Psyched Out

It took a while to begin to explain the weight of what was welling up and festering as it grew inside of me. It can be hard to relay the struggles of an ill-diagnosed or misdiagnosed mental illness to other people when everything on the outside is a typical life in their eyes. However, nothing was typical about the games my mind would play on me to make me feel as if everything was constant danger, and that I had never really escaped one of my biggest fears; losing the people I love due to ties with the military. With only four years of military experience and one tour in Afghanistan, it was hard to come back. Even though I was never engaged in actual warfare with the bombs and shootings laying a little outside the lines where I was stationed, there was not much solace that could be sought in the small clinic where we worked to return soldiers back ready to fight from what conditions had been ailing them. I never thought that once stepping on the plane headed back stateside that I would be carrying a burden with me over the next seven years. I was living a life with a misdiagnosed mental disorder, and it was seeking to sweep me from under my feet right in front of the people I loved the most with no reserve for the fears of my family, or the tugs of mental sanity I tried to keep peace with.

I had been to many doctors over the years with small to large complaints ranging from simple anxiety to paranoid delusions and hallucinations. I thought that roadwork in my area was the work of terrorists who had followed me home from deployment and were trying to plant bombs underneath the large roadway structures where I lived. This was due to the fact that when deployed in Afghanistan, the local nationals are in charge of a great deal of the building contracts through government allocated work with the United States. It was extremely common to see the Afghanistan residents working on bulldozers, or putting up the scaffolding on new buildings that would bring jobs to their people and much needed amenities like air conditioning in the blistering hot summer months. Tie that in with the fact that they are in charge of washing the clothing for the soldiers and transporting much needed materials like food and bottled water, not being able to 100% trust every single person you meet is a mind trap that I would not wish on my worst enemy. I thought that my house had been turned into a ticking time bomb, and that turning on any light could start a fire that could sweep the entire house into flames. This trailed into the next bit of my personal delusions where I thought that my loving grandmother was trying to set the house on fire to collect insurance money. Then the idea of foreign threat was no longer good enough for my mind that seemed bent on remaining fixated on tormented mental pitfalls. I began to suspect that my darling and wonderful grandmother was potentially in danger of hurting my child due to her increasing age, and the little I knew about dementia. These horrid illusions were simply that though, and it greatly taxed the relationship with my grandmother to be awake all night worrying about her next move and the safety of my child. I still to this day do not know why I thought something so sinister was going on, but I am glad that the events turned as they did so that the severity of mental health disorder could be assessed by clinical professionals.

It did not take long for the events to reach a head, and one night I kept my mother on the phone while I dialed 9-1-1 and was insistent that they send someone out to check on the house because my grandmother had not gone to sleep, and I was worried about the safety of my child who was laying in the room with me. Keep in mind this was around 1 or 2 in the morning, and I kept the police on the phone with me the entire night making them think that they would find my grandmother dead or trying to get into the room where my child slept. I closed our room off by blocking the door with my bed and prayed and prayed for the feeling of safety to return. Thankfully my child slept most of the time, and for some reason I thought my grandmother had died in the other room.

I cannot tell you how much it pains me to write of all of this seeing how terrifyingly misguided it all is, but my mind was an entire world away from me, and I would still be suffering had these events not happened. The police came around 8 in the morning after I had been up all night. I saw my grandmother start moving to the front door with a clipboard in her hand and I warned the cop, "She has a gun! Keep her away from my baby!" The scariest part was that I actually imagined seeing a pistol in my grandmother's hand. I saw her put it plain as daylight onto a night stand in the living room, and I saw her pick it up as if she was going to start walking back to where my baby was. I kept begging the cops to please take the gun away from her and make sure my baby was safe. I had not slept even 30 minutes of the evening and the cops could tell by my eyes it had been a long time since I had had good sleep at all. The next thing I knew I was in a vehicle thinking I was taking my grandmother to an assisted living unit, but they were actually placing me in the emergency room due to a protective order that had been placed for the safety of my family against me.

