thepsychoticdiariesblog-blog

[thepsychoticdiariesblog-blog]

I was a lucky one, one out of one thousand. I expected Postpartum Depression, given my history, but I’d never even heard of this. I couldn’t fathom it and I couldn’t prepare.

Postpartum Psychosis.

Some statistics: According to the CDC, about 1 out of 9 women suffer from Postpartum Depression. (Source) People with a history of depression are more likely to suffer it, as well as if the pregnancy was unplanned or things in the woman’s life were less than ideal. We had prepared for that contingency, discussed it with the doctor that we thought it was likely, had a plan to implement Zoloft before the girl was born.

Let’s rewind for a moment. Here’s where our story begins.

In October 2015, my mother died. I don’t remember my last words to my mother, or when we had last talked. She lived up in Idaho, I live down here in Oklahoma. I am not especially close to my family. Facebook has facilitated some relationships, but I spent most of my childhood raised away from the rest of my family, including other siblings. I was raised, in effect, mostly as an only child. Just the three of us, my father, who’d passed in 2010, my mother, and me.

My relationship with my mother was complicated like your relationship with fire is complicated. It’s warm and comforting, it lights up the room, but can also burn everything down around it. She had a history of abuse visited upon her, and never let that go, even though she had been safe for years. She suffered from some sort of Bipolar depression, though never got treatment. She’d been committed to a hospital twice in her lifetime. Somewhere in her mind, she was always a girl of 20, ready to escape at a moment’s notice. During my lifetime, her escape was opiates, an addiction she hid behind a diagnosis of Fibromyalgia. She died alone on the floor of her apartment, having pushed away most of her family, convinced they were all out to get her. We had our weekly phone calls, I tried just to be there for her, as much as I could, without judgment. There was no point in that.

I didn’t really deal with her death. I didn’t go up to Idaho, there was no funeral, there was just a mound of possessions in a run-down hotel that housed ex-cons. My sister was on the ground and took care of the details. I didn’t know really what to do...I took a few days off, tried to wrap my head around it, and eventually set it aside, unsure what to do with this knowledge. She was dead. I’d been expecting and been prepared for her death since I was a child. Now it’s happened. Well, now what?

Next time: Two Pink Stripes

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The day I found out I was pregnant with the girl was one of the more bizarre days of my life.

I had taken the day off. It was my birthday, after all. The morning had started off calm. I was spending it alone, attempting to relax at home, but I had a little niggling feeling at the back of my brain that wouldn’t go away. I wasn’t exactly "late" for my monthly cycle, per say, but I wasn’t as on time as I was used to being. I take fastidious notes, and my body runs like clockwork on its never-ending feminine routine. I couldn’t the nagging possibility out of my head. Eventually, I went down to the local drugstore and stood in the aisle for a good fifteen minutes, attempting to decipher the many pregnancy tests before me. Trying to check out casually at a drugstore counter is an awkward affair. The clerk always knows how your day is going by the contents in your basket.

I took my little test home with me and gave myself a pep talk. I talked to the test itself and told the inanimate object I wasn’t afraid of it and tried to busy myself for the three minutes it took to see the results. I made it two minutes and thirty seconds before I rushed back in to look, and was dumbfounded by what I saw. My husband and I had been trying since we got married three years before, but nothing had happened. I was 33, and though he very much wanted children, I was more ambivalent about it. Some days I felt desperate for a baby, but more and more often, as my cycle continued uninterrupted, I accepted what we had. There was plenty of time to pursue my own interests, and I told myself we weren’t exactly rolling in dough. Having a child would strain things financially. Additionally, I was very involved in trying to build up a community podcast that I co-hosted, and I was relatively happy with my life, for what it was.

While I was wandering around my apartment in a state of stunned bewilderment, I got a call from my Mother-In-Law. My Father-In-Law had had a heart attack and I needed to come down to the hospital right away. I was juggling emotions now, but all of them were fear and worry, just for two different subjects. I got a hold of my husband and told him to pick me up so we could drive to the hospital together. Once he got home to pick me up, before I let him start up the car again, I told him the news. I couldn’t keep it to myself. Though he was happy about it, he was worried about his father and asked if he could share the news with his Mother, to give her something happy to focus on.

