This is the mental health story of Ashton. How psychosis comes on. An intense story of suffering followed by happiness. Of how recovery takes time. “I was outgoing and a high achiever”.
As a child and young adult, I was outgoing and a high achiever. I had instances of childhood neglect and trauma early on…
Mental health, first experience
My first experience with mental health came in high school. I started having stomach pains that the doctors couldn’t diagnose – even after exploratory surgery and taking my appendix out and a nearly 6-week stay in the hospital. Eventually, I was diagnosed with abdominal migraines and given antidepressants like Zoloft and Paxil, which I didn’t take.
My senior year in high school I was very depressed… Then I went to college at the University of Texas, after graduating Salutatorian from High School. I did well in school. But my sophomore year I started having chest pain all the time and went to the doctor to ask for an EKG. I ended up being diagnosed with Panic Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. All the sudden, I would think I was dying and even called 911 once due to this. I was also prescribed Cymbalta, Lexapro, and Xanax during this time period… Eventually I took medication, got better, and stopped taking medication. In my early to mid-20’s, the panic disorder came back again with severe panic attacks and I started Lexapro again. Then I got better. Then came 2016 – I was 29 and one month post-partum from my second child.
Mental health in the family
In 2010, my grandmother died from a stroke. In 2011 my other grandmother died slowly from breast cancer on hospice. I helped take care of them both during that time. Then in 2012, I got a call that my mom had committed suicide when I was 9 weeks pregnant. My mother lived with severe depression and bipolar disorder my whole life… With intermittent, short-lived periods of wellness. But her periods of sickness led to evictions, no money or lunch money at times, running out of gas, cold showers for me for a year because of no hot water and even buying gallons of water to flush the toilet because of no running water.
There were times when there were tons of maggots in our kitchen from unwashed dishes… I had always worried someday she would succumb to her mental illness, especially after being prescribed and getting addicted to Oxycontin after she had a jaw tumor when I was about 18. Three months after she died, they said they found no proof she had committed suicide, but said she was ill and did have the presence of many prescriptions in her system at the time and had a heart attack. She was 45. But I had my first child…excelled at work..and life kept moving.
Overload
So back to 2016. Then, when I was 29, I got word my cousin who was a meth-addict had died…And the same weekend, my best friend’s mom died of lung cancer. I traveled home, just me and my 3-year-old daughter, to go to my friend’s mom’s memorial service. On the way back, August 7, 2016, music started seeming like it was speaking to me and I thought maybe I was an Angel…Then, from the backseat, I heard my 3-year-old say “The water is all connected, like that flows through the pipes and comes out in the bathtub. You know what’s not connected? The trees. You need to cut down the trees and get the ants out, one by one, like with tweezers.”
I thought God was speaking through her. Another time she told me she was the bread that came from heaven, another time that God makes us from the sunsets… I read a lot into all of this. I became obsessed with books, religion, connections, and meanings. I thought there were hidden messages in everything – books, emails, songs, radio commercials… Eventually I left my husband, took my daughter and moved in with an old friend that I felt could understand what all I was going through… But my mental health continued to deteriorate.
To be continued tomorrow october 19
Ashton is a Wife, Mother of 3, and Survivor…She works as a marketing director
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