my mental breakdown
these posts are just going to keep bouncing one off another, i think. i think i'll get a book out of it, too.
i still haven't a clue what my breakdown looked like. much like today, i can mentally blackout things, people, places, incidents, feelings i don't want to/can't stand to remember.
not to mention one doesn't often fully know they are manic when they are. they don't know they are psychotic and experiencing a break from reality when they are. they don't know what they look like, sound like, feel like, act like when they are riding a very dangerous wave that could crash and crush them and maybe a whole town at any time.
this is what manic-depression looks like sometimes. i *think* this is what it looked like for me from april-june of 2001. i vaguely remember my friend, bob (from the tom robbins list**), coming into town. he had a hard crush for my roommate, ann marie. i was trying to get things under control. i couldn't finish the semester of school at roosevelt university i had started, even though i enjoyed my classes and my teachers (cosmology and medical sociology). i couldn't think anymore. i couldn't really write. i couldn't put two sentences together.
i smoked weed every day and drank at least 3-4 out of 7 (sometimes more, i suspect). however, i don't believe that was my overriding problem at that particular point. it didn't help. but what i DO believe was happening was that my brain's chemistry was sort of shorting out. i couldn't hold it in anymore.
i had probably been untreated bipolar most of my life. talking way too fast, 'hyper,' very smart, very precocious. i don't know. i didn't know. i knew that when i thought i was talking slow, i STILL was talking way too fast for most people to understand me from 50 feet.
i knew my parents told me i could read at 2 1/2 years old. i don't know. i know i was put in the 'gifted and talented' programs in grade school.
i knew i never fit in.
and one day, i knew it was all over. i couldn't make it happen anymore. i wasn't smart. i couldn't think anymore. it felt like the back of my head was buzzing. with static.
i went to my boss, greg kasprzyk, and i asked him if i should go see a psychiatrist. i wonder how long i had probably been wild-eyed. he looked at me and immediately told me to go. right then.
and i did. and nothing much happened. i wasn't killing myself (suicide), or anyone else (homicide), so they told me to come to this intensive outpatient program (IOP). and i did. and they rapidly diagnosed me with bipolar disorder. after i had filled out their little questionnaire re: drinking and drugs (i lied about how much i drank, i didn't want to be called an alcoholic -- but i told the truth about everything else, cause i was a *recreational* drug user), they told me i ALSO had "substance abuse issues."
no way. no no no no way.
after a little while, i could get the scientific principles that i was "self-medicating" my "mania." or hypomania, as i was to learn later it truly was.
but alcoholic?? no. i didn't "have a beer and in the next four hours be on the west side looking for crack."
and during my coke week**, i got scared and pulled the plug on that shit myself, dog!
so, i stayed in IOP, and worked weird part-time.
little by little, however, i was "decompensating." in layman's terms: i was losing my shit. i was becoming increasingly paranoid. freaked out. unable to sleep. worried. hyper. jittery.
i was convinced that my friends were conspiring against me. that they were going to ditch me. that no one cared about me. that everyone was going to fuck me over. (some of this ended up having some merit, but as i was to find out MUCH later, i definitely had 'a part.')
and then the one moment i see as absolutely the 'tipping point' in all of this.
the thing that seems utterly against everything i believe in, and the thing that turned my relationship with my roommate of 4 years sour. the thing from which it seems i could never turn back.
i was convinced that my best friend, jen, and my roommate, ann marie, were in some sort of talks about me. bad talks. about me. about how shitty i was. and because at some point long in the past, ann marie and i had exchanged passwords to our hotmail accounts (remember when people only had really one email account, and it was pretty much hotmail or maybe excite?? whatever happened to them?) for some travel need or something. and i took it upon myself, heart racing, evil lurking, judgment totally obscured yet crystal clear to read her email. to see if there was an email from jen. and there was. and i only got 1/3 of a way through to see that yes, they were talking about me. and yes, it was not flattering. and yes, i had done a horrible thing. was it more horrible than what they were doing?
in a manic, paranoid haze, i think i thought they were equal. i had no concept of what was true and what was false.
and after some hours, i confronted ann marie...with her sin and with my betrayal.
there was screaming and yelling and disbelief. on both parts, i think.
and she was off, to WI to be with her friend, karie. i ended up going to my ex-boyfriend's, wyatt. i had been abstaining from drink and pot while in IOP. but that weekend (it was memorial day weekend), i smoked all weekend and never seemed to get high...it just put me to sleep, which i did copiously.
the end of the weekend came, and ann marie was not home, and wyatt had to go to work, and i was left with myself. again. and i was desperate and sad and tired. and i didn't really think that i'd kill myself, and i didn't really even think i COULD kill myself with the rest of my klonopin prescription, but i called up the leader of the IOP and i don't know where i started, but i finished by telling him that i'd be in. i probably walked there.
and i signed myself in on tuesday may 29, 2001. the day after memorial day.