Reluctantly, I agreed. I mean, it was wonderful news. However, as the day drew on, I grew a little resentful of the fact that literally everyone in the family, and half the hospital, knew about our little surprise before I even had a chance to really process the information myself. I felt shell-shocked by all of it. I calmed considerably after I got a chance to finally talk to my Father-In-Law, who was recovering and just as casually jovial as always. Yes, literally everyone had shared the news with him before I was able to, as I was one of the last ones to see him, but hearing his advice about the coming months and his unfaltering sense of optimism was the tonic I needed to get through the uneasiness I was experiencing.

Thankfully, it didn’t take me long to get excited. I grumbled my way through the first few weeks, feeling a little off center, but once I heard that heartbeat for the first time, all of my emotions broke loose. I cried, I was amazed. The little wiggler was there, alive, a miracle.

Next time: Maternity Pants

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My pregnancy trundled along fairly smoothly, I did all of the right things that I could think of. I switched from coffee to tea, I forsake sushi and rare beef, I did the prenatal yoga and walked every day. As I walked, I would sing to the girl so she knew my voice...Que Sera Sera, Moon River, Blackbird. I admit to having a lunch meat sandwich and a hot dog every once in awhile, but dammit, I wanted a sandwich. Otherwise, things were normal.

I read all about my options for childbirth, natural vs epidural, listened to guided meditations about managing pain for childbirth...I took better care of myself pregnant than I ever did in my normal life and tried to stay calm and optimistic.  

Most of all, over any other thing, I wanted the girl to come into a home of peace, a place to feel safe and loved. I never wanted her to worry about what mood Mommy was in, or to have to weather the storm of another bad night as Mommy thundered through the house, shouting out about the wrongs of everyone around her, but never mentioning any of her own. I didn’t want her to know what I knew as a child, a day that could be fine or terrifying seemingly at the flip of a coin.

I was pregnant through the heat of summer. It drove me a little mad sometimes. I could never get cold enough, I’d freeze wash clothes and lay them across my chest and the back of my neck so I could sleep at night. I battled our apartment complex manager over the functionality of our A/C unit, it always felt so hot in the front room, the unit never seemed to catch up.

Emotionally, things seemed okay. I went through random crying jags, especially in the car. I talked to Dr. G about it and he prescribed me a high dose of Vitamin D, which helped quite a bit with that. He didn’t want to put me on Zoloft quite yet, the plan was still to start it several weeks before the birth of the girl, to get it built up in my system. She was due September 29th, I was hoping she’d wait a few days and make it to October, my favorite month.

As September arrived, I spent a lot of time in her nursery, waiting patiently for her. I felt happy, I felt hopeful. On September 10th, a Saturday, my husband and I enjoyed a cookout out of doors. The weather was lovely, it was a beautiful evening. I journaled that night, wondering when she would be here to enjoy these times with us.

I woke up at 2:30 am, in pain. I expected it to go away, assuming it was just Braxton Hicks contractions. My husband moved into the other room to allow me to be comfortable in our bed and I told him I’d wake him up if anything happened. Instead of easing off, the pain increased, the waves became more powerful and regular. At 4 am, I woke my husband and told him to take me to the hospital. Three weeks early.

It was September 11th, the girl was coming.

Next time: 9/11

[thepsychoticdiariesblog-blog]

My vague hopes for natural childbirth quickly went out the window. My triage nurse looked me over and said, “Oh yeah, you have a really small pelvis. You’re gonna want to get that Epi.” At that point, after dilating to 5cms naturally, I willingly agreed. I counted the minutes until my Epi would be available, I’d have to wait until 8 am.

In truth, I don’t remember a lot about that day. After the Epi was in, I tried to rest and we visited with my husband’s immediate family. Any time I felt the slightest amount of any resembling what might be pain, I’d push that button that gave me another dose of the good stuff. I tried to sleep here and there, but it didn’t work out that well. As the day wore on, they eventually gave me Pitocin to move things along, and at roughly 9:30 pm, the girl was born. I was exhausted, but the girl was healthy, if a little irritated by this rude awakening. I felt so weak that I was afraid I would drop her, so I asked her to be taken to the nursery. She was fed a bottle there, which probably didn’t help my attempts to nurse later on, but I was soon to find out that was the least of my worries.

