Living in a psychosis, a state where you are accepting the irrational, and quite likely impossible, as reality is a hard thing to relate to others. The subjective part of my mind still says, ‘No, that was real’, no matter how diligent or how many facts my objective mindset has regarding these periods of my life. I still require a bit of pause to rationally process what was happening. Having lived with mental illness since childhood, I have despite my challenges, developed tools and productive coping mechanisms through therapy to address what I can now in my adult life. I’m also grateful for the advances of pharmacology that have greatly improved my quality of life. In short I’ve finally learned and accepted that you cannot change where you started, but you can always start to work on trying to change where you’ll end.
However before I had such a ground work, I was not able to overcome the consequences of an unexpected layoff in 2012 that eventually lead to the end of my career in information technology as a programmer and analyst. The strain of being a husband, father, and going from a very high salary to starting over in minimum wage jobs, under threat from unserviceable student loan debt, drove me to a state of severe depression with suicidal thoughts under the feelings of powerlessness and worthlessness. I’d worked very hard to rise up from my start in life out of poverty, to becoming a soldier, and then on to living a life with a possibility for economic prosperity and the illusion of security for my wife and kids. With the evaporation of my technology career, that is now all a former life. (But it still does haunt me how I better coped with the horrors of violence I’ve experienced in my life, over the terror of being a ‘loser’ in the modern economy and labor market.)
I was without medical benefits, no therapy or medication, headed toward a divorce, and seeing how my mental health was deteriorating and impacting my children had me at my lowest. It seemed no matter what I did to restart my career, it would all fall through at the last moment. From jobs at Google and Amazon where I was one step away from being hired in their interview processes, to entry level contract work for no benefits and barely over minimum wage, I was unable to get hired back in my field despite excellent references, appreciated contributions to open source projects, and my excellent work history.
It was after one of several suicide attempts that I found myself in my county’s mental health facility. And normally this is where some horror story of the sad state of public health institutions would start. To be honest, no the system was far from perfect, and God knows some areas of it especially tied to the ACA can use an overhaul. But weighing going through a flawed system, overworked bureaucrats, under resourced doctors and caregivers, to being dead by my own hand? I’ve been left with far more a sense of gratitude and awe for the extraordinary humanity I received as I learned to partake in, and take responsibility for, the treatment of my PTSD and it’s consequences.
I might have been a bit off the mark on the blog homework’s theme, by not going into a specific example for where a specific person helped me out when I needed it. Lord knows that as I have been on this journey I have had loads of those. From my phenomenal GP and several psychiatrist taking the interest in my case to send me for testing and treatment and fighting my insurer on it being needed. To psychologist that despite their own heavy caseloads have taken the time to see and work with me as an individual formed and somewhat damaged by unique circumstances. And also the countless nurses, NAs, orderlies, social workers, administrators, fellow patients, and finally my amazingly supportive family, they all by simple smiles, conversations, and empathy have given me the greatest help in regaining my agency and retaining my human dignity through this process. I just found no way where I could pick one as when I was in most need, they all were needed and have left me forever indebted to those wonderful people I was graced to have come into my life, even if for just the briefest of moments at times.
