I need an Island

You never really know when and how it starts, nor can you really fathom the depth of the river before you've been swept away by the tide.

For many years, between my 13th and my 18th birthday, I was emotionally, mentally and physically abused at my then-high school. The main culprit was one of the teachers. Although he didn't act alone. And the other pupils found it entertaining, if nothing else.

There was no one I could talk to, no one who would listen. No one who seemed to care. So I was left with the pain, the silence and the shame of what they did to me. It was all my fault, they said, and seeing it felt like me against the world, they had to be right. There was something wrong with me, and I deserved to be punished for taking up oxygen and space a decent, deserving, person could occupy.

Matters didn't get any better when the help of the family-doctor was called. This creature (I hesitate calling him human) agreed that it was my fault, that I had instigated the whole mess.. Because I was precocious and too smart for my own good and too sensitive for this world. Hey, thanks for the support, pal, why don't you just shoot me and get it over with, huh?!. Anyway, his solution to all my problems were pills. By the truckloads. Xanax, Prozac, Librium, Valium, Anafranil.. you name it, I took it. And so aged 14, my many years as a full-blown anti-depressant/anxiety-suppressant junkie began. It also marked the beginning of my liver-damage and laid the roots to what would 10 years later be diagnosed as hypoglycemia and endometriosis. I also developed a strong aversion to traditional medicine and haven't been able to trust many doctors since.

Apart from being a professional disaster and an obvious malpracticioner (is there even such a word?), my former doctor also had a few perversions of his own. Always enquiring about the state of my love life (those questions started when I was just 10, what a sick oaf!) and I often heard totally gross remarks like "oh, you're starting to get breasts" and "I bet a lot of guys would like to go to bed with you, I would if I were younger.". He made me feel sick to my stomach and he also made me feel disgusted about myself. I began to hate my body and the way I perceived it through the eyes of the perverts in my life. I was about 13 when my self-hate began. I started starving myself because I didn't want to turn into a woman. I wanted to stay a kid, a-sexual, so that those perverts wouldn't find me interesting anymore. I was in deep shit. No one seemed to notice.

Along with the self-hate, came the fear. The once brave kid suddenly seemed to be scared of everything. The worst were crowds and people. I started spending as little time with people as possible. They frightened the life out of me, especially people my own age and men with beards like that ex-teacher. I also got panic attacks. Was afraid to walk into a shop and ask for something (thank goodness for supermarkets where you just put your own groceries in a cart!), couldn't eat in public places anymore and even something like shopping or going to the theatre became a nightmare. So eventually on days I didn't have to go to school I stayed home. Always.

I also started hurting myself. Razors, knives, cigarettes, it sounds almost like a cliché. I also started to scratch. Today I'm still waiting for all the old self-inflicted wounds to heal. But one day they shall.

A month before my 18th birthday, after many years of hell had passed, I finally broke down. Mentally, physically, emotionally, the whole package. After a long struggle, I was finally referred to a psychiatrist, with the help of an uncle who had once been depressed himself and could spot the signs.

January 1995, I was diagnosed with severe depression, panic disorder, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and social phobia.

From 1995 tot 1999, I lived like a hermit. The social phobia had become agoraphobia and for a long time, leaving the house was impossible. I was also plagued with flashbacks of memories I seemed to have buried somewhere deep inside. I often felt helpless, hopeless and on many occasions I wanted to kill myself, have it all over and done with.

In 1999 I discovered the internet and started interacting with people other than snail-mail pen friends again. I chatted on a local BBS and after conquering a lot of fear met some of the chatters of that BBS in real life.

One of them became my boyfriend for 18 months. But promising as this may sound, it didn't bring me the happy ending one might hope or expect. My relationship with this person had me on another road to destruction, and after this modern romance had come to an end, I was almost back where I had started from.

Luckily, it didn't take me that long to mourn the relationship, and to gradually start living again. I began working (only freelance at first but eventually fulltime) as web designer, doing what I had enjoyed and what had kept me sort of sane for the past couple of years. I also met madhu and a lot of other friends. People who somewhat restored my faith in mankind and helped me see that there was nothing wrong with me, that I was for lack of a better term - a worthwhile person.

