The System is Fucked

The nicest way to describe the psychiatric system is fucked up. I call my doctor and say "I think my meds aren't working anymore. I'm up and down. My mood swings are insane and I can't control myself. My anxiety is so bad that I can't order food in a restaurant or decide what clothes to wear in the morning." It took me 2 hours that morning to decide to put a t-shirt and jeans on to come to the doctor's office. She puts in a referral to the local hospital to get me in to see a psychiatrist. I go on vacation for a week hoping that getting away will solve some of my anxiety. Instead the anxiety gets worse and I start flying through life. I'm binge drinking at night, stopped taking my meds because I felt really good (while I was drunk). I was social and laughing and laughing ... so hard I actually fell over. I love myself drunk more than I love myself sober. Everything that I hate about myself seems to disappear. All my social anxiety seems to disintegrate when I'm drinking. I'm the life the of the party. I announce to the bartender that let's get a round of tequila for everyone! One for the bar tender too. We lick the salt, drink the shot and bite the lemon. I then drink a beer as a chaser in two gulps. I have the perfect buzz going. I am affable. I am friendly. I make jokes. I no longer think everyone is staring at me. We dance like fools, we laugh, I carry on like I'm 23 year's old.

But with these highs come the lows.

Low enough that waking up is hard and I can barely wake up. Not because I'm hung over, but because a heavy sadness hangs over my head. I'm moving in slow motion. I cry at the drop of a hat. I'm paranoid. I return from vacation expecting to feel relieved, but I'm not. I'm more anxious than when I left. There has been no call from my doctor or the psych department of the hospital. I let another week pass by with major mood swings. Three weeks have now gone by and still nothing. I call my doctor and she says it will take up to 2 months to get an appointment. I don't have weeks. My scale is tipping. The craziness is coming. It's moved from my chest to my limbs. My skin is crawling. There's a body that wants to come out. I feel possessed. I asked for help and all they can offer me is a 2 month turn around. Instead of getting treatment, I self medicate. More booze and cutting.

I end up in the ER. He finds me cutting on the bathroom floor (as I mentioned earlier). Now I am in the ER. I am scouring the the halls for what the hospital calls "sharps." I need to cut so badly. It's all I can think about. As I'm searching the halls, I remember I have a metal butter knife. I go back to my bed in the ER and I try that, it barely makes a mark. yes folks, the ER left me with a knife. Although it doesn't do anything - what if it did. I rub it against my wrists back and forth back and forth. It finally breaks through some skin, but not enough. I try a fork - nothing. I try ripping a prong off of my hospital bracelette, still nothing. Finally the bright idea hits me to rip off the metal part of the pen off. It was sharp enough to make a small incision, but still not sharp enough to make me bleed.

I start pacing the halls again - looking through nurses hospital carts. Trying not to be suspicious. If I had the balls, I would have stolen something. But, I couldn't. I ask the nurse for my meds and decide to go to sleep.

I spend 3 days in the ER, where no one really knows what's going on. They treat me like a normal person. I'm able bodied and I can talk, but I can guarantee I'm more fucked up than anyone on that ER ward. It took imovain, seroquel, and some other unknown drug (maybe clonazepam or lorazepam) to put me to sleep.

The next morning I wake up and they can move me into the psych ward. I walk down the white corridor that is lit with neon lights. My parents and partner are there. I feel like I'm marching to meet my maker - they buzz me in. The Northern European nurse, Lucy, whom I remember from last time I was here, brings me to my room. She makes me dump all of my items onto the bed and she searches my bags for those infamous sharps. She confiscates my pills, my blowdryer, my razor, hair spray, and shave gel. I get the pills and the razors - the others I still don't quite understand. She leaves my Ipod, but says she'll have to take the headphones at night. I'm numb. I should be listening, but I'm not. I look around at the blush pink privacy curtains, the seafoam green comforter and wondering - can I back out now? By the time I've come back to consciousness I'm hugging my parents and my partner goodbye. My partner has tears streaming down his cheeks, but I am unmoved. I'm blank faced and cannot let him see my distress. But, when he leaves, I fall apart. I curl up on the bed and cry. All the composure and stoicism cannot help me now. He is gone and I fall apart...

