RealMental

How many people stop in their tracks some days and wonder just how in the hell they got to the particular point in their lives that they got to.

I’ve been doing this for a long time now.  I retrace my steps, I inventory the steps I took that led me to where I am right now and wonder what will come of it all.

One of my closest friends recently told me, that while speaking to another person close to me, she told this person at that point, “she’s the most unhappy that I’ve ever known her to be”.   I’m the she in that sentence.  That was over five years ago.  I asked her why didn’t she tell me then but she was uncertain.

I started crying when she told me this, knowing deep down that I was unhappy, and that I’ve been unhappy for a long time.  I’ve been doing the “make the best of it and maybe it’ll get better”!  I had some obstacles to overcome, some stuff that needed to be worked out and really hard life stuff that came in constant waves for a few years.

Life sure can take you full speed ahead down twisting roads and you have no time to catch your breath, much less your mind.  With each new battle, I would pray for the serenity I needed in order to climb the next hill.

I did what was in front of me to do, I put one foot in front of the other, and I persevered.  I stayed the course, I kept it together.  Silently questioning what it was that I had to learn from these calamities.  Why me God?  WHY ME?

Much as I despise that question (because it’s screams of a character flaw I do not wish to emulate) I would ask anyway.  Ultimately trusting that I was where I was supposed to be and sometimes the life you want and think you should have is not the life you get.  Acceptance is what they call that I believe.

At what point should you stop convincing yourself that this is how it is supposed to be?  At what point do you realize that being unhappy isn’t what you want out of life?

An answer to this riddle has eluded me for a few years now and I’m not even sure what course to take in order to change it.  In fact, I’ve only just begun to speak of it’s truth, I’ve only just begun to realize that I have to change my course.

This scares me, despite my experience and knowledge that changing courses brings about blessings and clears away the things that no longer serve me, opening me up for a new adventure.

Painful, uncomfortable, sad, and hopeless are a few of the friends that will join me in the change, even though I know their counterparts of love, joy, serenity, hope and freedom are waiting on the other side for me with cookies and tea.

My mom has an incredibly annoying habit of starting conversations with me with the phrase, “What’s wrong?”

Example:  It is the day after Christmas.  I have been downstairs eating cake for breakfast in my pajamas.  I walk up the stairs and see my mom.  Startled, she looks at me.  “What’s wrong?”

Nothing. I say.  I was just eating cake downstairs.  Everything is perfect.

Example:  My mom calls me on the phone and leaves a voice mail.  I return her call.  She answers the phone—no “hello”—but “What’s wrong?”

It wasn’t always this way.

***

I don’t know what it is, what makes her do this.  It unnerves me to no end, makes me feel like she’s always on edge.  I have my theories, of course—that our relationship is forever changed by the knowledge of my mental illness, that she feels guilty that she didn’t know I had so many problems.  Guilty because she discouraged me from getting treatment the first time around.  Scared that it could happen again, a snap of the crazy finger and everything changed, or gone, again.

Once, when I was 21 and in the middle of the arduous task of being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I spent the night at home.  It was Daylight Savings Time, the one where you spring forward and lose an hour, the same lost hour that started everything the year before.  The boy and I were both upset—him with me, and me with myself.  In the middle of the night, I slipped out of my bed and left a note saying I had gone to sleep at his house.  Later, in the early hours of the morning, someone shot a gun outside my house.  My parents awoke, saw I was out of bed, and immediately feared for the worst.  I got my mom’s panicked call on my cell phone, out-of-breath and hysterical.

I’m here. I said.  I’m alive.

But it was eye-opening, having a glimpse into the fears they had about my life and my illness.  The fact that they thought it could have been me has always shaken me to my core.

***

An essay on suicide and its presence in my life:

In 2002, a month before starting my senior year of high school, one of my best friend’s fathers committed suicide in the woods outside their house while no one was home.  Her mother, out of town and worried that she couldn’t contact him, called my friend on the phone and my father, brother and I drove home with her.  While we were in transit, he was found dead.  One of his employees knew me and knew that I was a friend of his daughter.  Trying to track her down, they called me.  We were halfway there.  We pulled over in the rain and I got out of the car.  At the age of 17, I had to tell this girl that her father died, that he’d committed suicide.  And then there, in my arms, were the pieces he’d blown apart with his gun.  I held the one who’d been left behind.

Last week, one of my closest friends called me—after a string of numbed-out half-started words, he finally choked out that he’d lost his college roommate.  I went over to his house and we sat outside as he smoked cigarettes.  He told me about the questionable nature of the death, about the erratic driving and an overcorrection of the steering wheel that flipped a car and left its driver DOA.

