Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

I was most likely born with a genetic predisposition to mental illness disability. My father has undiagnosed bipolar disorder, my mother unipolar depression. Most of the adults in my family used alcohol to self-medicate. My brother has ADHD which is very adjacent to bipolar.

Disability. Disability. Disability.

The neglect and abuse of my childhood created the anxiety, my constant companion.

The whole kit and caboodle triggered my complex Trauma.

So some of this was built into my DNA and the rest was imposed upon me by other people. But it is all mine now, a cocktail of disability.

Managing my mental health is an ongoing act of resistance. I take multiple medications throughout the day. Sometimes they become ineffective so I have to switch and wait for one to fade away while the other builds up in my bloodstream. There are side effects – most noticeably a permanent hand tremor. I have to constantly assess if I can take a decongestant or if I need to go off an anxiety medication for 10 days prior to an allergy test. Without a car, I have to constantly ask for rides to my pharmacy.

Eve handling my meds requires effort – my hand can twitch when I’m pouring out a dose. That’s fun.

I see my therapist three times a week since events of last summer, prior to that it was twice a week so we could have enough time to focus on talk therapy and trauma processing therapy. I try to see my psychiatrist often. Thankfully, they both are comfortable with teletherapy.

Then there’s insurance. I have good insurance through Highmark. But we have a coinsurance of 10% versus a copy so when our insurance reimbursement rate goes up, so does our 10%. Right now, my therapist’s billing team is trying to get it straightened out with Highmark. The practice itself switched from billing weekly to billing monthly without advance notice. In the back of my mind is that reality that I’ll be kicked onto Medicare when my wife stops working and we lost employer based health insurancee. Finding a Medicare approved therapist is very hard.

I have to make sure I eat with some meds. I have to have an array of beverages on hand to ensure I’m hydrating. Hand tremor impacts cooking. Sometimes i can’t hold a reusable bottle steadily enough to drink. So straws.

When my meds shift, I am usually extra drowsy. I cannot allow my sleep schedule to be disrupted too much, it messes with my mood.

I also have to do the normal stuff – housework, laundry, scoop litter boxes, fill water dishes, get the mail, make sure the lawn is mowed, pay bills, buy groceries, etc.

This is who I am – a person whose full-time job is living my best life with the hand I’ve been dealt. Obviously, I wish I had not been neglected and abused. But magic wands don’t exist so I prefer to focus on my success in getting to age 53 relatively intact.

Let me be clear – I don’t need to be fixed, saved, or prayed over. I need you to put all of that energy into creating a healthier world for me and other people. And yourself.

I do need you to support me and that requires you listening to me. I have a lot of friends who are freaked about any psychiatric medication as a tool of Satan and I cannot talk with them about my meds. I’m not going to try to fix them. I’m going to talk with other people. I have friends who cannot hear a story from me without telling me two in return to find a common bond. I don’t tell them many stories, maybe talk more about medications?

I know that my living out loud as a person with mental illnesses is a fucking lot for other people who have been brainwashed with horrible messages about people like me. Because, yes, people like me. I’m like the crazy, unhinged, cray-cray, lunatic people in your lives.

They don’t need to be fixed. They need your support to access the tools and resources they need. Affordable housing, income, health care, a grocery store, rides to the pharmacy, a compassionate ear that does not vomit their own drama into the narrative. And apparently more therapist authorized to accept Medicare.

I don’t need your pity. Also don’t ever say pity to me because its a big trigger. But I do need a ride to the pharmacy.

I wish you could see that you don’t need to be fixed. That some of the pills you loathe or fear could make life easier. That talking to a therapist won’t destroy your carefully built barriers. That you are still and always have been, you. That you have agency and power with regard to your health and welfare.

That it is not your fault. But it is your choice how to respond.