After my job as a case manager ended I spent a few months on unemployment looking for jobs. I also spent those months marathon running towards a total mental breakdown. I had a friend in a different, bigger city than me and we decided it would be a great time for me to pack up my stuff and move on up. I would go and spend a lot of time at her place applying for jobs and going on interviews. I also spent many an evening drinking, partying and getting rides home from total strangers. Each evening the girls got together to go out I would promise myself that when everyone else decided it was time to go home, I would as well. It never turned out that way. I would stay well past closing in a bar parking lot talking to people who I‘d only *known* for an hour. As the last few cars were pulling out of the parking lot I would ask any of the remaining people if I could catch a ride home with them. I had the address written on a piece of paper in my pocket because I hadn’t committed it to memory yet. I was in a city considered one of the most dangerous cities in Kansas, getting a ride home with strangers to a place that I couldn’t find. Yet somehow I lived to tell about it. I thank mania for that.

At this point in time I hadn’t even been diagnosed but looking back on it there is no other reason in the world I would have such disregard for my own safety. Mania can be the biggest, baddest ego boost ever. I honestly think the reason no one messed with me is because I believed so much in myself that I appeared intimidating to others. Plus, I was fun to be around and most folks probably hoped I would be back out the next night to entertain them again, and usually I was.

During the days I would interview for jobs. Believe it or not I got a few and I turned them down. Inside I knew I was on a train wreck heading for face to face combat with a demon. I knew who she was, I just hadn’t met her yet. I didn’t take any of those jobs because they involved being responsible for helping people and I knew, deep down inside, I was the one who was needing the help.

The only place I really knew that could help me was the place where I used to work as a case manager. My employment there did not end well (another story, another day). I don’t know what the final blow was but one day I walked back into that office and asked for help. I had a huge lump in my throat, I thought it was going to block my air passage and that I would gag and choke and die right there on the waiting room floor. I imagined my old boss smoking a cigar and dancing around in glee reveling in the fact that I had lost my mind.

I also knew the small strange details the folks on the other side of the therapist’s desk didn’t know. I knew I had to dress in a certain way because I knew the intake officer would comment on what I was wearing and how I looked in the intake notes. They would process my live body the way a mortician processes the dead.

I was assigned a Psychologist (talk therapy) and a Psychiatrist (medication) and the diagnosing fun began. I was first diagnosed with major depression and social anxiety. That’s a pretty harmless diagnosis. I came into contact with a few of those idiots that think you should just pull yourself up by the bootstraps but I quickly deleted them from my life. I have always had a hard time with ignorance, especially those who don’t even attempt to educate themselves about something that is affecting someone close to them. But yeah, depression and anxiety, not a bad diagnosis at all.

So, we spent a year talking about my issues, blah, blah, blah. I was still depressed and still found it very hard to leave my house. This was not a success.

We played around with different anti depressants. I wasn’t finding much relief with any of them. I think it was the fifth one we tried and after only a few hours I was cured!!!!! It felt magical. I was elated. This was my wonder drug and I no longer needed therapy. I was totally motivated to get things done. I decided I would write a book on mental illness. I was sure that I was the only person in the world who held the secrets to recovery. I needed to let others know they didn’t have to sit back and let the depression rule their lives.

I wanted newness. I wanted to cleanse my surroundings. I was free and I wanted rid of all old, stuffy, stuck energy. I began to clean, furiously clean. I dusted, polished and organized everything. I went to my friends houses to dust, polish and organize for them. I had to share this renewed energy with those I loved. I started to write in journals. I went to the art supply store and bought hundreds of dollars worth of painting supplies. Even though I had never shown an interest in being an artist I was convinced me and my oil painted stick figures could run circles around Salvador Dali. Please.

In fact no one could touch me in all my greatness. I didn’t need sleep so I could do the work of two people. I could be a writer and a painter. I could and I would.

I didn’t need the shrinks anymore. I was done and I planned on telling them this.

Things really didn’t go as planned when I arrived at the Doctors office. As I’ve already stated in a previous entry I was told I was bipolar and I refused to believe it because I had that darn degree in Psychology and had been a case manager. I was immune. Talk about ignorant, or delusional.

I was livid when I learned I was to be taken off this new wonder drug and put on something that was going to bring me “down a bit, level me out.” What? I couldn’t understand what the hell these people wanted from me. We had worked for over a year to lift me up and once I got there they wanted to bring me back down? What kind of psychobabble, nonsense, bullshit is that?

It was then I was introduced to Lithium. Some people have some crazy, romanticized idea about Lithium, especially people my age, people who were in that *generational angst/no one knows how we feel* period when Nirvanna exploded onto the scene. Ohhhh, Lithium, ohhhhhh, it must be such a cool drug if Kurt Cobain sings about it. I know for some Lithium has been a life saver, for me, it was the beginning of hell.