The Art of Breaking

This is the first of two posts. I decided to split the story into two pieces, because of length for one, and because, really, it is two separate stories.

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I suppose this story actually starts when I was a child, or at least, when I was physically a child, since I never really got a chance to be one...

Even as a kid, I have always suffered from violent mood swings. One minute I'd be quiet and content, the next I'd either fly into a rageful fit, or dissolve into inconsolable sadness. I never knew why. There wasn't any apparent reason for any of it. Its just how I was. I didn't know it wasn't normal -- I was just a kid after all, and kids don't stop to think about whether or not their feelings are appropriate. I wasn't a bad kid mind you. My teachers all loved me, my friends parents did too. But I think it was obvious to them, and my mother (not my dad at first, because he wasn't around much), that I wasn't quite right.

My test scores were off the charts, but I couldn't seem to do my homework. I was always daydreaming. I wouldn't talk in class. But if you gave me a workbook, or a book to read, I would go through it the way most people only go through oxygen. I could have easily skipped grades, except that I refused to do more than the bare minimum, and I wasn't socially advanced enough to interact well with kids my own age, let alone ones older than me. And then there were the mood swings...

My mom, out of desperation, consulted with child psychologists and was told that I was just "a difficult child." See, in the early 80's, almost nothing was known about bipolar disorder in children (especially not children as young as I was), PTSD hadn't even been invented yet, and only specialists were trained in recognizing the emotional signs of molestation -- and children were only sent to those specialists if someone knew that something had happened. That was time one being mis-diagnosed.

After my parents divorce, I got worse (added stress does that), so I was sent to see a therapist. I was maybe ten at that point, and didn't much care for the woman I was sent to. So I didn't talk to her. We'd sit there in silence for the full hour. The diagnosis? Unresolved anger about my parents divorce. No matter that my behavioral idiosyncrasies started before that... But like I said: Child psychology in the 80's was ignorant of a lot of things. That was time two being mis-diagnosed.

My stability got worse as I got older. My mood swings got more and more extreme. My behavior became more and more irrational. I started sleeping erratically. Finally, my grades plummeted as I stopped caring about school. The grades were what really got my parents attention, since I'd never gotten below a B in anything except phys. ed., and suddenly there I was in 9th grade, failing my best subject (English -- shocking huh?). So they threw me back into therapy. This time, I talked, but never about what actually mattered. I talked about anything and everything except what was going on inside my own head. In truth, I didn't know what was going on inside my own head. But I used my therapist to get out of my mother's house, and into my dad's. And my therapist came up with a diagnosis of me being "cyclothymic" (having mood swings that were slightly more pronounced than normal). No treatment was provided for me other than therapy. None. What. So. Ever. That was time three being mis-diagnosed.

After moving to my dad's, I did okay for a while, but after a bit the freedom I had there started to negatively affect me. There was no one watching to make sure I went to bed on time. There was no one watching to see if I slept all afternoon. My dad was still very absentee, and his wife knew nothing about kids, let alone teenagers, so I ended up stopping sleeping with any sense of normalcy. I would stay awake for a few days, then sleep through classes or weekends. The mood swings got worse, faster, more drastic. The highs got higher, the lows got lower, and by 16 I'd become a cutter. A cutter, for those of you who don't know, is someone who cuts themselves in order to feel better, or to distract themselves from emotional pain. I did it because I could control the physical pain. I could control it when I couldn't control anything else I was feeling. I understood where it came from, and why it hurt so badly, when I couldn't understand my emotions, or why I felt so miserable all the time. I also did it as a reminder -- a reminder that there was a way out, no matter how hopelessly trapped in life I felt. I would cut, and I would feel relieved... Calm, and relaxed, for a little while at least. But things kept getting worse.

I would vibrate from insanely happy to morbidly depressed, sometimes several times within the space of a day, and it was exhausting. I had all but stopped sleeping, and had started hallucinating. I was terrified, seeing things that weren't there, hearing things that weren't there, even feeling things that weren't there. Going to take a shower in the morning, pulling aside the curtain, and seeing the walls and floor covered -- seething -- with insects, ants, spiders, wasps, mosquitoes, feeling them crawl over my hands and feet, only to have them disappear when I'd scream. I can't count how many times I lied to my father, saying that I'd screamed because a spider fell on me... I felt like I was going insane. I probably was, actually. I couldn't take it anymore and, at 17, tried to slit my wrists. I failed miserably the first time... But did a little better at it the second time. Better enough that I shocked myself into finally calling a therapist myself.

