What I’ve gathered about my MD

I diagnosed myself with MD my 9th grade year which was 2015-2016. I’ve done a lot of dot connecting in these past few years of struggling with it and constant research on it. My belief is that it stemmed off of depression and formed its own issue, but there could honestly be countless other causes that have compiled into MD. I had a very low self esteem and incredibly negative thoughts that would plague me constantly ever since I was about ten. I was never good enough and had a lot of self hatred. I would go into crying fits at family gatherings because I would often end up by myself and let the thoughts consume me. I thought I was unliked and unloved. When I was ten I yanked out my hair and did other mild forms of self harm because I upset someone over a petty issue. I continued pulling out my hair until my mother pointed out the areas of hair regrowth. I cried and ignored my best friend for a week because she did not tell me goodbye when she left my house. Instances like these, in my opinion, point to depression. I would also play Barbie games throughout my life, which does not seem like a big deal, but I played them far past the normal stopping age. I could not play with other people. I had very specific plot lines and stories that I play out until I got bored out it and did a new one. I would often revisit the same plot lines. They would last no longer than a week but typically two days before I got bored. It was purely for entertainment. Then one day I got the idea to create a world of characters from books I liked, specifically their children, like how at the end of the Hunger Games two of their children are introduced. It became my last and continuous Barbie game. Obviously I did not have enough Barbie dolls to account for all of the characters, so much was in my head. Eventually I ended up just pacing around my room with the Barbie doll in hand speaking the parts. It was still just done in my free time. Then one day I realized I did not need the dolls at all. This all happened my eighth grade year. Over the summer I go to my father’s house in a different state and continued the game without the dolls present. My characters sang, so I would often play songs to go with whatever situation my characters were in. Backing up, there were separate daydreams that would occur starting in seventh grade. Since I could remember, I would put myself asleep by creating love stories that were often times sexual, or at least what I thought was sexual. I got the *great* idea in seventh grade to continue these day dreams during class while the teacher was teaching. They would change as frequently as my Barbie games, usually lasting two days until I came up with a better one and would also revisit previous plot lines. These two things stayed separate until 9th grade when I got obsessed with my Barbie game plot line. None of my Barbie games had lasted anywhere near as long as this one, and it was completely continuous. I would not restart it. It was incredibly complex and I could add whatever I wanted. I would have looked completely insane had anyone been present when I did it because I would be pacing around talking to myself, laughing every five seconds, and then running randomly because it was very action packed with a lot of comedic relief. Music was sometimes added, but not nessicary. In order to do it in public, I would just pace and not vocalize the parts. It would all be in my head. I remember loving to watch babies because they love to be held, and I would pace around while holding them until they left, or someone would take the baby because he or she fell asleep. I would do it all the time. I just loved it. With increasing home issues, I would turn to it more and more as a coping mechanism. It would distract my negative thoughts. Eventually it replaced my previous daydreams, so it was that storyline constantly. I would put myself asleep with it as well. The more I relied on it, the more my problems increased. It would make me feel good, so I often didn’t notice I had problems. It just relieved my stress, my negative thoughts. Eventually I just completely stopped vocalizing the parts and would just pace or run only, even when I was alone. I did it more and more. It was like a positive feedback loop: I would daydream to relieve stress from my problems, it would make me less accountable or procrastinate, then things would compile and get worse, so I would daydream more. Just a never ending cycle of the same issues getting worse. And I wouldn’t even realize how bad of a place I was in! My teacher recommended I talk to a counselor because I wasn’t doing my homework. This is obviously an issue, but I felt like I was fishing for excuses. I recognized I had issues with my mother and that I might have MD, but I felt like I was over exaggerating. She told me to just talk to my mother about our issues. Because school counselors are SO helpful. It got a lot worse after that. I started doing it everywhere. I didn’t care who saw. I daydreamed during class, then popped in my earbuds to do it between classes. During lunch I would listen to music then pace around the picnic table. I needed it constantly. I would pace when I got home until I was limping around or started seeing things from exhaustion. It just completely numbed me from my life. I hated my life. I wanted to focus on the lives of the people in my daydreams. The plot got considerably darker. I started going from generation to generation, just never ending, and something awful would happen to all of my characters. It also got very sexual. Typically I would focus on the more sexual aspects when I was going to sleep or throughout the day when I wasn’t moving, and the actual storyline when I was pacing. I got a D in one of my classes because I didn’t do any of my homework. And I didn’t care. I felt nothing. I have always obsessed over my grades. And I just didn’t care. Every once in a while, I would experience a “low.” With every addiction, there is a high and a low. MD is no different. Every once in a while, I would just be so disappointed in what I had become, how worthless I was. I would just sit there and cry. Then I would wake up the next morning just fine. One night I wrote a song about it in the dark while it was raining. Quite clichéd, but it actually happened. My handwriting was garbled, though. Before that, I could only write poetry; songwriting just wouldn't work for me. But suddenly I just spouted lyrics while I was at my lowest. That was what started my dream to be a singer. I’m a writer at heart, but music is in my blood. When the school year ended, I went to Florida and was punished for my grades. I had to weed. But I would just pace all day. It didn’t matter how much I did it, it was never enough. I would be limping around from soreness and cuts on my feet I would get from athlete’s foot. But that wouldn’t stop me. I paced so much, my step counter in my phone got up to 35,000 steps one day. Things didn’t start to get better until I had a talk with my stepmom about the issues I had with my mom. She told me what happened with my school work was not completely my fault. Those were the words I had been needing to hear for a long time. I could sit there and list all of the things I did wrong, and then the person I would talk to would just repeat them back at me. But someone finally acknowledged that it wasn’t completely at fault, that my mother took part in the blame. Things just got better after that. I started wearing a tiara every day because I’m weird like that. It was only recently that I realized that wearing it boosted my self esteem a LOT. I don’t have that voice in my head telling me how awful I am anymore. I’m just chill. I can’t say that I love myself, but I can acknowledge my presence, I guess. I still did it a lot, but I could make it through the school day without pacing, for the most part. My relationship with my mother was greatly improved. For the first semester of tenth grade, I would get myself hyper on coffee. It would scatter my thoughts enough to where I could only focus on one thing, and I made sure that one thing was English class. I did really well in English that year. Now this is only a temporary fix, and I had issues in chemistry because of MD because it was my last class and I would be dead tired. And I would also be all over the place emotionally. It’s not that great of a thing to do. I stopped. I hate coffee. I learned to take notes in class to force myself to focus. It didn’t always work, but it did something. It has steadily gotten better. I can definitely make it through the school day without pacing. I went an entire five days without pacing on a church trip last year without a ton of withdrawal. Well, it made me constantly daydream while I was still, and I was constantly exhausted, so that made me even more tired because I’ve always put myself asleep by daydreaming. I am still a terrible procrastinator and I have a lot of accountability issues from it. It’s the positive feedback loop. It hasn’t really changed in that regard. I just actually care about my education again. I’m just trying to graduate at this point. I plan on going to college for singing. Singing is the only thing that will consistently pull me away from daydreaming. I have to sing for hours every night on an app because I’m the co-owner of a party room. It’s honestly incredible looking at my history that I can give up that much of my free time to dedicate it to singing. Now I only pace sometimes in the morning if I get up early enough, when I get home from school, and before I go to bed(or at least on school days).That’s only about 2-4 hours a day compared to, like, seven on school days from before. So it had gotten much better. BUT. It’s still a problem. I just wanted to share my story and see if anybody has advice or could learn from this. Sorry it’s so long. It’s a lot. And this is just the condensed version.