As I've already mentioned before, I have General Anxiety Disorder and PTSD. It's hard as fuck to talk about, and I had originally planned on not discussing it at all when I started this blog, but as I've said before, obesity and mental illness are connected. There's a reason why I've struggled with my weight for most of my life.
I'll also admit that a lot of this is hard to talk about. It's hard to admit that there's a part of your brain that isn't working right. Part of this is because we live in a culture that treats mental illness as a weird deformity, something that we'd best make sure we ignore and pretend we don't have, so we can do our best to fit into the world. Yet another part of it is because we're scared to admit that we have weakness. We live in a culture that loves to kill and eat the weak. It's the second part that makes it hard for me to talk about this, as I hate to admit to having a weakness (you'll see why later).
Most of the people that read my blog are friends on Facebook, and they've been giving me compliments on writing posts like this, because they also suffer from mental disorders, and it gives them some courage to talk about theirs. It's for that reason that I'm writing this post. What I'm about to write about is embarrassing as fuck, puts me in a vulnerable position, and yet I have to talk about it so others out there know that they're not alone. We're all fucked up, and it's okay. We didn't get to being fucked up out of nowhere. We NEED to let people know that we need help, and our country has done, and will continue to do, a shit job of helping us until we start talking about this. So here goes:
I've just recently had some really good insurance thanks to my wife, who got a job as a school teacher (the great benefits teachers in Michigan have almost, but don't entirely make up for, the shitty pay that they receive). Because of that, I decided to get myself some really good mental health treatment.
Before Obamacare, I was left at the mercy of the Department of Veterans Affairs, which ABSOLUTELY SUCKS when it comes to mental health. To get an appointment for mental health, I had to go to my nearest outpatient clinic, and all but threaten to break down the door to get an appointment. Even then, the best they had was a nurse practitioner that knew nothing about mental health, but was all too happy to prescribe you some pills so you would be more sane.
After Obamacare, there was a time when I was able to get insurance through Medicaid expansion, but even then the mental health options SUCKED. There's not a lot of mental health professionals that are willing to take Medicaid. The best I could find was some marginally trained counselor that would refer me to yet another nurse practitioner that would prescribe me more pills to keep my shit together.
So when my wife got a teaching job with great insurance, I took advantage immediately. I didn't just want another marginally-trained counselor that would keep me on pills. I don't want to have to be on pills when I'm in my 50s to keep my shit together. I wanted the fucking John Rambo of psychiatry to treat me.
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| Mental Illness, meet YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE! |
I'm now in the latter camp. Thanks, love!
So a few weeks ago I made a call to the office of Carolyn Diatch to receive mental health care under her. It turns out she doesn't even take insurance, and requires well over $200 per session to receive help under her. She is the John Rambo of anxiety disorders, but unless you're really well off, she won't see you (I guess this makes her the Han Solo of anxiety disorders) . I was sent to one of her subordinates instead.
I won't name the person I'm currently seeing, but she does a good job.
During the first session, I was forced to realize some hard truths of what caused my General Anxiety Disorder. I used to think it started when I was a teenager, when a real bastard of a preacher had me convinced that I was going to Hell for not being a good enough Christian, but was exacerbated during my time in the military. Sadly, the truth is much harsher.
I was bullied since I was in the first grade, because I was a nerdy kid that liked to read. On top of that, I was extremely tall for my age, so the combination of being a nerd and a giant made myself a target for bullies that wanted to feel good about themselves by picking on a big kid that didn't like to fight. I was taught that fighting other kids was wrong, no matter what the reason, and I was stupid enough to believe all the adults that told me so.
The bullying took a few years off in elementary school (second and third grade were peaceful), but after that, I was bullied from then on until the seventh grade. The worst part about being bullied is that all those adult authority figures that told me that fighting back was wrong were also the same enablers of the bullies. They refused to punish bullies that hurt me, but when I finally decided to fight back, the punishment was swift and severe.
