"Your experiences are helping people. Nobody is writing about it more honestly. Isn't that empowering?"
"I hadn't really thought about it. I'm just trying to get through one day at a time."
"Well, think about it."
Joe and I had this conversation last night, talking about the blog and the reactions that I'm getting both on Facebook and offline. I'm touched by all of the positive feedback and encouragement to get deeper into the depression and anxiety recovery. Really I'm just trying to make sense out of what happened to me, I'm honored that anyone is reading along at all.
It's a multiple part thing. Yes, I suffer from depression and anxiety, but I still haven't yet completely processed the February psychotic break. Last week Joe posted on Facebook about gun laws, and what he wrote scared the hell out of me. I wrote here previously that I think of it as "that night," but in actual time the psychotic break played out over a week. I didn't end up in the pysch ward until Friday. I have very little memory of what went on during those days. Was I so psychotic that he was afraid of me? Do you have any idea how that feels? Here's what he wrote.
"We can talk mental health all we want, but until we recognize that the mental health of any of us is not a static point on the spectrum but rather a moving point impacted by other circumstances we cannot control, we're going to have issues with heavily armed and heavily troubled people.
Two years ago my wife was talking about getting a gun license and learning to shoot. She would've easily passed any mental health tests given her. Had she done that, earlier this year I may have been waking up with someone who was having a psychotic break and had a gun. At points in this she did not even recognize me as her husband, yelling at the EMTs and cops that I'm lying and she's never seen me before. I am personally thrilled that (and possibly am here to post this because) she didn't have one. It would've been an absolutely unnecessary complication in an already hellish week that we both had. Who knows what would've transpired otherwise. I'd prefer not to think about it to be honest. But every shooting that goes down reminds me, and I've had too many reminders since then.
Just because you're mentally healthy now doesn't mean you won't have an issue in the future. And by having firearms so readily available, we're inviting these problems, because someone who was mentally fit and armed "for protection" has suddenly become a person who is mentally ill and is just armed, and what they may think they need protection against is in their head, as was with my wife."
Mentally ill. I have to live with the whole "mentally ill" stigma now, and here I am writing about it in great detail on Facebook. The scariest part is that I had no idea it was coming, never had a clue. When I get asked if I have a history of mental illness, this means I say yes now, right? But what happened to me?!
Joe says, "My point wasn't so much that you would have grabbed a gun if you had one, but that it wasn't YOU. You tried to run outside naked."
In therapy Thursday I think this is what I'll talk about. I go in there and I never know what to say. Well I need to talk about how my life is supposed to be and what I'm all about after the psychotic break. I've been so focused on the depression and anxiety that I haven't been processing the whole picture. I'm never going to be the same person again, am I? Who even am I?
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