Hi, I'm Just Me

In less than 2 weeks my blog and I will share a birthday. I started writing on this thing on my 30th birthday as a way to start something positive moving into this decade of my life. Aside from my career I am not able to give much back to the world, and over time I have developed a deep desire to give back in several ways. For one thing, I want to share with mental health professionals/those hoping to be mental health professionals things that may never come up in classrooms about who the mentally ill really are. For another, I want to state loud and clear to the world that I am mentally ill and I walk among you. Yet I cannot do that in a world less anonymous than this because it is a world of discrimination. I also wanted to find a way to help mentally ill Christians be more fully accepted by other Christians. This is part of my life I haven't written a lot about and I hesitate to discuss it much because I do not want to help extend the common belief that Christians are prejudiced and non-accepting. However, I know that by lack of exposure some people of my faith (as some people of any group) don't understand fully. Because I went to a very conservative Christian college I encountered this most frequently while in college and from people affliliated with the college. When I started this it was with the knowledge that it could be used as a resource for students at that school through my friendship with one of the professors. I will talk more about this as time passes; this year hasn't exactly lent itself to fulfilling any plan I had set forth.

Because I became so incredibly ill my blog has strayed far from what I thought it would be. Instead it's been more of the story of my life as I've traveled through this, with random thoughts dispersed throughout. That's sort of weird to me, because it's so far from what I really intended. For one thing I don't really do a great job of either being very open here or filtering things; it's a hodge-podge. Also, I say more than I ever thought I would about who I am. One could figure out a great deal about me if one desired. Either of my doctors would instantly recognize me. Yet it is much more than I let the world see. This blog is somewhere between the hard shell I protect myself with and the person I am with my therapist.

Further, my birthday is not my favorite day. That's a long story that is never going to make it onto the internet, but it just isn't. So distractions are good.

So I thought that perhaps it was time to try something new. I know that there are a number of you who come here regularly, and that I just don't write a particularly participation-inducing blog. That's fine, asking anything else would be like you asking me to reveal more of who I am, where I am, etc.--something that won't happen.

But I thought perhaps those of you who have been coming here frequently for a year might have questions about who Just Me is, or anything else. Obviously I'm not telling certain details, but in general I'll answer anything in my birthday post on the 15th. The more the merrier............