My Life Living with Mental Health Challenges

Let’s pick up where I left off shall we? The signs of mental health struggles were there early on in my life. Let me make it clear, when you are in the midst of mental health challenges you don’t necessarily see the signs. You don’t know what to look for and are unaware that you are slowly slipping into a depressive episode. I was aware of the anxiety side of things. Never felt I ever 100% fit in. Change was hard. I didn’t like unexpected surprises. But everything else…the emotions, the agitation, the rollercoaster of feelings, the highs and lows…..I thought it was just who I was.

Up until 2000, I had been able to fight through the depressive episodes. But in 2000 something different happened. I wasn’t far from getting married. I had met the love of my life. The perfect woman. The one I would die for and the one I would grow old with. On a random evening, I was taking our dog out and I bent over to put on her leash and all the sudden, out of nowhere, my heart started racing. There was this feeling best described as “anxious distress”. Something was wrong. I didn’t know what but something was wrong. I couldn’t slow my heart down, I couldn’t think straight, and my anxiety was through the roof. As I reflect today, I believe this was my first mini-manic/hypomania episode. As far as I knew I was not depressed, I was happy and anxious to get married. But I went to the doctor and they put me on my first ever anti-depressant. It was awful. It made things worse. I couldn’t sleep, I had very strange thoughts and feelings, and it literally felt like heat waves were shooting through my scalp. I was scared. I felt I was burdening my future wife who I was living with at the time. I called my mom to come get me. I didn’t want to leave my fiancé, but I also didn’t want to burden her. I didn’t want to scare her. So I went home for a bit and she was supportive. My mom immediately took those pills away and got rid of them. And in not very long, I was getting better. I remember going back to my fiancé and we took a trip back to her hometown. I remember getting the best tasting cheeseburger I had ever had up (until that point I hadn’t really eaten in a week) at the local McDonalds. And that night, I slept on the coach and had the best sleep I had had in 2 weeks. I was ok. I didn’t have answers but I was ok. Maybe it was just some depression and anxiety like the doctor said?

So…we got married in 2001. It was, up until the birth of my children, the best day of my life. I was nervous the whole day, but I was happy. When the music hit and she walked through those church doors, she looked like an angel…literally. So our life began. Reflecting now, as life moved forward, as I got older, as pressure and stress increased, so did my battles with anxiety, depression and mental health.

Fast forward to 2020. We had established our lives in VA. We had 3 beautiful, smart, and God loving girls. There is A LOT of things that happened between 2001-2020 but I am not going to go over all of them at this time. I want to concentrate on ME. My mistakes. Was I the only one that made them, absolutely not, but for now I will speak for me. Other bridges may be crossed later.

Keep in mind, I had battles with mental health during these times off and on. Sometimes my wife knew, sometimes she didn’t. But one reoccurring theme that was told to me was that , “at times it feels like we are walking on eggshells around you. We just don’t know if you are going to have a good day or bad day”. It was the mood swings. I put it like this for an example, if we had a puppy and she peed in the floor, one day I may clean it up and be fine, and the next week it could happen and I would get frustrated. I had not idea why these swings happened and I often felt guilty afterward. There were stretches where things were fine, and there were stretches where they weren’t. And I want to be the first to say, I am sure, during those times that I was dealing with the depression, and anxiety as well as the effects of bi-polar (we are getting there. I didn’t know that at the time)..that it was hard on my family. All of them. And for that I am so sorry.

Back to 2020. COVID year. We were all stuck in home. The media was pumping us full of scary information. Nobody knew what was happening. The world had shut down. This thing was killing people. Who was next? We had no answers, no treatment, nothing. Looking back, we (my family and doctors) feel like this could have had an impact on what happened to me that year. What happened? My first REAL manic/hypomania episode and my first bout with MAJOR depression. I remember one night laying in bed and that feeling of “anxious distress” was back. But it was different this time. It was more intense. Not only was my heart racing and my anxiety through the roof, but my brain was in OVERDRIVE. It was like a hamster on a wheel and I couldn’t turn it off. I jumped from one subject to another to another to another. It got so bad that I couldn’t even remember my daughter’s birth dates. I couldn’t eat, sleep, hardly breathe. Something was really wrong. I reached out to doctors and they changed some meds but to no avail. It got worse, and worse. I was in a spiral and I didn’t know what was happening. I needed help and couldn’t get it. I was told to just “sleep it off” and “don’t worry about it”. And then it happened. One early morning, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I found myself in the yard close to the driveway with a knife in my hand. And I cut myself. I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t a huge cut, but it was a cry for help. I walked back in the house, with my arm wrapped up, and showed my wife. She immediately took me outside and called for help. She was calm. She was emotionless. I use to pick on her about being a robot at times with her emotions. Help came. They were going to take me to the local hospital and I was going to get help. I was scared, I was confused, I was in shock. I also didn’t realize at the time that what happened that day would change my life forever. I didn’t want it to happen. I didn’t do it to hurt the people I loved. I was crying for help.

That’s is where I will end the story until tomorrow.

I want to end on a happy note. Today was a beautiful day. I took a long drive and met two women (and a little baby) for lunch. These two women were two of the people that never left my side during the darkest time of my life last year. They went above and beyond for me…and I didn’t even know the extent of it until today. They never judged me. They refused to leave even when I tried to push them away. They stayed. We ate burgers and talked…for awhile. They both gave me the best compliment I could have got, they told me it was good to have me back. The real me. Like one of them said to me, “That wasn’t you last year and it wasn’t your fault. You had gone through so much in a short period of time”. We will circle back to that at some point. Exactly what it was that I went through, and I am still going through to some extent. But that is for another time. For now, I will focus this beautiful day. A day spent with fiends, a day spent with people I love, a day that…a year ago…I would have told you would have never happened again. Thank you God for today. Thank you God for never leaving me. Thank you God for the people you have put in my life. Thank you Dorthy and Blanche (inside joke…Golden girls reference). I love y’all.

I love music so I leave you with this new song by U2 called “scars“. Google it. Listen to it. Read the words. Believe it.

Much Love,

Tate