Living With Mental Illness

For Kiddush, I need access to grape juice. I have to go to the kitchen and ask the staff for my special “ritual juice,” which is reserved for me behind the counter as the glass bottle is unsafe for the ward.

About a year and a half after I started taking my medications, I had my first real flirtation with suicide and spent half the night with our local police force, sheriff, and state crisis workers.

For years I struggled with scrupulosity, believing what I was doing was correct and healthy. Then I got help.

“G‑d, You owe me. I’ll live. But You need to take care of me and make this life worth living.”

I see my struggle as a hidden gift from G‑d.

Bashie’s harrowing struggle against anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder is a journey that takes her from the depths of isolation and despair to the profound joy of knowing that a Jew is never alone.

The pressure subtly built a reality around me that I could not achieve. If the dream of that success failed, then everything was lost.

Winter brings a certain hopelessness and fatigue, irritability towards other people, and a desire to stay in and dissociate to daytime television with a jar of chocolate spread and a spoon. But this year was different...

I often found myself standing at the kitchen counter, mindlessly eating one piece of cake after the next. I wasn't even hungry, but I kept on eating...

I wondered how she could look me in the eye and think that I had been stripped of my humanity and my agency. I wondered how she figured that any person with mental illness could somehow get by without humanity or agency...

PPD would never happen to me. I was too "happy"! I was always the type of person that people viewed as so capable, energetic, and positive. But I suddenly realized that PPD could happen to anyone, even me...

As my sisters, my boyfriend, my friends and my students rallied to help me cope with physical illness, my mind was being warped by something more insidious. Realizing that I would live the rest of my life as a disabled person, I started to wonder whether or not life was worth living...

I knew I was miserable, and I had plenty of reasons to be, but I hit a low that I had never experienced before and hope never to again . . .

Something has tormented my soul for many a year. I tried to live by the adage that what happens in the family stays in the family...

Allowing yourself to step into a new and healthy reality from a traumatic past is a bit like zip-lining: If you don’t jump off the platform with trust that on the other side of the dense foliage before you there is another platform, then you will never behold the wondrous sights in between.

I have a disability, but you would not know it by just looking at me or by having a brief conversation with me.