Seven years ago, I found a man that had shot himself in the head in the driver’s seat of an older model SUV. He committed suicide on the top floor of the parking garage where I worked. I found on the cameras that he entered the garage around 4:30am and was not a resident nor did he have any connections to residents or the property. I thought that he drove to the top floor to watch the sunrise. Yet his car faced the west and to this day I wonder if he was facing east and he did see the sunrise if he may have decided not to kill himself. I had to work with the police and maintenance to clean it up the mess. The mess being his brains and blood on the concrete. I was a robot and just doing what needed to be done. One of my employees was strongly affected by this suicide because his brother had committed suicide not even 5-years past. I am not sure of the specific events in my life that followed this suicide, but this specific incident set me into a bit of a spin. Not a reckless spin necessarily but enough that I went back to seeing a therapist.
A few times to my therapist and she knew I needed a psychiatrist which meant I needed drugs. I had not been on medication for about 2 and a half years. I always wondered if I was going to write that. Not being on medication is such an irresponsible thing when you have bi-polar and in no way am I promoting it. For me I was in the steadiest place I had ever been in my life up to that point. I had an amazing support system of friends and family that knew the real me, all of me, and I had a steady job, and this was the most consistent time in my life since high school. So, I always knew if things would start to go south, I would have eyes and ears all over so being asked to get on meds again seemed like the right thing to do.
This doctor was different though. She did not know what meds to put me on. She had no idea of my history; I mean 10-years back I was at the same facility for therapy and meds but that was so long ago. This doctor knew nothing about me. So out of all the doctors I had in the past 18 or so years, she had me tested to know how to treat me properly, ethically. What. A. Concept.
So that jack ass doctor that did not believe I was mentally ill because I am self-aware and positive mostly, he simply said have a glass of wine at night, you do not need meds. Well, this doctor said let’s see and so I was tested. And boy did I test. Bi-polar II (which now 7 years later may be BP1), depression, social anxiety, general anxiety, PTSD and wait for it- ADHD. So, at 37 and a half I was a newly diagnosed mentally ill patient again. I had some extra layers to sort through and that was cathartic for me.
Being mentally ill is not cut and dry and it is not something you can just mention and move on. It is an active illness and the more you speak of it and the more head on you are to it and the treatment, the more you can work with it and add it to your life. In 2016 that is what I did. I leaned in and rediscovered myself monitoring medications, taking all the pills in the morning and at night and sometimes throughout the day. It is not glamorous to say the least! It is a very, very real illness. I truly do not think people know how much medicine I take daily. I mean it is the same number of pills as a cancer patient, or my grandmother. It is a lot. When I am down or going through a mental challenge, it bums me out to see it all. But then I must think how incredibly lucky I am that I get to take these meds. So many people do not have access to them or have heard bad things or even experienced the wrong mix of meds. Days like that are days that I say I find the joy in the little things. The fact that I have medications that make me better is a blessing.
I am trying to make these posts smaller and more specific to incidents and events that happen to me. I will wrap this up where it started. A man with a gun took his own life in an area he was not from and had no connections at all to the building. I think about that, and it makes me feel sad for him. It makes me feel like he was so alone moments before he ended his life. It makes me understand how hard life is for other people too. It makes me wish that we could all talk more freely when we are experiencing mental challenges. PTSD is an odd illness that snuck up on me with this incident. So, I will close with that, lots of new layers were added to me because of this one incident and now I can say I am grateful for that. Seven years later!!
Layers 