I am a first-generation Afghan American. In my family's household, mental health doesn't exist. I have been struggling with mental health issues since the fourth grade. I have never felt that what I was going through was normal. I would be told I am crazy and that I need to pray to get fixed, no doctor could save me, or so I was told. Living in a household where I was not allowed to share the way I was feeling had a lot of detrimental damage on me. I would come to learn that it would cause friendship issues and life issues. Trying to work full time and be in school full time just so my brain couldn't think the things it was thinking. I believed that what was happening to me was wrong because of my weight, or my level of intelligence. My feelings would consume me, and harming myself felt like the right way, the only way, to help me. It wasn't until my freshman year of college that I decided that I can help the way I am feeling. That I am not alone, and I don't have to go through this alone. My new friend and now my best friend showed me that having a therapist helped her in ways she could never imagine. Before being told that, I had never thought I was able to live a life where my feelings didn't consume me. I never had a specific illness, since I never got the help I needed. I knew this wasn't the life I wanted to live and that I can be very successful with my mental illness, not against it. I made an appointment with a therapist and from then on I have felt a weight come off my shoulders. I now know what I have been living with my whole life. I am diagnosed with Depression, Anxiety, and Bi-Polar disorder. Those mental illnesses don't define me, they make me who I am. Knowing how to push through my episodes and get through to the other side, has helped my life in the biggest ways. I now have healthy relationships with my friends and siblings. I don't see my education as a burden anymore, I am excited to see where it takes me. I will say, the road to having a better relationship with my mental illnesses was not easy, and it still isn't. But knowing that I have a support system with my friends, therapist, and siblings makes me push harder to be able to get through it. My parents finding out I have a therapist was one of the worst moments in my life. There were tears shed, things thrown and broken, and mental health setbacks. But at the end of the day, I made them understand what I was going through and what I still am going through. I made them see that the chemicals in my brain were not the same as theirs. I made them understand as much as immigrant parents would. They don't support that I have a therapist and forbade me from ever going again. That didn't stop me and they still don't know till this day I still see my therapist. I am pursuing a career in criminology to help the lack of mental illness training in the system and aspire to save up enough money to go to Cal State Long Beach and move away to finally be able to be my true self without feeling any shame. I am grateful that I stayed, despite my struggles, to see how far I have come.