I asked for help, it is not like a broken leg, and help seems rarer than finding a unicorn.

When we were children my brother and I were jumping down a set of wooden (and slippery) stairs outside in the garden. My brother landed awkwardly and he screamed. Obviously, our parents came to see what was going on, they took him to the doctor who diagnosed a broken leg and put it in a cast. My brother was able to go home after that, and despite the cast meaning he couldn’t do certain things (like play in the sandbox) he was able to live relatively normal. The only reminders of those 2 months are a picture of my aunt holding him horizontally so he could play in the sandbox with the leg sticking out over the side, and a small scar on the back of his heal because the cast wasn’t done right.

In 2014 my mental health was degrading to a degree that made it hard for me to function. I did my best to ask for help. I didn’t scream like my brother had we were younger, I tried talking to my teachers at first. Since they aren’t trained to recognize signs; since my classmates didn’t fully understand how bad it really was; since the school wasn’t equipped to handle mental illness; and since my plea for help was little more than a whisper and I myself didn’t really know what help I was asking for, I didn’t get any help.

In November I went on our annual family holiday (my parents, my brothers, my 8 aunts and uncles and my 10 cousins – all younger than me – in one beach house on an island). I spend the car ride in my big winter coat and wrapped tightly in a blanket, still shivering from the cold. I know now that was a symptom of stress, I didn’t at the time. Within an hour of arrival, I had locked myself in the room assigned to me. I didn’t go out to the meals, the only contact I had was my mom texting me a few times, and I only left the room when it was relatively quiet outside and I dared go to the bathroom. This was the first time my body truly screamed at me that I wasn’t well. I had had anxiety attacks before but never knew what they were or how to deal with them. This was unbearable to me. My aunt’s solution was to order me to unlock my door, bring me a tray of food and order me to eat. The gesture was well-intentioned, but in my situation, it was the equivalent of telling my brother to walk it off when he broke his leg. We had arrived Friday evening and by Sunday morning my mother drove me back to my apartment.

By the new year, I called my parents and asked if they would hate me if I dropped out of school. After the holiday incident, they were more understanding that I actually wasn’t well – which had hard to tell from opposite sides of the country. By that time I had half a year left until graduation. The principal was shocked when I informed him I would be stopping, I had been a good and hardworking student, and he offered to help me get through the last couple of months. I was furious. I had been begging for help every way I knew how for a year, and they hadn’t taken me seriously. I was done, I wasn’t going to try anymore, I was going to, for once in my life, prioritize myself and my mental health. One of my teachers literally dropped his jaw when I told him I was leaving, and to this day I still don’t know if I should laugh or cry at the image of him starring dumbfounded at me for a full minute before being able to speak again. I had asked for help, to the best of my ability. I had asked for a school funded appointment with a psychologist but by the time I was able to get an appointment I was way past the point of no return. Asking for help doesn’t work unless you are able to clearly spell out in all caps what kind of help you need and why you need it. Most people aren’t capable of that at this stage, it would be like expecting my brother to call out to my parents that he had broken his leg while he was still in the air.

I moved back into my childhood home, eventually back into my old room, and then I stayed there. I figured the stress I had been putting myself under was what had caused the social anxiety, and I just needed a bit of time to calm down again, breathe, and just be. By this stage, I was afraid of even my family. I stayed in my room all day, and I only went down for food when everyone was either at school or work, or asleep. I held my breath every time someone passed by my door, and some days even the two steps from my bed to my couch were too much for me to handle. At the time, I thought this was all the help I needed.

After a few months, my mom asked me if I would consider getting help from the state (we live in a welfare state, there’s free help offered and a monthly welfare check), and I agreed. I was placed in a program and told I had one year to get well again. I spend the entire time with that ‘one-year’ statement hanging over my head. After a few months of showing up there once a week for a few hours, I started coming in our youth group at church. This was the first real help I received, and it wasn’t anything that was supposed to help in that sense. I forced myself to come there every Wednesday evening. At first, I hardly spoke to anyone, I just showed up. People would come over and talk to me though, and they would accept that it was difficult for me to engage in a group like this. They accepted me as I was, they let me sit by myself at times, and at other times they would come and talk to me; effectively allowing me to be alone while still making sure I wasn’t lonely. It is thanks to them I am able to go out in public again, thanks to them I am no longer scared of human beings.

I spend my year in the assigned program, and when the year was running out I started frantically looking around for what to do then. Unite, the youth group, had helped me a lot, and I ended up trying to retake my last year of school over the internet so I could sit at home. This was when I realized that even though the anxiety was getting better, I had done nothing about the underlying stress, and bedrest clearly wasn’t enough to cure that. I quickly found out I had bitten off more than I was ready to chew, and I had to stop again. The thing is, with a broken leg you leave the cast on for 6-8 weeks and that is that; mental illness or the treatment thereof has no timeframe.

