My Mental Health Journey

Hello everyone, My name is James Kennedy and this marks the first of many blogs I will post. Today I will be talking about my mental health journey and discussing my progress so far. For those who do not know I suffer from Schizo-Affective disorder and PTSD. To put things bluntly I hear and see things that are not there occasionally. At first, this was damaging to the relationships I had in the past and I did not know just how far gone I was. These disorders affected my close friendships and romantic relationships greatly.

Let’s take a walk down memory lane to when I first met my wife for the first time. I was a teenager hanging with a group of friends that lived on the east side of Buffalo. We were all hanging out one night and participating in some now legal activities if you know what I mean, and I was approached by this girl who at the time I didn’t know would be a Godsend to me. Now for the sake of keeping some of the details PG I wouldn’t say exactly how our first conversation went but let me say that this girl was BOLD. I remember her telling me her name at the time and then one day she just vanished. Come to find out she had gone for an internship at Disneyland. A couple of months went by and I saw her again on the Metro bus on my way somewhere. We caught up and she told me her name again and told me I should stop by her house if I wanted to catch up with her. At the time I didn’t have a cell phone so I couldn’t call her whenever I liked and those flip phones were expensive at the time. Now of course my memory failed me again when I went to her house and met her Aunt who answered the door. I forgot her niece’s name again and just blurted out descriptions of her hoping she wouldn’t close the door on my face. Luckily she didn’t and went to get her niece. The girl I was chasing so hard came to the door and just teased me about my forgetful memory and we just sat on her porch and talked for literally hours. I knew then that this person was the one for me but there was one problem. She was a few years older than me and I was a teenager at the time….. I decided to lie about my age since I looked a lot older than most people my age. This marked the first of my problems with mental health. You see I have had issues in my life with people just showing up and leaving out of nowhere who I greatly cared about. I had just recently gotten robbed like a week before at gunpoint and wanted to selfishly hold on to the things that meant the most to me. I didn’t trust anyone enough to open up about my situation, since the people who robbed me were people who I thought were my friends. We’ll go through my relationships in more detail in later posts but back to the point. Black men face a multitude of challenges growing up. Some grow up without the guidance of a male figure while some take up the mantle of whatever male figure they have in their life regardless of whether it’s a good or bad example. I believe there is a target on our backs that not many overcome. If you add in the many individuals with untreated mental issues it makes for a really bad combo. I want this blog to become a resource for those who need assistance in their lives and build a community for people who are facing various issues in their lives. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you next week!