Girl, Interrupted (More About Me)

For as long as I can remember some form of mental illness was apart of my life.  In grade school I had good or "clean" pencils and bad "dirty" pencils.  At thirteen I was scouring my hands to get rid of germs.  It didn't help that my father thought an appropriate punishment for a C in History was to scrub the entire bathroom daily for three consecutive months.  I felt as if my mind was not my own.  I would repeat a thought in my head incessantly until I was in tears.  By fifteen I had been uprooted from my closest friends to a rural Midwestern town.  The daughter of an up and coming military officer, we came and went at the U.S. Army's beck and call.  It was by no means and easy childhood for myself or my siblings.  After a decade and a half of stares and bullying, saying I was depressed would be an understatement.  The taunt that echoed in my head through the years- "psycho bitch".  I loathed the bus rides home.  I not only retreated to my room, but deep down into the darkness of myself.  Towards my seventeenth birthday I had long laundry list of diagnoses.  Originating with Hypochondria going through Multiple Personality Disorder (now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder), Histrionic and Narcissistic personality disorder, depression, Bipolar Disorder (types 1 & 2) until finally they settled upon Borderline Personality Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder without psychotic features.  Did I mention I spent half a year in a youth residential care better known as a mental institution?  Just don't ever call me crazy.

For the Record...

Where to even begin?  I am a married 27 yr. old with a severe mental illness, but I live with a man who is not my husband.  Said man has a different just as severe mental illness and happens to be a recovering addict.  Recovering as of two weeks so who knows if this time it actually sticks.  Life wasn't always like this.  Although I can't accurately recall a time when I wasn't living from one chaotic moment to the next.  I never give up hope, but as the years go by I am starting to realize I am in a never ending cycle.  The pattern seems to repeat every fours years and while I always seem to skate by I'm never unscathed from the fall.  I'm not an idiot and I don't lack self-respect in any way, shape, or form.  I know exactly where I want my life to be and how to get there, it's the getting there that seems to have me in a bind.  I have tried to dig myself out of my hole.  It's been my dream to study and eventually teach Anthropology.  Unfortunately there isn't much use for a degree in Anthropology.  Right now I have mile-high debt so I don't even remotely have the chance to return to school and earn a degree in something useful.  I've even tried to get on disability in hopes of getting the medical care I so desperately need but for whatever reason the fact that I am intelligent alludes others into believing I actually have an illness that affects day to day life.  While most people are worried about which smartphone to get I spend my days focused on which food bank we can use this month and if and when Jay the Addict will fall off the wagon again and resort to threatening me and kicking me out of our apartment.  If I believed in luck I would say I am one of the unluckiest people on the face of the planet.  I do have a job albeit one with very few hours.  I work as a glorified waitress on a military post that caters to international clientele, but that story is for another time.  Jay the Addict is usually on the computer day and night obsessed with his online gaming, luckily because he too works, Thursdays are the one day out of the week I can spend all night online.  I have allotted every Thursday night to share my plight and opinions on my heavily dysfunctional life with the world. Enjoy.