Mental Health is a serious issue affecting our society today.
In an effort to get rid of the negativity and the stigma against mental illness, these brave women have chosen to share their stories with you.
Be nice, read, reflect and respond reasonably.
This post is from Maasiyat Jaan.
Online I go by the name Maasiyat Jaan. It means disobedient sinful soul which pretty much sums me up. No, it’s not my real name. I choose to write anonymously because I write about a lot of sensitive things that would affect other people. I was diagnosed as manic depressive at 13 and later on as bipolar type 1, rapid cycling, along with PTSD and attachment disorders. I’ve survived grandiose delusions and a psychotic break, but not without causalities. Today, I am remarried and attempting to glue back the broken pieces of my life. That’s really what I wanted to share with you today.
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The Aftermath.
Most everyone talks about what it’s like in the middle of a manic episode. They tell you what they feel and how it effects their decisions and those around them, but what seems not to be talked about as much is the aftermath. After the mania subsides and when you’re attempting to regain the control you’ve lost. There is an enormous amount of rebuilding to do and that is when a mentally ill person needs family the most. At least I know that is true for me.
In 2004, I started slipping into a psychotic break. By 2005, I believed I was a supernatural being chosen by God to help lead and train the army of the messiah. I sent my children to live with their father and went off chasing this fantasy. However, I ended up homeless, jobless, penniless and have spent the last 4 years trying to rebuild all I destroyed.
I lost my children, my family, my friends, everything.
Today, I’m not the person I was during 2005-2007, but I’m judged for my actions during those two years.
I’m 34 yrs old, but the only thing that matters to anyone is those two years of pure insanity. No one cares what a good person or mother I was before or what type of person I am today.
All they see is a woman who abandoned her children to go have a fling with a man.
No one will listen or accept my explanations.
No one will offer the slightest amount of forgiveness.
Loving and living with insanity is no easy task. It’s difficult, demanding and challenging. Not just on the family of the person who is mentally ill, but on the person themselves. I have days where I am so overcome with guilt and want so badly to be forgiven and to be seen for the person I am today that it causes me to become unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to function.
The pain is almost unbearable and it takes all of my strength to not slip back into a delusional fantasy world once again.
It’s important that people realize that if we COULD be different, then we WOULD be different.
We don’t want to be the way we are. We don’t feel proud of the things we do inside the manic episodes. We desperately wish we could be different, but we can’t. We didn’t do anything wrong that made us this way. We were born this way. I’ve been this way my entire life. I was first diagnosed at 13. Trust me if I COULD do anything to just be “normal”, I would do it in a heartbeat without a second thought. I am not saying that just because I have bipolar that I somehow should not be held accountable for what I do, but what I am saying is just know that if I didn’t have bipolar then I wouldn’t do the stupidly insane irrational things that I do. If I COULD control it, then I WOULD.
So if you have a loved one who is mentally ill, then know that somewhere deep down inside them they too wish they could control the insanity in their brains. While their actions may make no sense, in some way it helps them to control the chaos in their minds and that is the ultimate reason we do what we do. As irrational and illogical as our actions may seem to those on the outside, in some small way it helps us to control the chaos in our heads, and in the end that is all we really want.
