The Price We Pay
on surviving a mental health crisis in the shadows of capitalism
America is a pyramid scheme of cascading indentured servitude which requires those not born of privilege to grind away their lives. This is our modern conception of living.
We serve the dollar.
Everyday a prayer for that ever-distant hope of a weekend away, or some travel abroad. Hopes often dashed in the reality of a world in which necessities are priced beyond our means — entire system shattered for those who are not millionaires or surviving from assets acquired in times less broken.
We can escape inside with the breath, by stillness, in moments connecting to nature. Still, demands of this brutal world and its inhuman expectations are ever domineering. They stamp out seeds of abundance.
Human beings are not and will never be machines, we are not programmable. No matter how hard those with wealth would like to see us that way. When we break down, we need rest. When we get sick, we need to heal.
Yet, there is no space for rest when accelerated growth of profit is the core value of a civilization.
Last Year I Broke
Crumbled, shattered, broken mess — grasping for help.
These are the kinds of words which have littered much of my poetry in the past six months. Unfortunately, apt descriptions of self as I stumbled out of my 2024 fall season.
It was a season of cruelest harvest. Exactly what I’d wrought from a year of time spent painfully avoiding embodiment of the lessons which life had to teach me.
My third year of gender transition — a time of hormonal shifts and emotional openings — switching tracks from one way of being to another, landing fully in a new sense of self, shedding old skin. Second year of parenthood, with its extended initiation into living at highest capacity with new levels of responsibility and ever evolving challenges to ego. It would also be the year the floundering relationship with my parents would finally give out, and my hopes to secure a positive and affirming friendship with my ex would die away, at least for now.
I also began working as a manager — a first in the technological career path I’ve been forging for a decade. Which, while coming with benefits, clashes with my heart’s desire to help people. The environment of this new position, and quite specifically those with whom I now work beneath, is a hotbed of patriarchal toxicity. I work in a good-ole’-boys club. I’m the only woman in the room full of people who see me as a man. Making a living at the corruption of my time and heart and soul. The unhealthiest of working environments. In a tiny office of three, surrounded by dozens more like it, no space to think. Expected to be a machine of thoughtlessness, empathy unallowed.
On top of all of this movement in my life, in early 2024 I was a big gay idiot and fell in love with my best and only friend, losing them in whole. Compounding the pain by untold amounts through disastrous pleas to be heard, concluding with words said of greatest shame.
2024 would see me sink to the saddest depths in search of love — to not find anything but more trauma — compromising my values and sacrificing my worth more thoroughly than ever before. It would see me physically assaulted in my home — then force me to continue living there, with the one whose hands were upon me in anger, for months after.
I was more alone than I’ve ever been.
It was here, along with the unfolding of an additional and horrifying layer of trauma at home, perceived through a lens of the already manic state I was living in, where a full-on panic attack ensued. During this episode, a host of things happened, resulting in actions which have spurred the deepest shame. This newfound grief, coalescing with my entire saga of trauma, became the deepest well of hurt and fear I’ve ever experienced.
I journaled, and found myself writing, “I need help. I need help. I need help.” Sitting there afterwards, waiting, as if more would come. It did not.
So, I reached out to the only thing available to me. I called 411, then 911. I spoke to mental health crisis professionals through the night. I checked myself into a crisis center the next day. Came back home that evening medicated and finally — even if artificially — regulated to some level of relaxation in my body.
When speaking with individuals at the center, I was so painfully honest, completely bare. I let them know exactly how fucked up I was.
Looking at it all — laying it out. I could see how I was an addict, first and foremost. How my spiraling addictive tendencies, and the hell they were putting my body and stress levels through, were eating me alive in the face of my life’s many challenges. Even causing delusions.
They also told me that I was showing signs of bi-polar behavior.
And So, They Gave Me Pills
Not only did they give me the very small dose of some benzo-pill I was hoping for, to kick-start some relaxation in my hyper-stressed body and mind — they also sent me home with mood stabilizers to try taking in the evenings before bed, for my newly determined ‘bi-polar personality disorder’.
They said I’d probably sleep better and eat more. Both things I needed at the time anyway. This manic place I’d been in had included both staying up through the night and not eating enough.
