My First Break

My First Break

This post is not meant to diagnose, treat, or save you from mental illness, if you or someone you love is in danger, please get help. You can text HOME to 741741 to be connected with a crisis counselor. I personally have. You can also call or text 988 for suicide and crisis help.
http://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts

This post comes with a trigger warning, if you or someone you love has ever had a psychotic break, some of this may be hard for you to read. Please use discretion.

So why have I been crazy and back? What makes me a six year mental health survivor and where did this all start? Have I been this way my whole life? Yes and no. I likely always struggled with my OCD type personality; for I have always loved to clean and organize things to the point of it interfering with my daily life. But what is the real reason for my diagnosis and where did it all start? I will do my best to paint you a picture.

It was January of 2017 and I was getting ready to celebrate my son’s first birthday. It was an extremely happy time. First, we flew from our home in Southern California to my home town in Ohio. My goal was to prematurely throw my son a birthday party in my hometown so that all of my friends and family back home could celebrate my boy. I picked a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme for his big day and I planned all kinds of fun snacks and deserts for the event. I invited over 40 people, kids included.

Just as preparations for the party were being made and supplies were being collected, something began to happen with my mom and the new sleeping pill she was given. With my fiancé in California, my dad working full time, and my mom on some weird sleeping pill experience, the entire party fell into my lap and my lap alone. I was devastated and stressed to say the least. Luckily I did end up recruiting my Aunt to help with the deserts, my some day sister in law helped with some of the food and I busted my ass on cutting up dozens of vegetables, cleaning, decorating and plating all of the food. I have to include that I even made little themed signs for the food and printed out a picture of my son for each month he had been alive. The party was a success, but I started noticing that in the wake of my visiting and party planning, I was getting less and less sleep. It didn’t help that my son and I were in a different time zone.

As I made my way back to California, I had yet another visit to plan and another party to put together. My fiancés family lived in Northern California, so we were unpacking from one trip, and repacking for another. My son had just started teething and while he had always slept well at night, he began waking and needing mom’s love, his gums rubbed and sometimes medicine or a cold teething ring to be able to go back to sleep. I was exhausted but powering through it all. I couldn’t wait to celebrate my little guy one more time; this time having the help of my fiancé to put the party together. When we got to Northern California it was wild to say the least. My now husband has a very large family that I have been a part of since high school. With my now one year old in tow, we visited the homes of four families on our trip. The party was a little hectic with many, many more small children running around than my son’s prior party. I felt, and always have, as with the last party, that I had to entertain all of the children and check in on the adults regularly. While this party was also a success, I was beginning to feel almost loopy at how tired I was. However, my need for sleep was diminishing. At that point, I chalked it up to being super mom and being excited to spend time with the adults, once the children were in bed.

After all the partying and vacations, I returned home to Southern California and began planning for my next semester of college. I was working on my Associate in Arts degree in English and I was getting very close to completing and moving on towards my bachelors. My prior childcare situation had changed and I thought maybe, although failing before, I could try online classes again. I began trying to study and complete a full time semester worth of term papers, research and online lectures and discussions. This was not easy at all with a one year old in the home. He was napping less and less, getting into things, and although he was a well behaved baby, his need for stimulation and adventure was at an all time high. Shakespeare kept having to wait for me.

About a week after returning from vacation, my fiancé and I had had an unprotected love making session, for which I will never regret. I knew in that moment that something inside of my body had changed. I became extremely emotional and was becoming a victim of insomnia, as the only time I could get homework done, was after my little one went to sleep. I remember sitting in the tub with him one day and almost falling asleep. This shocked me to my core. How could I continue down this road? I began to feel like I could go on no longer with my fiancé working all day and me attempting school and childcare all alone. I started singing a lot to soothe myself, I began calling people and not making any sense to them, and I told my fiancé that we were moving to Northern California to be with his family. I packed a few things for myself and nearly everything for my son and insisted my fiancé drive me the 8 hours back to Northern California. To me, it seemed to be the only solution to me getting any support of sleep. Maybe having other moms around me and some grandparents would solve my issues.

By this time I wasn’t making much sense at all, I was staying up later and later and slowly ceasing to care for myself. I was bathing less, not brushing my hair or teeth, and I couldn’t focus on anything at all aside from my son. Stuck in turmoil with a spastic fiancé, my fiancé called his father for help. His parents told him to listen to me and to bring me and his child there right away, that they would help in any way they could. When I first got there things were good, I began not having to be the one to do everything. But after the honeymoon was over, his family began having to get back to their normal lives and routines. I was finding it hard to wait for my fiancé to transfer his job and join me. I had a hard time not exactly having my own space, even though everyone was very accommodating. I just still couldn’t sleep or study. I decided to quit school and then something inside of me seemed to snap.

I began to think that there was something living in the lake nearby that we all couldn’t see, but had to believe in, like a higher power. I began having visions of a mermaid or a sea siren in the small creek near my fiancés parents house and I began to wander around at night. I called my fiancé and had odd conversations with him about the future I thought I could see. I told him I was pregnant and that we were going to get married, soon. I found myself staring at my sleeping son for hours, fixating on my nieces lost tooth, going so far as to think I was the long lost tooth fairy, and all the while maybe clocking four rocky hours a night in sleep. I began feeling extremely lost and alone. I couldn’t seem to get anyone to understand me. I called my parents in the middle of the night once, convinced that I had the secrets to the universe. Everyone around me went from slightly worried, to panic level.

