Chiara de Blasio opens up about her "miserable" adolescence

BY Jennifer Fermino

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Tuesday, May 6, 2014, 1:06 PM

Aaron Showalter/New York Daily News Chiara de Blasio, with father Bill, then New York’s mayor-elect, revealed last December that she struggled with depression and substance abuse.

Chiara de Blasio released a deeply personal essay on her struggles with mental illness and addiction Tuesday, saying she was born an addict and spent the years of her life "miserable" - despite the best efforts of her close-knit and loving family.
Mayor De Blasio's only daughter, who is being honored today by the Department of Health and Human Services for speaking out on her issues, said she works every day on her recovery.
"My current daily routine begins with waking up anxious, my chest pinched tight as I try to shake the sleep off of my heavy eyelids ... It is remarkable how I’ve learned to change my natural state, as every morning I awaken a nervous and depressed wreck, before slowly putting myself back together again," she wrote on the website XOJane.
She also said that she found comfort in the documentary "Happy," a 2011 film that examines different people and what brings them happiness. The film claims that 50% of people's happiness levels are determined by genetic disposition, while 40% is "intentional action" and 10% is external forces, like love, health and friends.
"'Happy' [the documentary] summed it up quite perfectly," she wrote.
"Because, as you see, for my entire adolescence, I was miserable. Sure, there were happy moments, hours, days, weeks, or even months! But over the years, little to nothing changed. The way I saw it, the only change was that things were getting worse."
Her problems overwhelmed her, she said, despite her "unconditionally loving and unbroken family."
"I was surrounded by love, but I always felt less-than, out-of-place, restless, irritable, and discontent. Perhaps you’re reading this and thinking that I was simply ungrateful. Yes, I was. But a lack of gratitude wasn’t my only problem. I was the problem. I was not born a happy person," she wrote.
She said she knows fighting "depression, anxiety and addiction" will be a lifelong battle, but she is determined to prevail.
"The problems that I have aren’t ones that fix themselves. But as I always say, the most beautiful things come out of pain. And so long as I’m trying to create a beautiful life, I’m in a better place than I was before," she wrote.
Although she did not mention any specific substances in her essay - which is titled "I'm Chiara de Blasio and I'm a young woman in recovery" - the college sophomore has previously said she abused alcohol and marijuana.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/chiara-de-blasio-opens-miserable-adolescence-blog-entry-1.1781465#ixzz30xmJPIyB