Keep Smiling, love Casey.

Keep Smiling.

Wise words of my oldest sister, forever etched in my arm- tattooed on the 28 year anniversary this year of her suicide.

I just turned 40 last week which in my life, is a huge milestone. To most women, I’ve heard it’s sort of a big deal but for me it’s like celebrating my 9th year of freedom from a potential life sentence. For so many years I was called a “lost cause” and would be forever hospitalized due to mental health struggles.

It’s true, from May 1990 when my oldest sister Casey took her life, until early 2009 I was in and out of hospital and on so much medication that I couldn’t see straight most days. I felt trapped in life and couldn’t even succeed at committing suicide-which I had attempted on more than 1 occasion. It was honestly a horrible combination I was living. I had been diagnosed with rapid cycling bipolar, severe anxiety and clinical depression. There were other diagnoses thrown into the mix over the years like schizo-affective disorder, borderline personality disorder among a couple of others.

I believed I was going to wind up as another suicide statistic like Casey and why wouldn’t I when the one person I looked up to, decided life was too much for her too handle. My world was rocked and forever changed on that day when I was 11. Suicide does not ever leave anyone smiling.

If I could speak to myself back then I’d say to never let any diagnosis define you. Never let someone’s suicide define your life’s path. Never let what others think they see in you, define your future. No matter what. Keep smiling. Even in the darkest days, there is hope. When you smile you are sure to cause someone to smile back and you never know what affect that can have.

A diagnosis may occupy your life, run your mind, cause you to appear just as I did- “crazy and unstable”, rob you of your hope and dreams but at the end of the day hope has another chance continuously to be planted. I was forever known and referred to as the crazy one. Always in the hospital. You know that saying “Never let anyone dull your sparkle”? If I had of heard anything that resonated with me during those times, it would have been that quote. It took me several years to find my sparkle. The good thing is it may have quashed my reputation at the time but clearly it did not kill my soul. Today I have my smile back and my soul is alive.

It’s true. Nothing was helping me for years. No cocktail of medications, no electric shock therapy, no intervention by various mental health professionals…Instead I would last outside of hospital for a short while and then be re-admitted. Scarred up arms, flat appearance and feeling quite trapped in this thing called life.

This went on all through my teen years and into my early 30’s…I did have several years free during which time I got married and had 3 kids but as soon as I left that marriage and he got custody due to mental health past, you can guess where I ended back up. Casey’s suicide constantly resonated within as an excuse to go the same route especially since I had no other path or map to go by. Today, her suicide resonates with me as a reason to share her with as many people as I can because I am CERTAIN she regretted her action the moment it was too late.

I’m sure there was more than one staff at the local psych emerg who silently sighed at the sight of seeing me sitting in the waiting room again. Sometimes with a friend with me, sometimes my mental health worker, the cops or on a stretcher with the ambulance. Even when I was on the bridge on day I remember someone shouting “just jump” and I wondered, did I really matter that little? Where was my sister to remind to “keep smiling” when the world seemed to be frowning back.

I was a shell of a human honestly.

I had no tools for living, no real will to live, no hope and no future because all I knew was I was crazy. Unable and unstable.

In a community mental health facility in early 2009, I woke up one morning unable to walk. I was taken to the emergency department as the pain was unbearable and after ruling out kidney stones and a kidney infection, an emergency MRI was ordered. The results showed a congenital spinal cord disease which was severely compressing my spinal cord and would require emergency surgery. You can imagine all the thoughts going through my head at that point…Will I ever walk again? Will I be able to drive? Will it hurt afterwards? Never did I imagine it would be the pivotal point in my life that would get me off of psych medications for good. Really, pigs would have to grow wings for that to happen, or hell freeze over.

Clearly, no matter how many suicide attempts I made or how “messed up” I was diagnosed as, how little hope others saw in me…the truth is that hope conquered all of that. Something intangible but very real, changed my life.

There I was laying in the hospital bed a couple of days later when a psychiatrist came in to see me for a psych evaluation because, obviously the staff ordered one to be done. I was so off the charts now also on heavy pain meds as well. I’m not sure who ordered hell to freeze over but this doctor was unlike any other I had ever seen. He came in and said he wasn’t looking at my thick hospital file as he wanted a fresh perspective from me to tell him why I was on so much medication, almost a maximum doses on a few different ones.
I told him I was bipolar and had been diagnosed when I was in my teens. To my surprise, he shook his head and said no, you’re not bipolar. It was literally a miracle moment and all my worries about my back melted away. He then proceeded to say that he believed I have PTSD and definitely anxiety but not bipolar and he was going to start decreasing the medication in order to wean me off.

He said the medication was doing me more harm than good. I thought he was joking to be honest and part of me wanted to say “Maybe you are the crazy one, doctor!” The smile came in the form as hope in that hospital room on that day. Maybe my nightmare was coming to an end as someone had heard me.

People in my life were shocked and to be honest, I’m not sure if they were pleasantly shocked. I’m sure a few of them were thinking they’d be having to pick up all the pieces of me not being on medication and therefore having even bigger struggles.

But, over the coming months, I stayed out of the hospital. Here I sit nine years later and I have still stayed out of the psych ward since then. Do I still have people who doubt me? I think I always will because of my past. People are just like that unfortunately. Hard nosed from their own life’s hurts and experiences about thinking someone could really change that much when it fact, it’s possible.

It took me several years to learn how to live medication free since for so long my default was pills and hospital. Today, the seed of hope has not only grown but it is flourishing. Had someone told me that this was possible, I would not have believed them. Today I will keep smiling.

Each day is a gift. A smile to someone else could be the biggest gift they receive in a day.

My wish is that everyone, regardless of their current state of life, knows that hope exists even in the dark. Even in the darkest of times there is that seed within, waiting to sprout.
Hope does not judge or come with limits, it is not bias to life’s situations…it just kicks into action and when it does, boy watch out.

Never judge your tomorrows based on today and most importantly,

“Keep Smiling, love Casey.”

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