My Mental Health History

My first symptoms were in the 5th grade. I had my first panic attack and first bout of depression. I don’t know when the mania started. My Mom tells me she noticed it years before I was diagnosed at 18.. But I never did.

I was originally just diagnosed with Clinical Depression, an anxiety disorder, and Borderline Personality Disorder. Then, shortly after turning 18, after admitting I wanted to kill myself I checked myself into a hospital where the doctors there officially diagnosed me as Bipolar II, Rapid Cycler, with Hypomania, and changed my meds.
But we never got the chance to see if they worked. Weeks later, a friend of mine was killed in a car accident and another ended up in a coma. Then, before I could even begin to recover, my best friend, and boyfriend of two years, killed himself. I wanted to die but I couldn’t do that to my parents. So I simply quit living. I was breathing but I was dead in every other way. I was put on 24 hour suicide watch for several months though. I quit school and my karate classes. I also quit seeing all my friends. I quit going out.. The one thing I did not quit doing was eating. I gained 50 lbs in a few short months.

Then, only three months after my boyfriend died, 18 of my friends were killed in a plane crash. They were members of the French club and they were on their way to Paris. Four of them I had grown up with. The others were friends who I had met through my best friend, who was two years younger than me. Three of our teachers were also killed. The press bombarded our little town while the high school became a funeral home. The whole town was in mourning. But I hardly felt anything. I was on emotional overload…and lost the ability to feel anything. It took me several years to get that back.
Once I was able to feel emotions again. Things seemed to only get harder. Now I didn’t have the protection of numbness. I cared again. And that made the grief and depression almost unbearable.
It took me many years and several different medications.. To even begin to want to set foot in the real world again.
I think the hardest part is that I had to do this all on my own. My parents left, shortly after I turned 19 and they got me my own place to live, to travel in their moterhome full time. I hardly saw them for the next five years.

Now it has been eleven years since that horrible year..and I am finally doing better. I tried many different counselors over the years and never found anyone that seemed to help me. The doctors kept increasing my meds until I was on 80mg of Paxil (the highest dose a pharmacist will fill) 400 mg of Wellbutrin, 800 mg of Tegrotol, and 30 mg of Buspar. I have only recently convinced my doc to lower my paxil down to 60 mg. And I am still on the rest. I know for a fact though that if I wasn’t on these meds I would most likely be dead right now. I have also since been diagnosed with PTSD.

I did have to go back into intensive outpatient treatment at a hospital in Phoenix after I had to have several surgeries because of Endometriosis. I had to have an ovary and a cyst the size of a grapefruit removed. Then after several more surgeries I found out that I will have to have a hysterectomy at some point and will most likely never have children. This sent my into the worst depression I had been in for years. All I have ever wanted was to be a mom. The was my worst nightmare come true. Along with all the physical pain I was going through I couldn’t handle it and checked myself into a day treatment program. I would have just gone into the hospital to stay but I have a cat (who is my baby) and I had no one to take care of him.

Right now I live my life mostly in denial. Denial of my real feelings. Denial of how sick I really am, mentally and physically. In an effort to get back some of my life I enrolled at The Art Institute of Phoenix, but I quickly realized that I wasn’t able to handle it. I only lasted a few quarters and practically flunked out.
I have realized I need to stop living in denial and truly face my disorder and do what needs to be done to manage it