Specific trauma feels so far away

Posted: November 11, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: mental health, Writing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

For as long as I’ve had this blog (9 years!), I’ve written annually around this time of year, about a hospitalization I went through at age 17. I was there for 19 days; it was voluntary but quickly became involuntary once it was clear I wasn’t actually based in reality.

This year, I wasn’t sure if was going to write anything. I’ve been thinking it over for the past few days. What else is there to say? I mean, there’s a lot, but is it worthwhile? Do I want to get back into the headspace? I’m not even sure if that’s possible anymore (which is mostly a positive thing.)

I started by opening a tab for each post I’ve made about it, so far. Rereading it all. I’m not sure why, but I think I want to try to plot out a timeline, even if it’s hazy and incomplete.

November 12 – December 1, 1999 – hospital
Spring of 2001 – wrote down everything I could remember, for a college course
Next 10+ years – continued to get blindsided by the emotional intensity of this trauma, all the time, but especially mid-November
Spring of 2012 – talked a lot about it, tentatively, in therapy, which really started to help
2013 – got a copy of the medical records. Was disappointed at how boring and repetitive they were. There were some nuggets though, for sure. First wrote about it on my blog.
2014 – brought the records to therapy. Watched my therapist zero in on the paperwork as if she were working out a puzzle. She kinda tore it apart, actually! This was both alarming and calming. Something was definitely lifting.
2015 – I got the records back from my therapist (she had been hanging on to them for me). I had been hospitalized earlier in the year, for the 2nd time for the same reasons, and it started to sink in that I might actually have bipolar disorder, type 1, might have had it this whole time.
2016 – didn’t dwell on it. Lots of other things were going on.
2017 – I was hospitalized for a third time, and the traumatic event was starting to be re-contextualized as just, one of the times I was hospitalized.
2018 – This is where I really started to rework things. I’m not sure how to distill that down into a sentence; it’s just pretty amazing to be able to look back on this journey.
2019 – This was the 20th anniversary of my first hospitalization. I wrote that I thought all this writing might serve a future purpose; I just wasn’t sure what yet. I included a photograph of a re-working of different photos I did for a college project, in the spring of 2002.
2020 – I wrote about starting work on a memoir, and the raw material from that college course in 2001 factors into it, but I couldn’t get myself to revise that stuff; make it more cohesive. I was working hard on everything else surrounding it.
2021 – I had gotten past that block and had reworked the writing quite a bit.
Earlier in 2022 – I was clearing out a lot of old stuff from a storage area in my parents’ house, this spring. I save everything. In sorting through all that stuff and reorganizing it to bring to my house, I found a hand-written letter my mom had given to me while in the hospital. I had been looking for this ever since then! I even asked her about it; I was at a loss for where it might have gone. It was in response to a letter I wrote her – that piece is still a mystery, but it was so healing to finally find this thing.

Present day (my 10th time posting about this) – I’m stuck. My memoir is off track and I’m sad about it. I started to revise it drastically in a whole different direction for a long time, but it doesn’t feel like it’s mine anymore and so I stopped. I haven’t touched it for over 6 months. Instead, I’ve been doing a lot of journal writing, emailing my therapist, the usual. Recently, I started on ideas for a 2nd memoir. I’m starting to feel a little more serious about writing overall; I think I have three different stories to tell. Working on this other memoir has felt rewarding, but it’s not the story. I want to get back to this traumatic event and the events surrounding it. I feel like I might be on the cusp of getting back to it…

In those early posts about the hospitalization, I kept ascertaining that I didn’t need to be there, that it was extreme, and I didn’t actually lose a grip on reality until I got there. I see it much differently now. I definitely was going to need to be there – it was more a matter of when? If I hadn’t gotten my mom to get me there, I would have eventually had to go some other way. I know that now. And I could have ended up doing a lot more long-term damage. It’s kinda incredible that at 17, I had enough insight to know I needed to get there. Somehow, I saved myself. (In looking back over all these posts, I realized I wrote something very similar in 2018. For me, writing and recording and reviewing and revisiting all overlap and blend into each other. I’m starting to feel like maybe I am a memoirist? And trying to understand this one experience could be the impetus that has been pushing me there?)

