A Little About Me
Written by Jacob Crowley. Jacob is a rising senior at Illinois State University and is currently interning with The 16 Strong Project.
I grew up with alcoholic parents. I wish coming to terms with the first sentence I wrote was as easy as typing it. No one asks you if you wish to be born or what set of parents you end up with. It is all a part of some lottery we cannot control. This is not going to be a “poor me” story, rather a conversation on where I went wrong in dealing with my own mental health issues.
To start off this list of “do nots”, a little backstory on myself should be provided. I am a white male from a small farm town in central Illinois. My graduating class consisted of 85 students so it is fair to say everyone knew everyone. Throughout junior high and high school years I was known to be the fat and funny kid, so people regularly picked me as the target for bullying because they knew I had a sense of humor. Little did they know I had enough going on.
My home life wasn’t violent or criminal but I grew up far too fast. My parents both struggled in their own ways but shared a similar trait of having absolutely no clue how to co- parent after their divorce. This left me and my sister being in the middle of our parents' discussions. Obtaining this involuntary role was traumatizing for me.
Our parents filtered bad news and family conflict through our ears and relied on us to pass on these messages. They had a strict no text or call policy between one another. I often felt pressured to take sides in their arguments. As my sister and I matured, we started to portray qualities of our parents. I remember speaking to my mom and she stopped me mid sentence and said, “I am not listening to one more word tonight, you sound just like your father”. My father used to tell me, “You have such little work ethic just like your mother”. In both of these instances, I was no older than 17.
My father found sobriety when I turned 13 and has remained clean for 8 years. Unfortunately, shortly after his achievement my mother’s alcoholism took a turn for the worse. My father had struggled with alcohol early enough in my life where I was not as aware of the negative impacts it had caused. With a bit more knowledge and awareness, I really started to notice how rough things could get.
Alcohol confused me as a child and even to this day I dislike it. It changed the personalities of the people I loved for the worse in most cases. By the age of 14 I knew that I could not start a meaningful conversation with my mom past 7 pm because she wouldn’t remember the next day. I internalized a lot of my emotion and sought to bury it deep down where it couldn’t hurt me. I became numb to conflict and apologized for things I wasn’t wrong for. My self esteem took a major hit, which resulted in me being who I wanted everyone to think I was. I was loud, interrupted teachers during class, and easily cracked under peer pressure. I looked everywhere throughout my adolescent years searching for someone to accept me.
Currently, I am still battling with my own mental health but have taken steps to fixing it. I have been diagnosed with PTSD and high anxiety from my upbringing and it’s only up to me to help. I find myself struggling with confirming plans or waking up some days for work but I have become more accepting of the cards that I was dealt. I take it day by day and find the silver lining out of my prior 24 hours. Some days I am a champion and other days feel like a punch to the jaw. Life truly does get better but it requires effort.
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