#anyways yeah really good book you should read it. you will be hysterically sobbing btw

[anarcho-smarmyism]

God i fucking feel the whole psychiatrists are shit / fuck the medical system vibe. My shrink ignored and downplayed my complaints about antidepressants and kept increasing the dose until i went full on manic state mode. Now i dont trust anyone and im still suffering lmfao

yeah you would not BELIEVE the shit i had to do to get doctors in Texas to take me seriously about any mental disorder that wasn’t either bipolar, anxiety, or depression. people really think that it’s just as simple as “getting up and going to the doctor!!!” but in reality it’s more like: 

(this got WAY long so it’s under a cut lmao) (trigger warning for basically everything you can imagine btw)

fucking read up on the DSM, try to figure out which symptoms you have, go on goddamn tumblr and sort through the tags of various MIs until you find someone who seems like they’re not full of shit (professionally diagnosed or otherwise). try to have conversations with these people about these conditions, and what it’s like to live with them meanwhile a bunch of irrelevant assholes are hounding you trying to “prove” you’re lying for attention or something. go look through forums of people with the Edgy mental illness you think you might have, watch how they talk, try to figure out if that’s what you do, or if maybe you’re just over analyzing, or paranoid, or something.

THEN you gotta make calls and calls and calls trying to get seen by a real doctor in the first goddamn place. the only ones that take medicaid are shitty and obviously mostly aimed at “rehabilitating” addicts, but you take what you can get. meet the doctor and be polite and try to, like, surreptitiously feel out whether you can be honest, or need to heavily edit what you tell them so you don’t end up fucking institutionalized. pretend you’re too stupid to use Google and you’ve never heard of the DSM, try to describe the symptoms you have as honestly as you can without letting on that you’ve done any of your own research. have the motherfucker blow you off and say you can’t possibly have what you think you have because you’re “too nice” or “too self-aware” or because you’re in any way interested in self-improvement that you can’t POSSIBLY have a personality disorder. finally convince him that it’s possible you MIGHT have a cluster B personality disorder, but he won’t diagnose it because of ~the stigma~. get prescribed whatever standard mood stabilizers and anti-anxiety he feels like giving you.

go to see a therapist. the therapist ALSO does not believe you when you say you may be dealing with something worse than “depression and anxiety”. when you talk about why you think you have the thing, she asks a million weird, invasive questions that sound like she thinks you live in a fucking Lifetime movie. she OBVIOUSLY doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but she’s a ~professional~ and you’re not, so you just try your best to get whatever out of it you can. you get very, very little out of it, because she’s trying to treat “depression and anxiety”, and that’s not what you have, and she is not qualified to treat what you have, and you both know it, but you’re poor and can’t afford a doctor who’s qualified. all the doctors keep telling you about the godawful stigma and telling you how you want to “avoid the label”. you try to explain that you don’t give a fuck about the label or the diagnosis, you just want the treatment. they obviously don’t believe you, and obviously think you can’t tell that they don’t believe you.

so you think, fuck it. i’ll do it myself. i’ll talk to people online who have the Edgy mental illness i think i have, i’ll ask for their advice. and they actually have good, practical, helpful advice! they share worksheets and stories and tell you ways to cope. and it’s hard and it sucks at first, but you practice and it gets easier. but if you ever try to talk to people irl about that? you’re full of shit. you’re making it up, you’re too crazy or stupid or young, too female and too poor, to know what you’re talking about. “you gotta go talk to the PROFESSIONALS”, people insist. “you gotta get a DOCTOR to tell you what’s going on.” try all day to convince any of them that the doctors are sometimes full of shit. it won’t work. it will NEVER work. you are too easy to dismiss and Professional Authorities are too easy to believe.