More than eight years after my escape from hell, I have eliminated many of the demons that plagued me for so long. The agoraphobia is gone, the panic attacks only appear now and again, and a nightmare has finally become an exception rather than the rule. I'm trying to get over hurting myself and haven't cut for a long time now. I still scratch sometimes, but I'm working on that.

Depression? Well, it comes and goes, and the hypoglycemia especially doesn't help much in the way of keeping my energy-levels up. I get tired easily and sometimes just thinking about all the stuff I need to do, and heaven knows that's a lot since I have this little devil inside of me that says I must make up for lost time, already makes me feel too tired and demotivated to ever actually get started on those things.

This past year hasn't been easy either. My puppy died in a freak-accident, two close friends tried to commit suicide (luckily, without success but the fact that they tried it already freaked me out beyond words because you know, they were always so much stronger than me...) and then my previous job had me spiraling downwards again. The latter came to a swift end when they decided to fire me (in the lamest way possible too, but you can read more about that by reading the whole story) so that I no longer had to worry about staying or leaving and could find myself another place to work, with hopefully a better, more mature and tolerant, environment.

Within two weeks, I had a few offers and a new contract. Maybe I should have taken more time to recuperate from the mess that had gone before (I know some of the fatigue I have now is still the after-effect of my previous job's stress), but on the other hand, I was also scared of suddenly not working again and thus once more becoming scared of being amongst people/leaving the house. I wanted to force myself to go back to work so that the fear of being amongst people wouldn't get a second chance.

How am I feeling now? Well, most of the time I'm okay. Often though, I'm not. The 'not'-times have me wondering whether or not I should get help again. But weighing out the pros and cons, I don't think that would be such a good idea.

Don't get me wrong, my psychiatrist was a wonderful, competent, doctor, and in many ways he saved my life. Even if he hadn't been a good doctor, he got me out of that school, a deed that practically deserves him a knighthood in my book! But on the other hand, looking back, I don't feel as if I have been properly treated by the so-called medical experts

For a long time, I've been treated as if there were nothing
wrong with me, I suppose because I don't conform to textbook criteria. I don't "look" like a mental patient. I have a busy, productive life. I can laugh and smile, and apart from perhaps being perceived as a rather quiet person, I'm no different from anyone else. I look 'normal' (whatever that means) therefore I am normal. Right?

Wrong. And I'm fed up with trying to explain, and trying to convince people (and this includes doctors, most of whom are still quite clueless about depression, panic disorder.. ) that I am, in fact, not well.

I'm also not going to resort to taking pills again and doing myself further damage. Isn't it strange either, by the way, that although there is never anything wrong with me, the first thing they do is prescribe me an entire pharmacy?!

When it comes to psychiatric help, I'm just tired of it.
Tired of crying out. Tired of waiting in waiting rooms for a doctor who's going to say exactly the same thing I've heard 1001 times already. I'm tired of the false sense of hope I put into a stranger, only because this stranger has the power to give me a pill which contains so many unfulfilled promises. I'm just tired.

So that's one road I won't be taking again, regardless. If anything helps, rest does. Being with friends does, when I want them around. Being alone does, when people get too much, and listening to what my heart and mind tell me. Sometimes I just need isolation. Of the right kind.

I suppose the only way to get help now, is if I help myself, put it in my own hands, and decide for myself with what I can live and with what I can't.

I mean, obviously, I'd rather be without the mood swings and the fatigue. I'd rather not have all that stuff, but on the other hand I can live with it and accept it as something that's a part of me. I don't think suppressing the depressed feelings until they're ready to go away again is the answer. I don't think chemicals can really cure me. And I'd rather take the bad days with the good than 'live' every day in a fake, chemically-enforced, state of happiness.

On the whole, I'm on the right road. Even if I did stray from the track a few times and had some rubble come down on top of me on a few occasions.

In spite of what appears to be a chronic depression, I've come a long way since 1995 and this is really only the beginning of the chapter...

November 2003, from glitterkitty