2021, the most important year of my life
This was originally a December 31, 2021 post on a former blog of mine. I copied and pasted it here since I’ve decided to use Medium for blogging from now on.
It’s difficult to sit down and write this. I don’t talk frankly about the dark depths of my mental illness often, and for good reason. It’s painful and scary looking back at what I’ve been through, and laying it all out makes me feel so vulnerable. But when I reflect on 2021, the first thing that comes to mind is my mental health. Both because of how much I’ve suffered, and, far more importantly, because of how I’ve healed. This has been the most important year of my life because of the help I’ve received and how completely it’s changed my life. So, despite how uncomfortable it makes me, I’m going to talk about it. Because I’m hopeful that it might help others who are in the same dark place I was once stuck in.
My entire adult life has been defined by mental illness. While I struggle with general anxiety and bouts of depression, the worst of it for me has always been debilitating OCD. For anyone who’s curious, I have a specific subset of the disease called pure-O (purely obsessional) OCD that tends to be more complex and difficult to treat than others. This condition absolutely ravaged my mind throughout all of my 20s. It held me back from so much and caused an unimaginable amount of suffering. I’m not even going to try to describe how exactly it affected me because of how complicated and confusing it is to even try to talk about, but understand that, when I say it has been debilitating, I mean that in the true sense of the word. This disease prevented me from functioning like a normal human in so many areas of my life. It absolutely crushed me, and no amount of effort on my part allowed me to even manage it. What I did accomplish throughout my 20s was done through sheer willpower, not because I was reaching my potential.
For ten years, I tried to fix things on my own. It was a daily battle, one that I lost more often than not. And yet, I didn’t seek professional help. There were a lot of reasons for this, many of them involving the same fear and apprehension almost anyone feels at the thought of seeking professional help. I initially legitimately didn’t think I was that sick. When most of the world doesn’t take mental illness seriously, it’s all too easy to dismiss your own sickness as nothing serious. OCD in particular manipulates you and makes you doubt everything, and unfortunately, it made me doubt how badly I needed help despite obvious signs. Later when it became obvious I needed help, I still didn’t seek it out because I believed deeply that there would be no way I could be helped. I thought the problems I was having were too complicated, too weird, too crazy for anyone to be able to help. I thought I’d just embarrass myself and sound like a crazy person if I went in. Add on the fear of all the unknowns that come with seeking professional help and it was all too easy to keep putting it off.
In 2020, I finally talked to my doctor about my suspected OCD and was put on a wait-list to see the right people. Thankfully, since I live in Canada, I was able to access treatment free of charge. The catch was that I had to wait a year.
By the end of 2020, I was profoundly suicidal. Not in the sense that I seriously considered committing suicide: I would never do that because I couldn’t place that burden on my loved ones, but I would think to myself every single day that my life legitimately was not worth living. After so many years of being completely owned by my mental illness and having things get worse rather than better with time, I had lost hope. That feeling of true, profound hopelessness is, to this day, the worst feeling I’ve ever experienced. It was absolute rock bottom. I deeply, deeply believed that I just wasn’t meant to live a meaningful and content life. Despite having an incredible wife, and amazing family, so many incredible friends, and being a capable person with so much potential, I was doomed to have everything ruined by my mental illness.
Fortunately, in 2021, I finally saw a psychiatrist and psychologist. That marked the beginning of my recovery. Unfortunately, though, things got a lot worse before they got better. Overcoming mental illness is not easy.
The first ordeal was working with my psychiatrist and changing medications until I found the right one. I was on one med prior to seeing my psychiatrist (my family doctor had prescribed it a couple years prior) but that one wasn’t helping in the ways I needed. I went through three SSRIs (antidepressants) and two antipsychotics. It was hell. I can’t even describe the suffering I went through as I slowly tried each of these before switching to the next. It’s different for every person, and some people find it relatively easy to transition, but for me it wasn’t. Each medication came with a set of unpleasant side effects, and most didn’t seem to work at all. Instead, they made me feel so much worse. And then I’d feel somehow even worse when I’d go through withdrawals after stopping them. I wanted to crawl out of my own skin; I didn’t want to exist anymore. Existing was too painful. The only thing I looked forward to was sleep, because it was a break from the hell I was living through in each waking moment.