The God Question

My second night in emergency, waiting for there to be a bed in the psych ward, I am granted with the luck of having a great nurse. Our conversation began regarding her tattoos, which I have always found interesting, but I have been too chicken to ever get. My partner and I have thrown around the idea of getting each others name tattooed onto our ring finger, but we were told that it wasn't the best idea. The ink bleeds and a lot of people think they're gang signs. Ohhh the prejudices. Anyways, she had her husband's name tattooed on her finger. I asked her about it and she said her husband is unable to wearing any metal and so he couldn't have a traditional wedding band. So, they decided the next best thing was to tattoo each others name on them instead. At this point I was feeling quite anxious and she was sympathetic and talked me through my panic attack. I talk like chicken little, crying that the sky is falling.

Anyways... throughout our conversation she proposed the God solution. She claims that after finding God, she never suffered depression again. And I wonder - is it that easy? You find God and there is some cure that magically makes you better? I pick up a bible and head to church every Sunday and my anxiety, my depression, my bipolar disorder will disappear? Why aren't they bottling this stuff???? The cheesy tv spokesman comes over the t.v. and says: "Are you feeling depressed? Hopeless? Anxious? Have you thought of committing one of the biggest sins - suicide? Well, we have the solution for you! The "G" Pill! That's right folks, swallow the "G" pill and all these feeling will go away!"

Just like any other pharmaceutical drug - it doesn't stress accountability. That's always been my problem with religion. I was raised a Catholic and terrified of God and it was always "God punishing me" if something bad happened. But, what about my accountability? My responsibility? Everything becomes "God's Will." (I'm fearing some backlash for this post already, but it's called freedom of speech people!) I don't buy the God thing. I can't.

If the solution to mental illness was as simple as "finding" God, as my dear nurse suggested then wouldn't therapists and psychiatrists hang up their belts? I mean, I know mental health is big business and company's are much more focused on finding a profit and not on helping people and psychiatrists have a stake in these claims. But if God was really and truly the answer, wouldn't "the word" have spread by now?

I wonder if I have simply replaced God with a person. I wonder if finding meaning to life with or without God is just about finding your rock - the one thing that ALWAYS makes sense. No matter if the sky is falling or not. I've found this one thing (it still hasn't cured my mental illness, but we're talking the meaning of life here!) This one thing that I've found is not God, a spirit, or the holy ghost. It's a living, breathing, human being. It is not elusive. It is not found in an old book about legends and imaginary friends and voices in people's heads. He's real. He's proven himself to me (more than I deserve). He loves me more than I deserve. He's not God, but a man. A real person that I can run to, cry to, hurt, fuck, and love more than my own life. But he still doesn't solve my problems. It is still on me. I force accountability. This is what I am learning.

Hospitalization #2

I have been lucky enough that I have only been hospitalized (thus far) twice in my life. The second, being the most recent, was longer than the first and I had impeccable timing...

It is quarter to seven on Mother's Day. Instead of making my mom feel special - she'll be visiting me in the hospital. I have been a major source of stress for the majority of the people in my life - but especially my mother. With the various ups and downs - and down doesn't even qualify where I've been - she has been standing by me. When I have been unable to help myself, unable to do things for myself, unable to go on - there she is.

She is the rock and heart of our family. She is the carbon that holds the bonds together.

