My Diagnosis

I prompted myself to share something that I struggle with and that happens to be my mental health diagnosis.

Mental health is a very scary topic that most people feel very shy about. I guess I feel like I don't need to be. My mental health is something that I decided to walk around and wear with courage, because it takes courage to be alive when you truly don't want to be anymore.

How do I handle being suicidal while being a parent? I don't. At least not very well. Especially while you're focused on reparenting yourself and having childhood memories resurface. While being as depressed as I am, I have asked myself to find my purpose again, outside of raising kids. My own coping mechanisms have turned into my own worst enemy and my mind can be a pretty scary place.

I am painfully aware of the fact that I am only alive because of my children. I have picked that purpose to allow myself to live for. But what else is there for me? I struggle to see that worth. What else is there?

Becoming painfully aware of the fact that I have never had a healthy relationship to ever exist. Friend, family, coworker, the like: my anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder have destroyed everything good in my life. One of my favourite expressions one of my grandmothers have used with me is "caught" the depression. Because it is a disease. A really bad one at that. And anyone can experience it. My depression has turned me into a pretty hateful version of myself. When I just expected people to understand how I felt. I shut myself down and explode on people. I have very fragile relationships because of that. I am painfully aware of that fact. I allow myself to overthink to death. And when that overthinking panic bubbles up, I just feel completely destroyed.

When things happen to you, and you're just expected to keep going, that's endurance. Being as hurt as I am composing this, I have learned the very hard way that picking yourself up, while you're completely shattered is called courage. My journey, my story, maybe that's a part of my purpose that I get to allow myself to choose to live for besides being alive for my kids. I am stronger than anyone will ever know and I like to hold that very dear to my heart.

I allow myself to be completely picking myself to pieces already, people don't need to tell me how my depression has ruined everything good for me. Money doesn't need to be thrown in my face to make me feel better for the lack of healthy boundaries.

Mental health is important. It took me way too late in life to realize the fact of that matter. I was always very outspoken about my depression and anxiety at a young age, because these diseases have always been existing, lying around for me. Anxiety was a demon that had needed to be conquered a long time ago. COVID did not help those matters for me. Those diseases stuck around for a lot longer than they should have. I had first started seeing a psychiatrist while I was pregnant with my daughter. I was started on a new low-dose anti-depressant after a few failures from general practitioners.

The first panic attack I can ever remember having was right before my gym class in the 10th Grade. I didn't even hate the gym class or the lesson we were doing. I had half my stuff in a bag, waiting to stay at my grandparents' place for the weekend. Changing before gym class, I just up and panicked. My stupid purple Adidas bag was stuffed full to the brim with my belongings. I was fifteen back then. What can I say, I had anxiety. Sometimes, I was not taken seriously with my own mental health back then. Not by friends, not by family members, not even by school staff. I rested at home instead of dealing with the root issue. I sat on the couch and listened to what I was told by family members via text versus getting the help I needed. I view the little blue drug I was handed at age seventeen much differently than most people would. That anxiety drug was a blessing for me back then. I just did not realize it until now.

I went up to a psych ward for the first time after my daughter was born. I was twenty-two years old back then. Just three months after she existed, was the first time I had an experience in a white room. Because I was suicidal and was angry at how I was being treated by someone close to me. I had written two letters to my children in case something had happened to me, and got drunk to deal with the way I was feeling after something bad had happened to me the night prior. Some family members of mine back then were the worst fucking support people to exist for me. I remember that night I came home from the hospital, I was driven over to my abuser's house to "cheer him up". He had spammed me, and his father to have me come to his house at four o'clock in the morning after we had spent hours up at the hospital trying to regulate my own mental health. My mental health was so fragile back then, and some people did nothing but continue to deteriorate it. About a month later, the police were called on us, and charges were placed on him. I went to his court date with his father, and the charges were instantly dropped. I wish someone would have kept us apart after the first night I went up to the white room.

I did not take counseling very seriously back then. I turned inward to deal with the pain.

Going back up to the hospital a second time over a year later in the back of a cop car was different. A lot different. I had a mental health warrant out on me because of a severe panic attack that had struck me in a mean way. I then spent two weeks in a psych ward. I went up there pissed off. The hour drive in handcuffs did nothing but piss me off. Having little communication with family and friends caused me to become even angrier. When you're in a space like that, you become friends with one another. You share in the experience. I spent two weeks there. I never had a single visitor. Unless you count one of the former patients that were discharged before me who had come back to visit. My grandfather attempted to visit me when he came about a week after I was in the ward when he had delivered a bag of items for me, but because it was a holiday, we were unable to see each other. The first few days inside, I mainly stuck to myself. Your days tend to revolve around mealtimes when you're in a situation like that. I would start my day at 8 am when my breakfast was served. I tried my hardest to shower, once if not twice a day, just to give me something to do and give me some sense of my normal life. I arrived with sweats and a sweatshirt that were taken from me after I was admitted into the hospital. Eventually, a family member of mine delivered a bag for me with a few clothing items, books, and some snacks about a week after I was in there. When you get to wear your own clothes instead of the pajamas they give you, that's a little small mental health victory. The worst discovery that I had made, was the bag of ketchup chips my mother packed, just to piss me off. I gave away most of the chips and chocolate that my family had given me because I was hurt by their version of support. And, I knew clear as day my eating disorder was present front and center while at the hospital. It's a habit for people to fill out their own meal form while they are in the ward. I never once filled out my meal sheet the entire time I was there. I just ate whatever they gave me and made jokes about it. the fact I had no appetite for chips and chocolate, was beyond me at that time. If one person had visited me or spoken to me on the phone during those two weeks I was in the psych ward, I would have felt differently. I had my best friend call me three or four times, and coming home I was not the same person. That breaks a person. Who could be the same person after a traumatic experience? I was never prepared for a situation like that where I was kept in isolation for two weeks. I was angry. I came home to have to fight a diagnosis that I earned way back in my childhood. The word delusional sets me right off and that is what I came home to. I know the difference between a delusion and a thought.

I just recently came home from my second stay in a psych ward stay after going off of some of my medication and the experience has completely changed me for the better. My experience was completely different than the first time I was there and I even got moved to a secondary ward with more privileges. My diagnosis still remained the same even after this second trip.

I'm trying to normalize being in psych because of the stigma behind it.

Defending my own diagnosis has caused me to become an angry, bully of a person. Which had also hurt in an odd way, because that was never me before this past year. I never asked to be bipolar, I was just born this way

I told myself a long time ago, that I am too proud of a woman to commit suicide. I still stand by that statement, I really do. Because I am alive for a reason. I get to wake up everyday and decide that reason.

Thanks for reading.

Chloe Rose Violet