‘I just want to be happy – is that too much to ask for?’

An Anonymous Story

I have Bipolar, Borderline Personality Disorder and many other anxiety issues.  My thirteen-year-old son has severe ADHD, ODD, Dyslexia, Learning Difficulties, severe behavioural problems and thought processing problems.  We are both medicated for our illnesses.

We have both been diagnosed and we are both on prescribed medication. So I would like to know why I have had to fight for ten years for my son to access services he has desperately needed.  All these have been denied.  He’s not allowed to join after school clubs, because it’s too risky.  He’s not allowed an education in my county.  I have had to seek out the best solicitor, who has helped my son join an out-of-county residential school, who cater for his every need.  This school has helped my son so much, yet I had to find this school through a solicitor.

I have had major depression since I can remember.  As I got older, I started to self-harm, and now I have a long history of suicide attempts. I have been medicated since the age of eighteen, and over the years I have seen many psychiatrists, CPNs, psychologists and therapists.  I have also been prescribed many different types of medications.  At the age of seventeen, I was admitted to a hospital for children with behavioural problems.  So why was I, in 2008, discharged from my entire network of support, having been told I ‘look’ like I’m ‘coping’?  Why have I had to fight ever since to receive support, but have been either fobbed off, ignored or been totally denied access to services needed and lied to?

I am forty-nine years old and I am living in hell.  I don’t sleep because of the nightmares and I don’t want to be awake because of the real-life nightmares I have to face daily.  If it weren’t for my son, I would have been gone a long time ago, but I stay to try and help him.  Like me, he has no one else.

In 2013, how can this be happening to us?  We don’t have money or expensive things; we aren’t spoiled.  All we want is help to hopefully enjoy our time on Earth.  Is that so much to ask for?

Thank you for allowing me to share our experiences.

A Note from the Editor:

I get the impression you live in the UK.  Is that correct?  I live there too, and I have family who work in social care / social services, as well as friends who are psychologists.  I know all too well how common your story sadly is.  The government has ‘cracked down’ on benefits over the last few years to a painful degree.  Somehow in trying to stop people from taking liberties and living off benefits when they don’t need to, the government has managed to take these away from people who genuinely require that support. Furthermore, this comes on the back of quite a number of people having no tolerance and forming prejudices against people who need that extra help.  It has been an incredibly frustrating, upsetting time for many people and I want to thank you for sharing your story, because people like you need to speak out.  Otherwise, how will anything ever change?

If you have a story to share, please contact us here. We don’t mind if your story is inspirational or simply a way of getting things off your chest.  We proofread all stories, but we censor nothing.  And if you want to make sure you don’t miss out on the stories other brave people share with us, be sure to click the ‘Subscribe’ button at the top-right of this page.

]]> http://conditionalpublications.com/2013/07/02/i-just-want-to-be-happy-is-that-too-much-to-ask-for/feed/ 1 http://conditionalpublications.com/2013/07/02/my-story-by-the-bipolar-bandit/ http://conditionalpublications.com/2013/07/02/my-story-by-the-bipolar-bandit/#respond Tue, 02 Jul 2013 07:10:50 +0000 http://conditionalpublications.com/?p=1813 ‘My Story’

by ‘The Bipolar Bandit’

My name is Michelle Hughes and I started suffering from severe depression at the age of thirteen.  I would just cry and cry for no reason, and I could not concentrate or do simplest tasks like vacuuming. I would miss two weeks of school at a time.

I had a severe manic episode at the age of seventeen that resulted in a hospitalization.  It was during the month at the hospital that I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

I was always a good student and high achiever.  After missing two weeks of school, I would make up all my work in two to three days.  It is now thought that those were mini manic episodes that enabled me to do that.

I got mainly As in school, was the president of several clubs in high school and graduated from college with a degree in elementary education.  I was the manager of a movie theater, a trainer at Walt Disney World, and taught school for about ten years.  I was even named Teacher of the Year in 2004.  I am not telling you about these accomplishments to brag, but to make you realize that even though I had this mental illness, I was still able to achieve a lot.