I have at various points called her Super Woman, but even Super Man had kryptonite. My mom had a lot on her shoulders. She was a part-time single mom, because as my dad did his "fatherly" and "husbandly" "duty to provide" (his words not mine) - she not only "provided," but also took care of my sister and I. She drove us off to day care, went to work, went to the gym, picked us up, mowed the law, cleaned the house, paid the bills, all with time to tuck me in at night and read me a bed time story. The fondest childhood memories that I have of my mom is her reading me stories. She didn't do funny voices or all that crap you see parents in movies doing. She just read, but she explained every picture. Taking the time to capture every detail. One of my favourite books was a Disney version of The Little Train that Could. Goofy was the conductor and he was driving this train up the hill. She would explain: "There's goofy in his train. he's the conductor" or "There's goofy trying to make it up the hill."

I think I can, I think I can...

Goofy made it up the hill - slow and steady. Now I feel that this is a mantra of my life. "I think I can." Sometimes I'm very slow and not so steady, but I always try and think that I can achieve something even with this bizzare thing hanging over me.

When I was a little older, maybe 9 or 10, my dad was gone a lot. My mom made my sister and I listen to Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding - all the motown greats. At 9, I knew all the words on the Motown Greatest Hits album and in cliched form, the three of us would take up our respective microphones - a hair brush, mash potato masher, and a ladle - we would dance to The Supremes "RESPECT." We had an entire choregraphed routine by the end and we lip synched all the words and when my dad came home, we'd perform it all in front of him. These are the moments that I remember. My mom did her best to make sure my sister and I felt the love of two parens - even when there was for the majority of the time - one.

Here we are Mother's Day 2009 and I am in the hospital. I am not even in the psych ward yet. I am in the emergency holding cell. You know the communal ward where every patient in limbo - between admissions and actually having a room - wait. There are geriatrics screaming, a dude with a swollen arm, and me all healthy physically, but mentally battered and bruised.

I haven't slept and I am still feeling the madness wash over me. The depression is coming on strong. I feel deflated, flat. I feel like my limbs are filled with lead. I can't sleep, but I'm not awake.

I think the best analogy for mental illness is that of a shadow. For the most part you can go on your daily routine. Your shadow is there, but you hardly notice it. It's just there - serving no real useful purpose. Suddenly, it's midnight and you hear a creak run down the hallway. Your once safe bedroom looks scary as it casts its own shadows. The clothes hanging in your closet take shape and suddenly someone is in there. You close your eyes trying to make these visions disappear. You stare into the darkness and you see a figure. You swear it's a person - an intruder - ready to strike. Your heart rate increases, your left arm tingles - okay it's just a panic attack. You take a deep breath. Your heart is now pounding out of your chest and it's all you can hear in your ears. Your body breaks out into a chold sweat and you shiver as you try and hide under the covers - just like when you were six. You hide until you've calmed down enough to rationalize with yourself: "My eyes are playing tricks on me. It's my own over active imagination." So you sit up - clutching your knees to your chest - you slowly turn your head and just as you do head lights shine into your bedroom window and suddenly your shadow is seven feet tall and ready to strike.

You are frightened by the shadow of yourself. It's you, but not. It's you, but distorted. It's your face, blacked out. There you are face to face with yourself. A cut-out of yourself. An empty reflection of yourself. But in this shadow you are more frightened than if it was a burglar that broke into your house. Instead of breaking into your house and taking all your wordly possessions - it breaks into your mind. Suddenly, the place that seemed secure as a swiss bank account is broken into and turned upside down.

Your shadow doesn't want anything.
It just wants to tear everything upside down.

It throws a vase. Overturns a table. Rips the drapes down. Breaks a window or two. But you try to rationalize with it: "Hey, let's just talk about this. You don't need to do this. There's still time to just turn around and leave."

It ignores you and topples over a table in retaliation. Then it's your book case, with all your beautiful books that are alphabetized by author. As the book case is falling the books start toppling out and hit the floor with a light thud, thud, thud. The book case lands like the lid of a coffin.

Again you try to reason with it: "Please, just stop. We can figure this out. You don't need to make this any worse than it already is." Again, your shadow ignores you and bounds down the stairs, flinging pictures off the wall as he goes. You try to reason with him again: "You know, I really don't have time for this. I have a life and responsibilities. I don't have time to put everything back together, because you are feel like showing up!"

