A Lion Named Lucy

Lucy sat in the chair, hoping to find some answers. Between the irritability that drove her boyfriend, Charles, away and the reckless spending of her savings, she was not in control. It was always something. There was always some excuse as to why she wasn’t herself, and people were getting tired of it. She was either too tired to go to work or calling in sick to spend the day on an adventure. After putting up with the constant changes in behavior for the past several months, her parents dragged their adult daughter into the doctor to get some answers.

Depression ran in the family, and Lucy didn’t escape this burden. She had been medicated for nearly eight of her 24 years, though lately, it seems to have stopped helping. She would lay in bed for days on end watching tv and ignoring her friends. It was a wonder that she held on to a job for as long as she did, but eventually that, just like all the other ones, she lost and was at square one. Living back with her parents because she couldn’t afford to pay her bills.

For a while, they blamed her latest depression on the breakup with Charles. It’s pretty normal to feel down and sad after a breakup, but this was extreme. They hadn’t been going out that long, and she didn’t even seem to be sad, just… numb. Completely void of emotion and care for anything. The weight loss was concerning enough to bring her in. However, when you added in how just a few weeks prior, she was out partying every night and skipping work and living life up… something was going on.

Sitting in the doctor’s office, for the third time in 2 months, Lucy and her parents waited to hear what he had to say. Between treating for depression and sending her into what he was describing as “mania” and her other symptoms, they gave her a new diagnosis. There it was again. That word making her feel crazy and out of control of her own mind. Diagnosis. This time around was making her feel worse than how having depression made her feel, though. The curse fell off his tongue with the force of a thousand sentences. Bipolar 1.

“So I’m crazy?” Lucy asked with as much control as she could muster. But how was she supposed to say a sentence like that without losing it a little bit?

The doctor went on to talk about the symptoms, things to look out for, and treatment options. How he wanted to put her on new meds. Antipsychotics and mood stabilizers. How he wanted her to see a psychologist and get on a schedule. He continued listing off things that could help her manage, but his voice was already lost in a wave of thoughts flooding Lucy’s mind. Bipolar? Crazy. Losing it. Weak. Unlovable. Freak. These words would haunt her for a long time. It would be years until she became friends with her new companion. It would be months before she would take her medication consistently. It would be many more months before she would accept it. And it would be an entire year before she learned to love herself again and understand that there was nothing wrong with her. Because there wasn’t.

Mental illness is a hushed topic. Sure, more people are willing to talk about it, but that doesn’t change the way those with it feel. Why is it no big deal to talk about when someone gets a cold or the flu, but when it comes to illness of the mind… it’s spoken about with pity as if something was fundamentally wrong with those burdened by it?

Lucy would learn that medication, like cold medicine, was nothing to be ashamed of. Through the highs and lows of her journey… she was not a delicate lamb lined up to be slaughtered. She was a lion.