My story about mental illness is essentially my entire life. Mental illness wasn’t something we talked about in my family, so I’m not sure I ever put my finger on it as a child, but an Introductory Psychology professor told the class of over 900 people that if we were in this field to figure out our own problems, they didn’t want us. Somehow I knew that he meant me, so I gave up my dream of becoming a psychologist.

I was the oldest of six children, and as the oldest, I was supposed to set an example, although my next oldest sister was always the good example. But I was never good enough. We were a military family, and never stayed in the same place for more than a few years. California was home, but I haven’t spent more than a few days there once in a while since I was 11. I was born in California, and then we went to Illinois and my sister was born there. We returned to a different part of California, at least three different cities (part of the time my father was in Korea), before we moved to Spain, and then to Texas, and New Mexico, where I only stayed for a year before breaking free and coming to Utah on my own.

There was always something that wasn’t right. Since elementary school I had been a loner, and had regularly been beaten up by bullies on the way home from school, and I could never really trust anyone, but I knew that nobody cared because soon I would go away and be somebody else’s problem. I was not allowed to need help, but neither was I allowed to be independent and take care of myself. As long as I could remember I had been full of anger that had no place to go, which leaked out in uncontrollable tears so I had to run and hide.

By late fall of my first year away from home, my roommates had noticed me staying up all night crying, sleeping in the afternoon, and being generally miserable, and they suggested that I go to counseling. I had known that I needed help, but was never able to give myself permission. My first therapist didn’t ask the right questions, and I didn’t know what to tell him, and he concluded that I was just homesick (homesick for what, I wondered), and would be fine when I got married. Since I had not even dated much, and the boyfriend I thought I was going to be closer to by coming to that school was long since engaged to someone else, I wondered how that would ever happen. But I was dismissed from treatment after ten sessions of having no idea what I was supposed to say. I had learned enough by that time to know that I was depressed, and when I went home for Christmas that year I was very careful to act normal so that nobody would notice anything wrong with me. I needn’t have worried. People don’t tend to notice things that they don’t want to know.

The next year I had different roommates, who didn’t want me because they would have rather had someone else in my place, but I didn’t have anyplace else to go so I stuck it out. One day someone saw me crying through church, thought that I was beautiful with a red, swollen face, and asked someone to introduce him to me. I had no memory of meeting him when he called the next week. Within about three months he asked me to marry him, and since I never really expected anyone to want me, I said sure. I will never understand what he saw in me. I told him that I was crazy, but he said he didn’t believe me.

That winter I continued to cry a lot, and was referred to counseling again this time by church leaders. My new therapist was so busy, he could only work me into his schedule every other week, and when I was there he really didn’t seem to have time for me. I didn’t think that he was even listening when I told him about wandering around town until 3 a.m. wishing that a car would hit me because I couldn’t deal with being home for the meeting my roommates had called to discuss a problem (me), or about trying to cut my wrists with a safety razor and only managing faint scratches. A few weeks later when I told him that I was going to get married, and right away because I couldn’t live with those roommates any longer, he threw all of that back in my face and told me that getting married was the last thing I ought to do because I would just go and raise a dysfunctional family just like the one that I came from. I walked out quietly and never talked to him again.

My husband tried to give me a life, and to encourage me to develop hobbies and interests, something that my parents had never supported. He gave me goats and sheep — I had always loved animals — and eventually gave me a spinning wheel for Christmas since I was a knitter and he thought I would also like spinning and weaving. He was right. Many of the best things about me might not exist if not for him. But he often went overboard, and I was never able to give back to him anything remotely equivalent. I was never even really sure that I loved him.

I had told my husband from the beginning that I wanted a career, and he agreed to that. But when I applied for graduate school in speech pathology I was turned down despite having top grades, because my interests had become divided and my grades dipped slightly, and I was told that I didn’t have adequate social skills to work with children. One supervisor told me that I didn’t belong in the social sciences and ought to go back and try for a second bachelor’s degree in engineering. I was demoralized and gave up on school and career, and spent many years telling people that all I got for four years of college was debt, and education wasn’t worth it.

Over the next several years we moved a few times, and I worked sometimes at low-paying social service type jobs, but by the time we had three children I was a stay-at-home mom. There was very little communication with or support from my family, as once I stopped playing their game I was out of sight and out of mind. I never knew how, really, to make friends. When I was eight years old I decided not to try to make friends anymore – it hurt too much to leave them when we moved – and my parents thought that was a good plan and supported it. My husband was not a lot of help when the children were small. He would come home from work and the kids ran to him to greet him, and he yelled at me to keep them off of him because he needed a break. I never had a break.