Over the next two days, I spent a lot of time resting, but very little time sleeping. My emotions, due to the hormones, took a sharp nosedive and they immediately started me on Zoloft, along with a handful of other pills for pain. Because of a few emotional outbursts, I was given several mental health screenings before I was allowed to leave the hospital. I think I told the truth at the time I was given the screenings, I was emotionally numb, but I don’t think at that point I felt the need to commit suicide. I was told to sleep as much as possible, given Xanax, and sent on my way.

The first few days my husband stayed with me. As he watched me, I think the first thing he noticed was that I hardly ever talked to the girl. I stared down at her, she stared up at me. It took my full concentration and every bit of my energy just to change her diaper. I felt my fingers shaking while I tried to do it.

I was partially convinced she was still angry with me for the amount of time labor took, every time I tried to breastfeed her it resulted in furious screaming from her. I switched to pumping exclusively, but my emotions spiraled down into a pit whenever I did. To keep my supply of milk up, I had to pump almost constantly. Every. Two. Hours. Do you know how draining that is? I felt like a prisoner, but it was so opposite from the way I’d felt about it before. Breastfeeding was the thing I had most looked forward to, now, I loathed everything to do with it. However, I felt desperately depressed about it at the same time. I wanted the joy of it, the joy of feeling close to my child, or at least providing her nourishment even if it was through pumping. But the possibility of joy, from anything, was cut off from my brain.

Nights were becoming overwhelming. I grew to dread whenever my husband went to sleep. I knew I’d be up every few hours to feed her, and as he was going back to work, it didn’t make much sense to make him trade off with me on nights. It took her between 45 minutes to an hour to feed and fall back asleep, which broke up my sleep considerably. I should have been able to nap during the day, to sleep when she slept, but I couldn’t. The only times I managed to nap during the day was the few times I took a Xanax, and truth be told, I probably should have relied on those pills much more than I did. Perhaps the worst of it might have been avoided if I’d just allowed someone else to look after her, taken the anti-anxiety pills I was given and forced myself to sleep.

But, perhaps not. The darkness was quickly overtaking me, it seemed this was a train that couldn’t be stopped.

Next time: Did You Just Hear Her?

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All was well at the girl’s first appointment, she was gaining weight very nicely and looked as healthy as could be. My husband went with me, and unbeknownst to me, shot a video of me standing over the girl while we were waiting for the doctor to arrive, whispering sweet nothings to her and touching her tenderly. On the outside, I appeared to be a “good mother”, but on the inside, I couldn’t see any of that.

The doctor asked me about breastfeeding and I reluctantly told her what was going on. The girl just wasn’t having it. The doctor wasn’t deterred, she immediately set me up an appointment with a lactation consultant and told me to keep trying. I felt like I was already drowning in pressure to even just keep pumping, but I was hopeful that maybe it would help.

While my husband went back to work, he asked my Mother-in-Law to stay with me during the mornings to relieve some of the pressure on me so I could hopefully sleep. I spent the time before my Mother-in-Law’s arrival nervously waiting for her, terrified to be alone with the girl for a long amount of time. Looking back, I don’t know why I would be so anxious. The girl did what any infant did, she slept, she ate, she used her diaper. There wasn’t exactly a lot of activity going on. When she was sleeping, I was on pins and needles, unable to rest because I was waiting for the next time for her to wake up, always peering down at her in her bassinet. When she was awake, she was crying, and the rush of hormones that assaulted me threatened to shut my body down. I shook with nervousness, it was all I could do to make the bottle and get her back to sleep.

That was when I started wishing for death. My Mother-in-Law would drive us to appointments, or to go out and get something to eat, meanwhile, I’d pray for some friendly truck to hit us in just the right way...Something to end me, but leave the girl and my Mother-in-Law safe and unharmed. I could see it vividly in my mind any time we passed an intersection. If only I could just die from an accident, that would be so much better...I could embrace the darkness. There was no thought of Heaven or Hell at that point. It was just something to stop the madness building up inside of me, along with the constant thought that literally, anyone would be a better mother for the girl.