Your shadow turns to you for the first time: "You have nothing. You're a fuck up and a failure. You have ruined everything for everyone and you'd be better off dead. Oh, did I forget to mention you're ugly, fat, and an idiot? Man, how do you even have parents that love you?" He smashes a plate with this last remark. "And another thing," suddenly your shadow has eyes and there is a spark of malice in them, "you don't matter to anyone. Nobody loves you. You think they do, but they don't. Not even your parents. They only pretend because they have to. And your partner - he's just not that into you. He's just waiting for the moment when he can leave you." With this last statement he flips the dinner table over and slams out the door.

And you, you are left standing with the wreckage of your life. Your entire life turned upside down in a moment, in the middle of the night. This is what happens without any warning, without any clue when he will be back, but you are left to clean up the mess and attempt to piece your life back together.

Unfortunately, this happened on Mother's Day. The one day that I'm supposed to honour the woman who brought me into the world.

Instead, I sit in hospital limbo - wondering what I am going to do with this mess.

I am Mad

Madness is a funny thing. Not "ha ha" funny, but odd funny. You are going about your day and have a lovely evening with the love of your life, you share a glass or two of wine, have wonderful sex, and you fall asleep wrapped in each others arms and everything seems absolutely perfect. You wake up elated, kissing him good morning and whisper I love you. All this is going on, all this normalcy and perfection, and unexpectedly and undesired the madness is growing. You make scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee. Casually scanning the local paper, seeing if there is anything of interest going on in this small town (little do you know that your own life will become so very interesting in a few hours). You sneak a glance at your love, as an image of your blissful evening passes like a cloud shrouding the sun. It still lets in the sun, but it obscures the direct view of the memory. You both sigh as the day ahead urges you on. Sighing not wanting to lose this beautiful morning to responsibility and obligation. But, the day calls and you each move towards your respected duties. Outlining a thesis - it looms over you - the piles of books and research that took you months to collect and read must come together now in some cohesive whole. You've completed a ten page proposal and presented a conference paper, which was warmly received by faculty, but received a poor grade by the graduate director. You remember her comments vividly: "You will have difficulty in your career, because you have not decided upon a time period." As she does not understand that we do not all want to be Jane Austenists! She did not see the "point" of the paper and that my textual analysis was weaker than my contextualization. I seem more interested in the interdisciplinary model of English rather than the literature itself - I see this paper as an absolute failure. I was proud of it at one point, but these comments toy with my self-doubt. I am an apparent failure.

The madness was stealthy and quick .

One moment I am organizing my articles, and in a nano second I am on the bathroom floor, crippled by fear and anxiety. My chest is burning and it feels like my heart is going to beat out of my chest. My heart sounds like a drum, beating - beating - against my cheat. The tears fall in big globules that collect around my chin. I lay down and feel the cold ceramic against my cheek. I curl myself into the smallest possible ball and I try and stifle my cries. "He's in the other room. He's going to worry." But I can't stop. I suddenly remember - the razor - suddenly, as if possessed by a spirit I am a woman on a mission. I remember seeing a razor in here last night. Finding this this razor is absolutely necessary. It is the only thing I think about. If I find the razor I will just get some relief. I just need a release. But, I can't find it. "Where is it? it was here last night? It couldn't have gone far. If I were a razor where would I be? The medicine cabinet!" Empty. "Anything else useful in there? Pills? Medication?" Nothing but beautiful bottles filled with lotions and potions. "The drawer!" Empty. Nothing of use in there either. "Don't we have any medication in the house at all? Ah ha! Under the sink!" Not there either. Just some kotex and toilet paper. Then I remember, "the other drawer in the cabinet." This is my last hope. The tears have stopped since I began to search. All I can think about is cutting. I can't think of the anxiety. I cant think of the oppressive weight on my body. I can't think of the looming thesis. All I need is to cut. I need to feel the burning sensation. I need to see the blood. I need to know I am still alive. I tentatively open the drawer, as if I am expecting something to jump out and kill me (if I was only that lucky). At first I saw nothing, a few hairbrushes, a nail file - nothing. Then I see it. The bag containing the razors. It's like a glimmer of hope in my black world. Do I want to die? I don't know. Do I want to disappear and never exist? absolutely. My hands shake with excitement. Like an addict scoring their hit or an alcoholic with a 1950 bottle of merlot. I test the sharpness by dragging it lightly at first along my bicep. It burns. The blood begins to surface. I make a second mark parallel to the first. More blood. It's sharp. I drag a diagonal line across my forearm. Then repeat on the same spot. Ah - the blood is all I can think about it. I need a deeper mark. I drag another line closer to my wrist. Just caressing the vein. Then I get an idea - I need a line straight from my wrist to my elbow. No. Just one real deep cut. One that will gush blood........

