I'll be candid, it's the internet, you're all strangers but I'll never meet you so your judgment won't really affect me lol.
I am severely mentally ill. I am not dangerous. Last year I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I have had borderline personality disorder since childhood. I have been depressed with severe anxiety since I was 4 years old. At age 34, I started Spravato which is a nasal ketamine spray for treatment-resistant depression. Within a month of treatment, I was able to experience joy and happiness for the first time in my life--my depression was GONE. It has stayed gone --I have a Spravato session once every two weeks and that will likely continue indefinitely, it has been 3 years now. Ketamine has been my miracle drug. I also believe Latuda and Cymbalta have been very helpful for me.
Unfortunately, a lifetime of trauma and untreated mental illness has wrecked my brain function. I consider myself cognitively disabled. Years ago I was much more functional--I was able to get my master's degree in social work in 2011, but it has been downhill ever since. My short and long-term memory are both just awful, although I struggle less with short term. I describe many years of my past as a near-total blackout, I simply have no memories. I remember very little of my childhood. I don't enjoy reading because my memory won't allow me to follow the story, movies are difficult for me to follow as well because I will forget what I just watched and then lose interest because I don't know what's going on. I believe my brain has been physically changed by the history of trauma and mental illness and there is no medication or therapy that will make me any more functional than I am now, which is just... kind of devastating to be honest, because I am *happy* and able to experience joy, but I can hardly think, I have no executive function, my anxiety is still not controlled at all (klonopin works, but my doctor will NOT increase my small dosage, and honestly I am very lucky she has allowed time to continue the dose I'm on at all). I can't use my degree for work, right now I do work-from-home customer service for Williams Sonoma for 10-20 hours a week, and that's the max of what I can handle mentally and physically. I am usually scheduled for 25 hours but every day right away I put in for voluntary time off because I can't sit through a whole shift, it's always approved within a few hours of the start of my shift and I can sign off for the day. Good for my health, terrible financially because I can't pay my bills. My stepmom actually bought my WFH setup for me--M2 MBA and LG 4k monitor; my elderly father passed in October and she took some money out of a retirement plan to fix some things around her house and with that she also gave me the money to buy my WFH setup. Honestly, I live in poverty lol. The most I can hope to do on my own is upgrade my iPhone every year with carrier financing as long as I'm able to pay the sales tax on the phone. The jury is still out of whether or not I will be able to afford the 15 this year 😅
Physically, I have fibromyalgia that surfaced when I was in elementary school (looking back at my symptoms). I am in pain most of the time, just a general all over body pain, I describe it as feeling like a giant walking bruise. Some days I am confined to bed, writhing in pain. Laying hurts, sitting hurts, standing hurts. This contributes to my generally poor mental health, because even though I now WANT to go out and do things and enjoy life without depression, I can't because I am physically disabled. What really sucks is that my job--a job I am mentally capable of doing--requires me to sit all day. Sitting is very painful for my knees, having them bent. As a child I had a doctor's note stating that at assemblies or when we otherwise had to sit on the floor, I had to be placed on the outside of the row so I could stretch my legs out because sitting "crisis cross applesauce" has always been, to put simply, absolutely excruciating for me. This started when I was about 6 and never went away.
I am also very fat. I have always eaten for comfort, eating makes me very happy and I really enjoy food a lot. But I also never feel full. I have never felt full unless I am so overstuffed that I feel sick; I have two modes, stuffed and sick, or not stuffed and still hungry. There is no in between. Now I have come to love my fat body, I am attracted to larger people, I love my curves (although they're honestly way more than curves). I have decided to get weight loss surgery because my extra weight is causing my fibromyalgia pain to worsen. While I have about 200 pounds to lose to be considered a "normal weight," I would be happy and still love my fat body with a 100 pound weight loss. 00 pounds ago I was very mobile and able to DO things. But, if I do get that 200 pound loss, I will be stoked because I will fit on roller coasters again--that's the light at the end of this tunnel for me. I want to take my kids to Cedar Point and ride EVERYTHING again like I did when I was 16. The Raptor was my jam.
Losing weight will make me more mobile and will improve my mental health, but it won't cure my mental illness or fix my brain damage. Once I can afford it, I need to pay for a marriage dissolution (separated since 2014, 1 child together, good friends still) so I can be single to apply for disability. I was opposed to disability for a long time but this year I have finally accepted the fact that through no fault of my own, I am a disabled adult.
Well, if anyone read my life story, thanks and I would love to be friends haha 😅
