Content warning for topics around depression, misdiagnosis/medical trauma and suicide. Take care of yourself first, always.
When the sun sets tonight, likely around the time I post this, we will have begun a new Jewish year. Today is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement-- the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. This time, every year, challenges me in regards to my mental health. It is a beginning, it is an ending, it is a challenge, and it is a celebration. It is everything and so much more jam packed into a couple weeks. I don't believe it will ever be easy, but this year, for the first time, I felt okay.
As many of you reading this know, I have had a decade and a half long journey with my mental health. When I was only 12 years old, I was misdiagnosed with Bipolar II. This led to years of overmedication, dissociation, doctor's appointments, and deep, painful, horrifying, untreated depression. When I was 16 and a half years old, that changed-- right around the high holidays.
I have written and shared extensively about this challenging time in my life, and I am ever so grateful to my parents for giving me the privacy I needed then and for supporting me as I made the active choice to share my story of misdiagnosis, depression, and mental illness. I suffered for years in silence and in shame, and it is time now to speak up.
When we thought I had Bipolar disorder, success had a very different meaning than it does now. I have a tendency to experience burnout and crisis annually around my birthday, due to the existential intensity of living in adulthood.
Trigger warning for discussions of suicidality.
Depression is a cruel beast, and misdiagnosis is the web of lies it lived within. We had no family history of Bipolar disorder, and objectively, 12 years old is dangerously young to start someone on these very intense psychiatric medications. It never felt right, but I never felt right questioning it. I never felt right, in general. I felt broken in every possible way.
