Am I Crazy for Thinking I’m Crazy?
My mother first noticed something was wrong when I was in 2nd grade. I was 6. My father had committed suicide when I was 4 after struggling with depression for as long as my mom knew him, and they met in High School. For years I just dealt. My first therapist insisted that it was all ‘situational’ when I was 15 years old. At 16 I was sent to a hospital for 12 days. At the time my diagnosis was major depression with psychotic tendencies. My depression was so bad I was hearing voices. But since I had been told, repeatedly, that it was all situational I decided I knew better then them and took myself off meds and out of therapy as soon as my outpatient program was done.
I started cutting myself. I was anorexic and bulimic. I drank and did whatever drugs I could get my hands on to drown out the voices I heard all the time. Imagine an auditorium filled with people. Now imagine every single person in there shouting at you that you are the most worthless, vile, ugly, fat, worthless thing to walk the Earth. That was my head 24/7 for about 3 years. After high school I leveled out a bit. At least, my ‘psychotic tendencies’ were gone an my depression was manageable. Then I started to have anxiety. The voices weren’t in my head. They were in everyone else’s thoughts when they looked at me. At least, that’s how I felt. And still do.
Once again I started therapy. Again I was told I was wrong whenever I tried to suggest what might be wrong. I left therapy, discouraged again, because I had no health care and was pregnant. $40 a week might not seem like much, but when you make minimum wage that can e the difference between having diapers or not. I was lucky enough to somehow avoid PPD. And for a few years, things were manageable. I had a job, I had my little family, and I figured everyone’s 'blue’ now and again. Boy was I wrong.
After having my second child, my depression came back full force, along with night terrors that plagued my teens. I went back to therapy and finally heard from the woman on the phone who did my intake that what I was going through was NOT normal and definitely NOT situational. I was 27 at that point. It was the most wonderful thing I ever heard. I broke down and started crying even harder then I already was. Finally I choked out the words 'thank you’.
As of now my diagnosis is major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and mild PTSD. I still need to find the right therapist, and I haven’t found the right meds. But it’s not been a year since anyone has seen that I genuinely need them, and I know it can take years to get that right. But it all seems a little less hard (I won’t say easier cause it’s never easy) now that I’m not asking myself if I’m crazy for thinking that I’m 'crazy’. At 28 I have great hope that I won’t repeat my father’s biggest mistake. He only made it to 31. And sometimes I wonder if it’s all because he lived in a time when mental illness was so horribly stigmatized that it wasn’t even discussed.