The Author's Corner: Breakdown

We all suffer from breakdowns in our lives. One of the things that causes these time is when it feels like our world is falling apart. Something that we deal with, the fact is that when we are headed for a breakdown the signs are all there for us to see. Sometimes the breakdown can lead to a stay in hospital.

The one thing is that a breakdown can come at a major turning point in your life. Things like getting ready to start school for a new career move. Other time it could be during mid life when you are turning forty and you wonder where the time has gone.

To really understand where these breakdowns come from we need to look at our lives because everyone has lived through different experiences. As we see what we have been through or going through at the present can cause us to feel that we have not achieved anything in our life. The reason for that thinking is because of what society has said of what we should have by a certain age of our life, examples like the job, the house, the family and the debt to name a few things.

My breakdown came when I was living in Halifax. It happened because of the mental illness that I suffer from reared its ugly head in the beginning of the summer of 2004. It would get worse until the point when I went to sleep on December 25, 2004 and woke up in the hospital on the mental health ward on January 26, 2025 with no memory of what happen during that month.

I was twenty-five turning twenty-six; some twenty years ago. My breakdown made me see that I had lost control of my life because the schizophrenia that I suffer from took over. It would be five years later when I would take my life back as I had another breakdown in

February of 2010.

I had to make a decision of what I wanted to achieve in my life and to have something to live for. It would be writing that would be the beginning of telling the stories of the mental ward and my own illness to share true stories of those who struggle with mental illness.  This is when my career of becoming a published author started. It would be some six years in 2016 when I would publish my first book, An Individual’s Innocence: The Silent Screams. I have always looked back at my times in hospital and there is where the strength to keep moving forward in my life because I do not want to see the inside of another mental health ward.

Your breakdown could be something where you have lost your job of ten years or the loss of a loved one. It could even be that you are seeking medical help because of mental health problems. There is always going to be breakdowns in life, it all comes down how you mange them.

Stay safe.