Personal Narrative: Mental Illness Has Changed My Life

I have been through many uncomfortable situations in the short seventeen years I have been on this earth. I am very lucky to have had the strength and courage to get through and survive what I've experienced. No one should pity me or feel sorry for me, I didn’t want someone to see me as fragile or delicate. I grew up in a very unstable environment. Being surrounded by chaos and instability my childhood was confusing and scary. For the first three years of my life both my parents were still married and living together but soon after they got divorced and I was left with my mom. For the next eight years I lived with my mom after my dad moved out. I'm not going to turn my mom into a villain because I know she loved me. Mental illness plagues both

The summer that we moved i was going into ninth grade and my grades started off really well. But because my dad was using an stayed in his room all the time I was left to take care of myself. Both my grandmother and my dad treated me like a room-mate more than an adolescent. This put a lot of stress on me and as a result of that my grades in school my first two years of high school were affected. I was in a better place emotionally because i had a couple of friends that gave me some of the support that i needed. As my dad's substance abuse issues got worse he would drink and drive and it scared me to think that at any time he could die because he wasn't getting help. I was scared to be left alone and not have anyone left. To get away from my life at home as soon as i turned sixteen I got a job. After two years living with my grandmother and my dad i was miserable and it got to the point where my home life became harmful to my health. I was given the choice to move in with my aunt and uncle in Pittsburgh so that my dad could focus on himself instead of being constantly worried about me. This was one of the hardest decisions that i have made so far. My dad is all i have ever known. he was there when i would fall and hurt myself. He was there when I was sick, and he was there for me when my mom died. But the way i looked at it was that I couldn't force my dad to get help. All i could do was remove the variable that was stopping him, and that was me. So I made the choice to move but before i could settle into my new home there was a period of four weeks where i had no home. I was staying with my aunt in Connecticut for two weeks. Then I drove to New Hampshire to live with my other grandmother for another two weeks. During this time the small amount of clothes that I packed in my suitcase was all I had. I had no home of my own and no bed. Emotionally this was that most confusing thing I had