My First Breakdown

My first “mental breakdown” was a good 7 years in the making (since age 12 for sure), but really longer.  Everything in my life had piled up to the point where it was suffocating me.  I couldn’t make sense of it.  I couldn’t stay on top of it.  I literally could not imagine the future.  When I imagined it, I only saw blackness.  I literally had no idea what my future held for me.  I couldn’t imagine anything at all.  Everything I had experienced had basically been endured (family, school) and I simply could not comprehend the idea of having a life over which I had control.  I couldn’t imagine a life worth living.

At the age of 19, I had my first boyfriend, Owen.  It was an intense and volatile relationship.  We both came from dysfunctional families and had no idea what a normal relationship looked like.  That relationship, like any romantic relationship, activated my core emotions and all of the baggage that comes along with that.  I couldn’t handle it. 

I had been having violent outbursts.  I had a terrible therapist and an even worse psychiatrist.  They gave me an anti-seizure medication to control my increasing anger.  My anger towards my parent had reached disturbing levels for no apparent reason.  I hated them and had thoughts of killing them.  I never would have done that, not even in my darkest moment, but that’s how much I hated them at that time.  I felt like I was crazy.  I didn’t understand (like I do now) that the floodgates had opened and that 19 years worth of hurt, frustration, and anger had boiled to the surface.

I hated myself and didn’t understand what was going on.  I started to “self injure,” although I was reluctant to admit it.  Whatever thoughts of hurting other people I had, I turned against myself and took out on myself.

One night, Owen and I had been drinking and got in a verbal fight in the car on the way home.  He was driving my car.  I was so out of control, I started banging my head against the passenger window of the car while Owen drove.  When we were almost home, he punched the rearview mirror of my car, knocking it off.  For some reason, that act totally sent me over the edge.  By the time we got to his apartment building, I was completely out of control.  When he got out of the car, I also got out and started punching him.  I had enough self-control not to go for his face, so I punched him in the chest instead.  At the exact moment he used a karate move on me (he was a black belt), a neighbor looked out the window to see what was going on.  The only thing he saw was Owen “throwing” me to the ground.

The neighbor happened to be an off-duty police officer.  He called the cops and immediately came outside with his girlfriend.  They thought Owen had been attacking me.  Owen realized how bad the situation looked for him and immediately took off to get my parents, who lived a half-mile away.  When my parents showed up a few minutes later, my dad said something I guess (??!!) in an attempt to calm me down.  He said something like we all have a hard time sometimes.  I told him to f^ck off.  Maybe he was trying to be supportive, but I felt like he was minimizing my experience, implying I was overreacting.  Granted, I was overreacting to the situation at hand, but that’s because I had under-reacted to countless years of other people’s bullshit and my top had completely blown off, so to speak.

My First Everything

Although he was not always the best influence on me, Owen meant well.  He actually did the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.  He encouraged me to apply to the main campus of the University I was attending.  It was a school that is very difficult to get into.  Even though I was already attending a commuter campus, I had to apply as a new student in order to “transfer” to the main campus.  I was totally intimidated because only the smartest people in the state and country went there and I didn’t think I was one of “them.”  But, Owen always told me I was smart and insisted I apply to attend the following year.

So, with his urging and support, I started filling out the application.  I got stuck on my personal statement, but he stayed on my case until I finished it and submitted the application packet. 

 

A few months later, to my shock and amazement, I was accepted!  I could not believe it was real.  I was just accepted to one of the best schools in the country.  I was finally going to be able to get out of this horrible town I grew up in.  I was finally going to be able to get away from my family.  I was jubilant.  My hope that things might get better was renewed.

It was still a rough ride from there.  It took me many years to work through all of my issues, including the abuse and neglect I experienced during the first two decades of my life.  I had three “mental breakdowns” to get through over the following 14 years.

I don’t know what would have happened to me if Owen had not insisted I take that risk. 

I don’t know if I would be alive today.  I don’t think I would have made it.  I certainly wouldn’t be in one piece.  Based on my two short-lived stays in my hometown since originally departing, I know my addiction issues would have been much worse.  And the available mental health care was terrible.  The therapist I saw before I finally “escaped” my family and hometown insisted I had been sexually abused as a child (which I had not been).  And the psychiatrist I saw gave me anti-seizure medications instead of the anti-depressants I desparately needed.  He also shared inappropriate sex-related information with me and prescribed a medication that decreased the efficacy of the birth control pills I was taking without telling me that this was the case.  If I hadn’t escaped that “madhouse,” I would have ended up like my grandmother Bernadine.