20th anniversary of a specific trauma

Posted: November 11, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: mental health, Uncategorized, Writing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

For 20 years, I’ve been churning and mulling over, obsessing and ruminating about, writing and re-writing the events surrounding my first hospitalization which happened around this time of year in 1999, when I was 17.  Up until the age of 30, it had a hold on me in that way that trauma can stay with a person:  it was my biggest source of shame and fear, I felt like it defined my past and if only I had avoided it, maybe my mental health wouldn’t have gotten so derailed for so long.  It was a super sore spot that for some reason I just kept picking at, revisiting, but wasn’t getting anywhere with.

I’m 37 now, and I’ve been seeing it much differently, with the help of my therapist.  It was extreme and drastic, for sure, but it led to me getting real help that I desperately needed – without that help, my mental state could have festered and bubbled badly for much longer, in a much darker place; who knows what might have happened.  Not that I didn’t suffer for way too long regardless.  I did!  But some systems were in place that helped me feel not so alone, even through those times where I despised those systems.

I’m writing kinda vaguely here…    I voluntarily admitted myself to a psychiatric unit because I thought I was bipolar and I stopped being able to sleep, and things were getting wonky.  I was indeed diagnosed with bipolar disorder, as well as having gone through a psychotic break.  I was there for 3 weeks, even though I kept thinking I could leave at any minute, if I could just figure my way out.  I was put on medications, and later on, different ones and different ones and different ones.  So many different ones.  I got disillusioned with drugs and eventually weened myself off of everything because they ultimately didn’t make any sense.  They did do me some good at some points in time, but not much.

The thing that helped more than anything else, ever in my life, was getting assigned a therapist.  I was required to attend 20 sessions after my hospitalization; I ended up going so many more times than that; if not specifically with her because she moved away, then to the therapist she referred me to.  In fact, I’m still seeing this therapist (with a break of a bunch of years in between, during that time where I wrote off meds and all other psychological interventions).

I was talking recently with a friend about therapy, (It seems like all of my friends are currently in therapy…) and I referred to the fact that my parents facilitated me being in therapy from such a young age (and by young, I mean 18) as “early intervention.”  I know that term usually refers to 3-5 year-old’s who might be on the spectrum or might have a learning disability or a speech delay.  But, sadly, when it comes to emotions and figuring out how to communicate them, age 18 is still pretty much “early intervention,” in my opinion.  Things are definitely getting better, but not fast enough!  And when I said that out loud to my friend, it hit me how lucky I was.  I always went to therapy willingly – at some times, it felt like the only thing I had to look forward to.  Usually it felt like the progress was not quantifiable.  Was it doing anything?  What good was it?  Was it worth it?  I still pretty much always loved going, even if logically I wasn’t so sure.

My therapist has told me that among her clients who have gone through psychosis, I’m the only one who has ever wanted to revisit it (for me, there are 3 instances).  Everyone else just wants to put it behind them.  I don’t understand that; and I’ve ended up doing a lot more than just revisiting it.  I think there’s a lot of worth there.  It feels like a gold mine in an alternate universe.  The more I write, the more I can mine it later, for future purposes.  I’m not sure what those purposes are, exactly, yet, but I want the raw material to be intact as much as possible.