a knock.

I realize the crying has resumed.

another knock.

I hear my name.

A voice. His voice.

I panic.
He's going to be mad, send me to the hospital.

I've done it now.

I feel my chest heave with a sob. He tries the knob. Aha! I was smart enough to lock the door. I feel proud of myself as if I have accomplished this great feat of evasion. As if I have just performed some military coup d'etat. I hear my name again. The knock turns into a banging. I'm wailing along with the banging that seems to be going in beat with my heart that is pounding in my chest.

I let him in. Why? I don't know.

I feel myself lie back down on the cold ceramic. Putting my wrist on the cold floor and feeling the burning of the cuts subsiding.

He falls to his knees.

He is crying.

Why?

He picks me up in his arms and cradles me like a baby. He whispers that it will all be okay, and I think to myself that it's not. I am not okay. All I can say is, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I have ruined everything.

One perfect morning and my entire life seems to fall apart like a house of cards encountering a soft breeze that enters from an open window.

It is done. I am mad.

Depression

I've always been afraid to go to sleep. I always have had this feeling that if I close my eyes, I will inevitably die in my sleep and never wake up. I used to lie in bed at night, wondering what it would be like to not to exist. I used to try my best to imagine not existing and feeling nothing. As soon as I could feel myself disappearing, I suddenly became conscious of some part of me. As I could feel my mind emptying of my body, I would suddenly get an itch on my arm, drawing my attention back to my body. I would start again, this time picturing complete blackness and then emptying my mind of my body. Just as I thought I could feel nothing, my big toe would twitch. I was trying to forget myself and that I existed. I was seven years old. There was something appealing about not existing. If I was dead, I would not exist. If I didn't exist, I wouldn't have to go to school. I was terrified of school my entire life. My mom used to call it my "school stomach," where every first day of school I would be so anxious that I would make myself sick and I would cry all the way to school. I don't think that as a kid I ever did not have a sore stomach - just like not knowing how to disappear - I didn't know how not to have a sore stomach. It was just always this dull aching that felt like a ball in the pit of my stomach. It wasn't that it was the academics of the school, but more that I went to five different elementary schools and I never fit in at a single one. You think I would have figured it out after the second and third try, but there I always was - the butt of the joke. The subject of the torture. So, I used to lie in bed, wishing I did not exist. Wishing that I could disappear into the night air.