and the people who don’t tell you to have blind faith in The Professional Doctor Authority? they tell you that “it’s all in your head”. they tell you, if you would just Buck Up and Try Harder, the shit would go away. they say everyone gets sad sometimes and if you try to explain you didn’t just “get sad”, they roll their eyes and say you’re dramatic. exaggerating. it’s just How Your Generation Is. entitled and spoiled. oh what, you’ve been dirt poor for the last decade? you actually DIDN’T always have laptops and iphones and wifi and all that shit? oh whatever, that’s a fluke, doesn’t really count, you’re STILL entitled because of your “””generation””””

one day, after you’ve been having panic attacks nigh on constantly and deliriously telling yourself that you’re just imagining it, you’re just MAKING IT UP, eventually realize there’s no way you’re making this up. that you don’t know what you’ll do if you don’t get help soon. someone tells you, if you’re thinking about killing yourself, just call the hotline! they’ll help you! you’re suspicious, but what you’ve been doing isn’t working. so you give it a shot. you call them and tell them what you’re going through. they tell you to go to the ER. you go to the ER, they ask you questions, reassure you that you really do need to be here, then have some fuckin’ cop tell you, very slowly and softly, that he’s gonna walk you across a parking lot to a building where they’re gonna help you. for some reason he jokes about how ugly the walls on the inside are. you do not give a SINGLE fuck about how the walls look, but you’re “a girl” and you’re in texas, so you act like it’s funny. he’s annoying you, but he’s also obviously trying to help. you shouldn’t blame him for not knowing how. he’s a cop, not a doctor.

when you get to the building, you talk to a woman who asks you what’s going on. you tell her the truth, she tells you it’s okay if you need to pace around, then she tells you that you should never go through the ER because that’s a $1000 bill. you’ve never even seen a thousand dollars in cash before. what the fuck? she tells you you’re gonna stay for probably about 3 days, and then they tell you to sit on a bench, in a room by yourself, nothing to occupy yourself with but a fucking TV blaring news about the weather, apparently there’s a big storm somewhere and people are scared. you are hysterically crying and panicking and they leave you there for HOURS. you think maybe you’re in purgatory. you hear doctors in the next room laughing, talking cordially. your mind is devouring itself as you sit there shaking and trying to hold it together through faith and tenacity alone, and this is just another day at work for them.

before they’ll let you in, they strip search you. they count your scars and comment, almost laughing, to one another about how many there are, how neat they are. where you hid them. you try to make conversation and they ignore you. you are not a person, you are a patient. you want to scream at them but you know that will only make things worse, so you grit your teeth and stare into space and try not to react to anything at all. finally they believe you aren’t hiding anything and they walk you into the room with the other “general” patients. the woman says something about how “some of them are quiet and some of them are loud”. she smiles at you and you want to tear her fucking face off but you know she just doesn’t know what to say. there’s nothing to say. so you just nod and go talk to some of the other patients. they’re pretty cool, pretty nice. they try to hug you but they get yelled at for it. touching isn’t allowed.

you dont even realize for a couple hours that you’re still wearing the thin blue hospital clothes they gave you after they strip searched you. you have to go ask one of the nurses to give you your clothes and let you into a room to change. you put on your clothes, feeling slightly more human, but you still have to wear those goddamn socks instead of shoes, because your shoes are too beat up and shitty to wear without the laces. you zone out for a while and at some point, realize that while you were hysterically sobbing and packing some clothes and notebooks and books to take with you (most of which they would confiscate, telling you to go read some boring magazines about babies and dating and flowers and shit), you without realizing it, grabbed your Harley Quinn t shirt. the one where she’s looking at the camera, smirking as two cops are, apparently, about to drag her away for questioning. for some reason this is the funniest thing that has EVER happened to you. you start laughing and you can’t stop, and everyone looks at you like you’re crazy -the patients look concerned, the nurses look smug and knowing.

you eventually get it together. you remember you can’t sleep without the mood stabilizers you’ve been prescribed. you tell the nurses that, tell them you brought the pills with you, should be with your things. they politely blow you off with what is clearly a canned response, saying you’ll be able to talk to a doctor tomorrow. they ask you what your dose was, you say you don’t remember but you think it was 200mg, you tell them your doctors’ name so they can check. they nod understandingly and you think they’re gonna check. (you will later find out that they just took your word for it, and you were WAY off; you were only on 50mg. they gave you 200mg anyway. you later find out how fucking lucky you were that quadrupling your dose didn’t ACTUALLY fucking kill you.) when you eventually give up on sleeping at 4am and drag yourself up to pour some of the shitty hospital coffee they’re serving, the nurses ask you how you slept and act surprised when you say that you didn’t. “oh, you poor thing.” then they ask when’s the last time you ate and when’s the last time you took a shit and blah, blah, blah. you don’t remember most of it.

