Girls Who Handle It

On Friday, March 8, I was blessed with the opportunity to participate in an event called Girls Who Handle It. Girls Who Handle It began about a year ago as Julia Freet’s senior Communications project (at Cal Poly SLO). During a senior portrait session with photographer Asia Croson, both came to recognize how many women in their lives were struggling but attempting to cover it up and “handle it” From there, the project was born.

On the Girls Who Handle It website, it explains the organization eloquently, saying, "This project is about increasing the level of public vulnerability and advocate for a community of honest sharing and acceptance amongst women, specifically in contrast to what is portrayed on their social media profiles. In doing so, Girls Who Handle It is a platform where members of the community are provided with an opportunity to confront the pervasive norms of social media by directly addressing the issues these norms mandate that we hide.”

I was so incredibly blessed to be involved in this experience and event. While the event began in SLO, Julia, Asia, and the organization as a whole, made the decision to expand to Santa Barbara this year. Girls Who Handle It was truly life changing for me. It allowed me a space to be myself, share my story, and hear others’ as well. Some of my closest friends, Mia, Micah, Rachal, Hayden, Emma, and Izzy (and my dad :) came to support. Standing there, seeing my photo, my eyes full of strength, reading the stories of other brave women, and holding hands with my friends as they read the words pasted on the walls, was one of the most beautiful experiences I have ever had.

So, here is my story. Thank you all for loving me and supporting me.

For MH, MB, RJ, ES, IE, KL, JD, Dad + Mom + Muffin - you all have loved me always.

My life has not been linear - in any sense of that definition. While I have continued to progress, in aging, going to college, getting a job - growing up, my life has never really moved from one stage to another. When I was in treatment for an eating disorder, I finally took a step back and looked at the processes that had taken place so far in this crazy journey called life. I was overwhelmed, angry at myself, angry at this world - there was no reason that my 16 year old self should have to withdraw from high school and move away from my family and into a residential treatment program. There was no reason for me to be suicidal, depressed, anxious, and have my life overtaken by anorexia. I didn’t understand. I had an amazing childhood, parents who loved (love) me so dearly, a wonderful education, supportive friends… what went wrong? To this day I still spend a therapy session here or there trying to analyze what got me “here” So what did?

When I was first told about Girls Who Handle It I felt a huge tug at my heart and mind yelling “YOU HAVE TO DO IT” There have been a few things that I have been able to open up about on social media, one of which being my eating disorder as well as my struggles with depression and anxiety. There was only so much room in my head, I needed some external hard drive to store all of these random thoughts, trials, and triumphs. I started a blog to write about these struggles, partly because I just needed a single space for all this “ish” but also because eating disorders SUCK and I didn’t ever want anyone else to struggle with one or end up where I was. The thing about social media though, is that even though I was being vulnerable and talking about my struggles, I always felt the need to put a positive spin on every experience. One time I wrote a blog post during one of the worst times in treatment, in which I was incredibly blunt about how much of a hell hole life was. It felt great to be so honest, but then I felt so guilty. Tossing all of my struggles into the sphere of social media and onto everyone I loved… how could I? So I tacked on a cheesy and partially BS paragraph about how “through all of these struggles I have been able to learn so much about myself, empathy, and how to love others and with that, love myself” Which is true, treatment and recovering from my eating disorder did teach me all of that BUT in that moment, I didn’t feel any of that, I felt like I was drowning in this thing called life. With that, there are some things that I just can’t tack on a paragraph of BS on and call it a day because I don’t quite understand why they’re happening/it happened. Despite having learned so much from my struggles - about myself, others, and the world - to this day a lot of still angers and affects me. So, I just keep a big chunk of it off social media (people pleaser! can’t bother anyone with my emotions!)

When I was 17 I was sexually assaulted. Then again when I was 19. I have participated in Denim Day* ever since 8th or 9th grade. I had been told since my early teens that rape and sexual assault are never the victim’s fault. I was taught about consent and that no means no. I was… am an advocate. Yet when it happened, I made excuses. It was my fault. I analyzed the situation to see what I could have done to not let it happen again. What did I wear? Where was I? Why didn’t I just stay home that night? How could I prevent it in the future? I asked the same questions of myself that women are asked anytime they try to report… so I figured I’d skip the “humiliation” process of reporting and kind of move on with my life. I felt dirty, violated, hurt, and alone. I kind of just cut that part of life out, or at least pretended to, and “moved on.” I had just gotten out of treatment for an eating disorder, was finally taking my anti-depressants regularly-ish - this couldn’t affect me, I wouldn’t let it. So I woke up everyday and immersed myself into senior year of high school with a fat, fake smile pasted across my face, and a story of “perseverance and recovery” always in my back pocket as a response to, “So, how are you doing?”

But then I had to go home. I had to be with myself and didn’t have anyone to fake it for. I also didn’t have my eating disorder anymore, which had always been my go to “coping mechanism” albeit an unhealthy one. So I did what I had to do to get through the day. I took many mental health days when even getting through the next minute seemed like a trek up Mt. Everest. I tried to find something… anything that could get me through the day to day.