I was in therapy for 10 months that time. The woman was nice. She was caring. She asked all the wrong questions. She never asked if I hallucinated. She never asked if I slept. She never asked if I got too happy and acted crazy. All she asked was how sad, how hopeless, how suicidal I felt. She diagnosed me as clinically depressed, and sent me to a shrink for medication. He prescribed me Paxil. That, was time number four being mis-diagnosed, and time number one being mis-medicated.

Paxil turned me into an indifferent bitch. I didn't care about anything or anyone. I was too happy, all the time. I couldn't write, I couldn't draw, I couldn't create. I screwed over boyfriends, I screwed over friends, and none of it bothered me. I began to notice though, the lack of anything interesting in my life... And began to hate the person that I was. I stopped therapy, and took myself off the medication. I convinced myself that I could handle everything on my own. And for a while I did. I graduated high school. I started culinary school. And then I lost control again.

I partied with the wrong people, dated the wrong guys, got pregnant... But I still insisted that I was fine, that I was emotionally stable. Funny how we can be so blind to ourselves... I thought I was in control. Looking back though, I was out of control. Totally and utterly.

I got married, and lasted through it, clinging to sanity by a thread the whole time. I stayed awake for days and days at a time, full weeks, and crashed for days afterwards. My mood swings got worse again, and I would cry for no reason, I would yell for no reason, I would get surges of energy that drove me up the walls. But I was managing. I was aware, through research, of what was wrong with me, and thought that I could ride things out.

Then I got divorced. I started a long distance relationship. I went back to school. And the weekend before classes started, my ex moved out, and took my son with him. I screeched to a halt when that happened. That Friday, when I came home from work, I was looking forward to seeing my baby, and playing for a while. I was looking forward to his hugs and kisses and silly little games. I was planning dinner in my head. And as I was walking up the stairs, I realized... He wasn't there. He wasn't going to be there. He wasn't waiting for me. I can't begin to describe the grief... I was sobbing as I came through the door... Instead of setting my things down, I sank down in the middle of my living room, and cried. For hours. I didn't know it then, but that was the beginning of the end.

I threw myself into work and school like never before, trying to stay so busy that I wouldn't have time to think about the fact that I didn't have my son around. I threw myself into work and school so hard, that I kicked myself into a manic state that lasted for months. Months of not sleeping more than an hour at a time, not eating. Months of working harder than I ever had before. Months... I crashed on Thanksgiving. The first holiday I spent without my son. I fell into a depression so bad that I couldn't get out of bed all weekend. But I snapped myself out of it, I drove myself back into a manic state, back into a forced high... I stopped sleeping all together at the end of December. Planning the visit from the guy I was involved with, planning my family "vacation" back east, finals, work, divorce stuff... I started to wear down. The hell that was my Christmas break, was the proverbial last straw... And as I started to go back to work, as I looked at registering for another full load of classes, I saw that I was hanging on to the edge of a very, very, tall cliff... By my fingernails. I could see the abyss below me... I could see the darkness reaching out for me, beckoning me... I called a therapist as fast as I could find one. Unfortunately, I was too late.

The day after my appointment with the therapist (who I do see now, by the way), I broke. I couldn't see straight, I couldn't stop crying, I was soooooooooo tired... And all I wanted to do was sleep. Sleep. And never, ever, wake up. But I couldn't sleep. I would close my eyes, and terrible things would come up behind my eyelids. Living nightmares. Blankets of crawling bugs, images of death and destruction, nightmares I thought I'd long left behind me... It all was there when I closed my eyes. I started searching my cupboards for something to help me sleep. I was crazed. Completely and totally insane at that point. Anything would do. Alcohol. Anything. Anything to make it STOP. And then I found the bottle of codeine... By the time I'd drank half of it my mind started to slow down, and I realized what I'd done. My body was shutting down as I called my ex, over and over, finally leaving a cryptic message ("I did something stupid") before falling into a deep coma like sleep.