In December 2021 I experienced the most embarrassing moment in my life. My car was repossessed. Not because I didn’t pay my bill, but because I was unaware I owed $40 from my previous bill. It was the height of the pandemic and I felt my mental health was deteriorating. I didn’t think my experience was unlike everyone else’s. I mean it was a global pandemic.
For some reason, things felt like they went way worse for me. I just couldn’t “get it together.”
I’ve always had big feelings, but during that time my feelings were on steroids. I was constantly having emotional meltdowns, and on really bad days the thoughts that ran through my mind scared me. I was terrified and had no idea what to do. Not to mention I was deeply embarrassed by my car getting repossessed.
I told all this to my therapist in tears. I was afraid I was going to not only permanently lose my car, but also lose my job. This wasn’t the first job that I felt I was mucking up. That is when my therapist recommended I get tested for Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Luckily a co-worker recommended a good dr. and I was able to see a psychiatrist in my network.
I was diagnosed with ADHD.
At that moment everything in my life started to click. Walking around with undiagnosed and untreated ADHD was having a deeply negative affect on my life and mental health. Add on to that the fact that I also had unresolved trauma and you get a pretty gnarly combination.
It affected my job, my relationships, my finances and my overall quality of life.
Trauma and ADHD always affected my life, but the pandemic ramped it up to a point where I was scared I’d lose my life. And this is where my fandoms and geekiness come in.
Prior to the pandemic, and my living in the Central Valley in California I had multiple outlets to express myself and explore my big feelings. I am a theater artist, dancer, and I write both fiction and non-fiction. I also attended comic book conventions and loved playing DnD.
I didn’t know it at the time but all of my activities and communities in the geek space were helping me manage my ADHD and trauma. It didn’t mean I was less forgetful, my ADHD still required me to have systems in place to get things done.
But when the pandemic hit and everything shut down I felt completely alone. Not only that, I was in a city where I had no friends, and no community. Everything about my ADHD got way worse.
Coincidentally six months after I got my ADHD diagnosis, I started my online graduate school program, lost my job, and went through a domestic violence court battle.
At that point I knew if I wanted to get better I needed to do more than just go to therapy or see a psychiatrist. I needed to do some internal work. I started reading therapy books, like the Body Keeps Score, and philosophy books like Be Water My Friend.
I started journaling my experiences, and having conversations with myself. And I started finding my community. First was my local comic book shop. I started to get into cosplay. And when I was able to go to my first con post-pandemic I participated in the Hellfire Gala walk.
Slowly through my fandom communities, and the internal work I was doing I started to feel better and heal. My life was seeming brighter.
And then something really cool happened. In May of 2023 I was invited to be on the Graymalkin Lane podcast for the Trial of Lorna Dane.
Graymalkin Lane is a podcast that reviews X-men comics, mostly from the 60s. Every month the host Chad Anderson hosts a trial where he and his guests talk about the history of a character, their flaws, their strengths and whether or not they are guilty of the labels put upon them.
I was tasked with both prosecuting and defending Lorna on whether or not she was “insane.” Diving into this comic book character while I was also doing all this internal work and reading and understanding mental health conditions made something click in my brain. I started to see that actually the character exhibited a lot of symptoms of PTSD and trauma.
I fell in love with the character of Lorna because I could understand her. I realized, fiction facilitates hard conversations around mental health where we can feel seen.
My experience and that podcast inspired me to launch the site you are currently reading, Rebelle Geek. Rebelle Geek is a community with blogs and a podcast where we talk about mental health conditions by examining some of our favorite characters in fiction.
My goal and hope with this website and podcast is for others to feel seen the way I did when I read about Lorna Dane.
According to U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy mental health is the crisis of our time.
An estimated 20.6% of adults live with a mental health condition. Although such a high rate of individuals in the U.S. live with a mental health condition, I feel there isn’t enough media that talks about mental health.
I believe stories are how we understand ourselves and the world. My hope is by examining these characters we can build a community where we can discuss and destigmatize mental health conditions.
But I can’t do this alone. My goal is to create a community where we can not only discuss our favorite characters but also share useful information. I would love your help to build a database of low-cost, sliding scale or free mental health resources across the country.
Fandoms, cosplay and understanding my mental health conditions gave me the tools to heal, understand my ADHD, navigate the world and frankly saved my life.
Rebelle Geek is a brave space where our geekiness is celebrated and our mental health is prioritized. I hope you will join me on this adventure!
Since this is a project built from the ground up, your input is really important and valuable to me. I have a few questions I’d love for you to answer to help me better understand what you would like to see covered and what resources you’d like to have available.