Pride

It has been quite a journey, my life. I have come to the place where I am so grateful for all of the experiences I have had and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Living at Steve’s side for 26 years is likely the biggest accomplishment I have in my life. But living with and surviving a serious mental illness has to be a close second. Right now, I am on a myriad of medications and have been stable for over three years. I am so stable that recently I have been able to go down on one of my stronger medications. Originally I suffered with very strong psychosis, coming out of an episode in March of 2021. This had been the fourth in a series of serious psychotic episodes that I experienced between 2016 and 2021. I was not hospitalized for any of these episodes, and I have a very supportive family and community. I also have a dedicated therapist and psychiatrist that were at my side through it all. In 2021, we decided that a medication I had been taking since 2018 was not working very well. The side effects of this medication, Seroquel, were awful. I would lay in bed after having taken my pills, and as they would set in, I couldn’t feel or sense my body. So much so that in worse moments, I would have Steve assure me that I was still alive. I really wanted the medication to work, which is why we stuck with it as long as we did. In 2021, we switched to Olansapine, and I took twice the average dose for almost three years. Recently I went down from 40 mg to 30 mg and now am in the process of going down to 20 mg. I feel much better. 20 mg is an average dose, and for a long time I needed much more than that to fight the psychosis. But now, I am totally free of psychosis. I am very grounded in reality, and I am eternally grateful to my medications, my doctors, and my support. I have achieved the impossible and that is amazing.

In a program, sober, stable on medications, supported by my disability assistance, in the care of a good doctor and therapist, I find myself at 45 feeling so good. Life still has challenges, and my partner of 26 years is currently fighting lung cancer. He also became disabled in 2017, from a major spinal cord surgery, and struggles with pain and mobility issues because of his spinal stenosis. Having Steve become disabled, I have had a total turn around of perspective. Loving and accepting him despite his disability, I have learned to love and appreciate myself. Why would anyone think less of Steve? He is so talented, intelligent, wise, and accomplished. His disability did not change this. I am still working on this change of perspective. I myself, am talented, intelligent, wise and accomplished. I am coming around to loving and accepting myself exactly as I am and as I have been. I am making huge progress in simply seeing that I am so much more than my disability. I am not solely a person with mental illness. That is not who I am. Surviving and living with mental illness has affected who I am for sure, but I am no longer limited to thinking that this is all that I am.

That being said, I now live with my mental illness with great pride. Before my breakdown in 2016 which resulted in me leaving my job of four years, I had nine full years of remission. This means mostly that I did not suffer a major episode. There were still challenges, the occasional meds adjustment, and I continued to take my medications, attended therapy, and was treated by a psychiatrist or meds consul nurse. There were moments that I struggled, and I am still very much shaped by my illness even while in remission. But I worked for those nine years, and had many hobbies; playing music, yoga, writing children’s music and leading workshops with kids, selling tacos, painting, writing, and more. I lived a very full life during this time. My other major episodes that did result in hospitalization occurred in 1998, 1999, and 2007. Between 1998 and 2007 I went to school, worked a handful of jobs, built a garden and bought a house, wrote a memoir, traveled, camped all over WA state, and made many friends. I trained as a Peer Counselor and went to Massage School. I can see now that my life was so full. Still, my major episodes as well as my minor ones, shaped who I am. Just not in a bad way. I now see that my illness and my episodes are nothing to be ashamed of. There is a lot of stigma around mental illness, and my pride was very injured in my twenties. But the way that my illness has shaped my life, and all the lessons that it has taught, I now welcome. I love who I am, I love my life, and I have lived well. I think it is important to recognize that there is nothing about life that is predictable. Loved ones die, things happen, illness arrives, and we are not always prepared. We must do our best to handle whatever life brings. I think I handled everything the best that one could. I am proud of that. It feels good to be proud.