As the days passed, sleep only got further and further away. Every time I shut my eyes, every single night, I heard the girl wailing. I’d jerk up, staring through the darkness down the short hallway between her room and ours, and listen. Was she really crying? If my husband was awake, I’d ask him, “Did you hear her? Is she crying?” The answer was always no. I couldn’t understand it, but I was so far gone at this point I didn’t really question it. I laid back down and tried to sleep. I’d close my eyes and tried to shut out the sound of her screaming.

Next time: Mother, Interrupted

[thepsychoticdiariesblog-blog]

Let’s take a moment away from my current story to visit my past for a moment, as it will come into play later on. I mentioned my mother had been committed twice. All this time, during my pregnancy and in the few weeks before my hospitalization, I had longed to ask her what it was like when I or my sister was born. Of course, I couldn’t, and I don’t know that those conversations would have really been that satisfying. Still, I’m curious to know about what she would have said.

The first time she was committed she was young, and if I put together the few scant pieces of the puzzle I have, I think it was after my sister was born. I’ve spoken with my sister briefly about my own illness, and she shared some insight that made a lot of sense. After she was born, my mother put her fists through plate glass windows. Perhaps it was an attempt to cut both her wrists at one time and make quick work of killing herself. Perhaps it was a manic episode. Perhaps it was a little of both. All I know is she was hospitalized, and though I don’t know for sure that was the occasion in which it happened, I think that’s the most likely event that would have triggered her being committed. I wish I knew more…

The second time, I was in High School. We were living in California, and I had a relatively good relationship with my mother. I think this was mostly due to the fact that I was extremely passive, I didn’t fight back often at all. So, when she railed at me for hours on end and called me a terrible daughter or a lazy little shit, I sat there and took it, absorbed it, and accepted it as fact. I sank into my own inner world and lived in my computer or in books. That was on her bad days, which would only happen once or twice on a good month.

On her good days, I thought she could have moved mountains and hung the moon from the sky. More so in my younger years, of course, but when asked who my biggest hero was, I was always the daughter who said, “My Mother”. She’d been through so much over the years and had come through it...Mostly. During the good times, she was more often than not a normal mother. She encouraged me, protected me, and tried to draw me out of my shyness often. At that time, I never really thought anything about her pill usage or drinking. I accepted that she was sick and needed those pills, and since she didn’t drink every evening, then naturally she wasn’t an alcoholic. Sure, when she drank she got “shit-faced”, as she would call it, and it was an all-day drinkathon...But that’s normal, right? Everything she said, I believed. I was always her defender.

That started to change after she was committed. She had spent weeks spinning herself up in a nervous frenzy about neighbors whom she thought were drug dealers. She was convinced that they were going to come to our house and murder us. Finally, after a day full of these paranoid delusions, she had both myself and my father convinced she was telling the truth. So, we escaped up to Idaho, to stay with family and friends.

It’s a long, winding story of how she got committed, involving a long, winding car trip my sister had to take with her on the way to the hospital. My mother didn’t go in easily, and she roasted my sister alive for what she was participating in. It was the ultimate betrayal that my mother’s family was visiting upon her, in her mind.

As I got around the family that I hadn’t seen or even spoken to in years, it was the first time I had really heard any different version of my mother’s stories other than her own. Many of the stories were very difficult to hear and I didn’t want to believe them. Those are other people’s tales to tell, however, and not mine.

That was the beginning of when I started questioning my mother’s truth. I started to get an idea of what opiate abuse was, and realized that her suitcase full of pills might be a little red flag. It was a painful time, and I remember being so, so furious with my mother. When we went to visit her, I was hateful. We went back to California without her and lived our lives for a short time without the constant drama of living with her. It was then that I realized that my whole life, every time I came home, I had a giant knot in my stomach when I entered the house. Upon opening the front door my ears were open and alert, waiting to see if this would be a good night or a bad night.

It was only the absence of that knot that made me notice it was there.

When she came back, I fought it at first. I had tasted life without that daily question of what sort of night I might have. I had lived quietly with my father, and it was nice. I couldn’t withstand her influence for long, however. We eventually got right back into our old pattern...It was easier just to accept it, to be a team player because there wasn’t really any other option. It was that or daily strife, and I loathed living in chaos, so I did what I needed to do to avoid it.

Next Time: The Shut Down

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Back to our story in progress, I was growing steadily worse as the days went on. I felt like my body was rebelling against me, refusing to move at its regular quick pace. When the girl started crying, my limbs felt weaker and weaker, until I could barely keep a hold of her.