I dropped out again, and this time there was no way I was going back to the state assigned program because that clearly wasn’t helping. This meant two things: I had absolutely no income, and the only help at my disposal was whatever I could do for myself. I spend a couple of months that way, the best months I have had in a very long time. I finished a book I had started on about five times, and while I now think most of it is crap, it was a good exercise and it kept my brain going. I was happy, I had energy, and I had the courage to try again and finish an education.

This time I chose something different. I figured my problem had been that I was too much in my head so I chose something where I would be working with my hands instead, thinking I could keep studying other, more academic subjects on the side. It turns out the stress of being in a kitchen was, once again, too much for me to handle. I chose to stop there before it truly brought me down.

Despite my earlier resolve, I ended up back at the state assigned program. With three dropouts on my record (and a changed law saying I now need special permission to try to get my diploma again) and no signs of getting better, I decided it was time to seek professional help – which requires money, and therefore the return to the program and welfare check. I had hoped this time they would assign me to a different program, but alas, I am back where I was two years ago. Except for one thing: I am worse. Last time, while it made me slightly anxious to be there, this time I am terrified of touching anything. Last Friday I literally brought a trash bag with me to spread out over the table so I wouldn’t come into direct contact with it. I spend a few hours there watching Agents of S.H.I.El.L.D and then went home early when I ran out of episodes (/things to distract me from where I was). I could give you a list of reasons why I think this is, among others the feeling of having been placed in storage so you and your problems are out of the way, the knowledge that no one there is equipped or hired to help you move on from it, and the realization that despite my best efforts, based on experience, it will only go downhill from here. This is the help offered by the state and, in my opinion, it is the opposite of help.

Now I am three, almost four years, into this mess. I have three dropouts to brag about, two stays at a state assigned program (/storage facility) to think less than fondly off, three psychologists and a psychotherapist whose combined insight was something like: ‘you are highly sensitive’ to refer to. I have a letter from one of the psychologists saying that I need to be in a different program and that I need to see a psychiatrist. I am still in the same program, but I was lucky enough to get an emergency appointment at one of the two psychiatrists in my city. He hasn’t given me a diagnosis yet but wants me on medication for something I definitively don’t have. At first, this seemed odd to me; then I read about the alternatives. The medication he’s offering me now can be deadly, but the alternative can be deadly, is highly addictive, and only works about half the time.

In other words: my brother went to the doctors twice with his broken leg: once to get a cast, once to get it taken off. I have been to five different professionals now, have no diagnosis, can get no help or information about what I need from my caseworker, and I’m possibly about to start a medication with sides effects that included everything it’s supposed to help me with as well as death. Do not tell me mental illness is like a broken leg. Do not tell me I need to seek professional help. Do not act as if ‘help’ is something you just ask for and get. The only thing so far that has helped me was Unite. I am almost four years into this hell hole, and I am starting to believe ‘help’ is rarer to find than a unicorn. I am done asking, I am done demanding, the only solution I see now is buying a horse and sticking a horn on it myself – though how to do that I have no idea.

If you are struggling with something like this yourself, by all means, seek professional help. Sometimes you can get lucky and it will actually help. Who knows, maybe three years from now, I can tell you a story about something that actually helped me. Maybe the medication will work. Maybe the list of daily habits I have made for myself will do the trick. Maybe the medication will help me stick to that routine, maybe it will end up being a combination that gets me back on track. By all means, go look for the unicorn, just don’t make my mistake and assume they are as common as flies.

If, on the other hand, you are one of those people saying things like ‘it’s like a broken leg, you wouldn’t expect that to heal itself, would you?’ or ‘you’d think it foolish to not see a doctor about a broken leg, so why won’t you see a professional about this?’ could you please just shut up! A broken leg takes two months and two visits to the doctor’s to heal. A cast doesn’t cause suicidal thoughts or rashes that could kill you. A cast doesn’t change the chemical balance of your brain. This is not as simple, this is not as normal, and you are not doing us any favors by pretending it is. Unless your intent actually is to hurt us, to make us feel inferior because we’ve been struggling for years rather than months, because we take pause before taking any medication, because we dare doubt the professionals assigned to help us, then really, just stop it, there are so many better things you could say. How about next time offer a prayer, offer to drive us to a doctor’s appointment, offer a hug! Just don’t think kicking us while we are down is actually helping us.