For this, my first unit of my second year of medical school, we are studying Neuro and Psych. For the psych portion we were asked to write an essay via the following prompt:
I debated on whether or not to post this. I may or may not remove it in the future, but at least for now, I've kept so many details secret for so long that I thought there might be something liberating, something healing in sharing it.
....So if you care, here goes...
Brain and Behavior: Mental Illness Reflection
I think you have a tendency to assume that what you are exposed to is normal, but looking back, my childhood was anything but. I was six years old when my twin brothers were born. I heard the words post-partum depression thrown around regarding my mother, but I don’t think you can really understand the magnitude of that word at six years old. That word, the word that would shape my childhood and adolescent life, that took my parents from me, and that I am still trying to fully understand, depression.
That first encounter was mild. All I understood was that mommy was sad. I’d bring her food and ask her if she wanted to watch movies with me as I watched her slowly waste away, lying in bed, not eating.
My brothers were 7 weeks premature and I remember how excited I was when they were finally released from the hospital. Since mommy was sick it was my responsibility to look after them. I fed them. I dressed them. I bathed them. I was six. In retrospect that is not normal, but it is what I was exposed to.
My mom got better, but my childhood was full of ups and downs. My mother who is diagnosed as bi-polar schizophrenic would have episodes of mania. I’d come home to a room full of a thousand dollar’s worth of Christmas decorations that she decided to buy or to her ripping up the living room carpet, because she decided that afternoon that she didn’t like it. When I was younger I thought it was fun, but as I got older I’d be frustrated with her. There were still the sad times too. The times when mommy couldn’t handle all of us kids fighting in the back of the car and screamed, threatening to drive us off the road, the times when she spent her days in bed. No groceries. No dinners. No rules.
I’m not surprised that social services were called. I didn’t understand why I was called into the office at first. I answered the questions the nice stranger asked me, but soon learned to be more guarded. The things that happened at home were a secret.
I grew up. Depression was a part of my life, annoying sometimes. It meant no rides to school, no meals, but more than anything it hurt. It hurts to watch people you care about suffer. I tried my best to make it right, to take care of mommy but the cycles continued. Regardless of what I did she’d rebound and then relapse.
My dad was always a strength in my life. He was a locksmith. He worked hard and he wanted me to have the things he hadn’t. He stressed education and integrity. He told me I was smart. When I told him I wanted to be a doctor, he told me I would do it. He was strong. He had all the answers. I was a daddy’s girl.
Daddy first became depressed when I was 13. After years of ups and downs with a wife who suffered from mental illness, struggling to make ends meet taking care of six kids, after a bout of bad health, and after losing the home we’d been building, it was too much. Seeing someone like him, who had previously been so strong, so steadfast, become a shadow of his former self scared me. He was so weak. He couldn’t work. He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t sleep.
Mom was depressed during this time too. This was the first time when both of my parents were broken. Where before my father could supplement, and supply groceries or food when he got home from work, or the occasional rides to school and friend’s houses, now there was no one.
Mom got better. So did dad. It’s almost like they fed off one another after that point. As if there mutual depression had increased their co-dependence to extend to both their emotional and physical health. Things were better for a year or so, but then things changed.
I remember walking outside of school that day. My mother had our family car packed to the max. She explained that she had come to pick me up from school, but that after that she would be leaving. I was in shock. I was angry. I told her to leave and ran back inside the school.
The initial events surrounding that time are somewhat blurred, but it wasn’t long before dad fell. Without his wife, my mother there, he didn’t know how to function. He quit going to work. He quit eating. He spent his days lying on the couch, rarely showering, afraid to leave the house, and at times visibly shaking from his anxieties. I missed over 60 days of school that year, my ninth grade year. I couldn’t leave him alone. He was so scared and so visibly fragile. He had been my hero, my strength, and he was crumbling. I had 4 younger siblings to look after. Mom had left and dad was broken. I was 15.
When he started talking about suicide I was scared. I didn’t know what to do, but I felt responsible to stay home and look after him. I felt responsible to try and convince him that I and my siblings were enough for him to live for and to talk him down when he was making threats to end his life. A few times he drove around with a gun. This made his threats more real. When he sought my mother out threatening to kill her and then himself, they again became more real. When he told me how he would do it, not with pills as they might simply leave him with brain damage, not by hanging because it was not effective enough. They became more real. When he told me he would use a gun, when he held his hand to his head like the 9 mm he would eventually use, they became the most real. First under his chin, he explained you may simply shoot your face off, then to his temple, he explained it would not be effective enough. But here, and he held his fingers in his mouth, this is where I will do it. It severs the brainstem, it’s the cleanest, the most effective, he explained. I was 15.
I started sleeping in a sleeping bag next to him at night. He was so feeble, so lonely. He hated to be alone so I stayed home. I missed school. I took care of him, of everyone.
June 3, 2002. The day the threats became action. I sometimes flash back to that night. I feel myself pushing past those unfamiliar men standing outside my home, the police pulling me back. I remember wanting to go inside. I wanted to lie down in my bed and forget those flashing blue and red lights, the neighbors lined along the street watching us like some sort of freak show, the tears shining on my younger brother’s and sister’s faces, and the image of my father’s lifeless body lying upstairs in the house I so desperately fought to enter. It was over.
It’s fair to say that I have had experience with mental illness. In fact, I’ve spent the majority of my life trying to understand it in an effort to make sense of the things that have happened. The events might have climaxed, but the toll they took on my family, my siblings, and myself have been slow to heal.
Stigma and mental illness? It’s real. People are afraid to admit they are seeing a counselor or that they are taking anti-depressants, because it’s not socially acceptable to do so. There are parts of society that attribute mental illness to personal weakness on the part of the patient. Mental illness is a disease. These discriminations are unfounded.
As far as my experiences with mental illness and discrimination, I’ve been affected in a few ways. There have been boys I’ve dated that questioned my mental state because of that of my parents, ones that have projected that because of my experiences I will be damaged and not worth investing in. Besides from the discrimination placed on me by others, there is also the portions that have been self-inflicted. The shame I’ve felt to admit where I’ve come from. The fear that people would project that I was ‘white trash’ or mentally unstable because of my circumstances though sometimes founded were also due to insecurities I placed on myself because of my own personal prejudices regarding mental illness.
I’m 24 now. I’m still making sense of the things that have happened, but I have come a long way. Through time I’ve come to recognize that though my experiences have shaped me they are not a reflection of what or who I am. By finally being more open about what has happened, at least to a few that I know I can trust, I’ve been able to let go of some of the shame I have felt and much of what I consider my own prejudices regarding mental illness. Perhaps, and I am hoping, this unit on brain and behavior and a closer study of mental illness will bring me the rest of the way.
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