So, I went with it. Even though I would sleep like a rock for 10 hours after I took them, it was sort of helping. At least on a surface level. Though, I’d notice the pills would wear off after about 18 hours, and the last few hours of the day caused me to be more prone to anxiety spikes.
The psychiatrist I connected with told me if I was to ever come off the medication, I’d likely experience a very high-stress period of time.
For over a month I took this medication daily. Though, consciously choosing to not take it on occasional nights. My thoughts being that I’d like to have some energy in the evenings to get things done, and I still hoped I might eventually come off the medication entirely.
I spoke to the psychiatrist about this. I told them plainly. My goal is to not be on this medication.
Our talks revolved around all I’d been through, and how right now I needed a little help with the stress, but that I’d like to build healthier habits into my life which would help me regulate naturally.
That proved unheard, when on an unnecessary follow-up call, they asked if I was sure I didn’t want to up the dosage and prescription. Remarking how, ‘most people want more after a while’.
Lights went off in my head. Holy shit! I needed to get myself out of this.
To Be Saved
Things in my life allowed the possibility of coming off the pills to be born when I was gifted with solutions to finally live alone. No longer being in the direct daily presence of my ex — a person which my body was no longer able to properly regulate around — did me wonders.
Even more importantly, after another half-month, and teetering my way towards my next needed refill date on the medication. I had a second date with someone that went very well.
It was the most needed of connections. A human I felt purely grateful to have met.
It was truly one of the best nights of my life, after all the disconnection and loneliness, to just dive into conversation with someone I was so into and get to know them intimately. We stayed up into the earliest hours of the morning just talking.
Though this love burned fast and bright, now come and gone, birthing new traumas of the heart I’m still unpacking. That night in particular saved me.
So lifted by these blossoming seeds of love, I forgot my medication before bed. And the next day I was still feeling so great from spending time with this magnificent person, I decided — fuck it, here’s my shot.
I’ve not taken another dose of the mood stabilizer since, and it has now been months.
After a few days of some amplified stress levels from the detox which were powerfully counteracted by my glowing-ass heart. I found myself feeling truly regulated. Grounded at last.
Who knew? I just needed a fucking hug. A little love. Some human connection to make me feel like I wasn’t so alone as I moved through this nightmarish time of life.
The first time I saw my daughter after coming off the medication felt like the first time I’d seen her in months. It truly saddened me.
I had been justifiably broken down by a profit-driven world that asks us to bend to its unreasonable standards — hurt by others I care for deeply who struggle under the same stresses — with absolutely no time or space to rest, nobody to turn to or hold. And the systems that be made me out to be the problem. They called me ‘wrong’. Labeled me ‘bi-polar’.
Those were highly justified trauma responses I was having.
With nowhere to turn, life flipped upside down, unbearable weights placed upon me, and no time to breathe — I broke.
The proposed solution from our society? Assume I’ve been broken the whole time. Prescribe pills to numb me out. And push me out the door, back to work.
Only insult to injury that I was written up at work — final warning — for forgetting my schedule the Monday after my trip to the crisis center. My first no-call no-show ever. Assumed to be written up at last when I realized what I’d done. But bewildered to find that I would be callously threatened with a final warning when an honest mistake was made at my darkest moment.
Emblematic of the culture at work I so want to rid myself of.
Now, having finally found grounding at a new home where I can settle. Where I’ll have the financial freedom to get out of this most difficult place I’ve been in. Knowing that I can and will find a way to work for a living in a less toxic environment, in time. I find myself as healthy and grounded as I’ve been in years.
I find myself perfectly fine, not ‘bi-polar’. Simply a person put through incredible circumstances who made terrible mistakes and was overcome by the stress it wrought in her body — certainly amplified by her unhealthy addictions and the many griefs stored within.
Disillusioned, is how I feel after this saga.
Never did I think the medical and psychiatric industry put people’s best interests first. Always did I know they were a part of the profit seeking corruption that is America.
Still, to see it from the inside. To find yourself in the most dire straits with nobody to turn to, falling through the cracks of society, creates a helpless feeling inside. It shows you how calloused this capitalistic hellscape we live within truly is, firsthand. Illuminating so much about how the ways we operate are simply inhuman.
I pray for those I’ve loved and lost to find their own way to healing and grounded peace. I understand how this world’s stresses can, has, and will bring the worst out of people, including myself.
Still, I love us all the same.
