September 24, 2026
I’ve struggled with my mental health for years. I often felt off, but never fully understood what that meant.
My brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was a kid and eventually took his own life. I’ve often wondered if my dad has some undiagnosed mental health issues of his own. As I’ve gotten older, it’s become more and more clear to me that I may not be normal.
I’ve gone to several therapists. I was committed at one point. I spent a few days in a mental health and substance abuse facility. After all that, I’m still not sure what to claim.
For years, I believed I was bipolar. Therapists told me no. I’ve questioned whether I could have schizophrenia, but I don’t have a diagnosis. Maybe I’ve spent too much time trying to name something I haven’t fully learned how to describe.
I just know what it feels like to live inside of me.
There is great importance in being able to express myself openly and freely. I need to understand and explore my inner world in a way that allows me to strengthen my connection with myself and the world around me.
Isolation has usually been the answer for me.
Running away from the people who love me when I feel unlovable. Ironically, I’d run toward the things that depleted me even more.
Drugs. Sex. Toxic relationships…
People who could never give me what I was desperately searching for.
Maybe because somewhere inside me, depletion felt more familiar than love.
I’m 36 now.
This matters so much to me because it’s taken me 36 years to see myself. Thirty-six years to decide that I am strong enough to speak my truth, even if that truth is:
I have no idea what the fuck is wrong with me.
I can acknowledge that I need help. I can acknowledge that I struggle often with staying balanced. I can acknowledge that I’ve used substances and people as crutches to distract myself from the very parts of me that need repair.
Maybe acknowledging those things is part of the repair.
My last relationship was a perfect example of that. Leaning on the most unstable man I could find. Hoping that my love would somehow heal him. Hoping that healing him would somehow make him love me the right way. Overlooking every red flag that showed me that he was just a reflection of my father.
A smiling face. A playful heart. And underneath it all, the darkness they both carried inside.
For years, I watched my soul leave my body. Tiny bits and pieces, day after day, year after year, being drained from my very being.
Energy Vampires.
That’s what they’re called, right?
Those souls that suck the life out of you for their own gain. They take and take and take, and you blindly give and give and give.
Before you know it, you’ve given them everything you have to offer.
It’s never good enough, is it?
Lately, I’ve had to ask myself a harder question:
Why did I keep opening the vein?
Why did I keep offering myself to people who had already shown me they would consume everything I gave them and never once think to pour anything back into me? Why was I so willing to starve myself just to make sure someone else was full?
Maybe that’s what happens when you haven’t learned your own value. You start treating pieces of yourself like they’re disposable.
Endlessly replaceable.
Until one day…
There isn’t much left to give.
This writing feels scattered, very much like my brain in the moment.
Maybe that’s okay. Maybe everything doesn’t need to make perfect sense before I’m allowed to express it.
I’m grateful to you for reading, for listening, and for paying attention.
I don’t understand why life has gone the way it has for me. I’m still trying to figure that out. But I do believe that sharing these pieces, these Writings of The Soul, will help me identify the aspects of myself I have been running from for so long.
Maybe that’s why I write.
I express to feel.
I feel to heal.
I heal to grow and become the version of myself God created me to be.
Sometimes, I wonder why…
Why work so hard to become better?
What is the end game here?
What is the silver lining of existence?
Maybe I won’t ever know.
But I do know one thing.
I am glad to be alive.
~ Jane
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