Recovery from mental illness is a
very personal thing. It means different things to different people. For me it
meant getting off of disability and working full time. It meant getting to the
point where I could manage my symptoms well enough to do some kind of
meaningful work and be independent again. It meant being fully present for my
son.
For some it means the ability to
get out of bed in the morning and have some sense of purpose. For others it
means quieting the voices in their head long enough to have a conversation.
Ultimately recovery is a process, the getting from one place to another.
Recovery is rethinking one’s life
to include the realities of mental illness. It’s getting from the question of
what’s wrong to what’s strong. Recovery is reclaiming one’s life. It’s finding
a way to be the best version of oneself in spite of the debilitating effects of
mental illness.
In my darkest days I slept 12
sometimes 14 hours per day. I would go days without bathing and ate all the
time. I ate for comfort and to numb my emotions. In 2007 I broke down. I didn’t
understand what was happening, but my symptoms were out of control. I was
hearing distressing voices, crying all the time, not sleeping much or sleeping too
much and eating everything I could get my hands on.
One day I went out for lunch at
my job and knew I was never going back. I sat in my car fighting back tears of
utter defeat. I had no idea what was wrong, but I knew I couldn’t go on like I
had been. After 10 months of borrowing money from my brother and sister to take
care of myself and my young son I moved to Atlanta to be closer to family. I
remember crying on the phone with my sister saying “it’s all falling apart.” To
her credit she calmly encouraged me to let things fall apart.
When I complained that I didn’t
have the money to move she countered with” I’ll pay for it.” She knew I was
sinking, but she wasn’t going to let me drown. A friend helped me pack the 24
foot U-Haul truck and I drove from south Florida to Georgia with my son beside
me and our cats Luvy and Duvy in the back.
Again, my sister was there for me.
She set me up in one of her rental houses and let me catch my breath. I got
into a routine fast that centered around making my son’s life as normal as I
could. It was very hard on him. I had just uprooted him from the only home and
friends he had known for five years. I yanked him out of his fifth grade year
in the middle of the year and dropped him into an abyss. I never slept when he
was awake. When he was awake I kept my voices and tears at bay. I played with
him, helped him with his homework, watched TV with him and basically tried to
reassure him that everything was okay.
In 2009 my therapist told me
about this thing called a peer center where I would find support with living
with a mental illness. I went to the Decatur Peer Support and Wellness Center
with no expectations. I asked the staff if they had an art class, they said no
and then the director asked me if I wanted to teach one. I thought about it for
a whole five seconds and said yes. For nine months I facilitated an art class.
It was great. It gave me the confidence to apply for another part time job at a
local music nonprofit. I did that for a year then went back to the center and
applied for a job as a peer specialist. I was hired and my recovery really
began full steam.
Just being around people in
recovery was good for me. Having my experiences validated and not feeling the
pressure to be happy and well all the time allowed me to feel free. Everyone
around me had a diagnoses, but that didn’t stop them from doing their job. Nine
months into the job, my supervisor sent me to get my certification. I was
energized and transformed by being around so many recovery centered people. I
was inspired by being in such good company. These were my peers and they were
living a life of their choosing. The first night of the certification training
I texted my supervisor and told her I wanted to work full time. There were no full time positions at the
center and three months later I was working full time at another agency.
So how does one get from there to
here? Simply put, one fights. One fights every day, sometimes every minute to
live a life of one’s choosing. No one, not me, not my therapists, doctors or
family thought I would ever work full time again. I was convinced that my life
would be a never ending battle of scraping and scratching to get by on
disability. I was convinced that my illness was who I was and would decide
whether or not I could live with purpose. Then someone said to me what I needed
to hear…” you are more than your diagnosis and your lived experience with
mental illness has value.”
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