The Day The World Delivers Me Flowers
Trigger/Content Warning: This post includes sensitive topics including Bipolar Disorder, Suicide Ideation, Depression, Acne , Discussion of Pscyh Medications + Side Effects
It was two years ago today that I chose to live. Again. For a second time. Even though I had been saved from my overdose two months prior, I was still stuck. I was stuck waiting for the meds to “kick in”, I was stuck in my trauma identity that I had become blanketed in ever since my Aunt Anne committed suicide, and I was stuck in the middle of winter. I was also stuck on read, waiting to hear from a boy whose ringtone on my phone was a train because thats what my heart felt like every time we talked, a freight train passing through my bedroom. He was a boy I had fallen in love with earlier that Fall but had yet to meet (thanks to Tinder for showing up when you’re traveling out-of-state and get a good match while you’re on the way back home at an airport at 4am). I know it sounds silly but I was extremely stimulated by him via texting for sometimes over six hours a day. Us writing novels back and forth to each other with our thumbs was the first experience where I began to realized I didn’t need sex like I was conditioned to believe I did and just might fall somewhere on the asexual spectrum, but that is a story for another day.
I was stuck. And to be honest I had been comfortable living in that victim identity despite everything I preached from the hospital bed when I begged the police to let me go home because I “didn’t mean it” and would “never do something like that again!” The series of inpatient and outpatient programs that followed my overdose were exhausting. It was my second time going through the inpatient, then partial, then outpatient system like that but was the first time I was under such close supervision for a new medication that was highly dangerous for 1 in 1,000 people. What if I was that one? I wasn’t. But it took six weeks for the medication to build up and you had to be under close watch for a life-threatening rash that could develop. Along with a long list of other less threatening but still scary side effects. The rash never showed, I honestly wasn’t feeling a difference in my mood or my depressive episode, and I couldn’t help but feel terrible that I was losing the fighting attitude I had in the hospital bed that day when I vowed to always want to live.
I frequently had intrusive thoughts of wanting to hurt myself while on psych medications. While I was transitioning onto this new medication that would make everything better but could also kill me I had some of the most vivid urges that I would never otherwise identify with. A lot of the psych medications on the market warn that things will get worse before they get better, but I was in the deep end of worse. On one occasion when I was still in the hospital I journaled about my deep desire to take the boom boxes we could check out from the front desk by the handle and bash my head with it. When I told the nurse I was having this thought they simply said “I’ll tell your psychiatrist you are having these thoughts.” When I told my mom that I had this thought, well, first it broke her heart, and then she and I made the decision that that hospital was not the right place for me to be. I was checked out and placed on a waitlist for a different hospital in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. In the brief overlap where I had to stay at my mom’s before I could get checked into the new hospital, I went for a walk in freezing cold winter weather where I laid in a bank of snow in the dark and thought, “I wouldn’t care if I froze to death right here.”
Before I even gave it credit, my body has always been my temple. My fighter. My healer. My energy source that knows what I need before I do. It has helped me withstand more than I ever knew I could handle. It has reacted for me, on my behalf, out of protection when my mind wanted to sabotage my future and make me cut my life short. It also has been able to communicate to me when something was very wrong. My skin had begun broking out terribly prior to my overdose, a mix of the medication I was on had put it over the edge and the adult acne I was used to flaring up around my special time of the month had taken over my whole face and neck. Not your typical acne, but huge bumps that were cyst like and hurt to touch. The only way to relieve some of the pain was to pop them. Which of course in turn made it worse. It was hard to look at myself in the mirror most days. I didn’t even recognize the person I was anymore. But instead of listening to my temple, that was warning me that something wasn’t right with what I was taking - I was stuck in my trauma identity and believing I deserved it on some level. That I had always had acne, so of course I would continue to have acne. I wish I could have seen what my body was telling me. I wish I would have listened.
So on Valentines Day, two years ago. Two months after my overdose I found myself working a double at the salad bar in the Public Market. I was back living in Milwaukee and just making it day to day, counting on the medication to start working any moment now. They told me I would be “happy” and “back to a normal version of myself” within six weeks, it had been eight. I don’t remember much from that day, or really any of those shifts at the salad bar. I don’t know how I was communicating with people, or even dealing with frequent human interaction feeling the way I did about my skin on top of everything else, but I remember an urge I got, almost out of nowhere, that morning where I decided I wanted to make that day as good as I could for other people. I went to the Dollar Store before my shift to get sticky heart window decals so people could have a dose of love with their buffalo chicken salad.
That feeling continued through the day and as the end of my shift was approaching I decided I wanted to treat myself to a chocolate mousse slice of cake and a bottle of red wine after work that night. I promised myself I would have a self-care evening and even though I was spending Valentines Day alone, I would give myself all the love I had been denying myself. Part of giving myself that love was writing a letter to the boy who left me on read. Not for him, but for me. So I could gain some closure and move forward. Make space. For me.
