Meeting My New Psychologist
"Since I don't have your file yet, I guess you'll have to do the cliche, 'tell me about yourself'."
I'm 43. I have borderline personality disorder and I'm a severe chronic depressive. Actually, I believe the last time I saw my diagnosis, they had reduced the 'severe' level since I've been under control for quite some time. I was last hospitalized in April 2003, 5 days in-patient.
I had a wonderful, loving childhood, marred only by the physical and mental abuse of my elder sister. In my mind, I really have no reason to be the way I am. Unfortunately, my illnesses are part genetics, part the abuse thing, and part chemical.
I'll start with the chemical because it's easier. The way I understand it, my brain creates or secretes or whatever it does, very little serotonin. I've been on effexor xe 300 mg since 1996 or 1997, I don't really remember which anymore.
Genetics. Wow, that's a big one. Documented, would be my great uncle, hospitalized at 18 with dementia praecox, a puzzle to my doctors since that's a disease normally found in the elderly. At 32, he succumbed to pneumonia. He was never released from the State Mental Institution in Warren, PA.
Then you have my aunt, hospitalized in the 70s with schizophrenia. She received shock therapy among other things. I believe she was in there for months. Today, she has her illness completely licked at the age of 74. She attributes that to determination and Faith.
My sister, the one who abused me as a child, is loony tunes, but I don't think she's ever been diagnosed, at least, not as an adult. Her son is a bi-polar schizoid of some sort with a REAL anger-management problem.
My daughter succumbed to depression as a teenager and is a recovering drug addict, 5 years clean. My son keeps a rein on his own anger; it's frightening to see it unleashed.
Oh, and the fun part of all this? My parents are second cousins on the side of the family with all the mental illness. Guess who got a bad gene from both of them--you got it!
Abuse. This is always the hard one because it starts so far back. When my sisters, P & M we'll call them, were 4 and 3 respectively, their 7 1/2 month old brother died of pneumonia. Our parents were devastated. M was the most affected. She's one of those that has memories nearly from birth, my daughter is like that too. Unfortunately, whatever illness it is they have, the memories become what they make of them, they change over time. Anyway, I digress. Buddy died in December '59.
I was born in April '63, even though Mama was told she would never have anymore children, she'd had a tube and ovary removed due to a tumor. They thought I was a miracle baby. I was perfect. Clear blue eyes that turned brown about age 3. Coal black hair, a full head of it, that later softened to a deep brown. I was coddled and loved and nurtured my entire life. However, M looked at me like an intruder. They'd replaced her precious Buddy with me. Buddy was HER baby. This new baby not only LOOKED exactly like P as she grew up, but P became her mother because Mama was so sick in those first years. She was still recovering from the tumor surgery when she got pregnant with me. Then a gall bladder problem she'd had nearly her whole life was finally removed in an emergency surgery.
I took an entire bottle of baby aspirin because I thought they would make me strong (hey! I was 4!) and M couldn't hurt me. I remember eating an aspirin and peeking in her bedroom door, watching her do homework. Then I'd eat another one and she couldn't see me. Let me tell you, the hallucinations after I came home from the hospital were wild. We had these spring-loaded pole lamps and they were turning and bending, making dust fall from the ceiling, blinding me. I can still feel that dust when I look up at my own ceiling. I slept with Mama and Daddy that night and kept them up all night talking about the pretty colored trucks and cars on the ceiling. I can still see them. Great lines of them like on wallpaper or wrapping paper. Mostly red and blue and yellow. I also saw Jesus about that time and no one will ever convince me it was part of my hallucinations. I really saw Jesus.
Ever since I'd had the pneumonia, I was prone to bronchitis. I spent most of my childhood, or so it seems, on the couch with a pillow and blanket, playing cards and playing with silly little toys they would bring me to keep me quiet and make me rest. It was a lonely existence, but I felt nothing but love and safety and home and nurturing during that time. Unfortunately, those feelings continued into adulthood. They would hide things from me they thought I was too delicate to know, like when I was 13, they didn't tell me M was pregnant (Shh, she wasn't married and we were Catholic and Tammy shouldn't have to be confronted with those things). For Pete's sake! M and her boyfriend had lived together off and on for as long as I could remember. I'd kinda figured out they were 'doing it'.
I don't want to think about or talk about or write about the abuse. It's over, it's done, M and I have hashed some of it out, dealt with the hate, for the most part, I'm through it. It still hurts to think that my sister hated me enough to literally want me dead. But it's even harder to face the fact that as an adult, she still blamed me for the death of my brother, a baby who was born and died 3 years before I was born. But we dealt with it and actually became friends for a short while.
