Treatment

This wasn't supposed to happen.

The Record: Cracked

I’m not sure what’s wrong. It comes on so fast. Gravity is suddenly too heavy. 
 
I ride the biggest mare at camp, 16.2 hands and full of nerves. Behind me are twelve children and two counselors, and I have a walkie attached to my belt in case of emergency.
 
On the way up the hill, I’m falling asleep on the back of the mare. 
 
Falling. Asleep.
 
What the fuck is going on?
 
I manage to stay awake long enough to tie her up in the hot sun. 
 
I hide in the tack room. 
 
One of the girls comes in. She tells me to go to the office, that it’ll be okay. But I already know what’s about to happen. 
 
I cannot stay at camp. 
 
My children will be permitted to stay, but I’ll need to pay off the debt.
 
I flee.
 
Days later, back home, I can’t get out of bed without having a panic attack. I lose twenty pounds in five weeks. Brian tries to feed me peanut butter toast, but I can’t swallow it. 
 
I write the camp owner a letter. First, I put in the subject line, I’m sorry. Sorry I had to leave. Sorry I’m losing it. Sorry I screwed you over. 
 
I think about it.
 
Instead, I write, Thank you. 
 
She assures me that sometimes people take on too much at once, that I need to find balance. 
 
But my brain is broken. Melted down. This has nothing to do with namaste. 
 
It takes a year for us to figure out how to stop it, a year before we’ve piled on so many drugs that it’s impossible to know what does what anymore. I am a walking pharmacy with a belly full of pills. My life revolves around little orange bottles.   
 
And then, one day, I feel I am able to breathe once more. My mind shifts from terror to Christmas shopping. And there, just as suddenly as it appeared, that terrible weight of gravity is gone. 

I breathe out. 
 
 


The Record: Stay

My big brother has come down from Oregon to help. We’re new in town, and Brian has to work. I curl up in bed. 
 
The anxiety is actually painful. Physically fucking painful. 
 
Is that even possible?
 
There are blood tests and urine tests, talk therapy and the kind of therapy where they hold a little silver ball in front of your eyes and then wait for magic to happen.
 
It can’t be mental illness. I’m too old for it. They told me that if I got past 25 without a psychotic episode, I was in the clear. No manic depression for me. 
 
But the tests come back, and every single one of them is negative. It’s not my thyroid. It’s not my hormones. It’s not some rare disease that also happens to cause total mental meltdown. 
 
It’s so much worse than all of those things because this is the reality I’ve been running from my whole life. The fear that I will, at long last, become like her. Be sick like her. Because she missed it all, now, didn’t she? 
 
My brother sits on the side of the bed where I lay sobbing. 
 
My life is over. I am doomed to repeat her mistakes, doomed to a miserable existence for whatever remaining days I have left. 
 
We go to my son’s peewee soccer game. I sit and try not to scream in terror. Even the wind makes my skin crawl.
 
On the highway the next day, I briefly consider driving into oncoming traffic. It’s just the thought of whom I might hurt other than myself that keeps me from doing it. 
 
That’s good. 
 
It keeps me alive, even if I’d rather be dead.




The Record: The Riot

My middle brother once threatened schizophrenia, told me that our mom had it. I don’t know if that was true. 
 
But now, I sit around in a circle with a bunch of people as oddly matched as it’s possible to be. 

A chef. 
An addict. 
A schizophrenic businesswoman; she freaks out when you talk about her mother. 
 
My chest seems to be in a constant state of implosion. Pain. I’m too scared to drink wine. Too scared to smoke weed. Too scared, even, for decaf coffee. I try so desperately to keep my balance on the high wire, knowing the slightest breeze will be enough to knock me down, knock me back to an even worse place than today.
 
If that’s possible.
 
There is a woman in our group, our pathetic excuse for therapy. She’s here because she tried to kill herself and failed. She was angry when she woke up and realized she’d been unsuccessful. 
 
She’s older than me, maybe in her late fifties. She looks weather-worn, like she’s been sitting out in the sun asking for money all day. 
 
Of course, she hasn’t, though. She’s been sitting inside with the rest of us; the chef, the addict, the businesswoman, and me. 
 
She’s kind of intimidating. 
 
She’s only allowed to have five dollars a day per her sister’s conservatorship rules. She saves the money to buy cigarettes and a daily can of beer after program.
 
She’s not supposed to do that. 
 
It’s a difficult day; my chest feels extra tight, extra weighted. It’s time for lunch, and I can only eat so many Fage yogurts from the communal fridge. 
 
The woman jumps up and extends her hand to me. It’s been a rough morning.
 
Come on, Jen. Let’s go make some ruckus. 
 
I am blessed.
 
I smile and take her hand.


<<<<< >>>>>


Dear Readers,

These pieces reflect the total dismay I felt during those days back before I was diagnosed with two different mental illnesses. When I was young, around twenty, I had spent some time worrying that I would end up like my mother, up on that hillside thrusting a butcher knife into the side of a tree, screaming. 

That couldn’t be me… could it?

All the literature I had seen at that point had indicated that if I made it past twenty, I would be in the clear.

I was not in the clear. 

Instead, the weight of my greatest fears coming true hit me at thirty-eight, minus the knife. It was like one day my brain just cracked in two. I was devastated and terrified, not because I worried about becoming like her, but because I couldn’t see my way out of the mess I’d found myself in. 

I wrote these pieces because they are an important part of my ever-evolving recovery. Back at the beginning, I’d thought that it wasn’t fair, what I was facing. It took a year to medicate me and for the full weight of the whole thing to lift. I am living proof that it’s possible to come through things that seem impossible to navigate. 

Some people are advocates for meds, and some aren’t, but for me personally they have been absolutely essential to my well-being. They have allowed me to tap into my creativity when I was so unable to do so during that one, terrifying year. Your choice is your choice. This is mine. 

I hope that, for anyone reading this, you know that you are not alone. I know what it’s like to be hit with wave after wave of panic. I know what it’s like to not be able to get out of bed for weeks at a time. I know what it’s like to despair. 

But I’m here to tell you that there is a way through, and you will find it. 

Don’t. Give. Up.


Until next time,

Jen