#i am no longer pursuing an autism diagnosis but i'm putting this here for posterity | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

in-sufficientdata · 9 months

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The worst time in my life was when I was still in the cult and I had 4 little kids ages 6 and under. The church taught me to deal with my mental health issues by prayer, not meds, so I was not treated for my bipolar II and what was probably pretty severe PPD.

I was never diagnosed as having PPD, so I don't really know if it was that or a severe downswing on my bipolar caused by the hormones + my situation, but really, it doesn't matter. It just matters that I was barely hanging on by a thread.

When my 4th child was born, it was in the summer between the two years of my husband attending college for his associate's degree. Since I had to leave work to have the baby he was working as much as he could. I had to take all 4 kids with me grocery shopping and everything else.

One day I was doing my paper route and I could only think about how much I hated everything that was happening to me. I felt incredible despair. I pulled my van up to an intersection and realized a box truck was trying to turn left where I was pulled up.

I put the van in reverse and backed up to make room. I didn't think to look in my rearview. I almost never saw other vehicles on that street, and this was in 4 years of having that paper route. I backed into the car behind me rather abruptly and rather hard.

A woman came out of the car screaming that I was careless and a bad driver. She mentioned having children in her car. She cursed at me. But there was no visible damage, so we got in our vehicles and drove away. I don't remember saying much. I could barely hold myself together.

Reader, if someone could will themselves to die on the spot, I would have died that day. I have never felt such hopelessness and despair. I'm trying to find better words because these seem inadequate. I hated the paper route, I hated that I had so many kids, I hated being poor.

This period of my life is rather blank in my memory. I continued pushing on somehow. I don't know how. Thankfully we eventually got to a place, not long after, where we didn't need that $50 a week I got from that paper route so desperately anymore.

I can only think I have some kind of tenacity I don't even fathom in myself because, and this is no exaggeration, I thought about death and/or suicide on a daily basis from the age of 8 until I was around 35. But this was when it was the very worst.

I made a tweet yesterday that people found amusing about being the mother of 6. It's got way more likes than anything else I've ever posted on Twitter.

Every time it alerts me I think about being poor and being in a cult and being taught I shouldn't medicate for my mental illnesses. I think about being depressed and being suicidal and being unable to concentrate on anything but the next 5 minutes.

I don't know why I'm rambling about this except that someone I follow here just got a diagnosis of autism. When I saw her tweet I just burst into tears because my psych won't look at screening me for that, even though I presented him with my reasons for wanting to pursue it.

Because the thing is that he is the one who helped me get out of that hell pit of not being diagnosed or treated for bipolar II until I was 31, nor ADHD until I was 36. He has been a huge part of my life and now it feels like when I was in the cult and was taught I should just pray.

And now I have to just go find another psych who will listen to my concerns and my reasons for wanting to pursue this.

This hurts.

#mine #exvangelical #suicidal ideation cw #actually autistic #i am no longer pursuing an autism diagnosis but i'm putting this here for posterity #reposting everything from my twitter feed #i'm about to delete everything so get it while it's hot #tweet: 2018 #molly's mad life

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