This is enough for today. I'm tired now.
I'm 43. I have borderline personality disorder and I'm a severe chronic depressive. Actually, I believe the last time I saw my diagnosis, they had reduced the 'severe' level since I've been under control for quite some time. I was last hospitalized in April 2003, 5 days in-patient.
I had a wonderful, loving childhood, marred only by the physical and mental abuse of my elder sister. In my mind, I really have no reason to be the way I am. Unfortunately, my illnesses are part genetics, part the abuse thing, and part chemical.
I'll start with the chemical because it's easier. The way I understand it, my brain creates or secretes or whatever it does, very little serotonin. I've been on effexor xe 300 mg since 1996 or 1997, I don't really remember which anymore.
Genetics. Wow, that's a big one. Documented, would be my great uncle, hospitalized at 18 with dementia praecox, a puzzle to my doctors since that's a disease normally found in the elderly. At 32, he succumbed to pneumonia. He was never released from the State Mental Institution in Warren, PA.
Then you have my aunt, hospitalized in the 70s with schizophrenia. She received shock therapy among other things. I believe she was in there for months. Today, she has her illness completely licked at the age of 74. She attributes that to determination and Faith.
My sister, the one who abused me as a child, is loony tunes, but I don't think she's ever been diagnosed, at least, not as an adult. Her son is a bi-polar schizoid of some sort with a REAL anger-management problem.
My daughter succumbed to depression as a teenager and is a recovering drug addict, 5 years clean. My son keeps a rein on his own anger; it's frightening to see it unleashed.
Oh, and the fun part of all this? My parents are second cousins on the side of the family with all the mental illness. Guess who got a bad gene from both of them--you got it!
Abuse. This is always the hard one because it starts so far back. When my sisters, P & M we'll call them, were 4 and 3 respectively, their 7 1/2 month old brother died of pneumonia. Our parents were devastated. M was the most affected. She's one of those that has memories nearly from birth, my daughter is like that too. Unfortunately, whatever illness it is they have, the memories become what they make of them, they change over time. Anyway, I digress. Buddy died in December '59.
I was born in April '63, even though Mama was told she would never have anymore children, she'd had a tube and ovary removed due to a tumor. They thought I was a miracle baby. I was perfect. Clear blue eyes that turned brown about age 3. Coal black hair, a full head of it, that later softened to a deep brown. I was coddled and loved and nurtured my entire life. However, M looked at me like an intruder. They'd replaced her precious Buddy with me. Buddy was HER baby. This new baby not only LOOKED exactly like P as she grew up, but P became her mother because Mama was so sick in those first years. She was still recovering from the tumor surgery when she got pregnant with me. Then a gall bladder problem she'd had nearly her whole life was finally removed in an emergency surgery.
I took an entire bottle of baby aspirin because I thought they would make me strong (hey! I was 4!) and M couldn't hurt me. I remember eating an aspirin and peeking in her bedroom door, watching her do homework. Then I'd eat another one and she couldn't see me. Let me tell you, the hallucinations after I came home from the hospital were wild. We had these spring-loaded pole lamps and they were turning and bending, making dust fall from the ceiling, blinding me. I can still feel that dust when I look up at my own ceiling. I slept with Mama and Daddy that night and kept them up all night talking about the pretty colored trucks and cars on the ceiling. I can still see them. Great lines of them like on wallpaper or wrapping paper. Mostly red and blue and yellow. I also saw Jesus about that time and no one will ever convince me it was part of my hallucinations. I really saw Jesus.
Ever since I'd had the pneumonia, I was prone to bronchitis. I spent most of my childhood, or so it seems, on the couch with a pillow and blanket, playing cards and playing with silly little toys they would bring me to keep me quiet and make me rest. It was a lonely existence, but I felt nothing but love and safety and home and nurturing during that time. Unfortunately, those feelings continued into adulthood. They would hide things from me they thought I was too delicate to know, like when I was 13, they didn't tell me M was pregnant (Shh, she wasn't married and we were Catholic and Tammy shouldn't have to be confronted with those things). For Pete's sake! M and her boyfriend had lived together off and on for as long as I could remember. I'd kinda figured out they were 'doing it'.
I don't want to think about or talk about or write about the abuse. It's over, it's done, M and I have hashed some of it out, dealt with the hate, for the most part, I'm through it. It still hurts to think that my sister hated me enough to literally want me dead. But it's even harder to face the fact that as an adult, she still blamed me for the death of my brother, a baby who was born and died 3 years before I was born. But we dealt with it and actually became friends for a short while.
This is enough for today. I'm tired now.