“His father told me that he’d been on pills, and I knew that he was having some problems.  But nothing like this.  And he never told me how he was feeling.  He never told me.  Why wouldn’t he tell me?”

He was asking because he knows about my experiences with mental illness, because he knows that I’ve been depressed.

So, I told him the truth.  That sometimes we don’t tell the people who are closest to us because we don’t want to change their perceptions of us.  We don’t tell them because we can’t bear the sideways glances, the frightened looks that make us feel crazier.  That we can’t stand the thought of hurting and worrying the ones we love.  That when we tell the closest ones, that’s when it really hits us.  That’s when it’s real.

It’s easy to tell strangers and people you’ve just met.  They don’t have any emotional investment in you or your well-being.  They don’t worry at night or when you call them on the phone.  They never will have to ask you, “What’s wrong,” and be scared of what the answer might be.

So he’s quiet and drunk and upset—all the things I’ve been before, when someone I knew unexpectedly died.  And he looks at me, and repeats himself.  “I just wish he had told me.”

And here I am, once more—holding in my arms one of the ones who’s been left behind.

***

It’s not my intention to proselytize or blame.  I’ve been on both sides of the matter, flipping back and forth like a metronome from experience to experience.  I know what it’s like to wallow in desperation and sadness that feels like it will never end.  I’ve visualized it in my head a thousand times—what it would look like to rake a razor down my wrist, what my feet would look like hanging from a rope or the moment of clarity I would have just as I jumped.  I’ve wished for cars to hit me in crosswalks, and I’ve thought incessantly on rough days of turning the steering wheel and careening into a tree.

But I know, too, about the ones we leave behind.  Friends, family, teachers and acquaintances.  The ones who will sit in doorways, mouths drooping with cigarettes and veins running with vodka, the ones who will ask “why” and “how” and blame themselves, no matter what anyone else tells them to the contrary.  I’ve been there too many times, and the pressure of these times is always enough to push me back.

But in the light of this most recent experience, I feel guilty for being so frustrated with my mother.  She asks “What’s wrong?” because she worries that the time she doesn’t is the time it will matter.  I want desperately to tell her that she shouldn’t worry.  That the truth is that, if that time came, she wouldn’t be the one to know.  No one would.  Our hearts are full of secrets and lies, of deceit and worry and fear, of questions that have no answers.

But I want to reassure her.  I want to reassure all of them.  “Don’t worry,” I want to whisper.  And even if I can’t guarantee it, I’m pretty sure.  If I could, I’d write them all promises.  “No matter what, no matter how hard it gets—I won’t leave you behind.”

Since I’ve cut out half of my meds, started sleeping better, and been through hormonal hell (miscarriage & aftermath, then back on hormonal birth control for a month), I’m beginning to think I just have a natural mental imbalance rhythm with the seasons.

I’ve also realized that hormonal birth control is not for me. I went back on birth control for one month only so that I could go to Las Vegas for my 30th Birthday and be able to “enjoy myself” — drink alcohol — get drunk — self-medicate. (Well also I get all-day sickness and me in the first trimester ain’t purty.)

I’ve always been sort of skeptical about people’s claims that they OMG absolutely CANNOT take hormonal birth control because I took it from age eighteen to 25 without any effect, right? RIGHT? Well, now I’m not so sure.

My time in college was one of the most devastating periods of depression in my life. Of course I was in therapy and dealing with some really heavy stuff (Dad’s alcoholism, death, abuse of me & my family, etc.) so it would be expected to be at least down, but this was years long fog.

Back to my point. The month back on made me realize that the additional hormones just made me feel BLAH. A continual veil of BLAH hanging over my mood, with periods of downright sadness leading into a dark cave of depression thrown in there a few times a week.

Back to the seasons. I started mentally mapping my moods over the past few years when I HAVEN’T been on birth control or SSRI’s. I started seeing patterns in my behavior — wilder, more risk taking in the late spring and in the early fall; SAD (seasonal affective disorder) slash depression in the winter; somewhat stable in the summer with moments of being down.

I figure if I can understand my patterns, I can understand and manage my depression more effectively.

I’m also thinking of weaning entirely off of SSRI’s because my son, crazy as he makes me, needs a sibling. And of course, I’d kinda like another baby. ;)

I’ll keep you posted as to the state of my imbalance.

I’ve cut out one of my medications (Wellbutrin extended release), which was prescribed to me this spring to ‘aid’ the Zoloft that I am taking.

Never mind that MORE MEDS WILL FIX YOU. Clearly.

I like to say that I get ‘just regular ol’ depression.’ I’m not sure why I feel a need to qualify my mental illness; it’s possible that if I diminish my illness, I can out think it, or think that I can at least.