So, I guess it's not too far fetched to imagine that a child who used to wish for death, but simultaneously be scared of it, would later attempt suicide. Not only think about death, but desire it beyond anything else. Thoughts of death would consume me completely. How would I do it? Who would care? Could I do it without anybody knowing? Would they really be sad? If I took a whole bottle of tylenol could I keep it down long enough to die. I would surely pass out before the pain of the overdose took place. If I just drove fast enough and crashed into the median and flew over the bridge - I would have to get knocked out and I could drown without even knowing it. If I drank a whole bottle of vodka, that would kill me right? If I jumped off this bridge - the fall would kill me right? If I just cut the vein in the perfect spot - this would be done. These are the thoughts that used to and still do race through my head. On one of those "bad days," where shit just doesn't seem to be going my way and it suddenly seems like I can't do anything right, death becomes the easiest thing to solve the problems. This isn't normal, I am aware. Most people can make a mistake or have a bad day, but their thoughts don't jump to - how could I best commit suicide at this very moment? A bad grade doesn't send a normal person reeling to thinking that they are the dumbest person in the world and that life will stop, because I got a B. Not only would life stop - but MY life SHOULD stop! I deserve to die and nobody will miss me when I am.

It was high school that made me realize how unbalanced I was. I regularly got bouts of severe, crippling depression. I would show up to school with my physical body, but mentally I would be gone. I would go an entire day without talking to anyone, except to myself in my head, wishing for death or at least for the day to be over so I could crawl into bed and wish to die. I would hide in the bathroom in between classes and just sob. One particularly bad episode, I burst into tears in the middle of class and ran out of the room. At sixteen years old, this is slightly embarrassing, but I couldn't control it. I guess my teacher was slightly shocked by my emotional out burst, my french teacher sent out my girl friend after me. I was slumped on the bathroom floor just sobbing. My breathing was heavy and my chest was racked with sobs. I thought my chest was going to explode. I wished my heart would just stop. Could I give myself a heart attack? I could feel my heart beating out of my chest, I was dizzy, I couldn't catch my breath. The room was spinning. I was coherent enough to see my girlfriend come into the bathroom and I heard her ask, "What's wrong?" It was a very good question. What was wrong? Why was I crying? Was it chemistry? The math test? The boyfriend? No, it was none of these things. I was just crying, because I hated myself. I was mad at myself and my heart felt like it was going to explode out of my chest. Here I was, immobilized by sobs and hating myself - just like that day in kindergarten. But, because normal people don't just cry for the sake of crying, she was expecting an answer, expecting something like "My parents grounded me," or "I failed my math test." Or maybe something more tragic, "Someone died." But, none of this happened. I never did anything bad, and I have never been grounded in my life. I wasn't the best math student, but I never failed. My boyfriend was great and was the nicest person in the world. Nobody died, I didn't go to my first funeral until I was twenty. There was no reason for this craziness. There was no reason for this debilitating sadness. This heaviness that held me down. I felt like I was floating in water and my body was moving against my will. But, I couldn't tell her that I didn't know why I was crying. Normal people don't burst into tears in the middle of French class. Normal people at least wait until they are alone to cry like this. She was going to think I was crazy. And, not the good kind of crazy, where you make people laugh. That type of needing physical restraints and padded wall crazy. So, I used my story making skills and lied. I lied to make me seem normal. "My parents are fighting." This wasn't completely untrue and I don't know why I said it. It just seemed like the best thing at the time. The words came out of my mouth before I even knew what I was saying: "I think they're getting a divorce." My parents used to fight a lot - so the first part wasn't completely untrue - but they weren't divorcing. Not even close. But, the lie seemed like the best answer. That's all it took. A small stretch of the truth and somebody understood this outburst.

I have done this my entire life. Making up these stories to justify the way I felt. I have broken up with numerous boyfriends, caused fights, and told lies - because it didn't make sense the way I felt. My parents, although often fighting, were together. I was doing okay in school. I had a boyfriend. I had a part-time job. Although I wasn't popular, I had a friends. But, I would continually find myself crippled with these depressive episodes. They sometimes lasted a day, sometimes a week, and sometimes a month. But, to justify these episodes - I would lie just so someone could pretend to understand why I was like this. Now I know that these were depressive episodes - but when no one has mentioned depression to you before - you just feel like an emotional freak. Yeah, most teenagers are emotionally led by their hormones, contentious, irritable, and plain old difficult. This was different. I knew it was different. But, I couldn't tell anyone that I was immobilized by sadness and I had no reason to be. Instead, I would make up these stories. Even as a child, I remember crying in my bed. I was about nine years old. My mom would come in and ask me why I was crying and again - the best answer I could give - "I am mad at myself." I could never escape the self-hatred. It always seemed like the best answer and the most truthful.

