With my blue eyes bloodshot and wide, I read down the list of symptoms one by one. Tears wouldn’t stop streaming down my face. I had been awake for almost 48 hours, obsessively researching my freshly diagnosed bipolar disorder.

On one hand, I was relieved to finally have a name for the emotional ups and downs I had been experiencing since I was a child. On the other hand, it put into perspective that I was nothing more than a human being, prone to the same shortcomings as my own family.

I’d spent most of my time out of the house since age 12, bumming from friend to friend until I had a steady boyfriend at 15, and basically lived with him and his family for the next two years. The word “home” didn’t exist in my vocabulary.

My family moved at least once a year, and I completed K-12 at 12 different schools. At “home,” I could count on my father abusing my mother and brother until my parents divorced. After the divorce, I counted on my brother abusing me, having no money for lunch, dirty dishes in a dirty apartment and a sink so overloaded that sometimes, I’d trip over crusty plates stacked across the floor.

Everything was a mess.

Mom fell asleep on the couch every night, bypassing her bedroom because it had become her hoarding space, without an inch to breathe. After two years on that couch, she met a man on Match.com. Two weeks into “knowing” him, she abandoned me and my teenage brother and sister to live far away with our father, with whom we’d had virtually no relationship for the past seven years. She left the sunny skies of Southern California for the dirty streets of Las Vegas, in search of “a better life.”

There was no talk of mental health in my family, or anything really, unless it was wildly inappropriate. Dad was offering me condoms by the time I was 12. Mom bought my brother porn and a 40 ounce as a rite of passage for his 13th birthday. I had no limits or boundaries, but I never tried to cross any. Some holy voice inside me told me that if I gave in to the drugs or alcohol my siblings did, I wouldn’t come out alive.

I thought that what I experienced in my family was normal — chaos was all I had ever known.

Mental illness can result from genetics and/ or circumstances. My diagnosis is a mix of both. Think of it like cancer. If someone in your family has it, you’re far more likely to end up with it. Bad habits, though, such as smoking, can result in cancer as well. Poor circumstances, a lack of coping skills and poor self-esteem create negative thought patterns in our minds, carving pathways for our unconscious thinking. These pathways form strongholds in our brains, coloring our worldview from an unhealthy mind. The truth is, we can choose our thoughts. As a child, I wasn’t conscious of this, but as an adult, it’s my responsibility.

When I told my mother I needed therapy, she said, “No. Only crazy people see therapists. Don’t waste your money. It’s not like they tell you anything you don’t know already.”

My dad had a similar point of view. He denies his own diagnosed bipolar disorder, dragging those around him through cycles he doesn’t understand.

I left home as soon as I graduated high school with $2,000 I’d saved to live on my own. The privilege I’ve had since then, and my primary dream growing up, was to establish my identity apart from my family. If people weren’t able to see marks of the pain I grew up with, I assumed I had done a good job.

I’ve learned over the past few years that those painful marks aren’t even yet scars — they’re open wounds that still ooze when touched. At 24, the frontal lobe of my brain has finally developed enough for me to accurately perceive, analyze and heal those wounds. I wear them shamelessly as they scab over.

The root of mental illness often lies in our upbringing, linked to childhood pain. If you come from a traumatic background, it can be so hard to look at yourself and deal with the pain that’s subconsciously driving you mad — oftentimes, we don’t even know where to start. Even without mental illness, wrestling with our demons and finding emotional healing is a step we must all take to transition into healthy adults. Emotional healing hasn’t cured the chemical imbalances in my brain, but it has made them infinitely easier to manage. We need to think about our thoughts. We need to think about our actions. We need to be asking ourselves if we are okay, and why we do what we do. I’ll be vulnerable until the day I die because my willingness to speak and put myself out there is what saved my life. Help is readily accessible for everyone, but we’re the only ones who can fight for ourselves to reach out and take it.

Monique Lupu writes the Friday column on mental health. Contact her at [email protected].