mental-health – Page 2

365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 1 - Origins: Early Glimmers

What The Middle Teaches: Notes From The Fringe – Day 9

January 3, 2026January 5, 2026 ljandkariLeave a comment

Prompt – A childhood game that taught you something about power.

P.E. sucked. Full on sucked. It was rarely fun. Inflatable projectiles flying across the gym, ropes that reached for the rafters, laps to check off a box for the that year’s President Physical Fitness Award, and knowing that teams had to be made with no assistance from the teacher. None of it was my cup of tea. But as a card carrying member of Generation X, I was metal-slide strong and did what needed to be done, even when it sucked.

On rainy days, the parachute came out in the gym. It always arrived like a promise. The teacher delivered a speech about cooperation and character while the smell of dust and sweat hung in the air. Sneakers squeaked on the gym floor, and the colors of the parachute glowed, promising community, but the sense of community never really followed. Still, we circled the parachute, fingers hooked around the edge, waiting.

Lift. Lower. Again.

The middle was different. The middle was the prize. One kid received the honor, always with quiet ceremony. The lucky kid would slip beneath and disappear into that cool, secret bubble of air while the rest of us kept the parachute alive.

Lift. Lower. Again.

Life on the fringe had a simple assignment. Pretend the work on the edge and the fun in the middle were the same thing. From the outside, it looked magical. From the edge, it felt like labor. Wrists burning. Shoulders tight. No glory. No cool air where it mattered. Still, hope lingered. Maybe next time the middle would belong to one of us. Maybe someone else would carry the weight.

I remember wanting the middle and fearing the middle at the very same time. Long before I understood language like power or systems, something quiet inside that circle told the truth. The kid in the center lived differently. The fabric rose for them without effort. Joy arrived without cost. Power gathered beneath the tent of color while the rest of us stayed at the fringe and pretended it was equal.

Life kept offering new parachutes after I left the gym…at home, in the classroom, and at work. The language was still teamwork. The reality was often a bright center that glowed while everyone else kept the rhythm steady. If I am honest, I have lived in both places. I have held the edge until my hands felt raw. I have also stood in the middle and felt how easily the circle can disappear from view.

The parachute taught a lesson I wish had waited until I was older. Joy is uneven. Work is invisible to those not doing it. And if you are not paying attention, you can live your whole life on the fringe, convincing yourself that the view is the same for all.

Now I pay attention. Who is chosen? Who is always lifting? When I find myself in the center, with air and space and room to move, I work to remember the circle. I notice the hands along the edge. I try to live as the kind of center that makes more room for everyone to breathe, and the kind of edge where collaboration is real.

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365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 1 - Origins: Early Glimmers

The Pain Behind the Pane – Day 8

January 2, 2026January 9, 2026 ljandkariLeave a comment

Prompt – Something you believed about adults that turned out to be wrong.

I used to believe that adults arrived somewhere when they grew up. I carried this picture in my head of a final landing place where life would settle and the air would clear and everyone would communicate. With all this communication I would finally stand steady and know what to do. I imagined grown-ups as completed people. Whole. Wise. Calm. I held on to that belief like a promise that would arrive someday. I was wrong.

Adults are not finished. Adults are not completed works of art. Rather, adults are children who kept moving forward with broken pieces stitched loosely together carrying what shattered them, what rescued them, and everything they never learned how to name or were too damn afraid to name. Adults may have larger bodies with larger responsibilities, but inside, the storms still swirl. Inside, fear still resides and speaks. Inside, the past still taps on the glass and demands to be heard.

Adults call certain habits maturity. I see now that much of it is simply survival dressed in nice clothes. The same protective moves. The same rehearsed smiles. The same patterns repeating themselves quietly in the background like an old song that never stops playing.

For a long time I believed adulthood meant having life all figured out. I wanted that future version of myself to finally make sense of the chaos, to sort the pain of a dysfunctional military family childhood into neat boxes that would not spill over. Laughable, really. Instead, I began to realize that many adults remain stuck at the exact age when everything veered off course. The unprocessed parts of the story get dragged forward like heavy luggage. There is pretending. There is numbing. There are smiles that hide more than they reveal. And then there are a few, the rare few, who finally turn around, face what hurts, and begin again with shaky, honest steps leaving the past at that window.

Growing up, it turns out, is not about age. Growing up is about truth. It is about finally saying out loud where the freezing happened. It is about noticing where the running began. It is about admitting where fear still lives quietly inside the bones. Adults are not fully grown. Adults are still learning in real time. Adults are trying to parent younger versions of themselves while raising children, paying bills, showing up at work, and doing the best they can with the tools they have.

The sobering part is simple. No one fully arrives. There is no final plateau. There is becoming, and then becoming again. But buried inside that realization is something surprisingly tender. If no one is finished, then there is still room. There is room to soften. There is room to learn new language for old wounds. There is room to live with humility instead of perfection. There is room to forgive the child and the adult at the same time.

I did not get the certainty I once imagined. What I received instead feels truer. I am still growing. I am still learning. And that means the story is still open despite the adults in the room!

