Documenting my journey through the mental health system

I started to write. Frantic, hurried writing, as though my memory had an expiration date and it was fast approaching. As though I were making up for lost time. And in a way, I was.

A few days into my detainment, psych ward staff gave me a notebook to use as a journal. I wrote out the story of what had happened to me so far, trying to give context along the way as though I were about to send my psych ward journal to a publisher. Trying to remember the details that felt so important – where the devil can always be found.

I wrote about the voices that told me to kill myself and later, to run away from the hospital, to fight back and fight them. I wrote about my colossal fuck up in my grad school program and the pain it caused, and would continue to cause, for years. I wrote about the terror of belief – I really believed they would drug me, conduct experiments on me, and I wouldn’t ever be able to go home. I wrote about trying to hang myself, being placed in restraints, and medicated against my will. I wrote about the madness that lives inside me, in the more isolated corners of my mind. Waiting and biding its time, unleashing despair and fury for an unbalanced medication cocktail or simply life being an asshole.

I had been in the psych ward about 10 days. I wasn’t crying myself to sleep or shuffling into walls or whispering to the voices buried deep. I wrote prolifically, trying to will a way forward onto the pages. I clung to that flexipen like a lifeline, using up its meager share of ink and needing to request another one from staff. I made a list of things I needed to do – see the school counselor, see Heather, see about my finances… could I pay rent next month? I didn’t make much money back then – I was just a nurse assistant in an assisted living facility, but my rent was only 500/month.

I thought back to the first meetings I had with the program and practicum directors right after I got fired from my practicum, and cringed. At the time I was defiant, upset, and truly believed a great injustice had been done to me. (I still kind of believe this). I wrote about this, my frustration and heartbreak, my anger in that office when I demanded the director make himself present and face me. My pent up despair at the next meeting when they informed me I could come back on a part time basis after working on my mental health… and I just walked out while they were in mid-sentence. I wrote that that was probably not very mature but it was do that or something potentially much worse. I wrote about those fruitless meetings and finishing a quarter of school for no reason other than the misguided hope I might be able to return. I wrote about the one friend I had called, letting someone know where I was besides my providers at the VA and my brother. She offered to come get me and take me home when I was discharged. I wrote out a plan, desperate, hackneyed, but still a plan.

I had to see Heather right away. She was there, she knew everything, she could help put all this into context. Help me process it. Help me find a way back. I had to see the school counselor as soon as possible, summer break be damned. I still felt I could fix things! I was such a fool. I paced and wrote and nibbled my food in the hospital, going to groups and following the nurse when she came and got me for my daily assessment.

“How are you feeling?”

“A little stressed out. I’ve been in here almost two weeks, and before I came here I was in the ER a couple nights and before that I was at Foothills so almost three weeks away from home? I miss my animals.”

“That’s understandable, is someone looking after them right now?”

“Yeah, my brother.”

“How are the suicidal thoughts?”

“Invasive, but that’s my baseline.”

She nodded slowly, wrote something down, looked at me.

“You went through a traumatic event of its own kind. Sometimes trauma isn’t abuse we’ve suffered or horrific events we’ve lived through. Sometimes it’s losing everything you worked so hard for, and on which you built an identity.”

I nodded.

“On top of that, you live with bipolar disorder, and it’s a severe mental illness. But it doesn’t have to define you.”

Except it kind of does.

It’s not like I want it to, or use it as a crutch or an excuse. I always looked down on those who use their illness as an excuse for anything and everything. I’m sometimes very judgmental, judging myself most harshly of all, and refused to ever let my bipolar be an excuse as to why I couldn’t do something. I’ve amended my stance on this a bit. For better or worse, my bipolar has absolutely shaped my life since I entered the military as a teenager and first became quite ill by the time I was 21. There are times I laid awake at night, in hospitals and otherwise, desperately and bitterly wishing for a cure to be free. There are times I’ve lost opportunities or straight up squandered them, too far under the influence of imbalanced chemicals, too much dopamine here, no serotonin there. There have been dreams and aspirations that can never come to fruition simply because I take handfuls of psych meds every day and sometimes hear voices. I’m still not going to wear bipolar on my sleeve and I’m still not forthcoming about it till you really get to know me – just starting this blog is a huge change for me as I’m talking about things I just don’t talk about outside the therapist or doctor’s office. But bipolar has defined a great deal of my life and has largely shaped whatever path I managed to forge ahead. I don’t like it, but bipolar disorder is the context that explains everything.