oh hey! I’m Brandi. My friends and hubby call me B, my dad calls me Joey, my sister calls me Mine and my high school softball coach called me Bill, I’m still not sure why?!
I’ve been Dylan’s wifey for thirteen years and Mama to Addison and Landon for over 11 years . I’m cruising in the dark shadow of the big 4-0. I am a proud and blessed Auntie, sister, daughter and friend.
I used to be ill. Chronically, desperately, painfully, lock-me-in-padded-room-until-you-can-tell-me-what-is-wrong-with-me ill. Few people knew. The people that did know were not able to fix me, they could’t even comfort me. People saw me hiking and baking and managing my full, busy life with Instagram-filter perfection and few knew the pain I was actually in. Since childhood I had never known what wellness felt like. I never knew what energy felt like. I never knew a day without napping, yelling or sobbing. I never felt well. I never knew what healthy emotions felt like. I was desperately seeking someone, anyone to look me in the eye and acknowledge, “Yes, you are sick. It’s not in your head. Let me help you.”
Less than a year after graduating high school, with one semester of college under by belt, I made a very bold design to move to Oahu, Hawaii. With the intention of becoming a Hawaiian resident and then attend university for a marine biology degree. Island life was paradise. It was warm. People on the beach were so happy. It was exciting. It was busy and bright. Once per week I took a bus one hour each way to volunteer at a sea life park. I taught kids about marine life and watched trainers work with dolphins and penguins. I also nannied full time for a sweet family, worked in a restaurant at night and worked as an english tutor for a very famous Korean actress. I lived with two roommates, one whom was my high school boyfriend, in a tiny apartment on the edge of Waikiki. I was doing it. I was out living the life I dreamed about. I was mature and brave. I was within inches of achieving the life I had thought I wanted. Big adventures, big wildlife and a big, important degree. But the pressure of adulthood was too much. I was too isolated and lived in constant fear. I never had enough money and I was too homesick. I was so young to be so far away from my family and I was too sad. I was living with a silent illness that was making its way to the surface and I had no idea. My boyfriend and I were fighting and my other roommate seemed to hate me. I cried in the shower. I cried on the way to work. I cried in the closet and sitting at the ocean. I vividly remember contemplating wading into a canal that was full of migrating box jellyfish. I just wondered what it would feel like. I’ve never told anyone that before and I haven’t really explored what that actually had meant.
After less than a year I returned from my first ever solo adventure, moved back home and I restarted college at my hometown university. A few weeks into the semester I felt so broken, after the joy of being home faded, I crumbled. My boyfriend had broken up with me and I had failed miserably at my dream. I was in an emotional downward spiral. I had crawled into an isolated hole and wished life would blur by while I slept.
At twenty, after a long internal debate with myself, I walked into the university clinic and quietly asked the doctor for help. After a ten minute interaction the doctor said, “You are classic bipolar, take this.” He walked out of the room leaving me with tears running down my face, scared and confused, still alone. He didn’t even tell me what “classic bipolar” meant. I left without a follow-up plan, without a treatment plan of any kind other than that scribbled-on prescription paper he had handed me. Do you know what it takes for a person of any age, let alone a twenty year old, to walk into a medical clinic, alone and ask for help? And when that person suffers from debilitating anxiety, it’s nearly life ending. I had reactions, physical and emotional reactions that told me I wasn’t going to live through it. My body begged me to flee. All of that to be invisible to him, to be nothing more than a dramatic college freshman that couldn’t cope with adulthood. I left feeling small. I would live in that small feeling for many years.