Now, my husband has a different memory of this. He says I seemed mostly normal, maybe I walked a little slower, but I still took care of the girl like normal. I don’t have much memory of that or anything that happened in the evenings after my Mother-In-Law left for the day. All I remember is I began to rely on her help more and more, feeling like I could do less and less. This started a guilt cycle in the back of my mind, as I could hear the voice of my Mother telling me what a “lazy little shit” I was, that I was being a terrible daughter, and trying to pass off my duties. This voice told me I was making this all up, just pretending to be sick, and everyone knew it.

My memory starts to get hazy in the week leading up to my hospitalization, but I remember several things. First, I asked to be prayed over. My husband’s family is a very prayerful, down to earth Christian family, and if any prayers could have helped me, theirs could. My husband was reluctant about this, we’re both very private people, but my dire situation was overriding any sense of privacy. I don’t remember much about that, other than it took place.

The second memory is of my husband holding me as I rocked back and forth on the bed, begging and pleading with him just to take me to the emergency room. I needed help, I couldn’t do this anymore. Somehow he convinced me to take one of my Xanax and lay down, we had an appointment with my doctor in just a few days. Many of the things happening in my brain I couldn't verbalize, and he didn't quite understand just how bad things had gotten.

The morning of the appointment I sat on the floor of my room with a knife in my hand. My Mother-In-Law was in the other room, taking care of the girl. I gripped the knife and struggled silently with the urge to just get it over with. I took deep breaths and tried to focus on the fact that if I could just make it to this afternoon, the doctor would surely see what was wrong. And, if not, I could always kill myself afterward. I ripped a page out of my journal and wrote my husband a note…

“There is a monster in me I can’t get out. I am in Hell without end.

I’m trying so hard not to kill myself to protect her because [my husband] says it would hurt too much. I don’t want to hurt him. He made me so happy and now my brain is all ruined and I don’t know how to be me again.

She is so good and perfect and needs a good mom and I can’t do anything, I’m so afraid. I hear myself in my mind telling me to get my shit together, that I’m strong and I can do this, to not kill myself. I’m trying to listen, but that part is so far away.

There’s a knife in here, but I put it back down because I don’t want to hurt [my husband]. [The girl] needs to be safe from me. I’d never hurt her, but she can’t be with me. I’m too scary. Trying to wait in here, so I don’t scare [my Mother-in-Law], too. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what went wrong.

I’ve done everything wrong, somehow it’s my fault. Please don’t let her have my bad brain. That’s why I can’t touch her. I don’t want to infect her.”

Next Time: Getting Help

[thepsychoticdiariesblog-blog]

Waiting for my husband to get home so he could take me to my doctor's appointment seemed to take forever. Once he got there, I seem to recall listening to him and my Mother-In-Law talking in hushed tones about my conditions as I walked down the hallway. I remember being ashamed as I heard them talk...I felt tremendous guilt about my Mother-In-Law taking on the brunt of the work with the girl. However, I was thankful to see my husband, to be getting this over with. I shuffled out to the car behind him, barely able to walk, my condition seeming to affect both my mobility and my ability to string words together into a coherent sentence.

In the car, I tried to prep him for what was to come. I told him I wouldn’t be coming home with him, that they’d send me away at this point, and to be prepared for that. Once I told the doctor of my suicidal ideations, that I had a plan to take my life, I figured it would pretty much be a done deal. We didn’t have a long wait in the lobby. After I checked in, the receptionist must have called back to tell them I clearly wasn’t well. I was invited in within a few minutes and checked over by a nurse I wasn’t familiar with. She was a little colder than I was used to, very matter of fact, and looked like she could handle herself. Perhaps she was the office’s “heavy”. She immediately gave me a mental health screening after I gave her a brief summary of what was going on, and then my doctor came in to see me. She was shocked at the state of things. “What happened?” She said, “I just saw you a week ago!”

She listened to me, asked me if I had a plan for suicide, which I said I had, and then address my husband, telling him that he had to take me to the emergency room right away. She directed him to go to St. Anthony’s, which has several mental health institutions. After she left, he looked shell-shocked. We hugged and I tried to reassure him briefly, but we were fairly quickly ushered out of the examination room. I felt like I had a disease that they were afraid might catch.