From time to time depression was particularly troublesome and I tried counseling a few more times here and there, but I still didn’t know what to say. I went to a social skills group that ended too soon, during my last year of college. I was held up as an example because I was married and still didn’t have social skills. One therapist, a graduate student who I saw after my rejection from graduate school, was only interested in my sex life and I had nothing to tell that was particularly interesting to her. Another time I was referred to a therapist when I broke down crying because I had been asked to help in the nursery at church and I didn’t have the ability to say no, so I worked in the nursery for over a year even though I felt just as trapped there as I did at home with the kids. That therapist observed that my family of origin had erased my personality. Once he came to my house for a tour, and made suggestions about decorating, which I had no budget for. When he dismissed me several months later, he suggested that I try to start making some friends. It was a while after that when I suddenly recovered a memory of being molested by our landlord who lived across the hall from us in Spain, when I was 11 years old.

A few years later, in 1996, we got the Internet, and I joined a few email lists where members shared joys and sorrows and I learned through writing and participating in those groups about forming relationships and making friends with people who shared some of my interests. Finally I could be confident that relationships could be maintained even through moves, since the relationships were not dependent on living nearby. It was easier to express myself in writing.

I continued to feel stuck and trapped in a tiny house that I hated with three children I could never detach myself from enough to have any significant amount of time to myself. I don’t know when the insomnia started, but I took a lot of very hot baths at 3 in the morning when I couldn’t sleep. Anger and frustration got out of control sometimes, and I would scratch myself hard enough to tear the skin, or even use a pair of scissors. Someone emailed me a do-it-yourself stress kit with the instructions to print the page, hang on the wall, and follow the direction, “bang head here” when stressed. Soon there was a hole in the wall behind the piece of paper, and several other holes throughout the house. I have memories of banging my head or slamming it in my locker when I was in high school, and scratching my face when I couldn’t take any more of an argument sometimes just seemed like the only way to deal with that kind of situation. When I thought back far enough, I remembered being six years old and my mother being embarrassed about the self-inflicted bite marks all over my arm. She was afraid that people would think it was ringworm.

One winter was particularly bad, with fog that set in and covered the sun for six weeks. For two months I felt like I couldn’t take it anymore, and was planning an overdose of pills. I acted normal so that nobody would suspect. When the day and time came, the bottles of pills made too much noise in my pockets so I took them out. Disappointed in myself, I shredded my face with my fingernails and slammed my arms and legs in the door of the truck, trying to break something. I was exhausted and didn’t want my children to see me like that, so I sat down in the flowerbed in front of the house rather than go in. Neighbors saw me in that condition and called the police. The hospital in town didn’t have psychiatric services, so I was held in jail until someone came to evaluate me. By that time all I really wanted was to go home, so I answered the questions in such a way that they let me go.

The next day I felt better, and I got back into therapy again, and started reading everything I could. That was when I found Psych Central, and discovered that there were others like me. I read about St. John’s Wort, and decided to try it, and also ordered a light box since it was usually winter when my symptoms were worst. There were two books that helped me to recover lost dreams. The first was about a psychologist who suffered severe depression and still was able to help her clients (Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface, by Martha Manning). If she could do it, I thought maybe there could be hope for me. Next I found Who You Were Meant To Be, by Lindsay C. Gibson, which helped me to start to see past some of the obstacles.

Something was working, and I felt better than I could ever remember. I decided to try again at completing my education, and started by going back for more undergraduate psychology classes, intending to apply to graduate schools after getting a bit of current experience. That dream was what kept me going.

When I perceived a threat to my dream, another crisis occurred. I was confronted by someone who felt that my children were poorly groomed, and they offered to help, but to me it said that I was inadequate as a mother, and my family would be better off without me, because then at least someone else could step in and do what I couldn’t. How could I even consider being a student when I couldn’t handle basic tasks at home? I crashed instantly, and went home and collapsed in a heap. My husband was going out of town, and I told him to go. My only thoughts were of cutting my wrists and neck and bleeding out, and I knew that I could because I was used to cutting myself. What stopped me was the image of my children finding me. I couldn’t put them through that. After that experience I have had no fear of death, since in my mind I have been there and it was actually a thrill to me, but I know that it will not be by my own hand. That would be an easy out for me at the expense of people I care about.

I am still in therapy, and I am still in school. I am now a graduate student in counseling. I am still a work in progress, but I think that my experiences will give me an understanding and an empathy that I couldn’t have had otherwise. I still don’t have the answers, but I have learned a few things. One is that I can’t afford any longer to avoid living my own life. When I finally figure out how to get out of my own way, I will write a book.

–Rapunzel

    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 25 May 2006
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.