It can be a hard life.

Hello,

I’m new here, my name is Grace and I suffer from Bipolar, Borderline Personality Disorder and High Anxiety.

I came across this site yesterday while in the progress of trying to find some inspiration, inspiration to make a change! Last year was by far the hardest year I have ever experienced. At ninteen years old I was still battling what I thought was just a low period. I was first diagnosed with depression when I was thirteen year old which over time with medication I thought had run it’s course and I was out of the woods. I took myself off medication and I thought I seemed okay for almost a year! Then it hit. I had just turned eighteen I was drinking… a lot. Everyday was new experience and I was throwing myself into love, hate, alcohol, drugs and sex.

Slowly, over a few months I started crashing, I had no realisation that this was happening, I was happy and enjoying life I would never have expected what happened next.

I went out with a few friends on a Thursday night after work. I drank and drank and drank until I was a blubbering mess. I was dropped home where things began to dawn on me. What was I doing with my life? Why am I doing this to myself? I JUST WANT IT TO STOP! So I got myself together and walked inside where I grabbed all the tablets I could find and started taking them. One by one, then gradually it became handfuls. I lay there in bliss, so happy with what I had just done and then it hit me. I started vomitting uncontrollably, I got scared. What had I done! I want this but I don’t, I was so confused.

I rang an ambulance and told them what I had done. Within 5 minutes they were there, while I continued vomitting. I went in and out of conciousness and woke up in the hospital fighting the nurses and doctors off that were trying to help me. I had drips and machines attatched to me on every free surface. I got scared. My hidden anguish was once again in the public eye. What were my parents going to say? How could I possibly have done this to them, though the want to just be gone was still there. I needed help.

One week later I was admitted into Northside Clinic in Sydney. I was placed in ICU and after 5 days I was put onto ward 3;  Accute Services. I stayed in this hospital for 5 weeks and learnt so much, slowly the will to die eased with the help of constant therapy and medication. I left feeling reborn.

A few months past and everything was going fine. I started back at work where I was dealing with my panic attacks. Then one night came along and I broke down. My boyfriend who has stuck by me through every minute took me to the ER. I wasn’t seen that night, I was of low priority because I didn’t have anything physically wrong. What they don’t understand I was in pain, not just mental, but physical. My heart felt like it was breaking, I was in agony! I went home after waiting for 5 hours. My mother rang the hospital the next morning and said I needed to be seen, so I went back to the hospital and was seen straight away. For a patient the weren’t willing to see the night before, they were more then happy to think about scheduling me. I didn’t want a bar of that so I rang my Psychaiatrist and within one hour  I was booked to be back in Northside Clinic. I stayed for two weeks before leaving. We finally got my medication where it needed to be.

I still have my lows and my highs but nowhere near as  extreme as before and don’t get me wrong there is some very hard days where I don’t think I will make it but by being open with the ones around me is keeping me relatively stable.

My plan is to raise awareness. I want to get the attention of the government to make a change! Youth and their carers need to be more educated our health system needs to improve greatly and with my plan to approach this issue hopefully it will force the government to open their eyes on what is happening to the generation of today!

I would love to hear some response to this and if anybody would like to get involved with telling me their stories and how the mental health system may have failed them, or helped them and also any views on how you feel things could have been different if things were approached earlier or if there was a larger ammount of information out there to help you and your parents to deal with this sometimes disastorous illness.

Thankyou.

You can contact me either through here or email me at gracieyjulia-@hotmail.com.