Victim of Violence
I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder over 23 years ago, at age 32. My diagnosis came after I met my future husband who was a widower and who was raising a boy who attended the same daycare as my son. One Friday my son and I went to MacDonald’s for dinner, that’s where I met my future husband; it was love at first sight and six months later we were married. Our sons were only a month and a half apart in age and we legally adopted each other’s boys. At some point we decided a private school was the way to go; having both children was a real handful for me. At the time I was working full time as a legal secretary and this, combined with a new marriage and new son were too much for me. I had a “nervous breakdown”; that’s what they called it those days. For me, a nervous breakdown included continuous crying, hallucinations, hearing voices and constant racing thoughts; I thought the radio and TV were talking to me.
So here I was, a new wife, a new mother, and now I discovered my new husband was also an alcoholic. All these factors simply pushed me over the edge; I was dealing with too many things in my life. I remember lying on the couch in the living room, there were people in the house but for some reason I couldn’t converse with them, I was isolated yet not alone. Suddenly I could see through the living room wall to a beautiful scene filled with a multitude of countless and beautiful colours; a place where people were happy and enjoying life; I was mesmerized by this scene and I could not understand why no one else was able to see what I saw. When I realized I alone was seeing this vision my mood immediately dropped; I suddenly became extremely depressed, so depressed that I needed help, right then and there.
My husband took me to the emergency ward at Shaughnessy Hospital where I remember thinking both the psychiatrist and the nurse were clowns, the circus kind. Soon I found out I was a virtual prisoner, they locked me up and, to me at the time, if felt like they threw away the key. There were very strange people in the psych ward; I remember feeling scared at times. There were people with me who looked like street people because they were so dirty and very medicated. We were allowed to go down the long corridor leading to the cafeteria but were not to go past the locked doors at the end of the hall; I was trapped.
There was no way I was going to be released from this place anytime soon. My psychiatrist had just started to use Electro Convulsive Therapy (ECT) with other patients and one day the ward nurses came to get me. Because I knew I was going to receive ECT I was scared out of my mind. I had seen the movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and I did not want to become a vegetable. I also did not believe the doctors and nurses cared whether or not they inflicted pain upon me. I was put on a gurney, I was crying and they were trying to reassure me. After the ECT was done I was rolled back to my room where I slept for two days! When I woke I could not remember what happened; it took me a week to get back on track.
During that week and the days that followed I seemed to have “disappeared” somehow. I felt frozen. I was neither dead nor alive; I could feel nothing. There was no Johannes at that point. Because I was basically catatonic I needed to be fed, washed, taken to the washroom; they changed my gown and brushed my teeth. A few days later I felt like I suddenly came back to life, it was snowing outside my hospital room window, my husband was feeding me scrambled eggs and I was sitting by the window watching the snow fall. I was fully medicated; my hospital stay that time was two months!
Growing up I had it hard. My father was an alcoholic but I hardly ever saw this side of him. I still loved him very much. My mother on the other hand seemed to hate my father. For as long as I could remember my mother was always putting my father down. Now that I look back on it I can see my mother’s behaviour had something to do with the depression I suspect she suffered from. At age 16 I experienced a huge trauma. I was hitchhiking one day when a brother and sister team saw me and threw me into the car they were driving. This pair held me down in the car, fondled me and abused me. The sister said she wanted to kill me and she had a big knife and the brother had a gun; I remember trying desperately to change the subject, to try to distract her from acting out her threats. At some point while the two were talking to each other I saw a chance to escape from the car. I had no shoes on, I was in the middle of the woods miles from home but I ran. I ran through a field of rocks the size of potatoes to a log house that had lights on. I told the man answering the door that I had been kidnapped and I described the assailants. Immediately the man at the door said that the man who had grabbed me was his brother. The man said he had suspected his brother was involved in some sort of criminal behaviour and were on the verge of calling the police; that evening, after I was taken care of by the man and his wife, the authorities were called.
After this incident I was in shock for a long time. I remember I was not inundated with love and concern from my family though I had suffered a vicious criminal attack; this was a terrible time in my life. I remember going to the court house to testify against the couple who had victimized me but I did not have to take the stand. The couple was convicted and each received a few years sentence. As the couple were exiting the court room they told me quietly they would get me some day; I have been living with that fear ever since and I’m now 55 years old.
After this horribly violent event my boyfriend and I broke up and I became promiscuous and involved in street drugs. I held a good government job but things were unraveling for me. I ended up pregnant, had an abortion and became pregnant again. During this second pregnancy, which resulted in my wonderful son, I decided to move to the other end of the country and change my life completely; no more alcohol, drugs or men. I wanted to be a “good” person. I remember saying my goodbyes at the train station, my parents did not know I was six months pregnant; I wore a tight corset and told my parents I had water retention; they believed me.
During my childhood I was raised with very strict discipline especially coming from my mother. I was afraid to show my feelings for fear of being yelled at or put down. To this day I still fear my mother. To this day I also experience much apprehension and life can be very difficult to manage; my life really shows the ongoing effects of violence and fear.
Johannes
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