Many of you know that I started writing for Odyssey at The University of Houston in July of 2017. I wrote many articles beginning with one about my mother's Dhaal Curry (way to hit the top of the charts). Then somewhere around October/ November, I became the Editor in Chief — a title that taught me a lot and gave me a great leadership opportunity while still allowing me to write some amazing articles, if I may say so myself.
Then around April of 2018, I disappeared altogether. No articles, no editing, no Facebook or any other social media for that fact. I was completely off the charts because I had a full mental breakdown. It started with a text I sent my dad asking for a therapist. At the time I didn't know the severity of my condition, but I figured one place to begin would be by getting professional help.
As most concerned parents would, my dad immediately asked why, and the only real answer I had was that "something felt off." Nothing too big, until I was crying and dry heaving while clutching onto the steering wheel of my car in front of work one Tuesday morning. I called my mom, told her I couldn't step inside the building for work, went home and stayed under the covers for about four hours. It was a really confusing situation and I had no idea why I was feeling the way I was feeling so I did the one thing I could do.
I wrote a letter to my family pleading them to not ask me why I was feeling the way I was feeling. I was on top of everything. I had good relationships with everyone in every aspect of my life. I was at the top of my class, I was editor in chief of a wonderful team of people and yet I felt like my mind was trapped while another mind continuously abused it. Fast forward to when my dad came home, read the letter and out of sheer confusion asked me why I was feeling this way.
All I remember is screaming at the top of my lungs and being forced to listen to some calming music because I was hyperventilating and shivering beyond control. This went on for hours and hours until my mom finally called her best friend, a doctor, and he asked me if I was feeling suicidal. At the moment I said, "of course I am," and at 9 p.m. I was promptly rushed to his house and into a room of his house where he and his wife, an oncologist, questioned me for a while concluding that perhaps I was clinically depressed to which I cried some more because why not.
That night I was prescribed Xanax which my dad picked up from some shady pharmacy at 11 p.m. and the very next day I went to see a psychiatrist. I don't know about you all, but the word psychiatrist had some very scary connotations in my mind and I was convinced I was in some alter realm where I was just falling apart day by day and could do nothing about it. I didn't want to be the girl who had a mental illness, and I just wasn't prepared for the months that would follow.
At the beginning my psychiatrist believed I had an anxiety disorder and depression, so he prescribed me medication for that. All the while I had taken a break from school, from life in general and was soldiering on with medication and therapy with a dear old therapist who I eventually stopped seeing. This was all the beginning. Many months later after many antipsychotic medication trials, and various other events (all of which will appear in later articles), I was diagnosed with bipolar, or manic-depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. Both of which tend to wreak havoc in my life at the times I am least prepared for them.
My days are hard, but I am currently practicing living day to day, moment by moment and some days are harder than others, but I am happy to say I'm back to provide you all with more content and I'm now the President of the University of Houston Odyssey, bipolar disorder and all included.