I have been hospitalized more times than I can count.  Although most of the time it was for psychiatric reasons, I was also hospitalized several times for ailments that were thought to be caused by the medications I was on for bipolar disorder.  I had pancreatitis, my gall bladder removed, numerous stomach problems severe enough for hospitalizations, tardive dyskenisia and heart problems bad enough to put me in the ICU.  The worst was when I developed dystonia and my chin was “stuck” to my chest for about four months.  I was really lucky this was not permanent.

After being in the hospital for various reasons sixteen times in one year, I was forced to stop teaching and go on disability.

I have always tried to fight for the rights of the mentally ill.  I am also on a mission to fight the stigma of mental illness.  I have written numerous letters to politicians trying to change the way those who have mental illnesses are treated.

I fight the battle every day.  I mainly stay somewhat depressed, but am mostly worried about the manic episodes.  The last time I was hospitalized was for ten days and that was about four months ago.  I keep fighting the fight, although some days it seems hopeless.  I have a strong support system, a loving family, and a strong faith, and am determined to rise above this illness.  These things help me every day.

If you have a story to share, please contact us here. We don’t mind if your story is inspirational or simply a way of getting things off your chest.  We proofread all stories, but we censor nothing.  And if you want to make sure you don’t miss out on the stories other brave people share with us, be sure to click the ‘Subscribe’ button at the top-right of this page.

by ‘April’

I remember feeling extremely sad from the age of nine. I preferred being at school. When Friday came and others looked forward to the weekend, holiday or summer breaks, I would dread it. I never knew what mood my mother would be in, overly happy and enthusiastic or withdrawn and mean.

I didn’t understand it at the time. I was the youngest of eight kids; the older siblings either moved out or didn’t come home until my dad returned from work. I was too afraid to get in trouble for not coming right home after school. I wasn’t allowed to join clubs or sports or play with the kids on our street. I grew up very lonely.

In the summer I taught myself how to climb a tree – though only on the days my mother was in a good mood and didn’t keep me in my room or lock me in the basement – and by the middle of summer I made it to the very top of that maple tree. There were times I wished I would fall, but then was afraid it would only paralyze me and I would have to be under the care of that woman for life, with no means of escape.

At school I would get in trouble for acting out or talking too much. I never learned how to socialize. When I turned eighteen, like the rest of my siblings, my mother told me to move out. I was not prepared in any way. I was an introvert, on the verge of panic attacks all the time. Extroverts offended me constantly. I didn’t fit in anywhere. I made the wrong choices picking men and relationships because I didn’t know who I was and kept trying to mold myself into something I wasn’t because other people thought my personality was weird or awkward. I was a good worker and desired to go to college, but never had the means or encouragement to do so. It was a very lonely time.

I have been married twice, the first time with no kids. My ex-husband would not let me go for counseling no matter how much I begged him and told him I thought I needed medication to help me be a better wife. He told me I would only end up leaving him. I left him anyway, because I didn’t think I could go through another ten years of being controlled and not seeing any ray of sunlight.

I jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire and, six months later, I married someone I hardly knew, someone I thought was completely different from my first husband. I was wrong. The lies, the secrets started right away, and while I was pregnant he started physically abusing me. We went to ‘Christian’ counseling, but he didn’t change.  I was expected to stand in the gap between my husband and Jesus in prayer until God finished his work in him.

After five years of marriage, our three-year-old son was diagnosed with non-verbal Autism. I was expected to figure out how it happened, fix it, bring him to therapy, take care of the child and the household. Again, it was a very lonely time. After eight years I said I couldn’t do it anymore, and they told me I didn’t have enough faith. They also said medication wasn’t the way to go.