Is this what we call denial? Or is it self-preservation?

I’ve gone from feeling slightly manic to having hours long episodes of feeling down. I guzzle more caffeine to try to artificially elevate my mood. I eat chocolate to make myself feel better.

Self-medicating instead of prescription medication.

Hmm.

Perhaps not quite the fix nature intended.

Part One Here
Part Two Here

Part Three

By Muriel Lipke

After returning to San Francisco in 2007, I was great, for about a year… Then I had another episode which landed me in a doctor’s office.

The difference was that I had done my reading since that first breakthrough episode in 2007 about serotonin and what it does to one’s brain. I knew enough to advocate for myself at this point and so when the general practitioner I had been seeing told me that my list of symptoms I’d compiled following the more recent episode were “all in my head” I fired him and went in search of a doctor who would listen to me.

Which was when I found in Dr. Amatti. The first time I saw her I ran down a lengthy list of about 200 symptoms I had regularly experienced and asked her if she could figure out what was wrong with me. She listened carefully and said that she wanted to run blood work and other tests on me to see what could possibly be in common with my diverse symptoms.

All my life I’ve been particularly sickly. Well – not all my life – I first started noticing that I got sick a lot when I was in my teens. I had been treated for allergies, phantom physical pain, insomnia, night sweats, repeated strep throat and bronchitis, stomach cramps, irritable bowel syndrome, shaking hands, ringing ears, “female troubles,” asthma, random fevers, etc… PLUS depression and anxiety. I was regularly told that I was a flippin’ hypochondriac. So much so that I believed it a little. I didn’t think all those symptoms could be connected — but, after working with Dr. Amatti I learned that they are.

See the thing is my brain doesn’t make enough serotonin for healthy bodily functions. Serotonin doesn’t only control moods – it facilitates the central nervous system! My levels of serotonin were so dangerously low my doctor told me that had I not seen someone when I did that I possibly could have died – either by my own hand – (because I’ll freely admit that I’d contemplated suicide because I felt like such crap,) or because of organ failure.

I was really really sick.

Though, I immediately began to feel a little better as soon as I knew what was wrong with me. My body didn’t make enough serotonin and because I’d gone so long living without healthy levels of it in my body, I’d sustained some minor brain damage. The best the doctors could figure out, I’d become immune to the SSRIs my doctor had put me on the year before, because I was taking a high daily dose over an extended period of time. It happens. I guess.

What they have not figured out is how I got this. Dr. Amatti thinks it’s genetic. Mental illness runs in my family. I think it’s a combination of genetics and trauma from abuse. My therapist agrees with me. All I know is that in the fall of 2008 I was diagnosed conclusively with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Major Depression, Anxiety and a dysfunction that they haven’t come up with a name for yet (I keep suggesting mine) where the brain has been permanently damaged due to lack of neurotransmitters over an extended period of time.

I was placed on an aggressive drug therapy. It’s taken me a year to really get back to feeling better at all – but, I’m glad to say that I now do. At the encouragement of my friends and family I got back into therapy. It’s been nice to have someone non-partial to talk things through with, and I think it’s really helped me a lot, at least in feeling like I’m not alone.

I remember asking my therapist shortly after beginning to work with her why it was that I could go for years and years and years without experiencing any symptoms of my mental illness, only to think I was “cured,” and then break down again?

She told me that she thinks that much like I’m going to have to be on drugs for my whole life to deal with the chemical part of my illness, the traumatic events that lead up to my breakthrough episodes are going to be with me my whole life, too. Just that perhaps I will only have to deal with them every so often, in a cycle, usually when there is a trigger to bring it all back up to the surface. I think that’s true because I have noted that every five years or so something seems to happen which has caused me to need to revisit my abuse and deal with issues from it. I work really hard to get through those periods (I’m going through one now) and deal with shit so I can be as normal as possible.

I’m really thankful that I have good doctors now and a family and close friends who understand my illness and support me. Recently I started talking about getting back together with my boyfriend (the love of my life, the one from the start of the story) which has made me feel even more protected than normal. He knows all the dirty details of my trauma and I have been at my absolute worst around him — he loves me regardless. And, really, dealing with mental illness is so much easier when you have people to help you.

There are a lot of people out there – fake friends and such – who enable my bad behavior when I’m going through it or cut me down or make me feel awful about my disease (like I’m making it up or something) that I have had to learn to tune them out in the past couple of years. That’s a hard lesson. I want to be friends with everyone and it took me 35 years to understand that some people are just toxic.

I suppose that’s a lesson for everyone, not just someone struggling with what I’m struggling with.

