Going “Crazy”

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen!  I hope you are all doing well tonight.  Hasn’t this been fun?  I’ve most certainly been having a good time.  My name is Bethany Nelson and I, like so many 18 year olds in this country, am living with bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and major depressive disorder.  Those are a lot of disorders, aren’t they?  I like to joke around and say I am a living DSM-IV.  

But really, I am not my disorders.  I am not crazy.  I am merely managing disorders, just like someone with diabetes or any other disability.  Keep in mind, however, that although I have a disability, I am not disabled (and there is a colossal difference between the two).  I think Stephen Chbosky said it best in his book, Perks of Being a Wallflower, when he said: “So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons.  And maybe we’ll never know most of them.  But even if we don’t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there.  We can still do things.  And we can try to feel okay about them.”  Once you learn how to move on, your past becomes but a mere story.  I am here tonight to share mine, for although I have gone through great hardship, I am still a good person with good intentions and will try 

my best to reach out to at least one person tonight.  One person is enough for me, for to invoke change into one person’s life is to invoke change into an audience of many.

So, here goes: 

           Born in a loving household, one would think I wouldn’t be a person to get up and speak to a large group of people about going through hardship.  My mother and father did their best to raise me how they deemed necessary.  I had a few friends.  In fact, I was blessed to have two best friends.  We were called The Three Musketeers by the lunch ladies at our elementary school—me, Brandon, Jacob.  I was without any physical deformities.  Basically, if you looked at the window of my life, you would see nothing wrong.  It’s when you look in the window that you see at five years old, how my life was a living hell.

My grandmother had remarried after at least 25 years of being a widow to a man who molested his two daughters and later molested me.  He would throw me into a trashcan, roll the trashcan down the hill, and then tickle me until you could see the bruises on my frail skin.  That was my life for about five years.  It only stopped when my mother found out about how her mother’s grand new romance began in a jail cell.

In 2002 and 2003, I lost both my best friends.  Brandon died from a slab of marble falling on top of him and Jacob from a car wreck during our spring break.  Can you imagine both of your childhood friends perishing practically right after each other?  Maybe you can, maybe you can’t.  Point is, it wasn’t exactly a “normal” upbringing.  I will never forget (or regret) speaking at their funerals in front of their families and in front of our classmates.  Some things, ladies and gentlemen, never leave you.

Nothing else really significant occurred until my sophomore year in high school, although I will tell you I was bullied a lot on middle school.  Then again, wasn’t everyone?  I used to come home, crying my eyes out because someone would tell me I had poor fashion sense or what have you.  Anyway, I was halfway into my sophomore year when someone we’ll call David asked me out to attend the symphony with him.  I went, we fell in love and did the things lovers did until September 16, 2011—four days after my seventeenth birthday.

That is when we broke up and that is when I got pregnant with what would have been a baby boy.  David and I tried to work things out for the child, but I had a miscarriage a few months later.  It broke both our hearts.  There is a special place in hell where a would have been mother goes to after she hears that she lost what would have been hers if she had just—in her mind—done x, y, and z better.  She blames herself until she can’t blame anything anymore.  That is where healing begins.

The relationship with David lasted another six months before he broke up with me again (online this time—classy, right?) and called the police because he thought I was going to commit suicide.  I tried, but they got to me before I could.  I had filled the tub until it was overflowing.  March 18 was “supposed” to be the day I would die.  I was going to tie myself up and drown right there in my bathroom.

Stripped of my dignity (and electronics), I was handcuffed and taken to the Appalachee Psychiatric Center, where I met a myriad of patients, such as God, Bob Marley, and Lucifer.  That was my spring break and beyond, being in a mental institution.  I stayed at Appalachee for two weeks before being sent to the Behavioral Health Center for another two months.  Two months of hell, two months of healing.  Sometimes the two are synonymous.

I came back to school a few days after being released and in my AP Psychology class, prepared a speech because coincidentally, the project I had to do was on abnormal psychology.  That’s when everyone learned where I really was for so long, where I wasn’t actually hiding because of a bad breakup.  I saw so many therapists, social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists every single day that took me off the Zoloft and Gabapentin and put me on Trileptal, Buspar, and a few other drugs with funny names that I can’t remember.  Before I could even blink, I had myself a drug cocktail.

Little to no word from David.  He began to get involved in the partying lifestyle and turned into a real ass of a person.  I should have known.  I was warned from the get go, actually, but ignored all of my friends.  He was manipulating and using me for his own sexual pleasures because if he did not have me, he did not have anyone unless he started looking again and that, friends, did not seem worth it to him.  I made a grand mistake when I dated him for so long, but I do not regret one day of it either.

Because that’s what love is.  Love is... love is that lightness you feel, that peace of mind. Love is being with someone and being able to laugh, smile, and cry without any form of shame or anxiety. Love is having warm clothing ready when the other person was left out in the rain. Love is going to Starbucks and talking for hours upon hours on a skipped day of school, it's... that natural smile that arises from the once cold crevices of your face. Love is talking on the phone all night. Love is sneaking out at 3 in the morning to go to Steak n Shake and then do the physical act of it under the moonlight.  Love is also... love is also the searing in your chest when worried. What have they done? But then you know that in the end, they'll come back to you because that's what love is. It's in the end, coming back.  It is also wisdom. Knowing that above all else, it's the need for the other person to be happy, even if it's without you. That was my hardest lesson.

I try my best every day to go on, to keep on living and to keep on being a survivor for those who could not survive.  I’m here, I’m alive, and I am ready to face each day like it could be my last.  You never know.  I, not events or people, have the power to make me happy today.  Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t happened yet.  I have one day—today—and I’m going to be happy in it.

Sure, I have bad days. We all do, but I promise you that you—you—can make it.  You can prove all the people wrong who say you can’t.  They’re feeding you lies; they’re feeding you nonsense.  I have come here today to tell you that you are worth it.   I’m strong and I’m still here. So are you. 

And why is that? What is it that keeps you from killing yourself? There is something holding you back. You need to focus on it. Focus on a cause or an activity. Throw yourself into it. Surround yourself with the people that love you and trust me, there are people who love you. It may not seem like it right now, but do you really think I’d be spending this time on someone I didn’t love, on someone I didn’t think could pull through? You have so much potential. 

Don’t you dare tell yourself that you’re worthless because you’re not. You are not worthless. You just need someone to hold you while you cry and I will always be there for you if you need that. Just call me and I’ll do my absolute best to come to you.  Remember. Always remember to keep your head up. Please do.  Smile, smile, smile. Just do it once a day, if anything. 

David told me to keep a journal for the purpose of writing what I love about myself and only what I love about myself. No negativity. When I feel like I have nothing left, I need to look at all that’s written. There are many things you should love about yourself. I see many things, but I’m not going to say them. Why? Because real happiness is up to you.  Real happiness is in your grasp.  You just have to seek it out for yourself.

Thank you.