I barely slept in the hospital, once it was obvious that my family was going to have to leave me, I cried and cried and felt as if I was releasing some kind of monster inside of me. I talked to myself a great bit, and felt that some form of otherworldly work was being done to expunge me of the plagued thoughts that had overtaken my existence. It was hard to sleep as my blood was continually drained through the machines, and I began feeling pulses of electricity severe. This sent my mind on a spiral thinking that the terrorists knew where my body was laying and would use all of the machines I was attached to to try to electrocute me in the hospital. It did not take long for me to remove myself from the EKG monitor and curl up on the floor next to the bed hoping to stay away from any of the metal so that I would not be killed.

That room was so small but I bet I found about fifty ways to rearrange it to make the least likely amount of electricity able to reach me at any time. I tried to sleep on the floor, on the chair, on the bed, and I was so scared that my baby and mother were dead. I just kept begging everyone to let me know what my daughter was okay, sand they did not understand that I had no idea everything was fine. I think they thought I was trying to use it as a way to escape, but I was truly in miserable denial that everything really was fine outside of my personal state at the time. I thought after I had been put into the hospital that my grandmother could have found my child and done the worst thing possible. There was no coming back from the fears I had, coupled with the ridiculous lack of sleep I had from being placed so jarringly under the bright lights of the hospital room with no idea what was going on back home, and the next thing I knew I did the unthinkable.

After two days of hearing nothing about being released from the hospital and the borderline fear that my child was dead, I made a plan of escape. I took the spoon that was finally given to me with a meal and broke it in half. I brought the end of one of the pieces to my wrist, and in front of the camera poised it to make it look like I was trying to cut my own tendons within my arm. Needless to say it did not take long for the doctors to come in and I had a police escort waiting for me to take me to a psychiatric unit where I spent the next two weeks enjoying one of the much needed recoveries I could ever imagine in my life.

It was difficult being in the psychiatric unit for the two weeks. The food was meager, and the company was very depressed most of the time without knowing when anyone would be going home. However, the groups were fun and we were able to color and work with arts and crafts pretty continuously. I excelled in answering questions about how to use re-framing techniques from the social workers, and hearing my baby's voice over the phone finally did so much to bring me once again back to reality that she was fine. I unfortunately did not have a chance to talk to my grandmother the length of time I was in the psychiatric unit, but I did relay messages through my mother, knowing that I would not be able to talk to my grandmother while I was there due to her being at work. I felt so ashamed for what I had done, and thinking she was someone I could not trust. The medications were swiftly helping though, and the thought that the lithium and anxiety medications would be able to work their way through whatever the doctors thought I was struggling with made me feel much safer than I had in years.

Upon my meeting with the doctor to discuss discharge paperwork I asked him what I was being diagnosed with.

"I am diagnosing you with schizophrenia," he stated, and I was so relieved to know that finally after years of going to the veteran's services and doctor after doctor after therapist, that I was actually going to be getting help for what I knew had been a problem misdiagnosed for years. I was released after nearly two weeks back to my grandmother's house and I cannot tell you how magical it felt stepping through the doors, cleaning up my room where my things had been left so disheveled from that awful night.

When I saw my grandmother I lit up like a small child who was visiting for Christmas. I don't think I had been able to hug her like I did for months before with so much burden inside my troubled head. Being medicated felt so surreal because there were no worries like what I had had before. No one was trying to kill my loved ones anymore, my family did not hate me, and there was finally no threat like what I had perceived. My greatest fears died in that emergency room with the last flashes of whatever demonic entity was trying to overtake my life through fantasy and horrible ways of thinking gone now to the silence of medications and wonderful systems of support.

I can say now that I am living peacefully with my family, and enjoying a life where I can talk to a therapist the way I should have been able to ever since I was released form the military years ago. There is no more masking the true problems of what I had been dealing with, and for the first time since 2014 I can walk around the streets and my home knowing I am safe, and most importantly that my family is safe, and there is nothing that anyone can do to take that away from me now.

izophrena