I don’t know why you clicked on this specific link or if you are familiar with my hospitalization in the March of 2021 or not. I don’t know if you knew me before or only after then but all I can say is that psychosis, at least the manic psychotic break I experienced, has covertly dismantled so much of me and my identity.
In some ways it’s not so bad. I’m lucky to only be currently on an anti-anxiety med and melatonin for sleep maintenance insomnia that I have under control now. I’ve not had a recurrence of hallucinations, delusions, or a tangled web of rapid thought since that episode. In fact sometimes I think I have more bouts of reasonable optimism and general level headedness than I’ve had in the past. I think in some ways I’ve been so thoroughly scared by my experience it’s rare I entertain certain thought patterns or isolation. But that fear goes beyond scaring me into keep up with therapy and join social activities for my own wellbeing.
I can never have claimed to have a fabulously healthy sense of self esteem, but the lack of trust in my gut, my fortitude, and my decision making skills all linger in the back of my mind in a different, pernicious way now. Most difficult for me is how psychosis has pulled the rug of my faith’s understanding of the world and myself out from under me. There’s nothing quite like religious delusions and hallucinations to make you question the validity of religious experience. I can’t help but be painfully aware of the constructs that the mind can compose.
With all the unraveling of the threads of what I have believed for so long, has also come the unraveling of so many of my interests, values, and preferences. The music that I’ve loved listening to and singing now feels like songs of mocking, reminding me that I’ll never get to sing them again with quite the same passion I once had. Books, ideas, and other media that had so profoundly moved me began to feel empty or inaccessible. It’s been a slow progression, not so much a swift rip of the rug but more as if someone has been slowly pulling the threads away so that it’s grown to be a threadbare net holding me over a drop. What will, if anything, catch my fall? How different will it be down there? Unable to know what’s next, doubtful that my belief will resurrect once again like the God I put my belief in.
So, a vacuum is created, but yet there is nothing right at hand to fill it with. There are no quick and dirty alternate ways of conceiving the world. Sure there may be many lens through which to view the world, but you can’t just slot a new one in, it takes time to process, grieve, and salvage what you can. Unfortunately I’ve found it impossible to wrestle with the most important questions of my life or anything really substantial, without feeling like I’m oversharing. As it’s hard, or dare I say utterly useless, to talk about meaningful things generally with people, while ignoring the knowledge, emotions, and change a major life experience or trauma has imbued you with. So unable to dig deeper with other people, I’ve felt cut off and disconnected from many of the new faces I’ve come across, like a shadow of a person, feeling dry and stagnant.
I greatly feared further focusing on my psychosis, including on this site, not wanting to make what I experienced my whole identity. I didn’t want to be a mental health blog. I didn’t want to be person who is Traumatized™ and absolutely must tell you about it. Yet all this has left me with is unresolved questions, with neither answers nor people to bounce possible solutions around with. I’m left still fearing that people can’t handle those conversations or just don’t want to talk about it at all. Lastly, it has left me with a site with very few posts anyway, as anything that would inspire me to write I’ve disregarded, and nothing artificially removed from what’s on my heart and mind can’t get me here.
So ask me an intrusive question. Send this to someone that will find this post shocking. As wonderful as it is that our culture has radically destigmatized anxiety and depression, things like mania and psychosis still feels so far away. Yet oddly enough, the thing that has scared me the most about the idea of writing and posting this, is describing where in faith, or lack thereof, this experience has left me. Ain’t that rich?