when you try to talk to any of the nurses about trying to actually TALK to someone about what you’re dealing with, they tell you they “don’t do that here”. they tell you that’s the “outpatient program”. they make you go to group where they hand out these cute little pamphlets with cute little cartoon stereotypes of people in abusive homes, make you all go around and say which one you are. the nurses think you don’t notice them smirking at you, but you do. during group one day, they talk about a man who lost his wife of 50 years and who was smiling and whistling the next day, because when asked if the cup is half empty or half full, he replies "it's a beautiful cup". the girl about your age who came here after a bender for help with her drinking problem thinks that is so profound that when she gets out of here, she goes and gets a tattoo of a cup with that quote. later, you will admire her tattoo and be happy that the story helped her. on the other hand, they also say things like that "every situation can be good". they use the example of the big storms that are currently happening, somewhere in the world: the storm is bad, but look at how people are helping each other! it's a good thing, after all! the other patients smile. you don't; you say, but a lot of people still died. a lot of people still lost their homes. that's bad. it doesn't matter if some people also helped. the nurses glance at each other nervously and double down: no, you have to "find the good" in the situation. they smile at you and tell you patronizingly how very, very smart you are. you know that's not a compliment, and you also know that THEY don't know that it isn't a compliment. you decide to just keep your mouth shut; the other patients seem to be comforted by this crap. who are you to tell them they're wrong? you shut up.

every night, one of the nurses announces that she is a motivational speaker “outside of here” and talks about Jesus and Overcoming Adversity for about twenty minutes. she clearly has been through some real shit in her life, and she also clearly believes she is really, really helping somebody with her Motivational Speeches. you don’t know if anyone else is getting something out of this -other people are often comforted by things that seem completely ridiculous to you- but you suspect they don’t. whatever. good luck getting her to shut up about whatever she’s on about. (you confess to the doctor later that day that you sometimes think about hurting people. that night, the Motivational Speaker talks specifically about ‘wanting to hurt people’. you pay close attention, knowing she thinks she’s helping, but actually just thinking that they were lying their asses off when they said this shit was confidential. you think to yourself that you need to remember that.) at one point she tells a story about a girl who tried to kill herself and failed, ended up paralyzed. the moral of the story, she says, is that “if you try to end your life before God is ready to take you, he may send you back worse off”. you stare at her and wonder, vaguely, how anyone worships the God you worship and talks about Him like that, like he’s some evil tyrant who would paralyze a child because she wanted to end it all, had the audacity to believe her life was her own to do with as she pleases. you are used to other Christians talking about God that way by now.

the main benefit of being in here is that you get actual, real anxiety medications -not the cheap, weak shit that Texas prescribes poor people asking for anxiety medications. that, and you’re in a safe place. well, not completely safe; a man much older and quite a bit taller than you overhears you and another inmate trading sex stories, most of them sapphic. he sits next to the two of you and listens to you talk for about fifteen minutes, then gets up and says something about d*kes being disgusting. you joke about him, but nervously. the other girl tells you “well if he tries anything, i’ll kill him”. you laugh and say thank you, but you know that’s bullshit. if he tries anything, everyone around you will be too late to help you. you think oh, maybe i’ll just avoid him, but the next time you go to get coffee he glares at you like he wishes you were dead, shakes his hand at you limply, and it takes you a second to remember that it’s sign language for “f*ggot”. you flip him off, but then go tell the nurses about it. you’re very careful to specify he didn’t actually threaten you, ‘cause he’s a black man and you don’t want to get him in Real trouble for “threatening” a white girl when he didn’t. the nurses tell you to “remember where you are” and that people in here are sick. you nod and say yeah, it’s probably fine. he probably won’t do anything. he has to sleep in a separate room from you, anyways.

