It took 9 years.
9 years of initial assessments that were never followed through, of months of observations that did not evolve into diagnoses, of lows of incomprehensible depth and of highs that took me out and gave me enough hope only to have me go deeper again.
When my therapist this morning said that her clinical assessment was Bipolar II disorder, which will either be affirmed or negated by a psychiatrist, something that I have known and lived and felt for the better part of the last decade (if it was not my appeals for help that would make it apparent, it would be the ways the scars have etched themselves on my skin), I felt… light.
I also felt vindicated, and angry, and fucking devastated.
If I had money to get a diagnosis when it was first mentioned by a school counselor, if I felt safe talking about it to my family (and everything that have led to and exacerbated by it — anorexia, bulimia and my dentist’s pondering about the state of degradation of my teeth, my generalised anxiety disorder, my PTSD, the ways my body have been made entertainment and the assault that it has weathered), if I didn’t stop talking to my last therapist because of the shame that came with not being able to come forward as a survivor of assault… then maybe I could have gotten better faster.
Then maybe every hypomanic episode would not have been just the rare combination of the sun on my skin or good sleep or a blip in my cycle or, I don’t know, the food I had?
Or maybe every depressive moment would not have been just, “Ah, fuck. I want to die again.”
—
It’s almost absurd: how if I had the crossed wires in my brain straightened 9 years ago when it first manifested, then maybe I would be in a better place now.
Instead, I’m constantly on high alert, terrified of the next big trigger, my friends, exhausted and running to my rescue, every time I talk about Ending It All.
I won’t, but god have I thought of it so many times.
I would have given up everything the last 9 years if it meant I would have had the help I needed, wouldn’t have hurt the people I care about; if I had known that 9 years later, I would be standing outside my flat, rifling through my phone, Google searching “psychiatric hospitals near me”, because the thoughts were swirling so heavily and quickly and if I don’t do anything then I would explode.
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It has been the most difficult time — I have not felt as little ardor for life than I have the last couple months, when the pits of depression have called on me so loudly I have succumbed to it. I have held my palms over my ears, eyes shut tightly, begging the voices in my head to stop screaming at me, because I’m starting to listen. I have scratched at myself, have gone to school with a heavy fog circling my head, my eyes always exhausted from sleeping too little or too much.
I’m tired.
So, so fucking tired.
But I think I’m ready to fight still. Again.
Of perpetual finds 