It was swift and severe when my babysitter's kid would beat me up constantly and didn't face any punishment for it. But when I decided at nine years old that I had enough of him beating on me and decided to cold cock him, dropping him like a sack of potatoes, I was punished. My babysitter actually paddled my behind and I had to spend days apologizing to the very bully that beat me up constantly but never got punished for it.
It was swift and severe when my own brother would constantly beat me, but my parents wouldn't punish my brother. Yet when the day came and I snapped and hit back, we were both grounded.
By the time I entered middle school the lesson they taught me wasn't clear to my conscious mind, but it was clear to my subconscious mind: Bullies are allowed to beat you with impunity. Standing up to them means discipline against you.
So it was during the seventh grade that I started telling on my bullies to a school counselor. After the third or fourth incident of being bullied that had me and the bullies in his office, he finally told me words that would change my life:
Look, you're going to be punished for it, but you have to HIT BACK!
My school counselor had had enough of trying to convince bullies not to bully me. Teachers weren't protecting me. My own parents weren't protecting me. He didn't even want to protect me anymore.
The only solution was to defend myself.
His words were exactly what I needed; an adults permission to finally be able to protect myself from bullies, because NO ONE ELSE WILL.
A couple weeks after that, a bully challenged me to a fight. He was another of the smaller kids that was looking to take a big kid as a trophy. I beat the piss out of him. I took the In-School-Suspension that awaited me merely for defending myself like a champ.
The rest of middle-school and early high-school I took on bullies. I won some, lost others. But it was when I was 15 years old that I decided to start taking karate lessons. At the time, it wasn't because of bullies that I decided to take karate lessons. I originally wanted to take sword fighting lessons because I was a big fan of The Highlander (yeah, yeah, I was a 90s kid. Say what you will).
After I started doing karate, even my bullies never got past the shit-talking stage. Once a challenge was made by me to, "Don't just sing it, BRING IT!", they backed down. I had confidence. Power. A strong defense against bullies.
As of sophomore year, not only did nobody fuck with me, but I was the protector of my band of "freaks and geeks" that were my friends. Some of them I'm still friends with to this day. I was the marital artist of the group. I was their Bruce Lee. When they needed a protector from a school bully, from an abusive stepdad, from anything, I was there. I was trained and ready to stomp any threats from them into the dirt.
But nobody was there for me. I was left to defend myself on my own.
The years from 16-19 were some of my best years because I was happy. The reason that I was happy was because I didn't have anyone to fear. By the time I got my black belt when I was 19, I wasn't just invincible, I KNEW I was invincible.
It was that ability to defend myself that kept my anxiety at bay for a time. It still didn't keep emotional bullies at bay. They aren't the types that attack you physically. They attack you emotionally. Like shitty karate instructors like Darwin Bannister (yeah, I'm calling you out, asshole! Say some shit if your name comes up in a Google search! You TOOK MY PANTS OFF IN THE MIDDLE OF A KARATE CLASS WHEN I WAS BARELY AN ADULT! WHO DOES THAT, YOU SICK FUCK?!)
It's one of the many reasons why I got fat. Being fat, while being terrible for my health, at least provided protection against physical threats. People don't know that 360 pound people can't fight. They see a giant, and they run.
All this didn't stop financial bullies, like the Drill Sergeants I had in Basic Combat Training after I joined the military, and the shitty NCOs I had afterward. I didn't care if they gave me pushups as punishment, but when they threatened the pay of my broke ass I put up with way more of their shit than I should have allowed.
I had constant bullying in my childhood and early adulthood, and nobody was there to help me. It's because of that I'm a 35 year old man that constantly has this one lesson in the back of his mind:
People are coming to hurt you, nobody is coming to help you, and you're going to be punished for protecting yourself.
