Today, I went to a therapist for the first time in nearly four years.
The last time I saw one, I was 18 years old. I had just dropped out of college  because the dormitory administrators thought I was a danger to myself and those around me. Like I say now, I wasn’t playing in reality with the rest of the world. I’ve finally come to the point in my life where I can admit that I’m sick and that isn’t my fault.

What I can hold myself accountable for is how I deal with the every day decisions impacted by the symptoms that are outside of my control.  Just because the chemical imbalance in my brain is telling me that the strangers in the grocery store think I’m stupid or ugly doesn’t mean I need to hide in my apartment. I can be sick and still be well. I can take medication, every day, with the hopes of being a functional member of modern society.

And then, one day, my medication ran out.

Years of relying on this tiny white compressed powder came rushing over me in a wave and I felt lost. For the first time in nearly four years, I was up depression creek without a beta blocker paddle.

I’m a freelance writer with a hand full of preexisting conditions. What that means is that I do not have health insurance. I do have a drawer full of nicely worded ‘No thank you’ notes from the top ten health insurance providers. So, when the refills of my medication finally ran out and clinic after clinic refused to re-up my supply, I was in trouble.

My future husband, who met me at the height of my struggle with mental illness, convinced me to make an appointment with a therapist that could help me get back on my medication.  After all the time I spent justifying what happened in my head as a medical condition meant for medical doctors to treat, there I was on the phone with a mental health case work nurse booking time with a talk therapist.

I was mortified.

A big symptom of mine that indicates rough waters ahead is an overwhelming sense of shame. Intellectually, I know I’m a worthwhile person whose committed no unforgivable crime against humanity. According to the dark parts of my personality, I deserve to be treated poorly and to feel lesser than. When I started to run low on medication I started taking half doses. This caused my emotions to be raw and right on the surface. The feeling of shame for my illness that accompanied making an appointment with a therapist was all but overwhelming.

The week that stretched between that awkward phone call and my trip to the therapist’s office, even this fresh, is a fog to me. I remember lying in bed and hoping to find the energy to get out from under the covers and then sitting at my desk unable to relax my mind or body. It was a constant back and forth between being so desperately sad I couldn’t move and so tense and anxious I was frozen.

To me, the only answer to my problems was that pill. Precious medication. Without taking medicine I could not be well, that was how it worked. I’m sick, I take medicine. I had put it into my brain that what went on with me mentally was no different than having allergies or the common cold. There was no real cure, but I sure could treat the symptoms.

Admitting to myself and my boyfriend that I needed the additional help of sitting and a chair and talking about my feelings and perceptions made me feel like I was just as hopeless as I was five years ago when he first met me. I felt broken and incapable.

The irrational side effect of that broken feeling was not being able to work.  I would accept an order, pull up source information and then get lost trying to filter the content and put it back together into what my client needed. For hours I sat and stared at travel pages, shopping reviews and restaurant guides without producing a single salable sentence. Not one.

Irrational hopelessness and self doubt combined with unproductive work hours leads to meltdowns. It was inescapable, I was going to crumble. What did not help matters was the stress this was putting on my boyfriend, who relied just as much on my income as I did. His obvious tension raised my level of guilt to astronomical heights. It’s not like I could exactly ask him to tone it down a little. Why was he stressed out? Oh yeah, I was unable to contribute. I was sick.

We woke up early this morning to get to the offices at the precise time the nurse I had spoken with had indicated. 10:30 AM on the nose. I collected my paperwork to fill in while Ben paid $155 for the uninsured visit. As I walked from the front desk to a set of empty chairs at the back of the room, I was reminded why I hate places like that.

State run, low cost or government assisted mental health centers are often crowded. Iine the waiting room at an urgent care clinic. Now, make all of the patients waiting to be seen by a doctor some degree of mentally disturbed. The people I shared that small, dark waiting room with ranged from the functionally bothered like myself and the completely incapacitated.

It was a gallery of my worst nightmare. Ever since I started becoming unwell in high school my greatest fear has been descending into my illness to a point that I was no longer able to act in a sociably acceptable manner when in public. While I know that how these poor souls behave is not only not their fault but completely out of their control, so many of them in such a small area makes me want to scream and run away.

The nurse had me arrive at 10:00 AM. I had written it down as she said it and knew it to be the correct time. For some reason, this nurse had told me to arrive an hour and a half before my appointment.  For an hour and a half my boyfriend and I sat in the waiting room watching crazy person after crazy person mill around the lobby and then disappear down The Hallway.

Above every other aspect of going to a therapist, I hate The Hallway. It’s always the same long and poorly lit catacomb of what actuaries and designers have decided is pleasing to emotionally disturbed patients. Personally, I hate the colors grey, blue and brown. They make me thinking of overcast skies and healing bruises.

About five minutes before the therapist called me back, my boyfriend told the nurse we were in a hurry. He was having trouble sitting next to me as I silently freaked out about my surroundings.

I sat in my new counselor’s office a few minutes later answering a series of questions I’ve heard so many times I had accurately rehearsed them in my head the night before while I wasn’t sleeping.
No, I’ve no history of physical or sexual abuse.
No, I don’t abuse drugs.
Yes, I have tried to kill myself, but that was a lifetime ago.

This stranger, my new therapist, diagnosed me as bipolar.
This was not a turn of event that surprised me. I knew what my illness was. The only reason I was in the building in the first place was because I knew I was sick and needed medication. It was when she said in such a satisfied tone that she knew what was wrong with me that I realized my plan was not going to go as I hoped.

There was no medication perscribed to me. I need to go back and meet with a different doctor before I can be given pills I’ve taken regularly for years. This makes me angry and frustrated. I blame the health care system, I blame junkies that take advantage of doctors who do give out medicine without the red tape and I blame myself.

I blame myself because that’s what I’m good at.

In three weeks I go back. I will answer the same questions in the same way and hope things go my way.

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