will give you a reason to cry."** The violence wasn't always the car. I was **thrown into corners** because I was "too loud." I was **forgotten in a corner** while my father gamed — hours of being a piece of furniture in the room, invisible, because the adults were busy being adults. And when I was too different — when I stopped performing the child she wanted — I was **left to my own in my bedroom**, alone with the only thing that never hurt me: the computer. I learned technology as a coping strategy because the screen was the one place nobody could corner me, forget me, or give me a reason to cry. And there was one moment where it almost broke me — the story where I almost killed my mom. I don't want to relive the details of that night, and I won't put them here for strangers to gawk at. What I'll say is: a child pushed to the absolute edge of what a nervous system can hold, by the person who was supposed to protect her, can become something unrecognizable. I didn't. I held. But I know exactly how close it came, and I've carried that knowledge like a stone ever since. It's part of why I'm so careful about my own anger now — I know where that road goes. ## The system that failed me And then there was the day I called for help, and the system that was supposed to catch me handed me to the thing I was most afraid of. I was in crisis. I called. I ended up in the hospital, and **Jeff** — the dad figure who, whatever else he was, fought for me that day — helped me beg for a facility that wouldn't give me a trauma response. We asked for somewhere safe. We were told: no choice. The state had contracted — **via a police officer** — and the only bed available was at **Grand Mental Health in Stillwater, Oklahoma**. They took me out **in handcuffs. Nobody read me my rights.** I was a child in crisis being transported like a prisoner to a place that, by its own reputation and my own experience, was the worst possible landing zone for someone with my history. And now the records — because I requested them under the **Oklahoma Open Records Act** — tell the rest of the story. The Stillwater PD response (Case **R2401730**, April 2024) covers the hospital visit and transport to GMH. The call-for-service log (**CFS24017562**, May 15, 2024) was a welfare check on me — no report written. And in my medical records, the system's own note says they sent me there **just to free up a bed**. Let that land: **the state's own records say I was routed to a trauma-inducing facility to free up a bed.** The handcuffs, the missing rights, the "no choice" — all of it was compliance theater for a system that treats a mentally ill kid as inventory. I was processed, not helped. The US healthcare system is **designed around compliance, not care** — and the consequence of not complying, when you have a mental illness, is that you get the worst the system has and you're told to be grateful. I learned that lesson in handcuffs, on the way to Stillwater. I've been managing my own care ever since — because the system demonstrated, in writing, that it will sacrifice the patient to the bed count. --- ## The losses I have watched someone I was supposed to marry **die in front of me**. You don't get over that. You don't get *through* it, really — you get *past* it, and it lives in your chest forever, and it's one of the reasons the dark thoughts have so much fuel. I've lost Thomas. I've been pulled from homes I thought were mine. I've had to walk away from an adoptive family to save my own life. Grief is the backbone of my biography, and most of it happened before I turned eighteen. --- ## The aftermath There were years where I didn't think I'd make it. The diagnoses stacked up — bipolar, schizoaffective, borderline, PTSD, autism, anxiety — and every new one felt like the system adding another brick to the wall around me. There were hospitals. There were nights where the only thing between me and the void was a promise I'd made to someone, or the knowledge that Christina would never forgive herself if I didn't come back. I'm not going to give you the gory inventory of every low point. That's not what this section is for. This section is for the truth that the low points happened, and the truth that **they are not the whole story** — but they are *part* of it, and pretending they aren't is how the silence kills people. --- ## The line So here's the deal, in plain words: - The thoughts are real, and they are **not actions**, and I have a perfect record on that. - The instability is real, and it has cost me — and sometimes the people I love. - The losses are real, and they shaped me. - And none of it makes me dangerous to anyone but myself, on my worst days, and even then — I'm still here. If you're reading this because you're in a similar place: **thoughts are not actions, and help is real.** Call or text **988** (US Suicide & Crisis Lifeline). Talk to someone. The line between the dark and who you are is held by *you*, and you're stronger than the 3am voice says you are. I know. I've held it my whole life. ❤️