Origins

I have been trying to figure out when I realized there was something wrong with me, chemically, as they say. I have been flipping through the catalog of my childhood memories and there are a few moments that stick out from the rest, but really one in particular. I have this memory from when I was about five years old and I was in kindergarten. I went to a Catholic elementary school, which was the first of five elementary schools I went to as a child. For various reasons I switched and we moved a lot. High school was the longest I'd ever stayed in one place. That might be why I get stir-crazy when I live someplace for too long. I get restless when I've worn out a place. I'm at this Catholic elementary school and in cliche form, I have a nun as a teacher. But she wasn't one of those horrifyingly terrifying nuns you see in movies rapping the knuckles of children with metre sticks. She didn't pull us by our ears or shove us in closets or make us clap chalk board brushes. Instead, she was the nicest and kindest woman on the face of the planet - a mother Theresa teaching five year-old's. Truly. Or at least, this is how I remember her.

My class was on our weekly trip to the library to get some books to bring home.
I used to love library days or doing anything that related to books. Before I even knew how to read I would look at picture books and pretend that I knew the words to the story. I would make up the story to match the pictures in the books - not really caring that I didn't know the words. It didn't matter. My story was just as good as anybody else's. I remember the librarian telling me once that she could read the story to me and I said: "No thank you, I can read." She laughed at me and shook her head, but I really liked my own stories much more than the ones the words contained. So we're in the library and before we are set off to get our books, we sit on these grey, carpeted steps. It was that industrial type of carpeting that would give you rug burn just by brushing your hand against it. I used to hate it - it used to leave my legs itchy all day. So the Sister reminds us of the rules for the library - primarily being very quiet and use our "inside voices." Telling twenty or so five and six-year old's to be quiet is futile - although I was always silent. I was insufferably shy, to the point that I almost never spoke. I think that's why I liked books so much - I could be quiet and make up my little story in my head allowing me to be comfortably inside my own head. After reminding us to be quiet the Sister sets us out to get books and I don't move. Or, I feel compelled to not move. I can't move. I must have consciously decided it, so I sit on the prickly carpet immobile. I assume I had a moment of reasoning in my head. "Yes, now I should get up and get a book. But, I really don't want to. Why not? I don't know. Should I cry? Why would I cry? Because it seems like the right thing to do. Well, alright then. I won't move and I will cry instead." As I'm going through this in my head, the tears start to well up and I don't really know why. Why do most five-year old's cry? Usually because of nothing. Maybe falling down. But, I hadn't fallen down. I was just sitting there minding my own business when my legs decided they didn't want to move and I felt like crying. Through my tears I see the Sister approach me. She says, "Why aren't you going to get your book?" and I respond, "Because I don't want to. I can't," as the tears stream down my cheeks and land in little puddles on my clenched fists, which somehow showed my determination to not move. The Sister asks me, "Well, why don't you want to get a book? You usually like library time." And, as if it made the most logical sense in the world, I say: "Because I am mad at myself." Just like that. "I am mad at myself." I don't remember anything else from this memory, but this moment in the library explaining that my immobility was due to being angry with myself. There was this precise understanding that there is something wrong with me and I'm not sure what, but it makes me mad at myself. My life continues in this cycle of utter hatred for myself, my life, and everything that is included in this. I hate my body. I hate that I'm socially awkward. I hate that I am a perfectionist. I hate that I talk too much about myself. I hate that I am not a natural at anything. I hate that I have a mental illness. I hate all the medication. I hate that I'm a fuck up - a freak - a failure.