I have a pretty amazing family. My mom and dad both understand what it’s like to struggle with depression so they loved on me in every way possible. I also have some of the most fantastic friends in the world - I’m talking visiting me in treatment kind of supportive. My dog helped me in more ways than he’ll ever know. Therapy. A lot of it… I’m still going.

Even with all of this though, I still felt buried. Maybe it was my crippling depression and anxiety, but regardless of the love that I knew that I had, I still wasn’t able to see it.

Pretty recently I was diagnosed with bipolar II, something that didn’t surprise me, but also simultaneously completely shocked me. Ever since birth I had been a very “dramatic” and “emotional” person - I mean my mom was in labor with me for 3 days so talk about a *dramatic entrance* But apart of me always knew that these emotions were incredibly extreme. Sophomore year of high school, I was on Pinterest at 2 am looking at pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge and decided that I “really wanted to go to San Francisco” So, I hopped in my car, took some cash, and drove up to San Francisco (from Los Angeles) and walked around the city, ate some ice cream, took some pictures, then drove back home. I later learned that this was a “hypomanic episode” but for me (at the time) that was the epitome of my adventure and spontaneity. When I was diagnosed with bipolar II, part of me was relieved, another part of me just laughed because the stigma surrounding bipolar is “they’re crazy” and how much crazier could I get, but another part of me was incredibly sad. I felt like I was going to lose a big chunk of myself. I thought that maybe I wasn’t actually creative or adventurous, rather it was a disorder, that needed to be fixed, that was making me that way. One of the main reasons that I had struggled for so long to take my anti-depressants is that I felt like it made me a robot. It definitely helped my depression, but when it came to the hypomania… wow I missed that. For so long I had identified my creativity with the hypomania. When I was on a high I could write, run, act… my energy was booming and my mind was full of ideas, plans, adventures - I was on top of the world. It didn’t happen very often however. Bipolar II is characterized as marked episodes of depression and less often, but intertwined with episodes of hypomania. I take my medication which is good and not a thing I normally do. But I think my biggest struggle is the stigma behind it all - bipolar, depression, anxiety, medication etc. The word “bipolar” is tossed around fairly casually. When someone can’t decide where to eat or what to wear the response typically is, “oh my gosh, you’re so bipolar” or when the weather switches from sunny to rainy to cold… “Ugh, the weather is so bipolar!” I understand where those phrases come from; I used to throw them out as casually as a Saturday morning at home. While it may be subconscious, I think it does further the stigma a bit.

In my case bipolar affects my entire being. My thoughts, self-perception, what I do during the day, my interactions with people… it isn’t simply a switch of an outfit or indecisiveness or a change in weather pattern. That’s part of the reason that I have never really talked about it with people in a public sphere. For so much of the world bipolar = crazy, unstable, or erratic. If I shared that part of my identity, how would it affect my relationships - romantically and platonically? How would people view me? Sometimes I think “screw them!” I’m my own person and this is who I am! But being an extrovert, and someone who very much struggles with validation, well its hard to just think “F*** ‘em!”

Fortunately I have a lot of people who will say “F them!” for me. People have really been a huge key to me overcoming my struggles. I could write pages about all the people that have come to my rescue. Like I said, my mom and dad are just some of the most incredible people I could ever be blessed with knowing. My best friend Haley has been one of the brightest lights in my life. My cousin, Ashley answers every phone call, every text message, and drives to see me when I’m down. The women and men that I have met at university who have uplifted me in ways that I never thought were possible is just such an incredible blessing. My therapists, my treatment center, my friends that I met through treatment. And of course my dog. I’ve got a marvelous support system but I know that for some people that isn’t always a reality. Before I really accepted my support system as a “support system” I felt like I had to get through the day alone. I did that through taking lots of showers (sorry California!), running, swimming, and writing - journaling, plays, monologues, short stories, writing about the struggles, writing about the triumphs - whatever I needed to get out of my head, I put on paper.

I think there are so many ways to “recover” - I know I’ve been all over the place. Recovery from any sort of trauma or hardship is not linear; it goes up, down, backwards, forwards, loopty-loops and throws you through a loop. Life is hard, at least for me it has been. Trauma is hard. Recovery is hard. Recovery is long; sometimes it feels like it’s never going to get better, like nothing could ever imporved. It affects you everyday and enters into every single facet of your life. With that, I think it is important to share these stories. Stories are gifts and sharing them is the mechanism in which that gift is both given and received. Sharing a story is a gift both for the story-teller and the story-receiver. It’s scary to share as not everyone will accept the invitation of that dialogue, but when you find the people that do and the settings that welcome that gift, the light of life, of recovery, becomes just a bit brighter.

*Denim Day takes place in April and people are encouraged to wear jeans to raise awareness about rape and sexual assault. It was started when a 1992 court case was dropped in Rome, after the judge decided that the woman’s jeans were too tight, therefore she could not have been raped because she had to take the jeans off herself.