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365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 1 - Origins: Early Glimmers

In the Margins, Where I Breathe – Day 7

January 1, 2026January 5, 2026 ljandkariLeave a comment

Prompt – A rule you refused to follow.

The cover of my Trapper Keeper glowed like the inside of an arcade, all neon and loud. “Stay Rad” splashed across the front like graffiti that wanted to be dangerous but felt more like a fat kid trying to be cool. Behind it, a glowing triangle pulsed like the screen right before a new video game loads. That brief pause held its breath and made a promise just like my planner. The Trapper Keeper whispered that anything was possible, if only life was structured in just the right way.

The lie it tried to sell me, and an entire generation, was simple. Stay organized and life will fall into place. Keep my schedules straight. Keep my notes tight. Keep my dreams in tidy sections, labeled, hole-punched, and snapped into place, class after class. If I could trap it, I could keep it.

There was a rule hidden inside that message, and I have bucked that rule since the moment I knew it existed. Use the planner and live by the calendar, treating the schedule like scripture, is what the academy says to be true. As a student and later as a teacher, I saw it everywhere, as common as desks and whiteboards. Another system. Another promise. Another planner with color-coded order pretending to tame the chaos. Such bullshit.

So I refused.

I refused the Franklin Planner. I refused the Full Focus planner. I refused the Roterrunner. I refused the PalmPilot because that thing never flew! I opened them. I turned the pages. I studied the boxes and printed times that tried to tell me where my life belonged, and something in me said no. I even carried some of them, like talismans I was expected to believe in. But schedules felt like cages. Those preprinted lines felt like a stranger beside me in the cafeteria, offering advice that did not know my story. I did not want every minute accounted for, nor did I want my thoughts sealed into plastic sleeves like tiny body bags for the dead.

Instead, I wanted space for the unexpected. I wanted room to scribble, cross out, wander, and return. I wanted the wide, blank page where anything might appear. Teachers said that being organized meant being mature. Colleagues said that being planned meant being professional. The rule insisted that if I could not live inside the planner, I would fall behind, lose track, and fail.

Maybe. Maybe not. Or absolutely not and immediately no.

What I knew, even then, was simple. My mind did not grow inside boxes. My imagination did not breathe inside time slots. The most important learning arrived in margins, in scribbles, in the slow wandering back to myself. I carried the Trapper Keeper and with it I carried the illusion of control. But the rule that said the planner must run my life. I refused that one.

And in refusing, I learned something I could not learn any other way. Life does not live on lined paper. Meaning does not arrive neatly labeled. The heart does not follow gridlines, and neither does grief, or wonder, or love, or anything that keeps me waking up and trying again. The planner promised certainty. What I needed was presence.

So I chose the blank space. The risk. The messy page that told the truth. Not tidy. Not perfect. Just alive. That became the real rule for me. Stay curious and be willing to get lost. What matters most cannot be trapped, and it sure as hell cannot be kept.

It can only be lived.

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365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 1 - Origins: Early Glimmers

Family Rules Silence – Day 6

December 31, 2025January 5, 2026 ljandkariLeave a comment

Prompt – A rule you did not understand but followed anyway.

As a child, because I said so had a different flavor in my house. It showed up inside the command, Do what you are told, when you are told, and how you are told. I always wondered where the who and the why disappeared to in that little piece of military mantra nonsense. Every time I asked, the answer never arrived in words. It arrived through clenched teeth and lips pulled tight, the way a body looks when the mortician fucks up, followed by insults sharp enough to make my questions feel like crimes. The message was simple. Obey. And at the time, that is what I did.

Growing up under that rule taught lessons no curious child is meant to learn. I learned that questions were dangerous and not appropriate. I learned that curiosity was rude. I learned that authority did not need to make sense because authority owned the room. I began to shrink my voice. I memorized the script. I moved with a fixed response instead of a living person, at least inside the walls of my house.

Later, when I stepped into other systems as an adult, I recognized that same mantra living under different names. I saw it forcing its way into classrooms. I saw it showing up in workplaces built on top-down structures that pretended to be leadership. I saw it sitting quietly inside families that claimed love while everyone hid the truth. Do what you are told. When you are told. How you are told. It sounded efficient. It sounded orderly. It sounded like discipline. But beneath all of that shine, it trained me to doubt me and silence my own gut.

As a kid, I obeyed, even when nothing made sense. Obedience created quiet. It created peace, or at least the illusion of peace. But, like all things, there was a cost. What I believed to be obedience was actually just braided fear and respect until both looked the same. Obedience convinced me that the loudest voice in the room must also be the smartest. Obedience placed me inside someone else’s version of right and wrong.

I followed that rule because I believed it made me good. A good child. A good son. Much later, I began to notice the cracks. The whole thing felt like a performance. It was less about obedience and more about fear. Fear that if even one of us asked too many questions, the fragile idea of family might shatter and reveal what was already broken.