So this memory sticks out for me. Somehow, as a child, I knew that there was something not right. That I had the sensitivity to be aware that I was angry with myself. Mad enough that I couldn't move. Immobile and angry - not wanting to get a book - not wanting to do the thing I loved most in the world. This memory is irrevocably the origin of my mental illness and has stayed with me through all of the treatment and therapy. Questions by psychiatrists and therapists leading back to these same answers to different questions. Questions not about getting a book, but questions about the way I feel. Questions about why I think the way I do. Because, I don't want to, I can't move, and I am mad at myself.

The crazies?

I read a lot of memoirs, but particularly memoirs about living with depression, eating disorders, bipolar disorders in some attempt to comprehend myself. I've made it my specialty in school - in some vain attempt to help myself. But, the more I read, the more I study, the less I identify with. So, I'm using this blog to write about my own experiences - although they say that I am "healthy" now and I'm taking my meds like the good girl that I am - I still feel it every now and then. I haven't written in a long time and I almost never talk about my "disorder," because I hope that the more silence and secrecy that surrounds it, the more I can pretend it deos not exist. However, every now and then the crazies still well up in my chest. I feel the precarious balance of between being a normal, healthy, educated, young lady and muttering on the street, with a shopping cart, claiming I'm a prophet sent from God tipping one way or another. This is my worst fear. I start to feel the scale tipping to one side - making me more or less crazy - depending on the tilt. I have been "healthy" or "stable" for approximately two years, but I feel the weight of the scale is sloping slowly, but steadily towards (as my mother loves to put it) an "episode."
When I feel this slope - it sometimes instigates me to think about cutting - I love cutting (or more appropriately, I used to love cutting). I feel that there is some real release of pain and breaks through the numbness ... but, I promised a few people in my life that I wouldn't do it anymore. I am excessively honest and am the worst liar in the world. So, here I am and I can't cut, because I would be breaking a promise and it's sort of hard to hide the gashes in your arms or legs from someone who sees you naked. That same person who made you promise never to do it again. Yeah, I have had slips - but who doesn't. Doesn't an alcoholic sometimes drink? Or a drug addict go on a binge? Well, I sometimes slip and just make one cut through my skin. Just to see it bleed and make sure that I am real - that I exist. It's a funny thing existing. I can see my hands, my reflection in the mirror, I know other people see me and can hear me, because they talk to me and call my name - but sometimes you just need to make sure that you're still alive. That's the thing that the people I promise to just don't get. I don't cut to die. I actually cut to make sure I'm alive. Cutting does not equal a suicide attempt, not always anyways. I don't want to die - I mean, I did at one point - but not now. It's just a way to test that I am still alive. Or, that I can still feel things and that all of the medication doesn't numb me to the point that I don't feel anymore. This brings me back to existing. If you aren't feeling the way you "normally" feel without medication then am I myself anymore? Do I still exist? I read this article a couple of months back about identity and medication and the author debated, which is the real identity when medicated? The one before or after medication? Or, are we part of the same whole? Am I still me, even though I am medicated with stabilizers, uppers, and anxiety medication? It is truly an identity crisis...
But, this is all really getting ahead of myself ... the reason I am writing this blog - that's where I began. I don't identify with a lot of the books women are writing about their experiences with mental illness. They seem to come from families that are broken or breaking. They come from poverty or other bad situations. They were molested or abused by this or that person. I on the other hand, have nothing like that in my life. My parents have been married for twenty-six years - of course they've fought - but who doesn't. I've come from an upper middle-class family my entire life. I've had opportunities to become educated. This is the thing that I never understood. I mean, I had no reason to suffer from depression (when they called it that first) and I don't really have a reason to suffer from bipolar disorder either ... So, this blog is going to talk about my life, with bipolar disorder, through treatments and suffering and wanting to die ... and hopefully someone will be able to identify with my experience ... the experience that we don't often hear about ... the average individual, with nothing deeply traumatic in their life, suffering from mental illness ...