That is why I have General Anxiety Disorder. I know that I'm on my own against the bullies of this world, whether they be an abusive boss, a criminal that means me harm, or even the shitty coworker that talks shit behind my back. Nobody is going to protect me from the worst that society has to offer. Either there are people that can and they refuse (like the teachers with the bullies of old), or they're unable to because they can't even defend themselves (like my friends of my high school days). I have people that love me. They care deeply for me. But do they even lift? No, they do not. Can they protect me? No, they cannot. I still have to protect them. As for anyone to protect me, I'm just like I was when I was bullied in seventh grade. I'm on my own. It's why I lift. It's why I train. It's why I did martial arts when I was young and want to start training again when I have the financial means to do so. It's why I have a CPL and carry a gun when I'm outside the home. I need to be prepared for when evil comes to attack me, because nobody in my entire life has been either willing or able to protect me.
My PTSD is entirely another matter. General Anxiety Disorder may have helped make that happen, as I spent my entirety in Iraq thinking that whatever day it was, was going to be my last day on Earth (this says nothing of the days over there where I was CONVINCED that it was my last day on Earth, like the day after Christmas in 2005, when I nearly got killed by an IED). But after I came back from Iraq, my urge to protect myself from all threats had not only been cranked up another hundred times, but I now have things that specifically trigger some panic attacks. For the first few years that I had been home, it had been loud noises like fireworks. As soon as I heard firecrackers or any loud boom, I was looking for cover. My first Fourth of July at home was a nightmare. To deal with the fireworks, I finally got so drunk and stoned on weed that I could barely remember my own name. If I hadn't done that, the entire day would have consisted of me hiding in the lowest corner of my home with the largest sword that I had (I didn't own any guns at the time, and that's definitely a good thing, as I would have tried my best to explain to my family that I was okay, despite hiding in my basement with a loaded gun at the ready to kill any "insurgents" that made their way past the front door). After that, the weeks beginning and ending with the Fourth tend to involve me being hammered just so I can keep my shit together.
After a while, I wasn't as scared of fireworks as I used to be. I could handle them without self-medicating, at least from a distance. Until today, I thought the worst was behind me on the PTSD front. But then something incredibly stupid happened.
I was making breakfast in my kitchen when my dishwasher began making a loud noise. A loud, high-pitched noise, that exactly resembled the kind of noise that happens when a mortar attack is incoming. Exactly like when a mortar attack is incoming. Out of nowhere, I heard a high-pitched whistle, and I thought, "INCOMING! HIT THE FLOOR!" I screamed to my mom, who was in the living room watching my kids, "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!"
My mom had heard the sound coming from the dishwasher before, and said that it was just something gunked up in the works of the dishwasher (before that, I didn't know where the sound was coming from). I went out and smoked a cigarette while my eggs were cooking, hoping I would calm down with the help of some nicotine. I didn't. I finished my smoke and went back into the kitchen to finish making my breakfast. My mom asked if I wanted to turn the dishwasher off. I just said, "What's the point? The dishes need to get washed, and I'll still have PTSD!" I did my best to finish making my breakfast while I was hiding the fact that I was crying in front of my mom, and wondering why I'm so fucked up THAT I CAN'T EVEN KEEP MY SHIT TOGETHER WHILE I'M MAKING EGGS!"
I don't know if my mom saw me crying and kept silent about it, or didn't see it. All I know, is that it took everything inside me to keep from collapsing on the floor.
I'm lucky enough to have some good mental health treatment now, but I'm still far from cured. There's going to be some days where I'm stuck in that fucking desert, and today was one of those days.
It's hard as hell for me to admit this shit. It's incredibly hard to admit that I have moments of weakness that I can't control; that some of these moments have resulted from battles from my childhood, and others that come from a war that I had returned from long ago. But there's people out there that need to read this. For those that I'm friends with on Facebook and for those that may have stumbled on this blog from some google search, know that you're not alone. We have mental illness. It is what it is. But we need to stop being ashamed. Shit happened to us that shouldn't have happened because we live in a fucked up world with fucked up people. We need to let the world know that they made us this way, and we need help.
And if the world doesn't want to give that help, we better start demanding it, because we aren't going to get better otherwise.
Thank you for writing this.
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