11.25.23: I Say I’m Not Seeking Validation. And Yet, I’ve Written Four Pages, Trying to Explain.

Bipolar, Meds, and me.

I write about my struggle, and still, people take it as a cry for attention. Others, have good intentions to empathize, but still they fall short. Still, they don’t grasp the volatility of my pain. The desperation I feel to be understood, and I mean, really understood.

Honestly, it can be quite lonely knowing the only three people in your life who really understand what you are going through, are: the mother who has seen you go through it for the past 22 years, the psychiatrist who has studied you, consoled you, and listened to you (when you said the drugs aren’t working. They’re really not working.) And the third person? Why, every other person who has lived with a mental illness, and (and if they’re lucky) the family that huddles around them.

How long has mental illness plagued the human spirit? For centuries. And yet, people still question why. Why are we so bothered? Why do we get so angry? Why are we so troubled? What can be so wrong in our lives that can lead to such an uproar in our minds?

Well, it’s not just our minds. It’s every other organ. Our hearts. Our muscles. Our limbs. The veins that channel our blood.

Our bodies feel the pain that overflows from the brain.

So, yes, we are messy. And yes, we act out. Yes, we stand at the pharmacy counter and scream at the pharmacist because the medication they have been dispensing to you for the past sixteen years suddenly needs a doctor’s authorization, and for the life of me, I cannot fathom, nor do I have the time nor luxury to fathom why the man in the spotless white coat needs a phone call to confirm that the illness I have had for the past twenty-two years still exists.

Or better yet, my insurance changes, and it does not cover my medication. And they have me standing at the counter, hands shaking, knees melding into rubber, wanting to scream, but know I can’t in fear I might come off as the crazy person I’ve worked so hard to prove I’m not.

It isn’t just this hoop they have me jumping through. It’s hoop after hoop after hoop I’ve had to jump through over the course of two decades. Just to get my medication. You’re made to feel insane when you are trying to gain possession of the pills you rely on to keep it together.

It’s bad enough you’re made to feel shame and guilt for taking the pills in the first place. But then, the pills finally begin to work, your body finally gets used to them, and for the first time in a long time, you feel like you can actually deal with life. Waking up in the morning doesn’t feel like shit. So you continue to take them. They are part of your routine. And it works. And then, you run out. And it’s time to get a refill.

But again, the new brand your doctor switched you to is not covered. Your pills cost $2,400 out-of-pocket. And again, your doctor’s staff forgot to call in the script, and now, the doctor’s office is closed. It’s a Friday. Monday is a holiday. So, for the next three days, you are screwed.

And as you rack your brain for a remedy to the situation, unintentionally staring bug-eyed at the man in the white coat behind the counter, you can’t help but feel judged. He can’t help you. He might offer you four pills to hold over and tell you they’re free, but three days later, come back and tell you to pay up—you were foolish enough to believe him. (Happened to me two weeks ago…the man smirked in my face.) And you can’t afford the refill, even with a Good Rx coupon. You won’t get paid for another eight days. But you haven’t slept for the past five.

The pharmacist reminds you, that he is simply a dispenser of drugs. A gatekeeper of what are merely chemicals to him, but are capsules of your sanity. Your stability. Those little pale, yellow shells you have depended on to keep you erect for the past twenty-two years. The shells you swore are only aids and not what makes you you, but as you turn away from the pharmacist, you find yourself slowly falling apart. And you curse the man in the white coat for making you feel like a drug addict.

I have to say that after twenty-two years of being on three (once, four) types of medication, it can be easy to come to the conclusion that these medications have made me who I am.

But then, I’d have to forget the fact that, even on my medication, in the summer of 2012, I had my third major breakdown. That even on an extra dose of Clonazepam, I still would get anxiety attacks, and suffer anxiety for weeks on end, thereafter.

So if drugs really are what’s keeping me together completely, why haven’t they?

I am who I am not because I take Lithium, Seroquel, and Clonazepam. I am good and kind like my parents. My trusting spirit I inherited from my late father. I look to the bright side no matter how many times my mental illness has shoved me deep into the dark. To those who do not comprehend, it might seem like an exaggeration to say, I have been to hell and back. But, I have been to hell and back.

This isn’t to say these medications have not aided in my struggle. And yes, at times, I’ve chugged them back hoping and praying they would save me. But I am old enough to know resiliency, strength, and determination has played the largest part in my survival.

(If you don’t count, my support system (including a mom-turned-advocate, an intuitive, on-point psychiatrist, a husband who at times doesn’t always get it but tries hard to anyway, my siblings and other family members, my friends, and, of course, my faith in God.) I have to mention them because please believe me when I say, when you have a mental illness, you NEED a support system. In the end, drugs won’t do it. Your own will won’t do it. You will need that system.

As some of you know, I’ve taken a major step. Last summer, I’ve started tapering off my meds with the guidance of the psychiatrist who has treated me since I was 16. The goal? To have a baby.

It’s been...one of the hardest things I’ve set out to do. And I don’t necessarily mean the migraines, the nausea, the chills, the inability to do anything really, other than collapse onto the couch and shake like a drug addict in withdrawal—the drug addict you so wholeheartedly try not to be.