After that, I hid my metal illness from everyone. I took my pills in secret, telling no one, not even my sister that I had failed to manage myself and was put on medicine. I cried silently every day. I took the prescription and without guidance, advice or help began my journey with depression. The pills made me even sicker. I walked around in a perpetual state of lethargy. My mind was a thick cloud of nothing and I was nauseous every day. I drug myself to class in ball caps and sweatpants, barely awake. I made sure to be the last one to sit down and the first one to leave. I skipped lab classes and extracurriculars, I didn’t go to working biology days in the field. As the semesters slipped by, now an upper-classman, the classes got smaller and the student – professor interactions were unavoidable. I did all I could to be unseen. I didn’t want the attention. I didn’t want peers to talk to me or professors to call on me. I pleaded for invisibility. I was so lost in a sense of shame and embarrassment for my small existence that I wanted none to know me. I could barely function, let alone grow. Honestly, I’m not sure how I passed college. I made no new close classroom friends. I made no professional connections. I participated in no college extracurricular activities. I could not wait to graduate. I thought, with graduation I would finally be set free from this emotional prison.
During college I began to date my now husband, a lifelong friend from elementary school. He was easy to be with. I didn’t have to reveal or explain my shame or my shyness. I think because he knew the kid-version of myself and in that comfortable space I could let go of the emotional trap and just be myself. When not at work or in class we were together, in the woods – exploring, hiking, jeeping, camping, backpacking, playing on the lake. There were no crowds, or judgements or expectations. I could let go and have a good time, I had found people. We got very close to a few of his high school friends and we had fun together. I was funny, a good friend and I loved to adventure. These people loved and trusted me and in them I found a sense of happiness and because of this I could hide my truth from them. We entered post-college life together and began to morph into adults.
A couple months after graduating from college I lost my brother to suicide. Years of grief and trauma from that grief clouded my existence. For many years the emotional prison I thought I’d outgrow transformed into darkness. I had had no idea how to function. The hole in my heart was immense and even breathing was painful. I was certain I’d never be normal again.
After my brother died life happened pretty fast. I married my college sweetheart at 25, got pregnant with Addison six months after our wedding and when Addi was four months old we moved to a new state for hubby’s graduate school. Being a mommy brought me the most joy of my life. I was happy and content and so proud to spend my days with this beautiful baby who loved me so much. Hubby worked hard to graduate with a Physician’s Assistance degree and after eighteen months we moved back home to continue our life.
Our daughter was 3 1/2 when our son Landon as born. Landon was born 10 weeks premature and very, very sick. After nearly seven weeks in the NICU we brought our precious miracle home. A whole new emotional monster was born during this very scary, traumatic time. The scars of immense fear and devastation are still fresh and it shaped me in ways I’ll may never be able to fully grasp.
As things go, as our family grew, we at times floundered to find our place, our niche in our world. We moved many times, changed jobs many times. We carried heartache and stress associated with our son. As husband and wife we often fumbled to develop a healthy marriage through it all and together entered our thirties. As the years passed, I continued to silently struggle with a debilitating mental illness. For nearly 10 years, I had experimented with so many different depression/anxiety medicines, all leaving me shameful and exhausted because none of them worked, none of them made me normal. I go off one and go on another. I start and stop them sporadically. I’d ask doctors for a new medication and they’d appease my request without knowing my real history. I was sleeping away my life and I was utterly hopeless. Doctors were not listening to me. They would just throw at me a new prescription, the same way that first doctor had done all those years ago and say something demeaning to me like, “Yep, thats motherhood.” I was done. I was over it. I was over trying to feel better. I had come to grips that this was my normal. I tried to the best of my ability to live happy. To force myself out of bed to hike and camp and play and garden with my family. I smiled and laughed with friends. I invited people to dinner and had play dates with my kids. On the outside all was good. I could fake it so well.
Into my early thirties, with a toddler and kindergartener, on top of the emotional strain, I began to develop devastating physical symptoms. I was still sleeping as often as I could, waking with weakness and no energy. I had developed massive headaches, insomnia, joint pain, my fingers and back ached every day, frequent yeast infections and other womanly parts issues, painful sex and heartburn, constant sore throat, sensitive teeth, crippling stomach pain and so much more. I thought for sure I was in an unstoppable downward spiral. At times I’d check in with a doctor. They would run all the basic tests, and blood tests, to no avail. There was nothing wrong with me.
Expect there was something wrong.
To be continued…
Comentários