As I sit writing this, I am first terrified, because I finally took the step to get my thoughts out into the world. It is 2 days til my 42nd birthday, and looking back at my own journey, its a miracle I'm still here. I think of my illness as a merry-go-round, but there's a bit of teeter totter in there as well. That's how my life had been, spinning wildly out of control, or series of up down, up down. So here we go.

Round One - My first official diagnosis at the age of about 25 was depression and generalized anxiety disorder. Here are some pills, take them, see a counselor once a week, come back for med checks once a month. Yea, that lasted maybe a month.

Round Two - I'm 26 years old, and basically had a nervous breakdown. I couldn't leave the house, kept it as dark as possible, screwed up on my job, that I actually worked from home at. A telephone ringing terrified me. During a rare shower, (people who are depressed sometimes stop self care, thus the word "rare), so, anyway, during the shower, I started thinking about killing myself. Realizing this was a bad idea, and not normal, I proceeded to pack bags for myself and my then 6 year old daughter, pulled her out of school, drove 5 hours to where my mother lived and hid at her house for a couple weeks until I felt strong enough to face the world again. In hindsight, I should have been hospitalized. So, I eventually went home to my then husband, quit my job, found another counselor. Now, in addition to the depression and anxiety, we tack on PTSD. (more about that in another blog.) Here's some pills, counseling once a week, etc. etc. That lasted about a month, because I wasn't ready to deal with the emotions and memories related to the PTSD.

Round Three - Moved from New York to Texas thinking a change of scenery would do good. That was not actually how it started out. I was severely depressed, could not hold down a job, sleeping all day, not caring for myself, barely caring for my daughter. My then husband demanded I get help. So back to a mental health clinic. This time, I got the whopper diagnosis - Bipolar Type II. Here's some meds, come back once a month, see your caseworker whenever you're here, etc. etc. I hated those meds, my hair started to fall out, I was gaining weight, that my already overweight body could not afford, and i slept all day. Bye bye treatment. Somewhere during this time period, I started to go to group counseling for abuse survivors, but I quickly gave up on that.

Round Four - Around 33 years old, I'm divorced from my first husband, married to my current husband. I entered into one the worst episodes I had ever had. My private physician put me on a medication that I can say did not help my mental health at all. Mania was just around the corner, the worst I had ever been.

Round Five -After extremely inappropriate behavior, almost destroyed my marriage, lost our house, again struggling to keep a job, it got real. I went back to my old doctor from Round three, and miracles happened. We put me on what are considered "atypical" drugs, because that don't usually work with bipolars. Well, I can say they work for me. A little tweeking every once in a while, but all good so far. And I'm finally taking the pills, see my psychiatrist once a month, caseworker once a month and counseling once a week. I think I'm going to run out of space, but keep looking for my blogs, because there is a lot of story to tell.

Thank you for reading!

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The Merry Go Round of my journey with mental illness

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