When we got back to his car, we had the time to talk while he tried to compose himself. My husband called his father, telling him briefly what was going on, asking him if he could drive us both there because he didn’t feel up to driving in his current state of shock. I sat in the back of the car while they tried to talk like normal. I felt both embarrassed and relieved. Embarrassed because I was causing so much fuss, and people were looking at me so differently. Relieved because something was finally happening instead of just trying to tread water at home on my own. After a short stay in the emergency room to wait for a bed to open up, I was separated from my husband and taken in the back of police car to one of their facilities.

It was a Thursday night when I arrived. We didn’t know at the time, but this was bad timing. I would get one single visit with my assigned Psychiatrist on Friday, leaving me the rest of the weekend to get progressively worse and more paranoid. I was strip searched and my shoes were taken away, because of the laces. I had the clothes that I had on me, and that was it. Dinner had already been served and it was visiting time for family and friends of the residents, an hour I would begin to desperately look forward to.

Let me begin this next section of the story by stating I was starting to have many audio and visual hallucinations. I only knew what was “real” by what I could physically feel later.

As I didn’t have a visitor, my husband was still making his way to the facility with his father, I sat in the corner and tried to look as invisible as possible. A handsome young blond man approached me, and for some reason, I had it in my head he might be one of the councilors. He asked me why I was there, and I reluctantly told him it was because of postpartum depression. I was still ashamed of this prognosis, believing it made me an unfit mother since I was hospitalized. He nodded with understanding, reached forward to stroke my hair, and told me I was very beautiful, like a diamond in the rough. I immediately shrank back and murmured to him that he was making me uncomfortable. He sprang up and apologized while I tried to disappear into the chair beneath me, desperate to see my husband again.

That was my first introduction to J, and I spent much of my next 11 days thinking he was either an avatar of the Devil, or possibly a good guy. When everyone is crazy around you, including yourself, it’s really hard to tell sometimes.

Next time: Hell has Disco Music

[thepsychoticdiariesblog-blog]

I don’t know how much time I want to spend remembering my time in the psychiatric hospital. The memories are painful, they haunt me still.

The thing that most haunts me is the thought that once you go in, you’re just a few bad mental health days away from being put back in. It seems so much easier to go back in the second time around, like slipping on a well-worn glove. My perception of my own unwavering sanity has been altered.

This isn’t to say anything truly bad happened to me there. The first night with J was the only time he really came onto me, and who knows if that even happened or if it was a hallucination. The people that work there have a hard job, but most truly seemed to care. The other patients were friendly, despite my misgivings about a few of them at first. We were all “in this together”. Every day was a new day, no one would bring up anything you had done during your “bad days”. It was strangely touching how protective they were about one another. When someone went home, it was like a graduation. There were happy tears, hugs, promises to call one another and “check-in”.

It was very interesting watching their metamorphosis from a truly frightening person suffering a psychotic break to a regular person who you would just hang out and have a normal conversation with, after the anti-psychotics did their magic, of course.

When I came in, I thought I'd be an easy patient...It was funny, in a way, seeing the people I was afraid of because they were so crazy, look at me with the same fear in their eyes as I got progressively more violent and psychotic later on. The first few nights the nurses and other patients kept telling me I'd be out in no time, I was "too sweet" to be in there long.

In unfamiliar territory, I was timid and quiet. I had forgotten how to be myself, there was none of my usual dry wit left. The ability to crack a joke wouldn’t return for at least a month. I seemed to be losing pieces of myself hourly. The only thing my psychiatrist had done before leaving for the weekend was put me on Wellbutrin, which did nothing to stem the gradually worsening hallucinations.

I lost the ability to read. The words floated around the pages, they refused to stay still. Even when they did stay still, they didn’t make any sense. Reading is everything to me, and losing the ability to pass the time by escaping into books really did a number on me. TV was no better, people just spouted ignorant nonsense. Not that they don’t do that already, but somehow it felt more insidious at the time. The entire world seemed upside down. It was then that I stopped believing I was in a clinic getting treatment and started believing I was actually in Hell.

