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.
This time was painful, dark, and ominous. The medications I was on caused such extreme lethargy that I was asleep for more hours than I was awake. My brain felt scrambled, constantly. My voice slurred, and it became hard to communicate and find the words to describe the pain I was experiencing. I was barely a shell of the person I was, my identity a fractured shadow of my darkest hurt. My life was barely worth living, and in my mind, I was nothing but a burden to my family and friends.
Before I go any further (and I have already given the trigger warning), I want to share a virtual hug and loving support to anyone who may be resonating. This is a terrible mindset to live in, and I know firsthand how very true it all feels.
Depression lies. It twists your thoughts and sinks into your vulnerabilities. Depression is also a lifelong illness, at this point in our world. Even if depression can be treated with medication, therapy, and lifestyle changes, there will still be hard days when the depression wins.
Depression is nearly un-fightable, and it cannot be fought alone. Reach out to loved ones, find support, and ask for help if you need it. You are not stronger when you are facing this alone-- there are people who would jump at the chance to help you move through this time in your life. Take their hands. Accept the help. Find an umbrella to wait out the storm. Live to fight another day.
On Yom Kippur, we pray to G-d to be sealed in the Book of Life. We pray to live another year, to welcome in new experiences and build new ways of life. That's what we do on Yom Kippur.
And then there was little 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 year old me. The little Rivi who didn't care enough to pray for that, because her world felt meaningless. Nothing felt like life, or like death. Everything was fog. How does one pray for more of the same-- and why should I?
My junior year of high school, around the high holidays, I finally learned the truth of my misdiagnosis. My mom, who, to this day, never stops fighting for me, freed me. She pulled every string with every friend and family member to search for answers.
My mom saw the hollow eyed, zoned out, slurred speech zombie that was supposedly her daughter. She knew, the way only a mother knows, that something was deeply wrong. And she wouldn't rest until she brought her daughter home.
We found a teen mental health clinic at UCLA with skilled doctors who cared. I had been to doctors-- dear lord, had I been to doctors. I don't know why this time was different, though I have ideas. The UCLA psychiatrists started from scratch and wanted to learn about me, not just my illnesses. So many of the side effects of the medications hid away what might be going on, or just shut me down. The doctors found the human beneath it all.
I spent the next year in an alternative schooling program, titrating on and off different medications to figure out what was really going on. I found an anti-depressant that worked well for me, and the fog of depression began to lift. I slowly, quietly, and intentionally, began to blossom. I found healing through writing and through art.
Still, in the end, I was stuck asking G-d: Why? Because I prayed to you so many times. I prayed asking for healing, asking for health, asking for something- anything-- to understand.
G-d didn't save me. My mother, my father, my sister, my grandparents, and my community-- they were the ones I thank my prayers to. They were the reason I was living, and the reason I have grown to be a successful, strong, and independent woman.
I am finishing writing this with tears in my eyes-- still holding onto something greater than myself. I don't want to pray to a G-d that let me suffer. Still, I see how the Jewish community around me-- so much strength and love-- is what brought me back to life.
I hold all these truths inside, and I prepare for the year ahead. I watch the sun dip below the clouds, watch the heavens close as we near sundown. The Book of Life has been written for one more year, and I will claim my place, with or without divine intervention.
I am here, and with G-d as my witness-- I am here to stay.
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