Tardive Dyskinesia

Google that term. You will read about how anti psychotic meds can cause jerky movements. Now a doctor never shared that term with me. But I found it one of these times I was trying to make sense of everything. I don't know if that's what happened, but I do know I had a side effect of uncontrollable leg shaking. It may have looked minor, but my knee would jerk/vibrate/ making jittery reactions whenever I was just sitting. It was terrifying. My physical body was not in control. This was new. This was in fall of 2004.

Between the months of June and maybe August, I'd try to go back to college, given up headed home, tried meds on meds, my mom tried to baker act me, I talked my way out of it - because I was literally beyond stressed about living in an abusive home and no one would help - and I was sent back home, my mom enrolled me in community college, meds made me drooly, zombie like, unable to concentrate. Would I ever be able to sit in church again? Would I ever be able to be a student again? Would I ever be able to study and finish college? Would I be able to work to get free of this home? I had no answers. So I walked around in a medicated blur. My mom took me places she went - to hang out with her friends, to get food, to go to high school stuff. I was a medicated shell of a person. I was hopeless, and I had no idea where to turn. Without school, a way to get my education...without work...I was an invalid there to do my mom's bidding. I slept a lot. Sleep was my only escape. And the medications caused nightmares, screaming. I painted my feelings. Though I was tilting at greatness, my mom told me no. She told me bipolar people were creative, so that was nice for me, now that it finally made sense that I was bipolar. My mom decided she was bipolar, got herself in the medication game. Adding her own symptoms to her own diagnosis, between analyzing my every symptom. I organized my room, I danced in my room, I woke up every day hating life. I wondered if maybe I could stop being medicated. Maybe they would put me in a home for mentally ill people. But wouldn't that be better than where I was? I couldn't think my way out of this situation.

My mom looked at putting me in essentially a daycare for the mentally ill. A locked down place. I liked the idea of being somewhere else, but I didn't know that her idea was a good one. So I visited a place. I met people who were struggling with schizophrenia diagnosis. I met people who were dual diagnosis/co-occuring addiction + some fun add on people. I saw in some group therapy with them. I saw more locked doors. I heard about Saturday trips bowling or to the movies. And being stuck there every day. It sounded like the hospital, but a little more free. The location was right next to a place I grew up going for fun. The polarity of past and present realities was jarring. My leg wouldn't stop shaking.

I wanted to go to sleep forever.

So I gave up.