In the spirit of that, here’s one short snippet, that I first wrote in 2001:

“I’m going to be leaving tomorrow,” I announced at our afternoon community meeting.  I figured that since I wanted to come here, I was allowed to tell them when I wanted to leave.  I was getting sick of this charade.  The day before, I had told the nurse that I wanted to go home, expecting to find my parents there when I woke up.  When nothing came of that, I panicked, but then I realized the key was for me to get myself out.  I was going to have to stand up to everyone and announce my intentions.  I had to take control.  Everyone, including the staff workers, stared at me without saying a word.  That made me uneasy, especially when my statement went untouched, and the meeting continued with staff member Bob saying, “If no one has anything else to say, it’s time to go to the gym.”  It’s alright, it’s alright.  They’re just testing me.”

There’s a lot more where that came from.  Maybe one day I’ll share it with a wider audience.

Thinking about trauma

Posted: November 11, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: mental health | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Every year around mid-November, I tend to think back and reflect on a defining period of time in my adolescence.  And for as long as I’ve had this blog, I’ve written something about it, annually.  When I was 17, I voluntarily admitted myself to a psychiatric unit.  I envisioned I’d be there for a day or two; in the end I was there for 3 weeks, with everything quickly no longer becoming my choice.  It was both good and bad that I went voluntarily – On one hand, I didn’t resent anyone else for making that decision, and I may have made some things easier for calling that shot so early-on in my downward spiral.  Specifically, I could have been walking around in a mild/moderate psychosis for a long time without giving off any glaring red flags, which could have been much more damaging in the long run, led to me slipping back into that state easier and more frequently as the years went by.  On the other hand, I couldn’t forgive myself for the longest time, and I blamed that traumatic experience on being just the start of all problems and struggles that came after it.  If I hadn’t gone to the hospital, everything would have been different, I thought.  If I hadn’t gone to the hospital, I wouldn’t have lost my mind, I thought.  Now though, 19 years later, I don’t think those things anymore.  Instead, I think that I was an incredibly self-aware teenager, and I acted out of self-preservation.

When i was in the hospital, it was expected that I keep up with my schoolwork, or at the very least, try.  In Humanities class, we were just starting to read The Handmaid’s Tale.  Instead of my school-issued book arriving for me to read, a copy was sent from the Central Public Library, which made me immediately suspicious.  I was paranoid that we were being force-fed, brainwashed, and doped, and every little detail just added fire to that flame-in-my-brain.  I started reading it anyway, but I didn’t get far.  On pages 3 and 4, phrases such as,

“A window, two white curtains.  …When the windown is partly open – it only opens partly…”  “I know why there is no glass, in front of the watercolor picture of blue irises, and why the window only opens partly and why the glass in it is shatterproof.”

really freaked me out!!  All I could think about were the parallels.  The decor in my own hospital room, the panic and the dystopian surrealism of it all.  This part especially has always stayed with me:

“It isn’t running away they’re afraid of.  We wouldn’t get far.  It’s those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.”

I’m pretty sure I did eventually finish the book.  But I dropped the class.  I dropped a bunch of classes when I got back to school, out of necessity.  In order to graduate and have as little stress as possible while doing so.  In order to try to put some of my mental health issues behind me and to look forward to college…

My spouse and I just finished watching The Handmaid’s Tale, up through season 2.  So depressing and distressing.  Just a really jarring portrait of where we could end up, some of it hitting way too close to home – not so much on a personal level, but in a collective consciousness kind of way.  Hauntingly horrifying.

I got the book out of the library again – my local branch this time, not the Central Public Library…  Gonna attempt to re-read it.

Here’s what I wrote in the past, on the topic of being hospitalized:
2013:  Continuing to work through a specific trauma
2014:  That specific trauma is still there
2015:  That specific trauma is no longer a big deal
2016:  Anniversaries, traumas, deaths, and name-change
2017:  As that specific trauma dissipates further…

As that specific trauma dissipates further…

Posted: November 11, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: mental health, Writing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Every year around this time, I revisit the first time I was hospitalized, which was Veteran’s Day weekend in 1999.  It used to feel like the worst thing that ever happened to me.  And, in terms of fallout, I still think that it was – it just no longer feels that way.