That night I remembered that I had lent my good friend two of my favorite books earlier that fall - The Secret and Follow Your Passion And Find Your Power. Two books about the Law Of Attraction and manifesting the life you desire through the universal law of Like Attracts Like. I grew up Catholic and never identified much with religion, but when I was a teenager I was introduced to the concept of the Law Of Attraction and felt a resonation like never before. I talked about it with my Auntie Anne who was also on The Secret kick. We frequently would share and compare notes on all the amazing and wonderful things we were attracting in our lives. It was addicting and contagious and became my belief system when I didn’t have one.
When she died, I stopped believing in almost everything. I let my favorite books fall to the back of the bookshelf and honestly forgot about a universal law that kept at work even while I chose to live in my trauma identity and allow feelings of sadness, low self worth, and pain overrule my life. I like to believe that Auntie Anne gave me the nudge that morning to go to the Dollar Store and helped me remember the books. The next day I asked my friend for the books back and as soon as I got them I felt a shift inside of me. I was done waiting for the medication to work and show up for me, I was going to have to show up for myself.
I chose to shift my mindset that day. I chose to live. Again. And ever since then Valentines Day has been a day of radical self-love for me. I am a huge anniversary and date person, I remember everything and latch onto numbers and enjoy marking time. So when I could feel that mark of the shift coming up this time last year I knew what I needed to do. I needed to see who I was without medication.
After two and a half years of trail and error with over ten different psych medications providing more side effects than benefits I made the decision that I wanted to see who I was without it all. I had become so afraid to return to any version of myself before my Auntie Anne’s suicide, my own personal suicide ideation, my bipolar diagnoses, and my self harm urges and was conditioned to believe by everyone in the mental health industry that I was working with that I wouldn’t be able to do it. I remember asking my therapist at the time if she had any successful clients who were off of their medication and diagnosed Bipolar and she shook her head slowly and told me I would never be able to do that, after only seeing me two times.
I chose to believe otherwise, and without the support of mental health professionals I was left to do it alone. A month before February 14th I began cutting up my remaining pills very meticulously and weened myself off very slowly. I know the risks involved there, and as I was doing this I made a promise to myself that if it felt wrong at any time I would seek help immediately. I also had told two people very close to me that could help keep an eye on me through the transition. All the scary literature on the internet about withdrawal symptoms prevented me from doing it before but I thought if I did it so slowly, I might be okay.
February 13th came and I had one sliver of Lamictal left to take on February 14th. I was feeling fine. I hadn’t had any major withdrawal symptoms and was honestly feeling almost no difference at all. Except that a lot of my dark thoughts were starting to fade (cool!). And my skin was starting to clear up (wait, so it wasn’t just me???). I was really doing this.
Today marks one year off of all of my psych medications and I am sitting here in tears typing this particular paragraph with chills up and down my legs and spine. I feel like I could scream from the top of a roof top about how proud I am of myself for choosing to trust me when so many people were telling me that I would never be able to live a successful life off of medication. I understand the role that medication plays for people and that it saves lives. I am not arguing that medication can’t save lives and keep those living with mental illness healthy, I am only telling my truth about how it wasn’t right for me. I know people that swear by their medication and are living successful, beautiful, flourishing lives. And the truth is, I would never tell someone they couldn’t do something. I knew how that felt.
I am not saying that this year was easy breezy beautiful and I didn’t run into hard lessons along the way, I am always learning how to feel better and find rhythm in my life to stay healthy. But now, instead of going to my psychiatrist for a medication check up, I am reaching out to my therapist and dealing with the emotional root of a lot of my triggers, patterns, and cycles. I am thrilled to have found a therapist who said that she would work with me despite my desire to stay off of medication. She reminds me often about how self-aware I am and is a cheerleader for my own healing path and helps me in ways no other health professional has helped me before.
I am working on healing relationships, most importantly with myself. I became comfortable hiding behind my trauma identity for too long and I am working to shed that skin. Literally. I still have scars to show for the way my skin cried out for help while on medication, but they continue to heal more every single day, week, month. I became very comfortable in that identity, but I know that place, and that mask doesn’t serve me anymore. I am ready to shift into a mindset of healed instead of hurt. A lifestyle of thriving instead of surviving. I am ready to not walk on eggshells and wonder if I can handle what is around the next corner, because I made it to this milestone. I have made it around many corners.
I made it to this place of trusting myself, and knowing what Jenna looks like off of medication. Being bipolar means that everything could change in a moment, and I understand that that could always mean I will need to reroute my healing path. But for now, I have found a rhythm that works for me. And now, every year, Valentines Day will be my anniversary of when I chose to live. Again. And again. And again. And it just happens to be on a day when the world is flooded with flowers, and chocolates, and expressions of love. And though I know it’s original meaning, I am grateful to have reinvented it for myself so that it feels like this time every year, the world is showing up for me and delivering me flowers.
