We Are Pioneers: Joseph’s Story

Whether you have a mental illness or not, there may have been days when you thought about the reason for life or its struggles; days when you felt you couldn’t take it anymore. I can relate because there were times I wanted to end my life. I even considered suicide by using psychotic medication prescribed to make me better. These were days when I would ask myself, why should I continue living? Why is my life plagued by so many failures and setbacks?

Like many of us, the desperate need to find a way to increase my income to support my family became an unbearable burden. Not having the financial means to improve my condition made me feel inferior as I compared myself to my peers. What does it take to get ahead, I asked myself?  Would luck ever change for me in regards to making any real life improvements? Sadly though, these were the thoughts of a young man that wanted more out of life than what the hands of fate had dealt him.

As a young man, I married at the tender age of nineteen, started a family and had three children. I came from a poor Haitian family background and I am the oldest of four siblings and a native of Bahamas. Since the age of twenty-three I suffered from depression, ADHD, and schizo-affective disorder. This and other circumstances created major setbacks in my life that made it seem like words from a conversation with God book wasn’t a bad idea. As luck would have it, it was my need to understand my condition that led me to turn to spirituality for guidance. This guidance led me to take hold of a better understanding of what it means to be human, suffering with an illness. This spiritual guidance also gave me the clarity to see the divinity within all those affected with a mental illness; celebrating the real reason for being here.

Nevertheless, through my recovery I began boycotting being “Normal” by realizing that we are NOT just mental health “consumers”. We are pioneers! Peers + ion = P(ion)eers - person or group that is the first to do something. Consider yourself as a pioneer as opposed to a consumer, if only for what you have accomplished (or will accomplish) through your own mental health discovery and struggles. It’s the “ion” thing to do!