Two years after this hospitalization, I wrote an essay for a class, including every little thing I could remember about the experience.  A few months ago, I gave that document to my therapist to read over.  I didn’t necessarily want to delve into it or have her probe me about it.  I just wanted for her to have read it.  And she really only said one thing:  “There were always questions about whether you had been in a psychotic state or not.  This definitely shows that you were.”  And, strangely, I was satisfied with that.  As if I could lay to rest whether I needed to be there or not.  For the most part…

I’m currently giving my most recent hospitalization (from 6 months ago) the same treatment, as best as I can remember.  I’m up to 2,500 words so far, and only about 15% done.  I don’t have any plans for it other than just something that I want to do for myself.  We’ll see.  I feel like there’s not much writing out there that really portrays what can go on in someone’s head while they are in the middle of psychosis.  (If anyone has any recommendations, let me know!)  That does not mean I have lofty goals for where I could take this writing; it’s just a motivating factor, something that pushes me to try to capture it as best as I can.

I just did a cursory search, and a couple of books that stand out as worth checking out are:
Stress Fracture: A Memoir of Psychosis and Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

Here are the other posts I have made, yearly:

Continuing to work through a specific trauma – Four years ago, I wrote about how I finally gained access to the medical records from my hospital stay, and how I started to process things differently with the help of my therapist.

That specific trauma is still there – Three years ago, I wrote about finally bringing that record into therapy and how it felt to have her go through it.  I was starting to realize that maybe I didn’t need to pick it all apart; maybe my perspective was shifting naturally, over time.

That specific trauma is no longer a big deal – Two years ago, I wrote about how much time has changed things, and it no longer felt like a big deal.  The fact that I had been hospitalized again, that year, surprisingly helped me find ways to heal, rather than adding more baggage onto the feeling of it.

Anniversaries, traumas, deaths, and name change – Then last year, I wrote about how other things were going on, and I really didn’t have the space or time to reflect.  Which was perfectly fine.  Between the election results, working on getting my name legally changed, and other emotional markers, it just didn’t come up.

This year, I am thinking about it, but it is more in terms of “one of the times I was hospitalized,” rather than, “a traumatic event – the worst thing that ever happened to me,” etc.

 

I’ve been thinking of all the little occurrences that go into the bigger story.  Like, for example, in that state, my mind was so malleable and adaptable that it seemed like, theoretically, anything could be true and just as easily, not true all at once.  Which is one of the reasons I avoided watching any TV.  (There were two TVs on the unit – one played music and had legalese constantly scrolling, in both Spanish and English – like a “know your rights” kind of thing.  The other TV had a remote and listing of channels, and we could watch whatever we wanted, 24/7.)  At one point I did sit down, and there was a documentary on about pineapples.  (Er, rather I’m sure the documentary was on something more broad, but I saw the pineapple part.  I started yelling about the unlikelihood about these pineapples growing.  Don’t pineapples grow on trees like sensible fruits?  What were these miniature pineapples growing up from fronds in the dirt?!  A patient who knew-all immediately matched the intensity I was spewing, and argued for the realness of these pineapples.

A few months later, my spouse’s aunt was visiting from Hawaii, and sure enough, she grows pineapples on her property and sure enough, she had pics to prove it.  I can now accept it fully.

Anniversaries, traumas, deaths, and name change

Posted: November 15, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: coming out, mental health | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Game changing significance was loaded on top of more and more significance, this past week.  On Monday the 7th, Leonard Cohen passed away.  Then, of course, the upsetting election results.  My spouse woke me up to tell me the news.  I was in a hazy half-sleep, largely induced by my medications (I think), and I just replied, “Ohhhhhhh,” and immediately fell back asleep.  It was a surreal half-consciousness, and, in a way, I continued on in that space for a long time after, even now, as I try to wrap my head around it.

