A Comeback Story

Six years ago, I was suicidally depressed.

Six years ago, I was living with an emotionally abusive hoarder parent. Her one bedroom apartment was packed to the brim with junk. Piles reached the ceiling. There was a narrow walking path between mountains of clutter. Because there was no space, we slept in the same bed.

I had no privacy. I had no hope. I didn’t see a way out. I was unemployed, receiving disability benefits for a serious mental illness (bipolar with psychosis), and suicidal. I had just gotten word about a social situation that devastated me. I felt betrayed, worthless and like none of my pain seemed to matter.

It was during quarantine. I spent my day browsing and posting on twitter, playing Animal Crossing, smoking pot and dissociating. I was seeing a therapist at the time who, when I expressed my feelings of helplessness, said to me: “I feel helpless.”

I didn’t see a way out. I knew that with my job history, which was primarily food service, that I would not be able to find a job I could tolerate in a suicidal state without making things worse. Even if I did get a job, I wouldn’t be allowed to make enough money to move out due to being income-limited by being on disability. No landlord would accept that income.

It was around then that I first looked at the application for Certified Peer Specialist. I knew it was something I wanted to do, but I also knew it was something that was out of my reach at the time.

I am currently:

• A study advisor for a project by a team of Harvard researchers

• A Young Adult Peer Mentor for an organization that acts as a front door to psychosis support services for young adults, their families, and their providers. I do outreach, speak with young adults, and share my lived experience of psychosis in psychoeducational presentations to various organizations across the state.

• A public speaker with the National Alliance on Mental Illness’ In Our Own Voice program sharing my lived experience.

• A member of a Lived Experience Subcommittee for a statewide program to prevent psychosis

• A volunteer at a peer-led drop-in mental health center

• Actively advocating for (or against) mental health bills in the state by going to the state house and talking to legislators

I have now been a panelist three times at mental health conferences and events, including at McLean Hospital.

I have spoken on a mental health podcast.

I have attended a Harvard conference where I was part of a peer-run team presenting an academic poster.

I am part of a webinar series through McLean Hospital.

As of this week, I am a Certified Peer Specialist.

I am about to become employed at the mental health center where I volunteer. I will be facilitating groups at the center, at shelters, inpatient units, and acting as a responder for a peer support phone warmline.

I am doing what I have always wanted to be doing.

Yes, the government kicked me off disability and I had to scramble to fucking figure everything out in freefall. It was incredibly stressful. I had been on disability for the past ten years, working only part-time and paying no copays for insurance/healthcare.

It’s been a learning curve, for sure.

But I’ll always remember when a psychiatrist told me and my family I might not work, go to college or live independently, when I was fifteen, because of my mental illness.

Demystifing psychosis has always meant something to me. Like an obligation to the world. I feel I am doing my part - actively changing how people view and understand psychosis, one speech at a time.