I went to a technical school and got a job right out of school. The pay was okay and benefits were great, so I found a psychiatrist and psychotherapist. I got on medication and talked about stuff and started feeling empowered. I also put my youngest son with Autism on medication to ease his anxiety and behavioral issues. But eight years later the oldest one moved in with his dad. The youngest, with Autism, was getting too big and strong for me to handle his behaviors of biting and head-butting me, and his dad wouldn’t give any extra help. I ended up falling at work and breaking my legs. I was in the hospital for a few months and his dad then had to take in our son. Then, for whatever reason, he sued me for custody. He didn’t have to be so dramatic – we could have worked it out amicably, even though that is not his nature.

Two years have passed since then, and I visit with my youngest son (now seventeen years old) on regular basis. I live alone in a one-bedroom apartment like I started out when I was eighteen. I am still on medication and seeing my therapist regularly, but I still feel very lonely and I still don’t know how to socialize outside of work. People think I have my life together and that I am the friendliest most easy-going person ever. I am friendly toward others at the coffee shop, but that’s it. Fifty years old and I’m in the same spot as I was as when I was eighteen. It’s a very lonely time.

If you have a story to share, please contact us here. We don’t mind if your story is inspirational or simply a way of getting things off your chest.  We proofread all stories, but we censor nothing.  And if you want to make sure you don’t miss out on the stories other brave people share with us, be sure to click the ‘Subscribe’ button at the top-right of this page.

‘Rick’

My Story

Every moment, I know its going to happen.  The other shoe is going to drop and I will die.  From my own hand, maybe, because it will be so awful. I will not be able to handle it.

It’s morning.  The worst for me.  I’ve been up most of the night tossing and turning.  There is no such thing as healthy sleep.  I try to get out of bed, and I can’t because I am being crushed by my own thoughts.  Thoughts of my hell day flash through the diseased filters of my mind.  Welcome to me.

To understand this, or to understand depression in general, you ‘un-sick’ people out there need to get into the mood…and you must be willing to ‘feel’ …even though – actually, especially if – it hurts.

What is the worst thing that ever happened to you ?  Did someone close to you die ?  Were you in a terrible accident? Did someone you love dump you for another?  Did a close friend betray you?  How did you feel when you first learned of death and/or betrayal?  Did you feel lightheaded and confused for a moment?  Then did the train hit you?  As the initial days wore on, did you feel ‘better’, or did your gut remain tight and your breath short?  Did vivid images attack you – e.g. how the person died and what he or she felt?  Or did you picture your love in bed with another?  Or did you picture your best friend having good times with others, but not you?

You must feel those feelings here – as though it just happened. Do it. Not just for a moment.  Rather, close your eyes and hold the thoughts with all your might.  Go deeper – what is the morgue going to do to the loved one that died?  What acts is your love doing with the ‘other’ person?  What are all the places and events going to be that you will never enjoy with your friend?  Keep your eyes closed and force the images to stay in your mind.  Make the images and feelings go round and round – like a carousel.  And feel the blackness.  Feel the short breath.

Don’t open your eyes: I can’t – even with my eyes open.  Those harsh, tortuous feelings never leave.  Rather, they attack like an onslaught – it’s like right before you thrown up – the sick feeling, the acid in your stomach.   But the feeling stays – you can’t throw up for relief.  Rather, the feelings pull you down, and down.  And it gets darker and darker.  Keep your eyes closed – try to open them, but do not let yourself open them.  Feel the despair.  Feel yourself unable to move.  Feel yourself cry.  And feel what it would feel like to believe it will never go away.

Now, imagine having these symptoms arise and fall at whim.  Imagine them holding on and terrorizing you for hours, or even days.  Imagine you have absolutely no control over them.  Imagine that you have to function at work, at school, among friends, at family functions – sometimes while your gut is coming out.  Imagine that they appear to be with you for the rest of your life.

Imagine the feelings never going away.  Unlike other post-catastrophe mental states, there is never the occasional or sporadic relief that the mind creates for self survival in emergencies.  Imagine sometimes being in the dark hole every waking minute.  Imagine that you cannot even see straight – like you are partially drunk.  Imagine that those feelings mentioned previously never go away – those from the death, the heartbreak, the betrayal.  Rather, they ebb and flow all day long, or suddenly, out of nowhere, they attack without notice.

