Late to the Party

I’ve spent most of my life swimming in a swirling sea of self but barely treading water and having no idea why. There are so many components to my symptoms it’s hard to believe they are even real. Occasionally I think I must be making it all up.

Anxiety, sometimes crippling, comes and goes without warning leaving me scared and confused. As a plane flies overhead I look up to make sure it’s not crashing. I have to pull the car over because I can’t breathe and my heart is beating out of my chest. I wake up terrified, sweating and shaking with no idea why. When are the zombies coming? Will I have enough rent money?

Sometimes I feel great, like super great. I’m scrubbing the walls while talking on the phone to my Mom and asking her about my childhood. All the while I’m writing a poem in my head and wondering what they eat in Sri Lanka. I have to remember to look that up when I get off the phone, after I fold the laundry and rearrange the closet to make room for the new stuff I bought. I bought new clothes last week too and redecorated the living room. My thoughts are like popcorn in a movie theater popping machine, spilling out because there are too many for my mind to contain. It feels like my head could burst open at any moment. The thoughts would look radiant, hitting the walls like colorful art.

Then I lay in bed, the TV is on but I’m not hearing or seeing it. All I can think about is how people die. Sometimes they kill themselves by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. What if I died? I want to look up how many and what pills to take to get the job done but I’m too tired. I can’t get up and go into the world because it’s too full of sadness. Homeless people and wars and global warming. I’m glad I don’t have children that have to live on this messed up planet. What if I died? I’m crying but I don’t feel anything. I am a shadow.

For a long time I drank to “make these things go away.” It didn’t work. It slowly made it all worse. Then I quit. That’s when it all hit me from behind, like a train where the cars keep smashing into the back of one another all the way to the caboose. Everything became so exaggerated inside me that I started cutting, and mustering up the energy to actually kill myself. One morning I found myself counting out the pills I was going to take to make it stop. Luckily, I had the wherewithal to ask for help.

So when I got sober I didn’t go to rehab, I went to psych wards. Five different ones for a total of 42 days in seven months—and that doesn’t count the outpatient day hospitals. During those stays I was diagnosed with Bipolar II, PTSD and—obviously to me, the alcoholic—Substance Abuse Disorder. It was overwhelming, confusing and difficult to accept.

I was put on a cocktail of meds, rotating out one for another if they weren’t working, which they never seemed to. I spent a long year in this cycle of dealing with different doctors, different drugs, different side effects. My favorite was the mood stabilizer that made me gain twenty pounds in only three weeks. I sternly told the doctor I wouldn’t be taking that anymore. Some days I still wanted to give up but I also wanted desperately to get better, to have the normal life I’ve been putting off nearly forty years. Thankfully, things started falling into place and after setbacks and backslides, I finally started feeling better…like “myself.” Nice to meet her.

I guess I’m tenacious. I’ve stuck with it. I am currently managing my symptoms and functioning well. I go to therapy religiously. I take my meds as if they were the air I need to breathe. I see my psychiatrist regularly. I go to Alcoholics Anonymous. I have a new normal that I’m still adjusting to; it requires a lot of work and conscious effort to stay at this normal. My hope is that the normal will continue to get better and better. On days when I feel tired and I don’t want to work so hard to be well I try to remember the alternative.

I have gained a ton of knowledge, hope and gratitude through this process. These are all keys for my survival. I know I will do more than survive though. I will thrive. I have the opportunity to be the person I’ve always dreamed of. How could I pass that up?