Down The Well (A Series)

It must be horse show season, because the people I’m volunteering for ran late (as usual) and opted not to pick up their volunteer.

I’m not angry.  In fact, the only thing I really thought when I found out I’d been left behind was, “Well, that was worth getting up at 5:30am for.”

In the interests of my commitment to liveblog my mental illness, I share a thing.

This exact scenario happened last year — although, to be fair, last year was a hell of a lot more stressful, primarily because it was the first show I was working at and I had no idea what the hell I was in for, besides being a) the only obviously poor girl at the show and b) the only person wearing a headscarf.  Last year, I was very angry.  Righteously angry, because seriously, you don’t shaft the people who are willing to work for free around large, easily startled mammals in highly chaotic and dangerous situations.  This year, despite a number of factors that should have made me far more upset, I didn’t feel any anger.  I didn’t feel anything at all.  Just like how I didn’t feel anything when my aunt died, or when I found out I wasn’t getting a much-needed rebate on my taxes, or even something as mundane as when I died in Minecraft and lost over a dozen diamonds.  No grief.  No anger.  No emotions.

My doctor tells me that I present with early symptoms of psychosis — the lack of emotions and inability to cry, for starters, among other signs like crippling paranoia about strangers following me and trying to kill me, and the whole hearing-voices thing.  To which I was like, “Well, duh.”  I’ve been trying to get help for my psychosis symptoms since I was eleven, but every single therapist (I do not exaggerate, every single one) ignored my increasingly fervent pleas for psychosis treatment, and focused instead on my depression and anxiety.  One of them told me I couldn’t possibly be mentally disturbed because I was too polite.  Another, years later, dismissed my symptoms after finding out that the voices I heard rarely said harmful things.  I distinctly remember talking to a psychiatrist when I was twelve and saying, with no small amount of distress, “I might be a sociopath!  I want to kill people!”  She waved a hand and said, “Honey, we all do sometimes.”

Right.

I am, in all honesty, intensely curious to find out how my treatment will differ  as an adult.  The last time I received psychotherapy and evaluation was when I was eighteen — still under the jurisdiction of Youth Services.  At eighteen I was given the child-based tests for autism spectrum disorder.  (The tests were inconclusive, but I could have told you that would be the result before I even set foot in the testing chamber.)  The psychiatrist who ordered the tests was, my local friends may remember, the one who formally diagnosed me with bipolar disorder — and then later denied ever having diagnosed me, and not only went out of her way to call me a liar, but implied that I was wasting time and money by being in her office.  That was only marginally better than the therapist who physically abused me when I was eleven.  I think the only thing I wasn’t subjected to as an outpatient child was shock therapy — and don’t laugh, because that’s still used, despite controversy, in the mental health community.  (Some patients even enjoy it, and return yearly for a “tune-up.”) 

Surprising no one, I have developed a fear of therapy.  But I want to be better — dear God do I ever want to be better.  I want to go to university, and hold down a job, and have a healthy poly relationship, and maybe even kids.  I want to have energy.  I want to experience emotions beyond resignation.  I want to thrive.  Maybe therapy will change that.  And maybe it won’t — maybe I’ll have to claw my way out of the well alone.  Again.  Like I did when I was sixteen, and again at eighteen, because no one else would help.  Because the mental health system, as good as it can be, failed a little girl who just wanted to be normal.

This morning, I should have felt something.

Maybe by next year, I will have learned how to be angry.