Can you feel it, even for a moment?  If so, welcome to major depression.  Lucky you, though.  You can put this writing down and leave.  I cannot.

What is this called?  Some tell me I am a ‘major depressive’.  Some say I am bipolar, because I have incidents, though not frequently, where I am acting in a sort of manic stage – very outward, intense, wired, like on speed, doing things I otherwise might not – and then I crash.  But the lows far exceed the highs.  Some say I am OCD – I can’t let things go.  I’ll do things over and over and over – to be perfect and lose the forest  through the trees.  I also have panic attacks.  Sometimes I’m unable to get off the floor, even to do something as simple as take a shower.  Often I just want to stay in my house and not talk to anyone.  To sleep.  That is my savior. Sometimes weekends at a time.  What the fuck am I?  Does it matter?  Maybe for insurance purposes.  Maybe for the meds to be prescribed?  The many meds.  I am an addict.

Writing this is kinda good and kinda sucks.  It is good because others who suffer will read it, and perhaps this will help them know they are not alone.  It sucks because it puts things into words and reminds me of what I am – fucked up.  If I don’t have my six little pills every day, bad things happen.  Actually, bad things happen even if I take the pills, but without them, I get much worse.  But is it the addiction to the drugs which makes it worse – i.e. without them I freak?  Or, do I truly suffer from chemical imbalances?  I am not willing to try life without them.  Before I began to take them, I almost died.  For me, it works like this: survival = drugs.  No drugs = death.  I

n my sick head, I am so afraid of the impending disaster, and that it will cause my death, I am unable to think that someday I will die anyway, so I might as well enjoy life while I can.  That, however, would be a healthy thought – I am unable to accept it, or believe it.  Because it is bullshit – failure and disaster are my world.  Joy is for everyone else.  They are all so lucky, I think, because at least they don’t suffer from my hell – that which I cannot get away from.

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I am 35 yrs old. I have been diaganosed with Major Depression since I was 21. I spent my 21st birthday in the hospital. Most days I can handle it well. But when something changes too much in my life, it’s hard for me to deal with that.

Example: my SSDI check and my hubby’s check have been cut because of the goverment.  There is no funding to pay the insurance for our meds.  So they have taken a total of $261 from our collective check.  Now they say they are on the way to getting it back to us but we haven’t heard anything yet.

So how I deal with it is I watch a lot of TV.  TV has always been an outlet for me.  Even when I was a kid and there would be a lot of yelling going on and verbal abuse in the house, I would turn to TV.  It soothed me and made me feel like my problems were going away. To this day it does the same for me. The only difference now is that when I’m done watching TV I am so down that I want to do nothing.

I used to clean my home all the time and that gave me some sense of accomplishment, but now it’s even hard for me to get the laundry done.  Then there are times just like tonight where I was helping my hubby cook dinner – we made beef stew and I was chopping the veggies for it and I was getting anoyed because all I wanted to do was watch TV.  I was upset because I had just gone small grocery shopping and was telling my hubby that it took a lot for me to buy some cheap pillows – a two-pack at the Family Dollar on sale for $4.  It upset me to buy it because I was worried about how much money it was and if it was really important to get.  My thought was: did I need this and could this $4 go to something else like food or gas?  I started crying about it and felt bad about it.

I try to pull my self out of this a lot.  I usually can with prayer but something is different now.  I don’t know if I need a med change or just a change in my routine. I struggle with the thought that if people found out I had a mental illness, they would not want to be around me anymore.  This excludes my hubby and my closest friends.

As a young child (around 4-5 years old), I suffered from my “illness”. I would hear voices, and I never slept. Often I would ask my mother why it was that I heard things nobody else heard, and her explanation was that God was trying to talk to me. So when the voices called out my name, I was at my wit’s end, calling to God, telling him I really was listening, and that He could just tell me already!