Then, after a few months of sticking with it, I found one that worked. It’s different for each person, but for me it was Prozac/fluoxetine. It took the usual 4–6 weeks to start taking effect, and I wasn’t hopeful at all throughout that time, but I finally started to calm down. The nonstop agony slowly faded and I started to feel somewhat normal again — albeit normal for me at the time meant still suffering from debilitating OCD that needed fixing.
That’s where my psychologist came in. I was extremely nervous when it was time to start working with her. I didn’t know what to expect, and I was worried I would quickly have it confirmed that my problems are, in fact, too weird and complicated to be helped, even by a certified psychologist.
I remember the first few appointments vividly. I remember how I was immediately struck by her intelligence. I remember how I was stunned by her compassion and empathy. I remember how she inspired hope in me so quickly after years of hopelessness. I immediately felt that I was working with the right person and that I was in the best possible hands. The months to come validated that feeling beyond what I could have imagined.
Within a month of working on my OCD with my psychologist (and with the medication backing me up) I was up and living my life more than I had in years. One of the things that was thoroughly destroyed for me by my illness was streaming on Twitch, and within a couple months of working on things in therapy, I went live for the first time in years.
I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe how well understood even my complex form of OCD was in the field of psychology, and how flawlessly my psychologist was able to help me take on the issue. I was a fool for thinking I couldn’t be helped. That idea couldn’t have been further from the truth, and it held me back from happiness for so long.
By the midway point of 2021, I was more content than I had ever been before in my life. I felt like I had control over my life for the first time… ever. Despite the ups and downs that came throughout therapy, the support and confidence of my psychologist was unbending. She believed in me every step of the way, through every slip and fall. She always knew exactly what to say, exactly how to respond to a new problem. She never hesitated, never faltered.
It was the least I could do to power through and do the best I could on my end since she was doing so well on hers. I took every instruction to heart and faced every challenge she presented me with without hesitation. That relentless willingness to face my fears and endure pain combined with her steadfast guidance and belief in me resulted in true, meaningful recovery. It took most of the year and several sessions more than were initially allotted, but it was worth it. It was so worth it.
On October 28th, we had our final session. I was ready to deal with things on my own. I had learned how to live with my illness. And beyond just the illness, she had taught me how to be a healthier, happier person in general. So much of what I learned were things that anyone would benefit from, not just someone who is mentally ill.
This has been the most important year of my life, and the heart of it all was the time spent in therapy with my amazing psychologist. She was one of the most incredible people I’ve ever met, and I’m still to this day grieving over the end of our time together. She assured me that this sadness was a beautiful thing: it was a testament to how meaningful our time together was, how much it meant to me. She changed my life forever, and words can’t express the gratitude I will feel towards her and all mental health professionals from now on. The painting at the top of this post was actually a gift I made for her. It was the least I could do.
In the two months since ending therapy, I’ve been more content, productive, and happy than I’ve ever been. My mental illness is still there, but I can manage it now. It still causes me a lot of pain and distress, but it doesn’t define me anymore. I can live my life despite it. And even though I know there will be times when it flares up and knocks me off my feet, with the words of my psychologist floating through my mind, I’ll always be able to get back up. She believed that I would be okay, and I’m choosing to believe that as well. The future is always uncertain, but for the first time in my life, I’m optimistic. I hopeful that 2022 will be the best year yet for me.
My only regret after everything is that I didn’t seek help sooner. I wasted my 20s dealing with things alone and suffering so deeply. And that’s why I decided to write this. Because I know that at least a handful of people who are reading this have been putting off seeking help.
It doesn’t matter if you have a clinical illness or not. If your mental health is not where it should be, if your baseline is not the same as that of the average person, please don’t ignore the help that is available. Don’t make the mistake I made. No matter how scary it sounds or how vulnerable you may feel, take that leap. It will probably take a lot of courage, a lot of patience, and a lot of perseverance, but it will be so, so worth it in the end.
Thank you so much for reading. I hope this post inspires you to hang in there during the difficult times in your life. We all face hardship, whether its due to illness, loss, or any number of other struggles that are a part of life. If I was able to climb out of the bottomless abyss I was lost in, then you, too, can overcome whatever may come. I believe in you.
Happy New Year, friends. I hope 2022 is the best yet for us all!
