August 30, 2023
What Disability;
You’re Crazy
Dear Friend,
Here is one of the letters where I start talking and I
imagine you running the other way. Even farther than we are right now. Not only
have you learned that I have been unsuccessfully married two times, but there
was that odd time I mentioned in the last letter about feeling like I was two
people and having a disability.
What does that mean?
And wait a minute, if I have a disability, how can I work
full time? And why can’t anyone see it on my body?
First, I don’t talk about my disability much because I am
sick of talking about it. But I don’t
hide it. It also has stigma attached to it.
And some people don’t believe me because of how well I adapt my
surroundings to deal with it.
My disability is actually a cumulative effect of several
different events and diagnoses.
It started when I was in my early twenties. Again, I was
dating that farmer boy. I went to my
general physician, and explained that it felt like I was two people: the normal
shy one, that was often sad and tired, and one that was outgoing and risky. My
doctor had this sorrowful look on his face and sent me to a psychologist AND a
psychiatrist. This was in the late 1990s. They diagnosed me as depressed,
naturally extroverted, and put me on antidepressants. It only made things worse.
While this was happening, I was dating the farm boy, but my
“alter ego” that I call Rita—the outgoing hypersexual temptress that didn’t
seem like me but possessed my body—was hooking up with anyone she could get her
hands on. I broke up with the farm boy.
He didn’t like it, found out I (or Rita) was sleeping around, got angry,
and decided he would “take what I was giving to other guys for himself”, as he
put it.
Enter first husband, pregnancy, engagement, and a sudden
huge depression. Rita disappeared. I thought I was cured. Right? After baby number two, we had to be
creative about our money management, so in order to cut costs for childcare,
hubby worked days, I worked nights and took care of the kids during the days.
So I didn’t sleep. Know what happened? Yup, here came Rita again. Another
doctor tried diagnosing me with dissociative identity disorder (multiple
personalities), but that didn’t feel right to her. I had a sort of affair with
one of the board members of the place I was working at. Hubby got angry, put a
hole in the wall right beside my head after cornering me in the closet of our
bedroom.
What was our solution? Let’s move. We tried to settle down
into a small town, but we’ll just say you can’t move away from your problems,
and can’t drink them away, either. A doctor finally noticed something was very
wrong….and found a correct word for it. They use the word Bipolar. I use the phrase Manic Depression. I hate
having a buzzword for a diagnosis… and feel “bipolar” is an inappropriate term
for the illness. That was in 2006.
I couldn’t get my illness in order. Hubby and I had married for the wrong
reasons, and the stress of that kept popping up in my illness. I did finally get sober in December 2013, but
after years of self-treating a mental illness with alcohol and an eating
disorder, I wasn’t stable right away. He couldn’t (or wouldn’t) handle this,
and left (with the kids and a threat to use my illness to never let me see them
again if I tried fighting him) in 2015.
Somewhere in here is a series of catatonic episodes where I
lost consciousness that led to a traumatic brain injury from a doctor giving me
too much medication, becoming toxic from that, and falling down stairs dozens
times and a car accident while losing a week of my memory—in April 2016. I
fondly call it The Incident. It really messes with my current ability to recall
basically anything. It is why I have notes and what looks like chaos around my
house and desk at work: they are constant reminders of how and what to do.
Then there was hubby number two. I don’t talk about him.
Some people don’t even know he exists. I don’t say his name (I say dickhead
instead… even asshole is a compliment… there’s a poem for that, if you want to
know more). We will just call him a sociological project turned parasite that
ended up abusing me via gaslighting techniques, verbal threats, and cumulative
stresses that brought up farm boy rapist memories and created my PTSD. Enter
the second time I’ve had to get a protection order, the second time I’ve
divorced, and the final time I have gone out on my own… this time more
determinedly on my own two feet.
So diagnosed with Bipolar in 2006, sober but alcoholic in
2013, handed another neat diagnosis of PTSD around 2020 (happy COVID… here’s
another label for you)… I didn’t feel put together until sometime in late 2021.
And from all this rambling, it sounds like I’m complaining,
and it sounds like a bunch of made-up rubbish, which is why I HATE talking
about it. But now you know.
Yes, I am disabled—trust me, some people have actually
watched me have a psychotic episode outside a house in the town where I live
now (a moment I am very ashamed of), I DO have hallucinations (including seeing
a huge 6’6” 280 pound son of mine in my house when he wasn’t there and a
pangolin in the middle of a road in rural Nebraska), and I have actually
thought I could be in two places at one time because I thought I was two people
(Julie and Rita…they can entertain two groups at once, right? oh my what WAS I
thinking).
Now you can run the other way.
But wait.
Because I don’t sit down and roll over when it comes to my
disability. I don’t let it take over
anymore. I pay attention, and I listen.
I see a specialist monthly. I take medication that we alter regularly. I log
triggers daily. I am still sober. I fight—every day, every hour, I fight. I am
not normal, I will never be “cured”, but I am better now than I ever have been,
and I believe these experiences have taken me where I am today. I believe my
creative spirit comes from this mis-wired brain as well.
At this point, if I could choose another song to live in
(besides the “You’re Gone” from Letter One), it would be P!nk’s F**kin’
Perfect. Because no one is perfect, and I’ve fought hard to be where I am now.
So if you can put up with a slightly crazy, mis-wired but
eccentric, never normal but unique, wonderful ever-changing me, welcome. Don’t
go away. I miss you.
Thinking of you, every crazy part of me.
Love,
Julie
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