Everything Ends (Sally Interrupted)Part2

I have always struggled with depression and anxiety, but the summer before I turned twenty is when things started to get bad. I had never really needed medication. I had never before suicidal. I had gone to a therapist for many years during the time I was in middle and high school. When I went to college, I had a string of therapists at the university's counseling center, but I never felt like I needed medication. I was probably too young, and I was never a danger.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I became a danger to myself. I had just returned from France after a summer of study abroad, and I was about to start my senior year of college. I began having visions and impulses of severely hurting myself and even killing myself. I was scared that I could not control the barrier between my thoughts and actions. Despite my efforts, I spent an incredible amount of time wishing for and wanting death.

For me, the world officially turned dark one evening after work. I was tutoring struggling high school seniors in writing essays in order to try to get them into college. I worked until 10 pm and would drive home in the dark. For some reason, that muggy summer night, I had driven my mom's car to work. She and my father were out of the country and I was taking care of my three teenaged little sisters all by myself.
I drove myself home in the dark and pulled into the garage. All of a sudden, I just knew it was time to die. The darkness of the summer night floated into the garage, and I had never felt despair like that before. The darkness of the night was too much when combined with the darkness in my head.

I sat for a moment, as my thoughts concentrated on the absolute nature of the darkness. It was an impenetrable and all-consuming darkness. It crushes you underneath its weight, like a river where you have to swim against the current and fight to get nowhere.

I closed the garage door from inside the car. I put in park, but kept it running. I shut my eyes and smelled the exhaust that came through the open windows. I tried so hard to fall asleep, but the adrenaline and the insomnia that plagued me kept me awake.

I don't know how long I sat there, but it wasn't long enough for the gas exhaust to put me to sleep. Guilt saved me. I realized that whoever found me would be one of my little sisters. They were so young, and I could not do this to them. I would have essentially abandoned them. I loved them too much and felt like I had to protect them and their innocence. I turned off the car and went inside.

...

I told Jill what medication my mom was taking. My mom and I had discussed this the night before, sitting in the floor of her walk-in closet.
"I'm going to see Jill tomorrow," I told her. "I just feel so bad all the time." I know that the word "bad" is very vague, but I had no other words to describe how I felt other than just really bad. By this time, tears began to stream down my face. "I want to ask her about an anti-depressant."

"You know, I'm on an anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medication." My mom responded. "When I started teaching again, I felt so horrible all the time that I couldn't even get out of bed."

She explained to me how desperate she felt and how she wanted her world to end completely in order to end her emotional suffering. She told me which medications she was on, and I decided to ask Jill about that specific SSRI. If it worked for my mom, I hoped it would also work for me.

My mother quit her teaching job when we moved from Texas to Georgia when I was a little kid. When she began teaching again when my siblings all were in school, things got really hard for both her and the family. Unfortunately, I thought I was too young to help and too young to know what to do. All my mom would do was come home and sleep after work until the next morning. I remember only having two pairs of jeans because she couldn't get out of bed to take me shopping. Many nights, I was instructed to make dinner because my mom would be hiding in bed, in her room, crying.

Because of my mom's psychological history, everyone just assumed that I had depression and anxiety just like her.

We sat on the floor of her closet that night and she held me as I cried.

"We can definitely try the Celexa," Jill told me. She left me sitting before her desk, still fidgeting with the wooden puzzle. After a few minutes, she returned from speaking with the on-campus doctor in the office next door with a prescription.

She explained to me how this medication would work. "It will take about a month to fully take effect, but you'll start to feel better in about two weeks."

I nodded, but I thought to myself, "I want to feel better now."

"I started taking an anti-depressant after I was diagnosed with breast cancer," Jill continued. "The side effect that I experience the most is dry mouth, so it would be a good idea to get some mints or gum to carry around. Make sure to drink lots of water."

"Ok," I said. "I probably need to drink more water anyway."

"It may also make you feel drowsy," and then she spoke with concern. "If you start to feel worse or more suicidal, let me know immediately. Sometimes if a medicine does not work for you, you can get worse."

That scared me. I didn't know how much worse I could get. I was scared that if I got worse, I would actually succeed in killing myself. We both paused for a moment; neither of us spoke. I finally got the courage to ask something that had been on my mind for the past few weeks. "How do you know when you need to go to the hospital?"

Jill nodded, solemnly, but with understanding. "Ultimately, I will trust you to make that decision for yourself. People mainly go if they are a danger to themselves or others. Because you haven't tried to commit suicide, you are not medically obligated to go."

I hadn't told her about running the car in the garage. "I don't know if I need to go or not." At that time, I knew nothing about psychiatric hospitals.

"Sally," she responded, "You are a very smart young lady. You will know when you need to go. Right now, unless you feel otherwise, we will try the medicine and some therapy. But as soon as you feel that you can't control your actions or make a plan, we'll discuss other options."
I didn't really understand what she meant at first, and I know that I should have told her about what I had done from the start. She was right, though. I wasn't ready, and I knew for sure when I was ready.

"The problem with psychiatric facilities," Jill explained, "Is that they are very difficult places to be in. I'm afraid, right now, that you would not do well and be very overwhelmed. You may think you are crazy, but I assure you that you are not. There will be patients there that are much worse off than you. You can go, but I think it should be your last resort."

I still felt crazy.

The day I heard my first voice, my mother and I were sitting in her car after a shopping trip. Before going inside, and out of nowhere, she asked me, "Are you hearing voices?"

"Dear god, mom, I'm not schizophrenic."

Several hours later, I was sitting in my bed with my kitten on my lap. Earlier, after the shopping trip with my mom, I had taken her to get her 10 weeks shots. She was so worn out that she was fast asleep.

I was battling the intense drowsiness that the new anti-depressant was causing. I had been on it for about two weeks, and I wasn't feeling any better. It was nearing the end of the semester and I had several papers to write and several exams for which to study. Instead, I was fighting to stay awake. All I cared about was sleeping.

Suddenly, the deep voice of a man cried out, "BE NICE TO HER!"

My drowsy eyes shot open.

For a moment, I sat paralyzed in fear. I was fully awake for the first time since starting my medication. It was not the voice of anyone I knew. It was far too deep to be my father's voice and there were no other men in the house.

Somehow, inside my mind, I knew the voice was speaking to me directly. He was talking to me about my kitten, telling me to be nice to her. At this point in my life, this was the most scared that I had ever been. I began to cry out of terror. I held my kitten tightly to me as I sat in bed, now wide awake.

I don't know how it is for other people who experience auditory hallucinations in the form of voices; I've never asked. But for those of you who haven't experienced this and won't ever experience this, here's the best way I can describe it. You know the little voice inside your head, your voice with which you think? It's like that, except it's someone else's voice. It is that strong and that clear. It's almost as if (and many people with schizophrenia experience this delusion) someone put those thoughts in your head, or in my own case, someone speaking directly to you.

At the time of me writing this, I hear six voices: three male and three female voices. The first voice I heard, that deep male voice, continues to speak to me. They are very different when I am taking an anti-psychotic to when I am not taking any medication. Anti-psychotics generally do not stop all auditory hallucinations, but they do reduce the frequently. For me, they reduce the anger and the gravity. Instead of angry questions, deprecating, negative comments, and even commands, they turn to conversations between the voices, music, or sometimes sirens. It's very distracting, but I've been able to get to the point where I can identify they are not real (by using logic, context, or looking for reactions of those around me), and not focusing entirely on them. It's nearly impossible to ignore them entirely, and even now, they are still scary and confusing. They sound like a noise is coming from inside you, like a sound that anyone around you could also hear.