Last year I hit my absolute rock bottom.  I had been triggered by multiple deaths the year before and death is a huge trigger for me, but I did not recognize that until it was too late.  In the span of six months I lost my favorite aunt, my precious dog, and a sister I met for the first time only 11 years ago.  It sent me into a major spiral, I thought I was handling it well enough because I was seeing a psychiatrist and I was on medications.  But those meds were not working and I was too exhausted to tell the truth and keep trying every “cocktail” under the sun to find the right combination.  I binge drank to make myself feel and at the same time escape.  I wasn’t eating well, I was drinking, my meds were useless, my husband had brought up earlier in the year that he was frustrated by the lack of sex so I got a sex therapist to mend that hole in my 11 year marriage.  I knew I had problems with sex after multiple encounters with sexual trauma but I he did not bring this up until last year.  

My therapist did help a lot and I was able to begin to heal at least that part of my pain.  But, I felt the pressure and was drowning in pain and expectations.  One day I had a dissociative episode and it was as if my brain just checked out and I overdosed.  I had my system flushed and I told the hospital it was an accident and that I mixed up the pills.  My husband called my psychiatrist and I made the decision to commit myself to the mental health hospital.  I sat in the psych ward over night and was slapped in the face by just how far I had fallen, it was in that moment I realized just how badly I had been treating myself.  I spent a week in the hospital while they adjusted my meds and I participated in group therapy, which is something I had never done before but it was surprisingly helpful and up lifting.  And in this place I found that I have a support group that wasn’t going to let me do this alone, each night they came for visiting hours.  I was released and it was strangely scary, I had been in a protected place where I could begin to heal and now it was up to me to take care of myself.  I started enforcing boundaries on my mom who is a major stressor in my life and triggers my anxiety and feelings of guilt and inadequacy. I started walking and doing yoga, I started making healthy food, I cut out alcohol, I started journaling more and waking up at 7.  Turns out my brain loves routine.  I started paying attention to the things that were stressing me out and the things that helped call my mania.  My sex therapist shifted my treatment plan and it was the most revolutionary thing, we started breaking down the things that were unresolved traumas and pain in my life, I started to heal.  But then…out of no where my husband dropped a divorce on me two months after I got out of the hospital.  He said “if I could do it all over again I wouldn’t” and “I felt obligated to marry you” and “you are too much work.” That pain, we had been together for almost 14 years and now all of a sudden he just walked out.  My world was devastated.  To make it worse we were locked in a stand still and he would’t move out, so I was stuck with a man who I thought I knew and who didn’t love me.  We were able to sign papers and by the time papers were signed we had been locked in a stand still for almost 9 months, I lived with a stranger for 9 months.  But, once upon a time this would have wrecked my world, I was devastated don’t get me wrong but I continued to take care of myself, even working during May in quarantine to create a mental health blog with my testimony.  My psychiatrist of 9 years passed away earlier this year and it was painful, I had a friend commit suicide earlier this year and it made me want to curl up and never move again but I took the time to recognize these emotions I normally would have stuffed so far down that if I drank they would blow like Mount Vesuvius.  I’ve stayed on top of my medications with my new psychiatrist at the same practice, we’ve been able to safely make adjustments.  I was completely uprooted from my home in the country that I loved, I had been in this home with someone I thought was going to be “for better or worse” for 9 years.  I sold that home and knew it was time to walk away, I found a home that I knew was meant for me despite being in the city.  Every new hurdle seems so impossible but I take it one small step at a time, it’s not easy, some days it takes everything in me to get out of bed or leave my house.  But I have a group of people in my life that are ready to cheer me on and pick me up when I cannot stand on my own, they understand how to give me space and treat me with compassion when I need to be pushed.  I know I will never be “cured” but I know now that I’m not broken, I am worthy of love and a full life, and so are you.