Kristance Harlow

I'm not here to discredit your experience. What I'm here to say is that "feeling depressed" is a different beast than “having depression.”

Coming out of dissociation can feel like waking from a lucid dream. One moment you’re on the other side of physical reality, and then you cross the threshold and are part of life again.

To take care of myself in the months preceding my wedding I had to make a conscious effort to not dive into dieting. Wedding weight loss was off the list of things for me to do, or to even attempt.

It was my pattern: if therapy got too intense, if I started feeling better, or if I was referred to a psychiatrist, I’d just stop going. I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that I had a mental disorder.

My life is a constant recollection.

It’s not just being overwhelmed — this inability to find peace is worse than that. It can happen without a moment’s notice, any day and any time.

I lose hours to this obsessive compulsion, not a day goes by without it. Every mirror is an opportunity to ruin more of my skin in a nonsensical attempt to fix what I think is there