at some point, you’re playing cards with about five other patients. talking and shooting the shit, starting to enjoy yourself. one of the guys who is in here for a suicide attempt keeps making “jokes” where the punchline is that women did something sexual. people keep not laughing and he’s obviously getting frustrated that people laugh at your jokes more than his. he starts talking shit about “sluts” and you try to, politely, reasonably, tell him that it isn’t his business who anyone sleeps with, that so long as nobody is lying or getting hurt, everybody has the right to sleep with whoever they want. he slams his hand on the table and says, “No! It’s disgusting and it needs to be destroyed.” He stalks off, too furious for words. You glance at the other “slut”, the same girl you talked about being gay with, and she agrees. everyone else takes his side, follows him around reassuring him that he totally respects women, and you’re just a crazy bitchy SJW. you know you’re right and you know he’s not just some poor wounded frat boy. you know he’s an actual danger to any woman he’s around. you also know that no one will believe you, so you just try to hold your tongue and not pick fights with him, because it doesn’t matter if you’re right. everyone will take his side. everyone always takes the man’s side.

eventually, 3 days are up. you feel calmer but just as empty and lost as you did before, except now you are approximately $2k in debt. you go to a nearby elementary school’s park, even though it’s overcast and cold, and you sit on a swingset and stare into space. there are a couple of kids there, but you figure so long as you leave them alone it’s okay. you stare into space for a good twenty minutes before you realize you still have that fucking bracelet on, the one with a bar code that they would scan every time they called you up to get your pills. you tear it off viciously, immediately. 

a few minutes later, a woman walks out of her house, across the street, toward you. you watch her curiously. she approaches you and asks you “if you know where to get any bud”. you say sweetly, “i’m sorry, i don’t,” as if you don’t know for a fact that the woman is a cop because you live on this block, and have seen her cruiser, and also what fucking stoner walks up to someone they don’t know and asks for pot in front of 2 children and on a public school’s property? she wasn’t even dressed like a stoner, for fuck’s sake; just a cop’s approximation of what a stoner looks like. jeans and an oversized t-shirt and hoodie. please. was she even trying, or do cops really just think all stoners are complete morons? do you really look like that much of a stoner right now? doesn’t matter, anyways. you knew she was a cop, and you never tell strangers you do anything illegal anyways -not when you remember to watch your mouth, at least.

the outpatient program turns out to be more of the same bullshit. starts at 7am and they make you empty your pockets and stand with your arms out so they can use a metal detector on you and make sure you’re not smuggling anything in. they make you put your knife in your locker, and that annoys you because you always carry your knife with you when you’re not at home, but you know if you say that they’ll think you’re Violent. so you put it up and feel naked and exposed and try to act like everything is fine. try to be civil with people while you’re tired and irritable and everything is so fucking stupid but you never know, right? maybe they do have SOMETHING to teach you. maybe you’re just being full of yourself thinking these people are full of shit. so you make the pain in the ass arrangements for the little bus to come pick you up, dodging questions about whether the car outside your house runs and whether you have a license and whether it would be technically possible for you to drive yourself, even though you don’t have a license still and you know for a fact if you get pulled over for driving without a license it may be years until you can actually get your license.

the ‘group therapy’ in the outpatient program turns out to be mostly about making fucking collages and shit. they hand out pamphlets about Christianity and about how a butterfly can’t become a butterfly if it doesn’t fight its way through its cocoon. one of the days, the woman leading the group will not shut the fuck up about how she “knows” that talking to a different woman in a different room is going to give you all soooooo much anxiety. you want to tell her to fuck off, but you figure she’s just really green, they’re probably using you all to break in the brand-new “therapists”. you smile at her and make nice because she’s obnoxious and dumb but she’s trying. the woman who usually leads the group is obviously annoyed with you; you are too blunt, too aggressive, too confident in yourself, even now, even at rock bottom (except fuck,don’t tell yourself this is rock bottom, don’t say that, because then like clockwork, the rug will be torn from under you and you’ll find a way to sink even lower), for this woman’s comfort. you try AGAIN to tell her what you think you have. she tells you there’s no way you have it because you’re “too self aware”. you irritably explain that you think there is a strong possibility you do have it, and you explain why, and you try very hard not to scream when the most you can get out of her is some empty platitudes about “having self control” and “seeing the other person’s point of view”.

