Who am I? What feelings can I trust? I’m so confused all the time.

I’m getting so tired of this push and pull between being so many people. I am extremely emotional and unstable off my meds. I am either manic, a robot, or lack sympathy on my meds. I’ve been dissociated for as long as I can remember. People in my life are very judgmental of me, so I’m always feeling like I’m playing a character of myself. Then I can never tell who I actually am and what emotions I’m feeling too much or am lacking. It’s never easy to trust in my own judgement or have confidence in my own opinions. I just don’t know how other people manage this. I feel chronically confused.

I have a plethora of mental disorders that include diagnoses like bpd, bipolar, ocd, and adhd. Balancing my meds has always been tricky since I was young. My current mood stabilizer doubles as my seizure medication, so it’s not that simple to change around. My antipsychotic is effective but knocks me out. I’m always forgetting to take it because I’m not ready for bed yet. I have a brain injury so if I don’t take my meds right away after a reminder I will forget. I have a young child so I can’t leave my meds next to my bed or in an accessible place.

After a very rough year, I am now broke, jobless, and don’t have insurance. I have a car and a license but I can’t drive due to epilepsy. I keep having breakthrough seizures from missed doses. I’m cognitively struggling in so many ways from my brain injury. I’m continuously having relapses in my mental health and self harm. My family often sees me struggling and crying but blames the issues on my life choices and not applying myself hard enough. So I just pretend to be okay otherwise my parents become more controlling of my life.

It feels pathetic being 28 and having my parents taking care of me. But I literally can’t be left alone because of the seizures and memory problems. I accidentally leave food on the stove at least once a week. I think I’d be more accepting of the help if it didn’t feel like it also came with judgement. My parents’ biggest issue with me is that I’m gay. So they pretend I’m not, but also judge everything wrong with my life with that type of lens.

I grew up indoctrinated and barely interacted with my family for many years. They really came through for me when my ex kicked me out of our marital home. They helped me through my court battle to get my daughter back that my ex was withholding from me. Then I had my brain injury and they’ve been helping me get through that. I am extremely grateful for everything they’ve done; they clearly love and care about me… It just hurts because the version of me they love isn’t truly me.

This constant battle in my head, being all these different versions of myself; it’s destroying me. There’s no solution. There’s no way out. I’m falling apart over and over again. I have so many emotional outbursts and feel like a piece of shit. I feel so unworthy. I’ve never done anything with my life because I’ve never been fully mentally stable long term. I don’t know how much longer I can go through this cycle of just never being okay and constantly worrying about how it affects my daughter. I’ve been having suicidal ideation because I just don’t feel worthy of my daughter and it seems easier to die rather than have her think I ran away from her.

It feels like there’s no right answer and I don’t know if I can cope with that.