Finally one night when I had spoken in enough circles for hours, posted on Facebook that I was my new daughter and my name was Judith, and I began to act almost like an uncontrollable drunk. Although, I promise you I was not taking any substances aside from a few small hits of marijuana now and again (which I had partaken in for a long time) and nicotine in the form of cigarettes. My fiancés family, my friends and family, and my fiancé became so worried they all began conspiring together to get me some help. After not sleeping for over 24 hours and not making any sense to anyone but myself, the idea was created to spike my drink with a sleeping pill, unaware that my own mother had just had an out of body experience with the same type of medication.

As you can guess, it was a recipe for disaster. The “sleepy tea” complete with sleeping pill worked for a few hours and I was able to get some rest. I remember a lot of the women in my fiancé’s family standing around me worried and all I could tell them is that the new baby was going to be born on my fiancé’s birthday. They all looked at me with such worry, how could I know so soon that I was pregnant? I had just had my period the last time I had visited Northern California; the timeline just didn’t add up. When I woke up from my sleeping pill all hell broke loose. I turned into someone and something I can’t even ever fully describe in words. I began talking in “circle, circle, dot, dot, dot”, I was smoking a ton of cigarettes, one after another, and I was spewing other psychotic mumbo jumbo. I refused to go to the bathroom, became paranoid about everyone, and began screaming and crying that I was never going to see my son again. Thankfully at that point my son’s grandmother had stepped in to remove him from me before I could scare the living hell out of him. I began thinking extremely dark thoughts about all the people in my life before me that had died, I thought I was next. I began thinking I needed to run away from everyone screaming and thinking to entire world was out to get me. I wanted to be alone and babysat at the same time. I guess there was a part of me that knew I should NOT be left alone to my own devices. I was scared about being around three people, worried about what time it was, creeped out by all of the little figurines of angels my niece had on the porch.

In the midst of all my pacing, talking in circles, and failure to use the bathroom correctly, a plan had been devised to take me to a behavioral health center for an assessment. My soon to be sister in laws and my fiancés cousin all got in the car and took for an evaluation. I was disheveled, wrapped in a blanket and rocking back and forth to soothe myself. Mind you I had just lost control of my bowels to my (soon to be) sister in law as dismay. We would later find out that it wasn’t physical incontinence, but rather a mental paranoia that kept me from using the toilet anywhere but in my pants.

At the health center, they gave me a loose evaluation. Rather it was just a discussion with a counselor about how, in this mental state, my family could help me and get me care. The counselor noticed that I was going in and out of making sense and not making sense; that I seemed to almost “snap out of it” at times. He could also tell that I had a good support system. I did not however, tell him about the baby and I can’t for the life of me remember being coherent about much other than facts about where I was, what year it was and what my name was. Funny enough the male counselor had the masculine version of my own name. His name alone was enough to convince me that the universe was fulfilling my mission, that I was carrying a very important baby, and that the world was just not ready to hear what I had to tell them. Although, slowly but surely I became more and more paranoid. The center released me saying that yes I should seek some sort of outpatient help, that there was nothing they could do for me as I was not a threat to others or myself, and that it seemed like I had a good enough support system to get me through this. The counselor also mentioned that if I wasn’t getting any better and if this was really outside my personality, that the family might want to take me to the ER for an evaluation, urine analysis and CAT scan to check for any UTI or tumors creating the psychosis. At that time no one had even thought for a second that I was having a true psychotic episode, everyone just knew something “wasn’t right”.

With my fiancé on the phone and my sister in laws and cousin in charge, they took me to the ER for testing. I did tell the ER that I was pregnant, and after evaluating only my urine, they chalked me up to crazy or on psychedelic drugs, leaning to the later. With the pressing of my sister in law, they did however run a CAT scan just to be on the safe side. All of my tests were coming back negative for any life altering results. They gave me an Ativan, a baby sitter, and a 24 hour hospital admittance.

They were still at a loss and figured I had done some drugs that affected my brain and were already clearing a toxicology screen but were still leaving me in a crazy headspace. They did try to reach the counselor that had given me my assessment but he was out of town already on a vacation. I began questioning if he was even real to begin with. After getting a really good night sleep and having my fiancé arrive at my bedside, I was feeling a lot more connected with reality, I just was confused and left with a lot of questions. The nurse had begun to talk about discharging me from the hospital when the worst news of my life hit me. Now mind you before this I was a “good girl”; I had never done recreational drugs, outside of pot, I had always done what society expected of me, and I had been a very law abiding citizen. However, due to my odd behaviors, adamancy of pregnancy, and all of the paranoia and mentally unstable talking and pacing reported by my family, I was pink slipped.

A pink slip in California is also known as a 51/50, it is a psychiatric hold placed on a patient forcing them admission to a psychiatric stay. I had never even seen a psychiatrist before this incident, nor had I ever displayed any behaviors like this before. I felt like I was being held against my own free will, and I was. I was found incompetent of making my own decisions for my health and well being and I was to be transported to a psychiatric hospital hours away, in San Jose California. I felt not only crazy, but that I was being sent somewhere far away as a punishment for acting out. How could I tell them that I couldn’t control it? How could I explain that it was like a dream? I felt just fine, I didn’t hurt anyone or myself. How could they do this to me? Was I going to have to stay forever? And what did it mean to be “crazy”? I was about to find this all out for myself.

-A Manic Monday