Growing up was extremely hard for me. School was the worst, because I never had any friends. I wanted friends, but when I had them, I never truly felt happy. I was also verbally abused by my step-father. He was bipolar, and the medication he was on never worked for him.

My mother worked at a convalescent hospital and was always at work, so my step-father would watch my brother and me. He laid in bed all day, sleeping, only waking up for an hour or so to eat. My brother and I were expected to take care of ourselves, and if we  made even a bit of noise, he would come out and beat us. Eventually, as I approached my teen years, my mother left him, and he would never hear from us again. But another problem arose, and it was one that shaped my life forever.

On my mother’s side, I have two cousins, brother and sister. Let’s call them Amy and James. Amy and I had always been close. And James, while he was almost four years older than me, had always been more of an older brother figure. Well, they were…molesting me. Both at the same time, but neither of the two knew about the other’s actions. This abuse plunged me deeper into my insomnia and depression. Some nights, I would stay up the entire night, just sobbing uncontrollably. I felt so helpless and alone. It was then that I started to hurt myself.

My freshman year in high school, I met the most amazing person. Let’s call him Ryan. He was gorgeous, tall, with somewhat Aryan features. He was a nerd, and we would spend hours just talking about video games, cartoons, etc. We started dating, and all was well. But when he graduated, another side of him arose. I was transferred to a school that had just been built, and made new friends. All of them were guys. Ryan was suspicious of them, and forced me to break off the friendship. But I didn’t. Countless times he accused me of cheating on him. And yes, while I thought some guys were cute, I never thought of leaving him. I was so much in love with him, and I knew he was the one for me. But these accusations caused an on-and-off relationship for us. One day, we would be fine, and the next, he would find something wrong with me and break it off.

During this time, the voices came back, louder than ever. I couldn’t go a day without hearing them. And it made me feel even crazier. I would hear voices, and then I would cut myself, which made Ryan angry, and it was just a vicious cycle. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I beat myself up, because all I wanted to do was please Ryan. He was my entire world, and I loved him. He enlisted in the Air Force, and he said he would make a life for us. We began to plan our future together, and the reality was setting in that, even though we had our fights and troubles, he was still in love with me, and that we were going to be together for the rest of our lives.

Before he left, he proposed to me. There was no ring, but it didn’t matter to me. All that mattered was that we promised ourselves to each other, and that we were going to stick it out and make the relationship work. Time went by, and I was so helplessly in love with him. But somehow he didn’t feel the same. So I fell deeper into my depression, and began to have suicidal thoughts. I started taking huge amounts of pills and going to sleep, hoping I would never wake up.

I talked to people on the internet, hoping to find someone who would love me. I wanted to leave Ryan, but every time I tried, he would suck me back in. I hate to admit it, but I began to make relationships with random guys on the internet, even going so far as having phone sex with them, trying to feel something close to love. Those relationships never lasted, and it left me with the feeling of being so dirty. I hated myself so much for what I was doing, but I was so addicted. I would take a shower after every time I was on the phone with a guy, and I would bleach myself, and then cut myself all over my thighs. I wanted to die so bad.

So one day, I took a bunch of pills, I got a scarf, and I tried to hang myself. Right as I was blacking out, the hat rack I was using broke and fell, hitting me on the head. I crawled into bed and cried myself to sleep. A couple weeks later, I had my mom check me into the mental hospital, because I was so scared of myself. I didn’t feel safe. I wanted to die so very badly, but at the same time, I didn’t want to give up on life. So I spent a week in the hospital, and it’s really a week that I vaguely remember, because I was so drugged up. My speech was slurred, and I couldn’t even walk straight. I really feel that if I wasn’t so drugged, and if my roommate hadn’t molested me, I could have made some progress. However, it plunged me deeper, and the doctors suddenly called me “manic depressive.”

And so here I am today, 17, on the edge of becoming a legal adult, and wondering where I’m going to go from here. The thing that gives me hope is song writing. I hope one day someone will hear my music and be encouraged.

‘Ellie’