I became convinced I hadn’t just considered committing suicide, I had actually succeeded in killing myself.  I was being “fooled” into thinking I was getting treatment, that was my punishment. I began to question how long I had been there. Hell has no real time construct, after all. My husband and baby were probably already dead, enjoying paradise in Heaven, while I was forever separated from them.

Visiting hour became a cruel joke, a taste of Heaven that would remind me of what I could never have now since I’d committed the sin of suicide. I told my husband all this, but I wasn’t exactly sure I could trust him. After all, my husband might be another construct of my mind, or perhaps just a demon having fun at my expense. To his credit, he patiently talked me through all of this, trying to talk some sense into me. When he wasn’t visiting me, he spent the majority of his time calling the clinic, demanding answers as to why I was getting worse and not better.

On the television, all I could see and hear were sadistic reality shows where people were violently murdered or dragged into deep, fiery chasms by demons. Everyone around me laughed, finding it hilarious while I sat dumbfounded and attempted to tell the others that this wasn’t “good” or “right”. No one listened. During rec time, I grew frustrated as we played games of Uno. The numbers kept changing on the dice, and I didn’t trust J to tell me the truth about the numbers he saw. I couldn’t verbalize why anymore, but I remembered I didn’t trust him for some reason.

Coloring became a tortuous activity, worse than small talk with strangers I’ll never see again. It was the small talk of the art world, completely pointless, but meant to give me some sort of fulfillment. It was supposed to be therapeutic. It just enraged me.

By Tuesday, I was ready to escape. I tried every door, I studied any opening that I thought was a possibility. There was a locked door and hallway that separated us from the geriatric ward. As I was studying the geriatric ward door, contemplating whether or not it would be easier to escape on their side, an old woman stared back at me, knocking at the window for me to let her from the geriatric ward to our side. I apologized, explaining I didn’t have the key. The women, I knew from experience, was mute and had been for years. However,  I saw her open her mouth and she spoke as clear as day through the thick glass door, telling me I was at the gateway to Hell. It was a little unsettling.

Finally, my husband arrived for visiting hour. I saw him bathed in white light as he stepped through the door, and I was convinced that was Heaven, right through that exit...I tugged at him, begging him to just take me out...No one could stop us, this was an illusion, he just had to take me outside and I'd be free and in Heaven with him. Why wouldn't he listen to me? As he continued to refuse and tried to get me to calm down, I laid my head down at the visiting room table we were sitting and closed my eyes, bidding him to go. I'd given up.

When my escape plan didn’t work, I lurched to each class, begrudgingly following along during the exercise programs, hating each repetitive Disco song I heard. Finally, my anger boiled and I got up, walked into the hallway, and began screaming. As I closed my eyes and started smashing my skull into the wall repeatedly, trying to kill myself again even though I was pretty sure I was already dead, I prayed I would wake up somewhere else. Home, perhaps.

I didn’t.

Next Time:

Time Slows Down

[thepsychoticdiariesblog-blog]

It was Thursday before I finally broke free of my delusions. I was on a plethora of pills, and each day they adjusted my dosage a little bit. Zoloft and Wellbutrin for Depression. Seroquel for sleep, which is also an Antipsychotic and Antidepressant. Risperdal, another Antipsychotic and Antidepressant. And finally, since I refused to eat half the time, a pill to help me absorb the food I did eat. There’s probably some that I’ve forgotten, but those were the big ones.

While they were trying to get everything sorted out on their end, I was continuing to navigate my new reality. Time would speed up at random, causing people to vanish from sight whenever I blinked my eyes. I tormented one nurse by following her around relentlessly, begging her not “disappear” so she could help me get some fresh clothes. On one of my husband's visits, I abruptly decided I was done seeing him, telling him it was time for bed. I lay down on my mattress, which was situated in the hallway since I had to be kept in “line of sight” after my little incident on Tuesday. I watched apathetically as the people around me ran past at super speed, colors blurring and day turning into night within seconds.

By Wednesday, I had a new theory. Perhaps I couldn’t escape Hell, but I instinctively knew even in Hell God can hear you. So, if I prayed hard enough, asked for forgiveness earnestly enough, I might be released. I spent the whole of Wednesday praying fervently, clutching a picture of the girl and the husband like it was the only lifeline I had left. I borrowed a garish blouse sporting a huge glittery butterfly from my roommate, wearing it over my clothes because I’d heard butterflies were a sign of God. I fell asleep that night whispering God’s, Jesus’, and my husband’s name over and over again.

