The Balto Bunny ProjectABOUT ME, ALICE GRAY
I am in my early thirties… I am an artist and a writer. I have always had an overabundance of creative energy and determination. This is what helped me to force myself to accomplish things (I have 2 college degrees, have co-authored 2 text books, & have had a small business for the last several years) despite suffering from unrelenting and debilitating depression and anxiety. My story is truly strange. I grew up in an isolated environment with a mother who was not only very cruel, but whom I have come to understand is schizophrenic and suffers from narcissistic personality disorder. These are my assessments after living with her for many years, talking to doctors, and based on all that I have read. My father left me with her at a young age. Her family knew she was schizophrenic and often physically ill, suffering from horrendous bouts of ulcerative colitis, but for the most part, they turned their heads and went about their lives. She isolated me from the world and I grew up suffering enormously in a world that I would one day realize was purely delusion. As soon as I left home permanently my depression and anxiety worsened. After a few years, I left the state where I grew up to try to separate myself further, but over the years the depression and anxiety continued to worsen to the point where I could do nothing except obsess over dying. I have been diagnosed with PTSD and all kinds of fancy sounding depression and anxiety disorders. I was hospitalized, and continued to actively pursue treatment through medications and therapy. What I know now is that I may have moved 1500 miles away, but that is just geography. I never separated myself from from my childhood, or how I had come to define myself based on my childhood. I might as well have been living right there in the same house that I suffered in. I never looked at any of this, I just told myself that I was lucky to have gotten away and I should be grateful and just work hard towards building a future. I ignored my pain, because after all, others had it much worse.
In my 20′s I noticed that I created situations for myself ( relationships, mainly) that were very painful emotionally. I became aware of how I could then think about these painful present things all day, they consumed me. I couldn’t seem to change it, so I decided to observe it. I realized how much thought and energy went into living in these circumstances on a daily basis. I them began to wonder… if these things were not in my life, what would fill the void?
In my early 30′s, I could not bear the depression and anxiety any longer, all the ups and down with the medications. I suddenly stopped pretending and just started being honest about wanting to die. I know longer had the energy for the façade I had been desperate to keep up all these years. I had spent my whole life begging to die, just not out loud. I decided to conduct an experiment. I decided that I make the opposite choices of all the ones I had made over the last ten years, and see what would happen. I wanted to know for sure if it was impossible to find peace and happiness within myself.
When I began to explore the things that haunted me all these years, I fell in love with myself for the first time. Instead of the intense hatred I had for myself for never being able to get a handle on the depression and anxiety, instead of being so frustrated with myself because my mind did things I couldn’t control- I realized how much I had endured, how brave I had been, and how affected I had been by circumstances that were not my fault. I began to have mercy on myself, which allowed me to heal. I had the profound realization that feeling so unbearably suicidal for most of my life was not about wanting to die, it was about wanting to be free. What I discovered is that life is in fact, about joy and truly worth living when you find your personal truth and don’t accept the fate that others hand you.
I created this website to save people from wasting years in pain, the way I did. My goal is to educate people about the most important truths of depression: #1 There is a reason for it. #2 It is curable.
