This is complicated for me. In retrospect, I was struggling with mental health issues before I even would have been able to spell mental health. I always hoped / assumed I could beat it. And I managed to struggle along in denial & in hiding for 5 decades before it all began to unravel. I even intentionally put myself into employment situations that inflamed my m. h. issues thinking that this would cure me... sort-of a "sink-or-swim" strategy, I guess you'd say. (I didn't work.)

Nowadays, I don't really have any overt mental health issues. I just keep to myself, I have no desires, no goals. I simply live from one day to the next. If I wake up in the morning, I go about doing what needs to be done. I simply don't allow myself to even consider the possibility that it could be any different. (I've always been pretty good at that.) From that vantage point, it's easy to forget, or perhaps overlook, all of the secret insanity of my life & to imagine I've always been pretty-much normal. But all I have to do is to look back over all that has gone on since before I was even old enough to "know better". And then I realize how warped I have actually always been. Thanks for your post. I benefitted from replying to it.