She also texted me later that morning saying “Happy anniversary of our ‘legal’ marriage today.”  I had completely forgotten about that.  We have much more meaningful anniversaries between us; this one is not a big deal.  But, interesting that it happens to fall on this same date.  Plus!  It was the one year mark of the launch date for the radio station I am a DJ at.  Also on this day, a friend’s father passed away.  The next day, my spouse’s sister proposed to her boyfriend!

The following day, I heard word that two pride flags had been burned in our neighborhood.  Talk about being hit close to home!  More on that in an upcoming post.  We attended a rally on Saturday morning with some friends, and the spirit of that event was totally incredible.

Also, around this time, 17 years ago, I was hospitalized for 19 days, and was traumatized by the process, for a very very long time.  I take a moment every year to think about this and reflect.  (In the past, it’d been much more than “a moment” to reflect.  For too long, it had felt like constant rumination.)

Three years ago, I wrote about how I finally gained access to the medical records from my hospital stay, and how I started to process things differently with the help of my therapist:  Continuing to work through a specific trauma.

Then two years ago, I wrote about finally bringing that record into therapy and how it felt to have her go through it.  I was starting to realize that maybe I didn’t need to pick it all apart; maybe my perspective was shifting naturally, over time:  That specific trauma is still there.

Last year, I wrote about how much time has changed things, and it no longer felt like a big deal.  The fact that I had been hospitalized again, that year, surprisingly helped me find ways to heal, rather than adding more baggage onto the feeling of it:  That specific trauma is no longer a big deal.

This year, this personal matter has simply been buried underneath all this other stuff going on.  I don’t have the capacity to think about it and write about it right now.  I don’t see that as a problem.  It’s not like I am grieving the loss of space and emotional energy to be with this thing.  It was a thing.  And it gradually became not as much of a thing.  It is OK.

I also experienced an upswing this week.  Probably galvanized by the shitty stuff going on.  I cancelled a doctor’s appointment that I didn’t want to go to.  I called my grandpa and talked to him about different ways to save for retirement.  I solidified plans for my spouse and I to take a trip to Washington D.C. for her birthday – right around Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and just in time to get the fuck out of there before the presidential inauguration.  We are going to go to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, part of the Smithsonian, which just opened a few months ago.

I also submitted my stuff to legally change my name!  Finally!  I did this yesterday.  (This might also be a separate upcoming post.)  I also emailed a lawyer to see if he would be willing to work with me toward gaining legal non-binary status.  I haven’t heard back yet, and I realized that the timing is shit.  This is such a low priority right now, as transgender people scramble to get their Social Security card, passport, etc. in order before the Trump take-over.  And I know this lawyer in particular is probably swamped with going above and beyond to help people with this.  So, I’m going to wait on it.

But a time will come.  I know it.

That specific trauma is no longer a big deal

Posted: November 11, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: mental health | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Around this time, 16 years ago, I voluntarily admitted myself to a psychiatric unit, but then I got stuck there for 19 days without knowing what was going on.  The lack of communication was horrendous.  I suffered a psychotic break and left with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.  I accepted this for years, and I internalized that I have a mental illness in some pretty detrimental ways.  This has always stayed with me, always felt like something I needed to work through and get past.

Two years ago, I wrote about how I came to finally acquire my medical records from my hospital stay, and how I started to process things differently with the help of my therapist:
Continuing to work through a specific trauma

Last year, I wrote about finally bringing that record into therapy and how it felt to have her go through it.  I was starting to realize that maybe I didn’t need to pick it all apart; maybe my perspective was shifting naturally, over time.
That specific trauma is still there

This year, although I’m acknowledging the anniversary, it feels like just the slightest emotional blip on my radar.  I talked about it in therapy yesterday.  I finally got my hospital records back from my therapist (she had been holding onto them for me for a whole year!)  I looked through them again last night – there was always one page I skipped over.  It was handwritten by me, explaining what had been going on in my social life that led me to feel like I needed to be hospitalized.  I read it and felt OK about it.

