Perceived: Losing and Finding my Mind

BETWEEN THE EPISODES: PART 1

By this time, I had lost almost all my confidence. I had gained a lot of weight on my medications, which were also making me feel very drowsy and lethargic. I just felt like a different person. My psychiatrist explained to me that having a psychotic episode was much like having a broken bone. She said something along the lines of, “A part of your body (brain) is broken, and it needs time and care to heal”. I always trusted my psychiatrist for some reason. I am thankful that I always see her as a genuine person who is trying to help me within the narratives that my brain cooks up when I become ill.

My friends and family didn’t really know what to say. Because mental health is not really talked about, I feel they felt they had to tread lightly around the topic. A lot of friends and extended family approached my family members, where I was craving for people to have open discussions about it with me.

I was adamant that I would continue on with university, I had a goal and I wanted to achieve it. A setback such as a psychotic episode would not stop me. My entire family was very empathetic towards my situation, and especially my mum used to listen to me complaining of anxiety and restlessness each night that I couldn’t sleep. While I had elected to continue with university, it came with many challenges. The medications made me flex various muscles in my body in an attempt to deal with my feelings of nervousness at all times. It became tiring to be flexing my muscles all the time, and I remember feeling overwhelmed about it. I became disengaged from conversations, partly because I was kind of out of it because of the medications, and partly because I lacked the confidence to know what to say. This made me even more self conscious; that my friends and family had to lead the conversation and that they were most probably internally judging me for not being able to string together a basic sentence or two to carry on a conversation.

I felt so small at this point, and like I had absolutely lost control of my life. My family’s support and trying to carry on with my university studies were the only thing that were really keeping me going, otherwise I might have just withdrawn from everyone and everything. I remember I had an early morning class one day for one of my business subjects, and I woke up all of a sudden in it and realised I had fallen asleep in it. I was absolutely mortified, because I would never do this at baseline. I thought it was disrespectful and weird behaviour, and really brought myself down about that incident in particular, I remember. I remember feeling in awe of my friends and my sister, for example, for being able to do day to day tasks with ease, and carry on conversations without a second thought. But with constant encouragement from them, I didn’t lose hope and kept on trying to ensure I put in more effort to stay engaged, and more so, awake.

As time went on, my medications were slightly weaned down and I was feeling a little bit better. The flexing of the leg muscles hadn’t stopped, and I was sick and tired of having to endure this for months. But I kept reminding myself that people go through even more adverse hardships, and that this was a minor setback that I would have to deal with as a result of my medications. I kept questioning why this had all happened to me, and thinking about what I had done to deserve all this. I remember asking my sister one day, and she said that I hadn’t done anything to deserve what had happened to me, and it was probably simply a biological defect that had emanated as a result of my lower natural threshold for stress. She assured me that I could get through this, and there were a lot of people that combat long-term mental health issues, and that I was lucky because my health condition was a brief episode compared to this. This was extremely insightful, and I decided to count my blessings and change my perspective on life. Rather than using how well I was doing at university or what job I was going to get in the future as a measure of success, from then on, I decided to make happiness my number one priority.

Life started resembling normalcy from then onwards. My family made plans to go to Fiji for Christmas to visit my paternal grandparents who we hadn’t seen in a while. My grandparents were really excited about seeing us soon, and I was equally as excited to see my aunty (dad’s sister) who also lives in Fiji. When we got there, we went to my grandparent’s village called Saweni, which is a beautiful beachside farming village. When we got there, my grandparents embraced us, and were so happy to see us. Dad’s cousin was at their place too, drinking beer with my grandad, and he looked at me in judgement and said, “What do you eat in Australia?”. I remember feeling so self-conscious and horrible about myself in that moment, as my sensitivity and emotions surrounding self-image were incredibly heightened. People don’t realise that sometimes a few words can really scar a person who has been through a lot, and can’t control certain aspects of their life in that moment. On hindsight, though, with the benefit higher confidence levels, the comment is actually hilarious.

We spent time with my dad’s extended family and caught up with my mums extended family too. My sister had organised a trip for her, my brother-in-law, mum dad and myself to go to the Mamanuca Islands. It was such a great day, on a beautiful big sail boat. We sat on the deck of the boat and looked out onto the big blue open sea. People were jumping off the side of the boat into the sparkling water, and because I loved adventure, I wanted to do so too, but backed out at the last minute.

My mum and I then went to India, where we spent some time in Goa and Ahmedabad, for a wedding. Goa was absolutely beautiful, and reminded me of an Indian Fiji. We had a relative who took me out clubbing, which was a very interesting experience in India. Everyone was dancing to live music, which by the way was great. We did a lot of water sports and chilled out by the beach. There was a pool at the place where we were staying, so we also spent a lot of time there. When we got to Ahmedabad for the family friend’s wedding, we met a friend of the person who was getting married and we bonded quite a bit, as we were roommates with our mums at the accommodation his family provided for us. We bonded over the culture shock, some funny-sounding songs and the great time we had dancing and laughing together at the wedding and events leading up to it. The girl’s name was Abbie, and I am so glad I got to share that experience with her and she was lively and funny, and best of all, shared my love of pizza.

A year passed by, my sister told us she was pregnant with her first child which was extremely exciting, and I had been busy completing my university studies and working part-time as a medical receptionist at a general practitioner’s clinic. My sister had landed me this job as she felt like it would enhance my wellbeing in boosting my confidence and keeping my thoughts occupied with things other than what I had been through.

I then decided to take a holiday to Japan with two of my close friends, Georgia and Lana. I had met Georgia in my very first class at uni, torts. She had said that when she first saw me I looked a bit stuck-up, but as soon as I opened my mouth and started talking to her, she could tell I was super kind and wanted to be friends with me. We soon became good friends, and one day she invited me over to hers. Lana was also there at Georgia’s place, and we all hit it off as a friendship of three straight away. That night we decided to be ‘rebellious’ and get our helix piercings together. We really bonded, and the saying that you meet some of your best friends at school and uni holds true.

Just before we left for Japan, we had a baby shower for my sister. We invited all our close friends and family, and I was the MC for the event. I had regained most of my confidence, and I was excited to run this event for my sister, who had been excited about it for a while. We played games, including charades, games involving water balloons, who could skull beer the fastest out of a baby’s bottle and Minnie and my brother in law had to guess the melted chocolate flavour in the diaper (which gave the illusion that they were smelling and licking a dirty diaper…hilarious). Everyone had the best time.

Japan was beautiful. It was extremely clean and gorgeous, and the highlight of our trip was going up to the snow mountains and having snow monkeys running around us after an incredibly scenic short trek to the peak of the mountain. I really enjoyed exploring Tokyo as well, and it was a great getaway to relieve stress and have a fun time away with friends. For most of our meals, we just went to convenience stores and stocked up on bread, sandwiches and drinks. It was a low-budget holiday, but extremely fun nonetheless. We stayed at three different accommodations; a hostel, a hotel and another “hotel”. While the first two places were nice and clean, the last place was filthy and felt damp and had mould everywhere. It was not the best ending to the trip, however, going to Tokyo Disney Sea made up for it. We went on a bunch of rides and had the best time. The fireworks spectacular show was amazing to watch, and I so enjoyed spending such fun times with two of my best friends.