However, now that I have done that AND gotten on the right medication AND found a therapist who I am comfortable talking to AND developed my support network around myself so that if I fall again there are people there to catch me… I finally feel like me. The me I knew I always was. And, it’s so liberating… to be able to just enjoy my life… it’s freedom from those events which shaped and informed who I became as an adult that I never anticipated having.

Having it makes me grateful.

Hi everyone. A ton of great stuff is happening that I hadn’t planned on, including a job promotion that gets me back to full-time status, and shooting my first short film.

After years of fighting to get to a place where I felt like I was on solid ground, I’m at a place where changes are happening so rapidly and I’m overwhelmed with positive thoughts for the first time in my life. I used to spend so much energy at first getting sucked into depressive thoughts, and then applying the tactics I had learned in therapy to manage those negative thoughts. Now I’m suddenly in a place where I am happy and excited for all sorts of wonderful new things that are coming into my life.

I’m looking forward to reporting in February with a post that spends more time on all this good stuff for which I am so grateful. I wonder how my writing will change from being so happy.

It almost feels like I’m a new person.

In the ensuing days since December 31^st, I keep finding new bruises.  One on my shin (darkening, still, as of this morning), a smattering of small ones on my thigh and arm.  A large one on the back of my thigh, two square inches and a deep purple-black.  All self-inflicted, not on purpose—not really—but the result of a few hours of banging around drunk.  Purposefully drunk.

Every New Year’s Eve since I turned 21 has been same verse, same as the first.  I have spotty memories of them, woven in and out of drinking games and one final magnum opus, the moment when it all reverses and I vomit until I no longer can.

It’s cleansing, in an exceedingly fucked up way.  I start each new year with an empty stomach and an insidious headache, sleep away that first day.  Sleep away the memories.

That first year—21, the end of 2006, the beginning of 2007—is full of other meaning and connections.  The last time I was completely untethered, the end of the Big Bad Hurt, the almost-end of us.  By the end of the day, January 1^st 2007, I would have lost an engagement.  I would realize, truly, for the first time how close I was to really losing everything.  I would realize that I had lost my mind.

***

My best friend eschews digital cameras, for the most part, sneering at a technology that allows us to have what he refers to as “instant nostalgia.”

This semester, my friend Charlie has dutifully toted his camera around at night, documenting our drinks and the way we sink into each other as the night progresses.  In the mornings after, when I wake up on someone else’s couch [or when he wakes up on mine], I download the pictures into a folder on my hard drive.

I take advantage of this so-called “instant nostalgia,” track all of the pictures he has surreptitiously taken.  Pictures of the side of my head, or my pointed glare into the camera—wielding a smirk, dimples blazing.

And one picture from New Year’s Eve—post-ball drop, at the very edge of my memories.  1/10 of the nights of the year I wore my hair straight and down.  1/3 of the nights of the year I wore high heels.

A genius picture, really—though probably not intentional.  “Serendipity,” as it goes.  “A beautiful mistake.”

On the right side of the picture, I am laughing.  Loud, it would appear.  And on the left side, an expanse of kitchen between us, the same boy who broke an engagement three years ago.  [He’s laughing too].

***

It’s been more than a thousand days since that first year, the first time I ever puked from over-drinking and the day I almost lost everything.  The days since then have seen the biggest changes—I’ve gotten used to nightly meds and psychotheraphy, gotten used to feeling desperate in the grocery store when I’ve forgotten the previous night’s Lamictal.  I’ve gotten used to trying to decipher my moods—and used to sometimes failing.  I’ve gotten used to divulging my bad habits to my best friend and my psychiatrist.  I don’t know if I’ll ever spend a New Year’s Eve without feeling sad, without wanting to empty my stomach or hurt myself crawling up [and falling off] banisters.  And I’ve stopped pretending that I’ll never feel the hard things ever again—I’ll never be done with sadness or frustration or longing.  And I’ve stopped pretending that I’ll ever be 100% ok with the idea that I can’t have a 100% normal life (whatever such a thing is…).

So, on January 1^st of this year, I wrote this:

“At the end of the year, I sometimes feel pretty. And sometimes hurt or overwhelmed. Sometimes filled with soul-shattering longing. Sometimes blessed and fulfilled. Sometimes invincible.”

The most I think about these words, the more I feel the gravity and the truth in them.  The reality of my life is that I have an illness that sparks a shift in emotions, that once swung me in and out of moods that I could barely recognize, much less control.  But now, I get to experience the most beautiful and real emotions—crushing sadness, blossoming anger, the frustration that makes me shake in my shoes.

And happiness.  The kind that leaves you laughing in a kitchen with someone who could have left.  But didn’t.