Although this seems counter-intuitive, I think it helps that I was hospitalized in January.  Where everything went wrong the first time around, everything went right(?) (maybe not right, but it went smoothly) this time around.  I can overlay this experience on top of my shitty traumatic experience, and things make more sense.

I resisted the diagnosis of bipolar disorder for a long time,  I’d been off all meds for 9 years; I felt relatively stable.  When it was re-affirmed that I have bipolar disorder by the psychiatrist I was assigned, (“Once a bipolar, always a bipolar.”) I bristled at that.  Actually, I bristled at him in general every step of the way.  Appointments with him lasted a mere 2 minutes.  He was inflexible and adamant I stay on meds forever.  He forgot pertinent information about me.  (At one point he told me I needed to stay on meds because I had been hearing voices.)  After 6 months, I just stopped making appointments with him.  With all his intensity toward me staying on meds, it was surprising how easily he let me just get away.  Maybe he didn’t even notice I left.

My therapist helped me find a new psychiatrist; she’s awesome!  She’s willing to follow my lead on what I want to do about drugs, and she’s willing to dialogue with me instead of ordering me what to do.  I still don’t know what to do about drugs, but at least I have the space to feel supported with whatever I do choose to do.  For now, I’m staying on them, but I can’t pinpoint why.

I respect this new psychiatrist.  When she (also) told me I fit the criteria for bipolar type I, for the first time in a very long time, I felt like I could accept that.  I don’t need to incorporate that in any particular way into my identity; it doesn’t need to mean I view myself differently.  Personally, it’s not a core part of who I am.  It just is an aspect of me that can just be, and I can leave it at that.

And I can finally integrate the difficult journey toward mental health as parts of myself, rather than things that happened to me.

That specific trauma is still there

Posted: November 13, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Around this time (middle of the night), fifteen years ago, I started a game changing series of events by getting my mom to bring me to the hospital, from which I was admitted (voluntarily) to an adolescent psychiatric unit.  Once I was actually there, I didn’t want to be there anymore, but a lot of things were changing, and I ended up having to stay for 19 days.  I left with a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder and prescriptions for Depakote (mood stabilizer), Risperdol (antipsychotic), and Wellbutrin (antidepressant).  The medications changed a lot over the years…  I’m happy to report I’ve been med-free for about 9 years at this point.

Last year, I wrote about how I came to finally acquire my medical records from my hospital stay, and how I started to process things differently with the help of my therapist:
Continuing to work through a specific trauma

This year, I finally brought this massive document in to therapy with me, despite the fact that I was pretty unsure, er maybe more like totally ambivalent, about what I wanted to get out of talking about it (yet again) exactly.

My therapist started reading through the pages out loud, and simultaneously made comments and processed it in her own way.  At first this felt tedious (the thing is 210 pages long!)  But I also felt intrigued.  It was much more helpful for her to tell me about the content than for me to try to go through it myself (which I hadn’t done since first receiving it, last year).  I also started to feel yucky and shut-downy.  I finally verbalized, “Let’s take a break.”  I was worried this therapy session was really going to have a negative lasting impact on me, but, in fact, I felt fine afterward.  Maybe I’m more resilient these days than I think.

I used to always think that if I do this one thing, or if I find out these missing pieces, or if I reflect back in a different way, the pain of that experience will be lifted.  If I just keep grinding into it and picking away at it, I’ll one day be free.  Now I know that this can’t really happen.  And I can accept that it was a shitty thing that probably didn’t actually need to happen.  It was traumatic.  It was so long ago.  I can look at it with a completely different perspective by now, but not because of anything I did – that perspective shift happened naturally, over time and with personal growth.

