Mental Health Support

For example, the part about not eating and running until your feet bled. August 2012, check, did that.

"I'm not a loner living in my car or shack, or a funny looking guy in the library who doesn't talk, and I haven't been for a long time."

That line also really resonates with me on several fronts, where I was, where I could have gone if I had given up and let this consume me, and the new direction I am moving in. I was the weird nerd with poor social skills who muttered to himself and was terribly afraid to even say a simple hello to someone because I felt inadequate. My ultimate fear over a mental illness diagnosis wasn't that it could be fatal in terms of suicide, but that I was going to lose everything in life that I have and literally be that homeless man in the shack until I either died on the streets or got myself thrown in jail over some act of desperation such as shoplifting some medication or food.

My mother is the only person in real life, except for paid and HIPPA-bound healthcare professionals, who knows the truth. When I told her the entire story, I gave her the option of asking me to leave and go out on the streets, because of what transpired. She was surprisingly ok with it all. Last week, I told her how I wanted to get some new suits, start dressing better for work instead of the casual look I always wore, and she surprised me and said to go get what I needed and put it on the joint household MasterCard as my Christmas gift from her. So, last Saturday night, I went out and ended up buying four suits, a couple of sportscoats, a new topcoat, a couple of pairs of shoes, and some new ties. I actually ended up buying two really inexpensive Marc Anthony suits at Kohls that I thought were just as nice as anything I saw at Macy's or Nordstrom for four or five times the price. I wore one of those Monday with a new shirt I had in storage for several years, new tie, new shoes, even new underwear. When she saw me, I told her this look was the opposite of the Cass Corridor look I was afraid would be my life (the Cass Corridor is Detroit's most infamous drug and crime neighborhood with tons of homeless). I also told her that I was running as fast and hard away from that dark future scenario and trying to write my own future in a much more positive way.

Agreed, never cured, just managed. Right now, the lamictal seems to be doing a great job, and at $16.69 for a month's worth of pill, is the bargain of a lifetime if it keeps me in a world where I blend in a hell of a lot better with the Saturday night pre-Christmas shopping crowd at Somerset Mall than I do with the crush of homeless milling around the shelter waiting to be let in out of the cold Michigan December night.

Bright future or dark future, I see it as a choice now, not a fate. Roadbumps, sure, I expect some, but I know what to look out for now before a pothole the size of a dinner plate turns into a life-shattering all consuming sinkhole.