A Life Divided Into Before and After

Source: © Abdullah Toppınar | Pexels

I’m knee-deep in writing a memoir. Perhaps this should have been apparent to me before, but now, due to my writing this book, it’s obvious to me how my life is divided into Before and After: Before my mental illness and After.

Before only encompasses 25 years, so that is only a small portion of my life today, as I just turned 63. Considering that time was spent in a chaotic state, with mental illness percolating, so to speak, they were not joyful years. I was smoking pot, confused about my sexuality, and, during the last few years, addicted to cocaine.

I don’t know if an unsuccessful suicide attempt qualities as a trauma. I don’t know if being diagnosed with mental illness with a team of psychiatrists telling you that the prognosis is poor and not to hope for much qualifies as a trauma.

For anyone who has experienced a trauma, it’s natural and easy to divide one’s life into before the trauma and after the trauma. When you ignore a trauma, it festers, and the negative effects manifest themselves in other ways. (Here is a Modern Love column from The New York Times that describes one way in which ignoring a trauma has a detrimental effect on a life.)

A study from Japan, which included MRIs of students before and after that nation’s devastating 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, identified five areas of the brain that were altered in the students impacted most by the disaster. The fact that the brain is constantly developing implies that changes continue to occur. Those changes can be positive and negative, intentional, and incidental.

I learned a long time ago to stop asking what if? These mental illnesses are an integral part of my brain; they are woven into my mind like yarn into a sweater. I would not be me without having recovered from them; I, Andrea, wouldn’t exist.

There’s no point. I have to admit I’ve started to go down that rabbit hole more than once, but that’s just what it is—a rabbit hole. I don’t even know where to start. What if I hadn’t gone to that first therapist? What if that psychiatrist had not prescribed the medication that decimated my appetite? There are so many permutations, and as I move past the initial steps, they expand exponentially.

What if my life was one seamless piece of fabric? With no Before and After? How would that feel? Boring is what comes to mind. Certainly easier. What is the trade off?

Source: © Praveen Kumar | Pexels

Certainly, my passion—my writing—sprang from my illness. I can’t imagine having made my way through life without having that to fall back on. This post by Robert Evans Wilson Jr. speaks to the power of realizing the moment of demarcation. He asks: What have been your turning points? Those points when a significant change occurred that altered the course of events in your life.

Twenty-five years of Before. Thirty-eight years of After. Hard to imagine. I’m flying stronger and higher than ever in these last 38 years than I ever did in the first 25. Even a kite has seams.