There is so much I could write about.  But I actually really only want to write about one thing right now, as it relates to my hospital experience:  while I was there, I wore this one particular hoodie constantly.  And once I was released, I never wore it again.  But there seems to be no way I can get rid of it.  I brought the hoodie in to therapy, along with the document, and told her all about it.  When the document felt too overwhelming to keep delving into, I told her she should just hold onto it and go through it on her own time.  She asked if she could hold on to the hoodie too.  I said, “yeah sure.”

Los-Angeles-Rams-return-to-Los-Angeles-FOOTBALLPHDS

My hoodie sported this sports logo.

The reason I loved the hoodie so much was because the LA Rams were not a team.  (I just looked it up, and they were a team from 1946-1994).  I worked at a thrift store and picked up this gem at some point.  I liked the incongruousness of it.  I do not like football.

Continuing to work through a specific trauma

Posted: November 12, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Fourteen years ago today, I was taken to the emergency room and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for nineteen days.  It was by choice – I voluntarily admitted myself, but once I got there, I realized that basically, I was stuck, and things got much much worse for me.  Essentially, I went from being in a confused and vaguely depressed state to suffering a full-on paranoid psychotic break from reality, which in retrospect, I believe could have been avoided had I not been there at all.  My plan in my head was to go there and sleep and restore my mind and body for a day or two, and then make a plan from there.  Their plan was to do what they do, on a medical and legal basis, and this took so long, I was unsure if I was ever going to get to leave.  Also, I was a month shy of 18 years old, so I was not yet a consenting adult, and my parents signed everything that needed signing.  (On the other hand, I’m relieved I was not yet 18, because that month’s difference was the difference between being on the Adolescent or Adult unit.  I am glad I was with people my own age and younger.)  This was during my senior year of high school.  I went back to school with a (mis)diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and even more of a disconnect from everyone around me.  I felt even more isolated, and self-stigmatized than before.  I sank into a severe depression.  I dropped out of a few of my classes and took a leave of absence from my job.  I tried to stay occupied with some art classes at school, but nothing at all interested me.  As the summer before college started, things finally did start to lift.  I got my driver’s license.  I started to hang out with friends a little bit.  I felt excited to be moving two hours away and starting college.

This experience has stayed with me as a lasting trauma.  In college, I wrote a lengthy personal essay about it, trying to capture every tiny thing I could remember.  I was in therapy for a long time after – I was actually doing a lot worse in general after being discharged.  I was on a lot of pills and unsure if they were helping.  Therapy, at least, was helping.  Therapy has been the one thing I’ve done for myself that has made the biggest difference in my adult life.  Therapists have taught me how to be a verbal person and communicate with others.

About a year ago, I worked at talking through this experience that still haunts me, in therapy.  My therapist was a little hesitant to delve into it – she’s not too big on rehashing the past.  But she did help me through it, and encouraged me to talk with my mom about it, in order to dis-spell some long-held beliefs that might have actually been way off.  Such as, “it didn’t really affect my mom that much, that I was there.”  So I did talk to my mom about it (however difficult that was), and felt myself getting to a new place through doing that.

And then this year (every year around this time, I’m thinking a lot about it again), I decided to gain access to my medical records from back then.  I didn’t know how to go about that because the hospital I was at has since been closed, demolished, and rebuilt into a new multipurpose health facility.  But I was told my records are somewhere, on microfilm, and I can get them at a fee of $0.75 per page.  So I went through the request form and noted I’d like to be informed of the length of the document before it’s sent.  Two weeks later, a heavy package arrived, with a bill for $168.10!  I thought we were talking about something in the range of 40 pages!  This thing is 210 pages, and this bill is much more than I want to pay.   (So I did email back and forth, explaining my request was ignored, and I did get the bill knocked down to $100.88 – still way more than I was planning to pay.)

The document itself is largely made up of pages that have no interest to me.  And many pages in which I can’t read the person’s handwriting.  But, in the process of gleaning as much as I can from it (and skipping over quite a few things that feel triggery, for right now), I’m coming to some kind of new terms with what happened to me, way way back then.   And, something is lifting.