I was raised in Nashville. It was there that I was taught to romanticise the ideals of modern stoicism, to replace my inner needs with alignment to Christian values, and to firmly affix my personal value to my ability to hold to my beliefs. To waver under hardship was weakness. To admit to negative emotions was to admit to faithlessness. To claim victory over these things was my constant goal and I took a lot of pride in my ability to stand above, be anxious for nothing, be strong and courageous, and completely bury how I was actually feeling. The mere suggestion that I might be feeling a bit anxious or stressed about something was an insult to the point where I would regularly make statements like:

“I don’t feel anxiety, why would I?”

“I’m always happy for there’s always a reason to be.”

Grief is notably insensitive to all of this. Trauma doesn’t give a single shit.

One year after the loss, my mother returned to the US to deal with trauma in her own way. This left me alone in the apartment where everything happened. It was left to me to move everything I wanted to keep, and give away whatever was left over. I spent a lot of time crying on the floor of that now-too-big apartment, which horrified me. The emotions were spilling past the cracking ceramic door of my ideals.

Sleeping was the hardest. I love a good night’s sleep. I’m a wreck without one. But there was nothing good about my sleep. I would spend hours locked in flashbacks of what happened, overwhelmed by her screams filling my mind. Always screaming. Eventually the routine settled into:

• Avoid/dread going to bed.
• Finally give into exhaustion.
• Have a panic attack.
• Fall into a restless sleep filled with nightmares.

But of course, this didn’t fit my narrative. I couldn’t admit to myself that this was all happening because that would also admit I had failed myself and God. I avoided doing anything different because I was so sure that eventually my faith would conquer the grief and I would go back to normal. For two years I lived like this, too prideful to be honest.

Eventually, I couldn’t handle the lack of restful sleep sleep anymore. I made an appointment with my GP (General Practitioner AKA doctor) with the intention of asking him about sleep aids. He listened, expressed understanding, and asked me to fill in a questionnaire to see whether or not sleep aids would be the best solution for me. Well, shocker, the test had nothing to do with sleep aids but was, in fact, a mental health assessment test. I scored quite high! A+ for Josh.

That GP saved my life that day. He made it clear, without words, that he understood the mindset I was coming from. And so he talked to me without judgement. He told me that what I was going through was common and not something to be ashamed of.

I wasn’t a failure for needing help with something too big to handle on my own. That just meant I was human.

He helped me make an appointment with my first clinical psychologist. I would spend the next three years having an appointment every week.