While I’m now recognised for my witty articles about Taylor Swift or rambling essays where I needlessly overshare, I wasn’t always a journalist, or even on the track to becoming one. And yes, I’m aware that no one’s ‘recognising’ me in the slightest, but a girl can dream.

Back in the day, I was firmly committed to studying psychology. I discovered it in high school, as I was lucky enough to attend a school where it was offered as a subject. I fell in love with psychology: the studies, the findings, the way of looking at the world. I loved how self-aware it was, how often we’d have to dismantle findings and poke holes in them, and the focus on how an answer is never certain. Psychopaths, optical illusions, brain mapping, we did it all. I studied psychology for four years in high school and then I left to study it at university. I dived into new areas of psychology, like adolescent development and health psychology, but my heart lay in clinical psychology.

I love psychopathology, the study of mental illnesses. It covers all aspects, including abnormal cognition, maladaptive behavior, and experiences that differ according to social norms. Why do some people struggle when others don’t? What symptoms are relevant in classifying a mental illness? How does the treatment of one disorder differ from another?

But when I reached the end of my bachelor’s degree, I was no less in love with psychology, especially clinical psychology, but I no longer wanted to pursue it further. I had spent all this time [and money] working towards the goal of being a clinical psychologist and helping people, and suddenly I didn’t want it anymore. I didn’t feel like I could help people, like I had any right to be treating them.

Because at the same time, throughout all these years spent with my nose buried in psychology textbooks, I had been just like those examples I was reading about. My life had revolved around my mental illness.

I often pinpoint the beginning of my troubles to the age of fifteen, but that’s just an estimate. With borderline personality disorder, which I’d later be diagnosed with, things usually start brewing in childhood. All I know is that fifteen is when I started self-harming. I later found a diary from that time, where I talked about how grey and sad everything felt. I was also beginning to abuse exercise and restrict my calorie intake at this age, and soon after I developed bulimia.

I was a bit of a mess, to put it lightly. Yet, at the same time, I was devoting my time, energy, and passion to the study of mental illness.

Funnily enough, I never really connected the two things. Years later, when I finally began opening up about what I’d been going through, my mum asked me if that was why I was pursuing psychology. She said it as if it were such an obvious thing, but truthfully, I had never even considered this.

I think the main reason for this is that I didn’t consider myself to have a mental illness throughout this period. I didn’t think I had a reason to be depressed. I didn’t think I was thin enough to have an eating disorder. And on and on, I swam in the impostor syndrome of my own mind. It sometimes felt like I was working towards having a mental illness more than I was working towards not having one.

So, while I read about all these cases, I didn’t link them to myself. They had real problems deserving of empathy, and I did not. Even though the example of Susie being depressed without a specific cause seemed highly plausible, I didn’t offer myself that same compassion. I didn’t allow myself the luxury of being labelled as anything more than difficult.

Did I study psychology to try and cure myself? No, I don’t think so. I didn’t see myself in the same category as those I studied, even though I now think I’d make an excellent textbook case study. I also didn’t see myself as curable, as I thought everything was my own fault and that I was just a difficult person. I didn’t look for a cure as I never even believed one to exist. I now know there is no cure, but there are tools to help, something I wish my younger self could have known.

But, I do think unconsciously, perhaps I was trying to understand myself. While I didn’t give myself the acknowledgment of a label, on some level, I was searching for answers. My mind scared me so much, and I hated feeling isolated in what I was going through. I think psychology gave me the refuge that whether or not I’d be okay, I wouldn’t be alone in that. We’re all fucked up together, I suppose.

I left psychology but it’ll never fully leave me, and I like to think I still use it in my writing and how I approach things. I’m still a sucker for any novel or film with a psychological twist to it, and I still strive to understand my own mind and those around me. Psychology was never about finding a cure, but rather earning a spot in the textbook.