I am completely taken back by people sometimes!!! I commented on a new friends facebook post concerning her depression. so I made the comment, "pills are just a band-aid. you need to figure out the root of the problem if you are to completely heal" or something to that effect. Evidently she was so upset about this that she took the time to compose a blog stating what she has gone through saying that since my "new friends" do not understand that I have bi-polar and depression and that I need to be on meds. This really hurt me and pissed me off because as I am reading this it sounds like what I went through. Only difference are: I am a functional person and she is not. I got through all of my illnesses without the use of a shrink or anyone. I put in the time and researched my problems. Found out that there were simple things that I could do within my day to stave off my anxiety or my depression or my blind rage. I didn't make other people in my life go thru a living hell because I didn't get my way. Nor did I give up upon myself and take pills that do not address the heart of the matter!!!!
If you are a person dealing with mental illness I have nothing but understanding and tolerance for you but do not assume that I do not know what you are going through based on my outer appearance. I have mental illnesses. so much so that I should be heavily sedated and in the psych ward. But I am not. Why you ask? if i have such bad mental health then why am I free roaming on the streets without medication? well for one I cannot afford any type of medication so I had to seek out other means of helping myself. I went to my college psych person back when I was 19 and they gave the test to see how badly I was messed up and I scored a 72/80 for severe depression w feelings of persecution. Sure I was told to go on meds but everything he gave me turned me into a walking zombie. So I did something about it. It wasn't till i got admitted to the first psych ward that I realized my anxiety was out of control; not to mention the stress that all of the rapes placed upon me turned my psyche upside down. interesting enough I still maintained a job. Then the second time around I was in a county psych ward- I had just gotten diagnosed with cervical cancer and they cryogenically froze my cervix which led to lots of internal bleeding while I was on my way to work one morning. I pulled over into a store and they called the police since I couldn't afford an ambulance. my mother was in Vegas so when the police came all they could do was drive me to the nearest county psych ward since no one could pick me up. I spent a week in that hell hole with people trying to convince me that I was crazy; that I was the wrong one and they were in fact WRONG. An Indian doctor there just looked at me and told me that I didn't belong in there. he grabbed my hand and told me that there wasn't anything wrong with me and turned my hand palm up and read it. He said that I was destined for so much more than this place. He explained that my life will be one of success if i could get out of here and gave me a hug. I never saw him there again but he is the reason that I am not there...
For me, it was crucial to look at my life and see where I went wrong.I needed to understand what was going on internally so that I could address all of my issues: my anxiety, depression with thoughts of persecution, Irritable bowel syndrome, emotionally induced illnesses, chronic fatigue syndrome, my rapes, high fevers, insomnia, neurotic thought patterns and migraines. Smoking marijuana helped focus my brain so I could understand what it was the was bothering me so much. A healthier diet helped give me the minerals/vitamins to overcome my chemical imbalances. Learned to control my breathing and when I feel the onset of a panic attack I can calm myself down enough to control it. all Of my issues stemmed from the harsh treatment of my father. Due to the nature of how i came into being he never forgave me when my mother chose to carry me to term even though I could have killed her. He opted for abortion as did her sister. For once I am grateful that my mother's catholic upbringing is the reason that I am here today. 19 years of physical, emotional, and verbal abuse likened me to a rose growing underneath concrete. trying to find any way to grow underneath the weight of my father. it was his belief that i was the devil incarnate and that i was too weak to survive this place. I became his full whipping girl by 8 when my bother left for west point. I survived 11 more years of being told to stop lying about dad or i don't believe you. But my mother knew but she was going thru the same thing and she couldn't help me. My brother was long gone and when i was 13 Nana, my protector, died which gave me no more places to hide. all of these events were piling up in my head and I was forcing myself to feel them; acknowledge them so that I could understand the meaning behind all of the pain. Once I stripped away the layers of lessons that i was suppose to learn and didn't I realized that they were making me understand my patterns. I kept making the same mistakes again and again and each time the consequence of not learning said lesson made my life worse. I began paying attention to my body; since that is the physical response to something internally wrong. I started to understand what my triggers are that were causing me to feel this way. Started to understand what others do to also bring on my triggers and i learned to stop them before they happened. I went to the gym to get my endorphins up and I challenged myself during the day by doing things that were slightly out of my comfort zone to break out of my armored shell. Bought a book called Healing with Whole Foods and it opened my eyes to an eastern/western philosophy that made sense to me and I have been mostly free of my issues for the last 10years.
So when I read/ hear things like what she wrote it infuriates me. Am I stronger than her? no. I just made a different choice to fix myself nothing more or less.
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