A Personal Perspective: Embrace every version of yourself, as you are still the same person inside. Take pride in your entire journey, even in the "lost years" of psychosis.
You can be proud of yourself when you are mentally ill because that person got you to where you are today.
I think what was most frustrating was knowing and feeling who I was, my core, and where I wanted to go in life, but my brain was ill, so others could not always see who I was or understand where I was coming from. I was a good person, but I was mentally ill. After over a decade in this holding pattern, my acute mental illness came to life, and I had to be hospitalized multiple times.
However, it just simply doesn’t work this way. I can’t truly love and accept myself now if I can’t go back and reclaim who I was in my twenties, the missteps, the embarrassments, and the regrettable setbacks. To reclaim these years hindered by serious mental illness, I have to know the common threads of my existence and acknowledge that they were present during those years so I can reclaim who I was then with pride and fully understand and embrace who I am now.
With that said, now that I can open my eyes to the world around me and fully embrace it, I realize that this person I was who I shunned is my hero and champion. As a mentally ill person in my twenties, I was my own warrior, overcoming insurmountable obstacles, all for the benefit of my future self, because my younger self knew my future life was worth it.
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