I mean, knowing you have depended on these pills for so many years of your life, and as the chemicals fade from your bloodstream, you wonder which parts of you will remain.

Will you be the good, kind, trusting person you started out to be? Will the smiles and the laughter remain? Or will you become twisted, troubled? Will you fall apart at the seams?

The crisis is an existential one.

Who am I? Who am I without these pills? And do I even want to know?

Because at age 16, before the pills, there were the hallucinations. The voices, if you will, that were never really there. There were the paranoid delusions. The feelings of grandeur. The false euphoria. The floating on air. The exaltation of being famous. That is, the exaltation of thinking you are famous. And then, feelings of complete dread. Hopelessness. Despair. And then, eventually, feeling nothing at all.

At 17, came the 5150. The lockup. The lockdown. The booty juice. The fear. The desperation to escape. To go home.

 And then, the release. And again, the feeling of feeling nothing at all. Who am I? Where do I fit in, in this world? A world that no longer seems to belong to me. A world perhaps I never belonged in. You take the Lithium the doctor prescribed. Bitter pale pills that sit foul on your tongue. You swallow them robotically. You are a zombie. But there’s a tiny part of you, somewhere, in the folds of your brain, that hopes the pills will bring you back to the person you were before. Whomever that was.

And as time goes on...they do. But not on their own. With therapy, will that support system, but mainly, with TIME. So, you begin to feel again. You begin to live again. And you convince yourself it’s all because of the pills. The ones you take every night before you go to sleep, and every morning you wake up.

22 years of doing this. So routine. They are an external part of me, and yet, somehow I’d been convinced they are a part of me. And maybe in some philosophical, metaphorical way they are.

They’ve contributed to my belief, not that I am ill, but that I cannot be well without them. That I cannot survive with them. That I need them. And I don’t mean to say they are the villain. I don’t mean to say they are bad. They have gotten me through some of the hardest times of my life.

May have permanently damaged some of my most vital organs as well—but that’s a tale for another time.

Point is, I am ready to be free of them. As I near 40, (I will be 39 next week), I don’t want to be on these pills for the rest of my life. I don’t want to be taking hundreds upon hundreds of milligrams of chemicals til I’m 82. I just...I’m just tired of taking them.

I am currently tethered to these prescriptions. I cannot go to bed without making sure I take them first. I cannot just carelessly fling myself atop my sheets and float off to sleep. I have to actively remember to have a glass of water nearby and hope that that tiny tablet of Clonazepam doesn’t get lost in the threads of my carpet in case it slips from my hand.

Maybe such a thing seems silly. The desire for the freedom to fall asleep without taking my pills. But I’ve been doing it since I was 16, and I just...you get my point.

But all that aside, all cards on the table, I want a baby. And I know I cannot bear a child with these drugs in my system. And I know some may look at me, and think, just adopt. And I cringe because I wonder, is it fair that I should give up my dream to have a baby just because I have a mental illness? And of course, it isn’t fair for a motherless child to sit in a foster home for fourteen years either, but I still want my shot.

This is my chance. My opportunity for some ounce of normalcy in my life.

Living with a mental illness, (bipolar 1 disorder), in my case, more often than that, have I felt abnormal, whether brought on by the ignorance of others or not. The second half of my high school career was hijacked by this illness. Three years of my life put on hold. One led by someone who was not me at all. And what normal teenager gets thrown into a mental institution?

What normal teen goes to see a shrink at 16? I’m not the only girl to lose a father at 15, so why was I the only one screwed up because of it? I mean, yes, there were other factors, but again, voices, delusions, paranoia...not normal.

My God, all I wanted to be at 16 was normal. All I wanted to be since this intrusive disease had made it way into my life is normal.

So yes, I do want a baby. The way other women have babies. I think, I at least deserve a shot.

My life is beautiful, and I am happy. Do not get me wrong.

And I will tell you even the deepest pain I have felt in the wake of my illness could never eclipse the anguish I still feel from living without my father.

But it is still pain. I don’t feel it all the time. But now and again, it rises up. And I do get scared, that a fourth breakdown is right around the corner. And perhaps, that might lead you to question why I would attempt to get off my meds if a relapse could occur.

And I would tell you because I’ve weathered so much so far, and I have to believe I did not get this far because of some pills, that I am more than a bottle of chemicals. I am not the creation of Frankenstein.

These past two months in particular, as my doctor has been lowering my doses, I’ve been vigilantly keeping note of my moods. If I cry for no reason, I’ve wondered, is it the meds leaving me? If I get angry, I think, my gosh, I was crying, and now, I’m angry. Not stopping to think, the anger was actually associated with the current crisis in the Gaza strip, or the crying is related to simply missing my father the older I become. Also, not stopping to connect my emotions with the onset of my menstrual cycle which already puts those emotions in whack.

I just want you to know, whomever you are, that I am not going into this blindly. And if you think I’m an idiot for doing what I’m doing, that’s fine. A part of me may always seek validity for my thoughts and my feelings, but the main part of me knows I am not doing this for others.

I have made it this far, and even with all my doubts, I will persevere. I will push forward. The question isn’t why.

It’s why not.