Real families ask questions. Real families sit in the discomfort of truth. Real families refuse to treat because I said so as a final answer. It took years for that realization to settle into my bones. My life’s work has become the practice of asking why, again and again, and creating spaces where others feel safe asking as well. And I am grateful to report that the world does not collapse when why is asked. The opposite happens. Everything begins to breathe.

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365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 1 - Origins: Early Glimmers

Secrets the Air Remembers – Day 5

December 30, 2025January 5, 2026 ljandkariLeave a comment

Prompt – The first time you felt left out.

The third grade was my year, but not the banner kind of year. I began to understand that the world is not only what sits in front of my eyes. There are other layers beneath the seen, humming quietly, sending signals that not everyone can receive or understand or even wants to comprehend.

Another move pressed my family into boxes as we traveled from California to Alaska. The world grew colder and wider. The sky stretched in a way that felt endless. Mountains rose like silent witnesses to something that could not be named. This move felt different. It carried secrets. Each of us held our own private weight, and each of us carried it alone.

At eight years old, I could barely understand the ordinary world that everyone else seemed to agree on. Then something was added. Colors slipped out of their lanes. New surroundings arrived with weight and feeling attached. I began to hear with my whole body. I remembered air. I understood that walls could breathe, floors could whisper, and space held echoes of grief and laughter at the same time. I had no language for any of it, and I would not for years. What I had instead was loneliness, and the quiet fear that something in me was wrong.

The other eight-year-olds in my class spoke of Saturday morning cartoons, which kid cheated on the playground, and who ran the fastest at recess. Their worlds felt simple. Contained. Safe. When I shared my experiences, I noticed the slow and careful distance that formed around me. There was no vote. No raised hands. No secret ballot. Only the quiet math children learn too early…subtraction. A new seating chart formed without the teacher. Conversations paused when I walked by. The circle tightened, and I found myself outside of it before I even knew it was happening.

That was the first time I remember being excluded because I was myself. Not because I misbehaved. Not because I broke a rule. In that moment, I learned to step backward, to become smaller, to study the room before the room had the chance to study me.

However, every story finds its own way to balance loss. When some people leave, others arrive, carrying lessons that are needed. Ms. Mullins, my third grade teacher, was one of those people. She carried lessons, and she carried me, for the entire year. She noticed. She always noticed. During recess she invited me to sit beside her and asked me what the day felt like. Not what happened. Not what I saw. But what it felt like. I told her the room felt loud even when no one spoke. I told her the air remembered things. And she listened. She did not laugh. She did not try to make it smaller. She spoke in words an eight-year-old could hold. “Your brain is paying deep attention,” she said. “That is not broken. That is a gift. You will learn how to walk with it. I did.”

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365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 1 - Origins: Early Glimmers

Good Bones & All The Damn Receipts – Day 4

December 29, 2025January 5, 2026 ljandkariLeave a comment

Prompt – A moment when you felt small in a good way.

The fat never goes away. I carry it with me like a witness that knows what has been seen cannot be unseen. The fat settles into hidden corners of my body and builds its own archive, not just on a cellular level, but the fat moves into identity, into the story I tell myself about who I am. The mirror changes. The scale changes. Clothes fit differently. People respond differently. But my mind has all the damn receipts. My mind remembers the weight…that one picture…that one shirt that clings. In a real way, fat becomes my lens and an unwanted narrator. I feel it when I choose a seat. I feel it when someone lifts a camera to take a picture. I hear it whisper when I try on clothes, and it is there when I decide who I am allowed to become.

Diet. Exercise. Programs. Pills. Injections. All the glittering promises that sound like salvation never shrink the fat. Through the discipline, the tracking of steps, and portion control, the fat remains. No longer on my body, but in memory sitting quietly ready to apologize for taking up too much space. Over time, as the fat weaves itself into identity, it becomes the voice that reminds me to be careful and not draw attention to myself. The fat wants to be heard and invisible at the same time, and I feel the contradiction living under my skin.

Hollywood gets a fat suit. Put it on. Learn a lesson. Take it off. Credits roll. Real life does not work like that. My body remembers. My skin remembers. My joints remember. My heart remembers. Once fat, always fat is not shame. It is truth. My body carries history, and history does not vanish just because I walk it away.

So the work is not pretending I have lost the fat. The work is staying honest inside the body that carries me. I name the pain. I admit the embarrassment. And I honor the parts of me that survived and have thrived anyway. The parts that keep loving. The parts that laugh. The parts that refuse to disappear, even when disappearing seems easier. The story of fat is not only about size. It is about protection. It is about comfort. It is about armor I once needed. And slowly, I am learning that I am worthy inside a body that shifts and changes. I am worthy when the mirror tells complicated truths. I am worthy without shrinking myself to make other people comfortable…including myself.

This morning, I read this prompt and laughed. I had just finished getting ready. I caught my reflection and almost missed it because my fat lens was still doing its job. But there it was. My clavicle. Beneath everything…bones. Strong bones that have carried this body through more than I ever thought I could hold. It feels like a quiet gift to know I have good bones. And it feels even better to finally see them.

Tag: mental-health