****these are breakoff stories.
more about the psych ward. this is just part one.
i still haven't a clue what my breakdown looked like. much like today, i can mentally blackout things, people, places, incidents, feelings i don't want to/can't stand to remember.
not to mention one doesn't often fully know they are manic when they are. they don't know they are psychotic and experiencing a break from reality when they are. they don't know what they look like, sound like, feel like, act like when they are riding a very dangerous wave that could crash and crush them and maybe a whole town at any time.
this is what manic-depression looks like sometimes. i *think* this is what it looked like for me from april-june of 2001. i vaguely remember my friend, bob (from the tom robbins list**), coming into town. he had a hard crush for my roommate, ann marie. i was trying to get things under control. i couldn't finish the semester of school at roosevelt university i had started, even though i enjoyed my classes and my teachers (cosmology and medical sociology). i couldn't think anymore. i couldn't really write. i couldn't put two sentences together.
i smoked weed every day and drank at least 3-4 out of 7 (sometimes more, i suspect). however, i don't believe that was my overriding problem at that particular point. it didn't help. but what i DO believe was happening was that my brain's chemistry was sort of shorting out. i couldn't hold it in anymore.
i had probably been untreated bipolar most of my life. talking way too fast, 'hyper,' very smart, very precocious. i don't know. i didn't know. i knew that when i thought i was talking slow, i STILL was talking way too fast for most people to understand me from 50 feet.
i knew my parents told me i could read at 2 1/2 years old. i don't know. i know i was put in the 'gifted and talented' programs in grade school.
i knew i never fit in.
and one day, i knew it was all over. i couldn't make it happen anymore. i wasn't smart. i couldn't think anymore. it felt like the back of my head was buzzing. with static.
i went to my boss, greg kasprzyk, and i asked him if i should go see a psychiatrist. i wonder how long i had probably been wild-eyed. he looked at me and immediately told me to go. right then.
and i did. and nothing much happened. i wasn't killing myself (suicide), or anyone else (homicide), so they told me to come to this intensive outpatient program (IOP). and i did. and they rapidly diagnosed me with bipolar disorder. after i had filled out their little questionnaire re: drinking and drugs (i lied about how much i drank, i didn't want to be called an alcoholic -- but i told the truth about everything else, cause i was a *recreational* drug user), they told me i ALSO had "substance abuse issues."
no way. no no no no way.
after a little while, i could get the scientific principles that i was "self-medicating" my "mania." or hypomania, as i was to learn later it truly was.
but alcoholic?? no. i didn't "have a beer and in the next four hours be on the west side looking for crack."
and during my coke week**, i got scared and pulled the plug on that shit myself, dog!
so, i stayed in IOP, and worked weird part-time.
little by little, however, i was "decompensating." in layman's terms: i was losing my shit. i was becoming increasingly paranoid. freaked out. unable to sleep. worried. hyper. jittery.
i was convinced that my friends were conspiring against me. that they were going to ditch me. that no one cared about me. that everyone was going to fuck me over. (some of this ended up having some merit, but as i was to find out MUCH later, i definitely had 'a part.')
and then the one moment i see as absolutely the 'tipping point' in all of this.
the thing that seems utterly against everything i believe in, and the thing that turned my relationship with my roommate of 4 years sour. the thing from which it seems i could never turn back.
i was convinced that my best friend, jen, and my roommate, ann marie, were in some sort of talks about me. bad talks. about me. about how shitty i was. and because at some point long in the past, ann marie and i had exchanged passwords to our hotmail accounts (remember when people only had really one email account, and it was pretty much hotmail or maybe excite?? whatever happened to them?) for some travel need or something. and i took it upon myself, heart racing, evil lurking, judgment totally obscured yet crystal clear to read her email. to see if there was an email from jen. and there was. and i only got 1/3 of a way through to see that yes, they were talking about me. and yes, it was not flattering. and yes, i had done a horrible thing. was it more horrible than what they were doing?
in a manic, paranoid haze, i think i thought they were equal. i had no concept of what was true and what was false.
and after some hours, i confronted ann marie...with her sin and with my betrayal.
there was screaming and yelling and disbelief. on both parts, i think.
and she was off, to WI to be with her friend, karie. i ended up going to my ex-boyfriend's, wyatt. i had been abstaining from drink and pot while in IOP. but that weekend (it was memorial day weekend), i smoked all weekend and never seemed to get high...it just put me to sleep, which i did copiously.
the end of the weekend came, and ann marie was not home, and wyatt had to go to work, and i was left with myself. again. and i was desperate and sad and tired. and i didn't really think that i'd kill myself, and i didn't really even think i COULD kill myself with the rest of my klonopin prescription, but i called up the leader of the IOP and i don't know where i started, but i finished by telling him that i'd be in. i probably walked there.
and i signed myself in on tuesday may 29, 2001. the day after memorial day.
****these are breakoff stories.
more about the psych ward. this is just part one.
