Moving Forward

The hardest thing about my mental health journey has been the medication. Medication that means I will not slip further into psychosis again. When I don't take this medication my mind unravels and fractures in ways I have absolutely no contra over. The medication however makes me loose control of a lot of my bodily functions from sleep, to movement to even being severely depressed and unable to leave my house.

I was on an injectable medication once a month called Invega. I can not even begin to describe how numbing the effects of this drug were on my system. It's a dopamine antagonist which means it impaired the functioning of dopamine in my body. Dopamine is something we need as part of the reward system of our brain to keep us motivated and driven. With an impairment in dopamine I woke up almost every day with a deep dark depressive mood with suicidal idealisations. I had to stop because it was literally killing me.

They switched my medication to Ability a partial dopamine agonist which helped change some of those low moods. Previously I was reluctant to try this because I'd been trailed on it and it caused severe side effects. It's taken till now for the doctors to realise that I'm extremely sensitive to the medications so the dose was drastically reduced.

 I still have a lot of inveigh in my system after almost 6 months of injections and it will probably take several months for it to leave my system completely. For about 6 months now due to an over production of prolactin I haven't even had a menstrual cycle in 6 months which indicates just how hormonally pervasive this drug is in my system. On top of that there's the weight gain which I have to try extremely hard to monitor and also take medication to inhibit it.

Basically psychiatric drugs do help but they come with a whole list of issues. One of which is the suppression of my memory. Now that I'm on Ability my memory has started to to return. I think a lot about if I had of stayed in the situation that I was in would things be better if I got help earlier. I had to answer my self back with a resounding no because the person I was in a relationship did everything in their power to disable me mentally, emotionally and physically. Their fear of losing me was so great that they would go to any length to beat me down so I stayed in subservience to them.

My role was not that of a human being but of someone who was expected to cook, clean and take care of children on my own. If I could manage to do all that as well as deal with my mental health I was "allowed" to have my own time. If you knew the situation you'd realise that time wasn't on my side and I wasn't ever afforded a luxury to be myself or pursue a career or dream. I was quite literally drained and overwhelmed by my responsibilities.

I had a lot of anger that when he left me in my darkest period that he all of a sudden had time to pick up the children by finishing work early. He all of a sudden had the ability to take full care of the children when our 50/50 custody arrangement ended. Basically he'd left everything up to me to do even when we were sharing the children between two cities. I even had to send home shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, cereal and other necessities because he wouldn't buy them.

Suddenly all of the excuses he made not to be present in helping raise the children were non existent. This was so hard to deal with because he told me he couldn't come home early and that he had no money to contribute to bills I had to pay. The thing with him was that once you took a burden away from him he would not catch up but get used to being looked after and not having any responsibility.

Up until a bout a month ago he was still being mentally and emotionally abusive to the children. Of course his public social media displays would have you question other wise. If he occasionally put up a loving post he could be excused and hide the devastating blows he dealt not just me but my children. Let's also remember he was so physically abusive towards the children that Police child protective services interviewed both himself and the children over the abuse. If court did anything to such a crooked person it was shame that he could not continue the abuse under a microscope.

I hope and pray that he really has turned a new leaf and keeps up the care for the children as I try to rebuild my own life. I'm so excited and looking forward to being able to study and it's a blessing I now have the freedom to do so. One of the most important things about that is showing my daughter that she doesn't need to be born into slavery due to her gender. I know that if I kept going the way I was she would have had a very different life role modelled to her.

One of the most devastating things to me was not being afforded time or money to advance myself in a career. This particularly is the case with my photography. I know I'm a good photographer and could work in that field. However I was never given the time or money to advance that opportunity and it made me very sad. I saw people all around me with the funds and the means while every spare dollar I had was put towards raising my children as that is the one thing he never contributed to until now.

I'm glad to finally be putting a lot of this in the past. Like I said I hope he continues to stay on the straight and narrow and doesn't revert back to his abusive tactics with the children. I need this time for myself more than anything. I'm hoping that my nights are not spent hoping he isn't destroying the hard 12 years I achieved in raising my children the right way. Now that they're finally happy, well I feel like I can be too as well.