I’m sharing my journey in hopes I can educate people on mental illness. It’s taken me an entire year to talk to others outside of family & a few close friends. And I still am uncomfortable talking about something that is very private to me. So in healing myself & offering a better understanding of what a mental illness is, I’m sharing my story. 

At Lasting hope, they took me off all medications I was on. Some drugs I had to be weaned off of. A psychiatrist was on board. I would see her through out my stay. They needed to observe me to get a correct diagnosis. I was given a higher dosage of Abilify. She suspected I was Bipolar. But she wouldn’t know for sure until she had fully assessed me. I still thought PTSD. I’d lost my mom. Had breast cancer,. My son was hurt in Afghanistan and I was my dads caregiver while he lost his battle to Lou Gehrig’s disease. Then my sister had end stage renal disease. In my mind, she was going to die soon. And no one could convince me differently. I wasn’t in reality. I was obsessing about many things, I was posting weird things on social media. I had lost 35 pounds and became obsessed with buying all new clothes. My spending was becoming a huge problem. Financially, I was sinking us. My husband, said packages were coming to the house every day for me while I was hospitalized. I was spending an enormous amount of money. And we wee to a point where I had spent it all. Once I got past the first 3 days, I began to sleep better. They had classes, meetings, therapy sessions with your psychiatrist and fun nights, movies, ice cream socials etc. As a social butterfly I didn’t have any problem getting a long with anyone except for one young man. I was the oldest patient and for some reason he targeted me. He would taunt me, make fun of me, and he wanted it known that he was a gang banger. He literally wouldn’t leave me a lone. At one point we were in group therapy and he stood behind my chair. Another patient knew he had been harassing me and she told him to leave me a lone. He wouldn’t leave & was getting closer to me. He was scaring me. I did the only thing I could think of and that was to start screaming at him to leave me alone. I went to my room and hid behind a chair. The nursing staff came and promised he would no longer bother me. I made it very clear that if he continued to harass me, they’d be dealing with Steve. He was pissed it was going on. All I wanted was for him to stay away from me. I was transferred to another wing of the hospital. I was only there two days and they scheduled a family meeting. Steve, the kids and 4 of my doctors were there. I finally got an official diagnosis of Bipolar 1, manic depressive. I had been manic and had no idea. Problem solved. Or so I thought. 

I was released in care of my family. It was so strange being out of the hospital. I remember the sun being really bright & it hurt my eyes. I couldn’t remember how to drive home. I was afraid to go anywhere. My husband and daughter had taken everything over. I had no credit cards, no bank account access and for the first time in my life, I wasn’t in charge of our finances. That was a hard pill to swallow. I always had done a great job of budgeting but I literally spent all our money. I had to ask permission now to even grocery shop. I felt as if I were constantly being policed by my family. I’m a very independent woman & this was very difficult for me. The more I learned of the things I had did or said during my manic episodes made me cringe with humiliation. I was embarrassed and ashamed. I didn’t want anybody to know that I was battling a serious condition. But I will say this, if it hadn’t been for family and a handful of close friends, I don’t know how I could of survived my ordeal. 

Now that hat I was out of the hospital I was starting to feel like my old self. But as the days went by, I was sliding back into my mania. The thing is, I didn’t know it at the time. My husband took me to our lake house for some relaxation. It was far from relaxing. I was delusional. The things I did or said were real to me but my husband knew I still wasn’t well. I again would not sleep and was hallucinating. My husband was terrified I’d leave the house & drown in the lake. I remember looking out the patio doors at the lake and seeing headlights on the Levy. I kept insisting that people were waiting for me. I kept telling Steve to get dressed. It took him a long time to get me back to bed. And even then, sleep evaded me. We left the next morning & Steve was exhausted. He was terrified to go to sleep in worries that I’d do something. Earlier in the week I had kept my daughter awake by calling her non stop. I remember laying on the kitchen floor in a fetal position crying uncontrollably. I left her probably 50 messages. Reality had completely escaped me.