Troubled Mind

It has been a rough couple of months.  I broke my foot shortly after my birthday.  I was staying with a friend at the time, who'd offered to let me housing in exchange for help with her ailing mother, house sitting, and rent.  Searching for a new home on a broken foot when you also have no car is really, really hard.  I applied for every disability housing unit in the city, but of course none were available.  Because there are never disability housing units available.  It's like that is written into the law:  "make disability housing impossible to find.  That will somehow force the disabled to have the motivation to no longer be disabled."  Honestly, the whole thing made me feel like I was stuck to the bottom of someone's shoe.


And then, of course, things got worse.  My doctor and I agreed that I should wean off of Topamax (which I've been on for over five years) and onto another drug because Topamax makes me feel fuzzy and stupid and made going to school almost impossibly hard.  Switching meds is awful.  I went through days of dizziness and puking and insomnia.  I felt like my nerves were on fire.  All I could do was cry.  Meanwhile, the friend I was staying with told her mom (whom I'd been caring for) that she didn't want me to live with them.  That hurt--not so much the not wanting me there, I get that people need space and sometimes are incompatible, but the fact that she relayed the message through her mom and never talked to me about it at all.  The depression hit like a brick wall.  I felt shattered.  For the first time in years I just didn't want to be alive.


The thoughts just kept running through my head (my head that was all messed up and destroyed and running on overdrive trying to deal with functioning without a med I'd been taking for over five years):  Why should I be here?  There's no place for me to even live.  If I died now, it wouldn't matter--it would just be one fewer person in that line waiting for a home.  It would be one fewer person who has to be on SSDI and Food Stamps.  I know how people feel about me.  I see it in their FB feeds every day.  We're leeches, we're drains on society.  Society doesn't want us and is better off without us.

It had been a long time since I had these sort of thoughts.  I didn't know why I was having them.  At that time it didn't occur to me that switching meds was affecting my emotions and my self-perception.  All I knew was that I felt terrible.  I felt unworthy and I felt unwanted.  I didn't know who to talk to.  I couldn't think of a friend who'd want to help me.  I felt so alone.  I finally called a suicide hotline.  I didn't get any real solutions, but at least there was a voice talking to me, telling me that I mattered.  At least I eventually felt calm enough to go to sleep.

It occurred to me later that it was the meds that were causing such trouble for me.  I was able to contact my doctor and arrange a solution on that front.  Shortly thereafter I found an apartment (funny how the bleak can suddenly turn hopeful).  I've moved my things in.  I'm almost done unpacking.  I start school tomorrow.

Epilepsy and other neurological disorders--and even the meds that treat those disorders--can wreck havoc on our emotions.  These disorders can make your brain lie to you.  Please, please, please don't believe the lies.  Somewhere someone cares.  These things are only temporary.  Hold on for an hour, a night, a day, a week, a month.  Hold on until someone can help you.  Hold on until you can figure it out.  Knowing that there is a solution is a major step and it brings so much hope.  Please, please hold on.