Why?

I’m wondering, what makes someone have mental health issues while others don’t? Is it genetics? Environment? People’s personalities? All of the above?

I just wonder sometimes. How come I’m the one with all this? The self harm. The eating disorder. The social anxiety. Seeing a school counsellor in year 8 and then in year 12. Seeing a psychiatrist then a clinical psychologist. Being offered anti-depressants (which my mother declined for me).

Why is it that some people are ‘normal’? Okay, so normal is a difficult concept to define. But I guess ‘normal’ means not needing psychiatric help. Not having a mental illness.

Is it genes? Yet my parents or any family members that I know of don’t have any mental illnesses. Unless they have one that is undiagnosed. Or that we don’t know about. I have an uncle and aunty with depression. But they’re related by marriage and not blood relatives. So… I’m just the ‘lucky’ one I guess. Although, Asians tend to keep stuff like this to themselves so there could be a someone with a mental illness I don’t know about. After all, the only people who know about some of my stuff are my parents, 2 grandparents and aunty. So, no, genes is not it in my case.

Environment then? I feel guilty sometimes. Like, I have a roof over my head. There is food on the table to eat. I wasn’t abused and I’m not deprived. Yet I have all these issues. I feel bad for having all this when I know there are a lot of people with worse lives than mine. And I know purging is wrong when there are so man people in the world ho do without food and are starving for it everyday. Yet I still do, I eat then purge.

When I think about everything that has led me to this place…being really scared of angering my father as a kid as any little thing would get him angry, dealing with my overwhelming fear of school, my father’s favourism of my brother, being bullied in primary school, having frienship problems throughout school, pressure on myself to do well and the stress of study and exams, my father’s cheating which happened twice…It hasn’t been easy but it’s not like I’ve had a really hard life either.

With personality. Well, maybe I have a personality that is more prone to developing mental health problems? Maybe people like me, who are quiet, sensitive, a perfectionist, who keeps everything to herself, who’s insecure…maybe people like that are more likely to have issues like self harm, social anxiety and an eating disorder? Perhaps. Yet there are also many people who are loud, extroverted who also have mental illnesses.

I dunno, it’s just all really strange to me that I have all this going on. And sometimes I just wonder, why?