On Thursday I woke up and things felt...different. I couldn’t tell exactly how at first. Everything felt slower. Soon I realized time was just going at its normal pace. I was able to read again, people on television made sense again. I’d finally turned the corner, my prayers had been answered, the combination of pills had brought everything back into focus. I had escaped from Hell.

They kept me for observation over the weekend and into the following week, but I rapidly improved from Thursday on. One of the nurses looked like she might burst into happy tears when I asked for a book to read to pass the time. I found a copy of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire on the shelf of their small lending library and sank into the warm, familiar embrace of the Southern Gothic prose, cherishing the experience of reading again.

When I was finally released back into the custody of my husband, I felt like I had been away for a year. It had “only” been 11 days, but when every moment of your day is scheduled and you’re not free to do what you’d like when you’d like, time tends to stretch out tortuously. Stepping outside for the first time, the sun felt brighter than I’d ever seen it before, I had to squint against the light. We went to Walgreen’s first to pick up my prescriptions, and I tried to reacquaint myself with the knowledge that I could do something as simple as going to the drugstore and getting a candy bar whenever I wanted. I promised myself I would try to never take such simple pleasures for granted again.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite out of the woods yet. I was very anxious to see the girl again, eleven days away from your newborn is a long time when they grow so quickly and change so much over the first few months. When I saw her, I was almost afraid to touch her. Part way into the visit, when she started crying again, the old terrible feelings started to come back. My husband had to force me to leave because he knew I was getting quickly overwhelmed. However, the guilt from leaving, along with a bad reaction from Risperdal which wouldn’t allow my body to rest, landed me back in the emergency room. It was a terrible night, and I was very nearly placed back into the clinic, but I managed to pull it together long enough to convince the psychologist that came in to look me over that I was well enough to go home.

After that experience, my husband was reluctant to let the girl come back home right away, despite how much I wanted her home with us. Instead, I went for daily visits, and we had a few trial runs at night. Finally, about a week before I had to go back to work, my husband felt confident that I was stable enough to care for her full time again. I spent that week getting to know her new habits, reestablishing a routine with her, and trying to enjoy the last little bit of time I had left before my maternity leave was up.

Next time:

Epilogue

[thepsychoticdiariesblog-blog]

At the time of this entry, it’s mid-July of 2017 and the girl has just turned 10 months old, with her first birthday right around the corner. She is a happy girl, impatient to be on the move, quick to giggle at the sight of the household kitty, and just starting to crawl. The autumn troubles of last year seem very far away as the sun bakes the browning grass around Oklahoma.

I’ve been through a few months of counseling to deal with what happened, along with some residual stuff from growing up with my mom. It probably wasn’t as much counseling as I will ultimately need, but it’s a start.

Strangely, the experience has given me some insight into my mother that I otherwise wouldn’t have had and has softened me a bit towards her memory. Not that she didn’t do things that she should have apologized and sought help for, she certainly did. However, I can understand the feelings she had about being desperate for her freedom and always needing to have an escape plan. I’ve now experienced the feeling of being trapped, both mentally and physically.

The good thing about Postpartum Psychosis is it has a 100% recovery rate. The bad thing is my daughter has a higher chance of suffering from it because I’ve had it. The rate becomes about 50/50 if she ever suffers from any mental health issues. That’s part of the reason I wrote this, so if she does have children she’ll know her full history and have a better chance of lowering her risk.

The other reason I wrote this, besides just to get it out of my head and onto the page, was for the husbands of women going through this terrible illness. My husband was desperate for information when I was in the midst of my psychosis, and there’s so little of it out there. The personal testimonies he did find he clung to like a raft in the middle of a storm.

There are a lot of things that I’ve left out of my story. The mind knows your every fear, every way to humiliate and degrade you, and when your mind turns on you...Well, I can think of few things worse to happen to a person. Fortunately, unlike other forms of psychosis, unless I have another child I don’t have much fear of another outbreak of it. Now we know what to look for, we know how this disease works, and how to combat it.

So, thank you for coming along on this little journey. I know it wasn’t a pleasant one, but I hope it will be helpful for someone, someday.