The Men in the White Coats

TRIGGER WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS DETAILS ABOUT A MENTAL BREAKDOWN. IF THIS WILL UPSET YOU, PLEASE DON'T READ IT.

They really did come to take me away. (Ha ha, hee hee, to the Funny Farm......)



It might have been the pressure I put on myself from Hubby being gone, the rough transition of him being back for just one week and gone again coupled with that strangely changing power dynamic. It could be that the hypo-manic episode I had in early October swung the other way and led me into a vast crash, not suicidal but not in any way competent. Maybe there is just something about this time of year that sends my brain into emotional overload and I take a nose dive. Maybe the Lexapro destabilized me just enough to see the upswing in October and the downturn in December. Oh hell! maybe a butterfly flapped its wings in Central Park and someone around the globe wished they hadn't forgotten their umbrella.

Whatever the cause, the result was the crash. The cutting intensified - the pull of the urges so strong that even the desire to not have the urges faded away into a foggy background. The song Fake It by Seether became my mantra, my theme song. I felt like I had this grand elaborate mask on, trying desperately to fool everyone around me (including myself) into thinking I was doing just fine. And I wasn't. I don't know how much others realized I was sinking because I got so much encouragement and praise - that could have been in hopes keeping me going or out of ignorance that it wasn't true. But I sold my soul to fool the world and lost my self-esteem along the way.

Then Hubby came back for a week. Things were strange in a wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff kind of way. I wanted things to go back to how they were before he left. I wanted him to become the me I had become while he was gone. I wanted him to fall in line with the changes we had made without him. I wanted to make it easy on him. I wanted him to make it easy on me. It was a very confusing set of emotions and contradictions packed into one short week.

And then he left. Again. And this time I knew how it would feel to know that my heart was only beating half-way because its other half had been ripped out and shipped off via airplane to Atlanta, Georgia. And I knew the kids were going to feel that too. I knew the whole schedule had fallen back onto my shoulders. I knew then that there would be no going back or staying the same: everything was changing and we didn't have an adapt or die choice, we simply had an adapt option.

I blamed myself for him being irritable and out of sorts while he was home. I blamed him for it then blamed myself for blaming him. The world seemed to speed up around me while I trudged through the mud trying to catch my bearings, my breath. I didn't see how we were going to make the rest of our lives work if we couldn't even make one week work, forgetting that the water is coldest in the first moments after you take the plunge.

I let myself slip away inside myself more and more, sleeping as often as I could, sleepwalking when I couldn't sleep, dissociating when I couldn't do either. Predictably the headaches came on in full-blown glory, along with the shots of Happy-Juice. Instead of taking one xanax, I'd take 5 or 6 or forget I'd taken a couple and take a few more. That Wednesday, the 3rd, I snapped. And everything else is like a memory of someone telling me about a movie they once saw when they were drunk.

The straw that brought the men in the white coats actually ended up a bipolar rage - mine. Well, Kid-1 started it. (I sound like a kindergartner! LOL) He went into a rage and in my basically incoherent state, I responded likewise. We tussled, physically, and the exertion gave me an asthma attack bad enough to call in the EMTs for me and the cops to calm Kid-1 down. In the process of getting me breathing again, the EMTs saw my arm. The latest gash is deep and long and wide and was bleeding quite grotesquely. For some strange and incomprehensible reason, they were not impressed.

The men in the white coats restored oxygen to my body, bandaged up my arm and called The Shrink to find out if I was bloody nuts or harmlessly crazy. The Shrink was literally in the process of telling them that if I promised I wouldn't do anything that I could be held to my word... when I pulled out the IV and stripped the bandage from my arm, got dressed and tried to leave. Thus came the court ordered 72 hold.

When informed of the hold that had been placed against me, I was less than pleased at the prospect. In fact, I tried repeatedly to leave the hospital, thwarted by a HUGE guy who, if his name wasn't Bubba, it ought to have been. When they told me I had no choice and brought out the HANDCUFFS(!!!!!!) I began to shriek. And shriek. And shriek. And shriek.

The running joke amongst my friends is to use a patronizing tone of voice to tell someone: "Don't worry. The men in the white coats are your friends. They will bring you a coat that lets you hug yourself. And the big shiny needle only stings for a minute."

Wow. How true it is, only substitute the huggy-coat for handcuffs and there you have it. The sedated me for transport - twice. When I came out of my stupor, I grew more and more coherent. I quickly realized where I was and that this was NOT a good thing. But the fog was also clearing and I began retrieving control over my mind. Within 24 hours, I (me, not someone in my body that wasn't me) was back. I was released from my 72 hour hold after little less than 48 hours. (This caused them some paperwork issues but I don't care - that's their problem.)

Now I am back from the funny farm where life is beautiful all of the time and I am trying to pick up the pieces I dropped over the past few weeks. I didn't OD or attempt suicide this time so I didn't break too many people's trust in me. I went to the hospital via ambulance because of an asthma attack and that is the story that the vast majority of people heard so I am not getting lecture upon lecture upon lecture. I am feeling better, a definitive upswing (that has me worried but that's for another time) and not sleeping all the time. Hubby will be back TOMORROW!!!! And I have gained some new insights into some issues here at home.

I guess all's well that ends well but the next time we use the men in the white coats joke or sing that silly They're coming to take me away haha song... I guarantee I will think of this. Maybe it will take the edge off the joke and dull the humor; maybe it will increase it exponentially like the "Are you psychotic?" snafu did. Time will tell.