when she leaves the room, the other patients commiserate with you about what a fucking waste of time this is. one of them is mourning the death of her daughter, lost to suicide when she wasn’t even in high school yet, and she went to the office like she was supposed to, and had an argument with the girl working there and annoyed the girl, so the girl claimed that she was “suicidal” even though the patient said she’d been dealing with depression for decades and knew it wasn’t an emergency, and that’s why she was even here. she starts crying in group and you wonder if you should go up and hug her, or that would be overstepping a boundary. you stare helplessly. the woman leading group watches sympathetically for a few seconds, clears her throat, and diverts the conversation back to her lesson plan.

at some point, they call you in to talk to a doctor. there are three people about your age also in the room, writing stuff down on notepads. one of them asks you questions about every possible trauma and hardship you may have gone through. after you admit to each one she says softly, “im sorry that happened to you.” you are grateful to be treated like a human by somebody in the room, even as the doctor himself is clearly bored with this whole schtick. the meeting takes about fifteen minutes; within a few weeks they will send you a bill for several hundred dollars. that’s how much it costs to sit in a room while a doctor ignores you and lets medical students do his job, asking you about the worst things that have ever happened to you, for college credit so they can finish medical school.

they tell you to do “homework” that amounts to writing about your feelings, your worst memories, your deepest secrets. you try to convince yourself that you might actually get something out of this whole shitshow if you just go along, but you can’t stand the idea of letting that fucking woman read anything you write. whatever. you show up every day and say no, you did not do the homework. no, you do not feel guilty about not doing the homework. the woman who leads the group glares at you. you are an incorrigible crazy girl who must not want to get any better, after all. one day they have you all go outside, hold hands, and move a hula hoop around in a circle without letting go of each others’ hands. you make a skeptical face and the lady who leads the group says something about “being resilient enough” to do her stupid little exercise. you want to tell her to go fuck herself, there’s no part of this shit that has anything to do with resilience, but you know better than to argue. you participate and, incidentally, you pass the hula hoop quicker than everyone else did, and then you say “i don’t like to touch people”, because you don’t, and the other patients let go of your hands immediately. the lady who leads the group looks pleased with herself.

on the seventh day you drag yourself up in the morning to go to this stupid outpatient program, they just have you watch Inside Out and then fill out a paper about “what emotions does society tell us to repress”. you go through the motions, go eat the lunch they serve you, and go home, knowing you are not going to bother going to the next day. These people are full of shit. you have to figure this out on your own, as usual. at least you got the higher dose of mood stabilizers you needed, though.

you get a new job, because you quit your old one in a panic. you’re too anxious and pissed off all the time and awkward and unsure of whatever the fuck these people are so mad about when you can’t sit them down immediately or whatever, to be good at customer service, so you just start doing the grunt work. you’re still under the impression that being a hard worker when you first start a new job will help you keep the job; this job will be the one that lets you figure out you don’t actually want to give 100%, because then your coworkers will slack off and when you try to slack off, your boss will be mad at you for not performing the way you usually do. 

it’s almost unbelievably difficult, but you keep showing up to work. you hide the panic attacks and you push through the depression. you smile and play nice even though everybody is full of shit and thinks you’re an idiot and you can’t ever, ever change their mind. you feel like you’re going to explode all the time, but you don’t explode. you don’t die. you don’t relapse. you toe the line and you slowly, slowly learn and improve and heal.

you try to talk to people about it. they won’t believe you. crazy people can’t fix themselves. they can’t reason their way through a problem, they can’t realize their behavior is an issue and take initiative, they can’t. it’s impossible. crazy people don’t know they’re crazy. only the Doctors can be trusted.

whatever. they’re full of shit. you have to figure out your own way to survive, just like always.