My mental health journey started when I was a child, just as my children’s mental health journey is starting in their childhood, except my childhood was much, MUCH different.
My mental health story starts when I was just as little as I can remember. I watched my dad beat the crap out of my mom “on the daily” as my kids would say. My dad would make us watch, actually forbidding us to leave the room while he tortured my mother. My father would go out drinking, only to come home and unleash on my mother. I always knew when it was getting close to time for Dad to get home because the air would get thick with tension and stress. I can remember my Mom starting to prepare us. She would start to shush us, let us know Dad was on his way. Beg us to be good. I know that she worried about us. If we had done something that day that Dad was going to find out about, she would apologize in advance for the beating that we would take. Once, we were at a park, my brother fell off of one of those tall metal *death* slides that they had in parks back in the day and my brother broke his leg. Now my father had to have known his leg was broke, but he told my brother to stop being a “sissy” and get up and walk. My brother was three. After my brother was casted for the break, I can remember my Mom bringing my brother out to the backyard and asking me to teach him to walk on his cast. I still to this day don’t know if she did that to keep us busy while Dad beat her or if Dad wanted his “sissy” son to walk on his broken leg.
There are so many more stories, so many memories that come up when I stop and remember. The memories are not there all the time, but they sit in the back of my brain gathering dust for when I have time to stop and think about them. And let me tell you, that shit fucked me up. I am not saying that is what gave me mental illness because I truly believe mental illness is a chemical imbalance in the brain, but I do believe that all of what I seen and all of what I went through led to some post traumatic stress of some type.
Much later after my dad left is when the first signs of my mental illness began to come forth. At first I am sure that my Mom thought that I was going through some type of emotional trauma about the divorce (which I did not, I was happy about it), or maybe she might have thought I was just a troubled kid, or that I was just a brat. I can’t be sure what my mother thought was going on, but I do know that she tried her best with me. Heck, how she managed as a single Mom with 5 kids is beyond my wildest imagination because I am struggling to do the single Mom bit with just the twins still at home with me. Anyway, my behaviors were bad.
It began with *fits*. I remember just getting so mad that I would just start screaming, crying, hitting, kicking, hurting myself and I wouldn’t know why I was doing it. I remember times when I was so happy I could barely contain myself, but more often I remember laying in bed wondering why I was so worthless and why everybody hated me. I was only around 12 at this time and looking back I wish I had told my Mom how I was feeling because she might have been able to get me much needed help when I was much younger than when I finally began to go to counseling.
I think when I began counseling I was around 14 or 15, probably when my mother just couldn’t take anymore and just didn’t know what else to do. Unfortunately, mental health care back then isn’t what it is today and I was pretty much just labeled a troubled child as far as I know. I don’t know for sure because I never heard a “name” for what I was going through.
Finally in my twenties I happened upon a woman named Amy who was very similar in the way she felt with the highs and lows of moods and suggested I look into seeing a mental health doctor again now that I was in my adult years. I did, and that is where I got the diagnosis’ that I still have to this very day. Bipolar Disorder, Extreme Anxiety, and OCD.
The Bipolar is about 50 percent under control and still remains the most troublesome of the diagnosis’ because it is the hardest to control. Even with medication treatment, my moods still sway slightly which makes life hard to handle sometimes. Especially now that I am a single Mom with only my adult daughter to help me to trudge through it all (GOSH she is a blessing). There are days when I can clean the house like a maniac and get it all done in a day. Then there are days that the house is a mess for three or four days while I ride the depression like a wave that will eventually recede. I have been hospitalized twice over this last year, but only after the separation between me and the twins father (more on that in another post). My last hospitalization before that was over 20 years prior! I take pride in that.
My anxiety is bad, but it is controlled by medication. It still comes on strong, but I can take my medication and while I wait for it to take effect I practice breathing and self soothing methods for helping the panic attack or simple anxiety to pass.
My OCD is doing ok with medication therapy. My fingers don’t bleed from overwashing anymore. I can eat food without worry that I am going to die of a foodborne illness, which is probably why I now have obesity to worry about too! Haha
So overall things are OK. Not great, not horrible, but in the middle. I just try to get through each day, with a new meme and remember that I have made it through some pretty heavy shit and I am still alive.
I think my next blog post will be about what I am blessed with before moving onto my health issues.
Funny how God works in my life, a few short hours after writing this blog post, I came across this article. If I ever do post this blog publicly and you are reading this and want to know more about what Bipolar looks like in childhood, take a look at this article by The Mighty:
16 Signs you great up with Bipolar
A Mom's Struggle To Find Herself 