The Wait

Sitting there, battling your thoughts alone, hiding in the darkness of your room.

“Why won’t this stop? Why is this happening to me?” you wonder.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in this situation. Where your thoughts are running your mind and your body is filled with pain. Where you can’t move and don’t want to speak to anyone but are constantly being asked “what’s wrong” and “what can I do to help?”.

The reality is, I don’t know what you can do to help as I don’t know what to do myself in these situations. Sometimes, I sit there in silence. Other times, I want to speak to someone I’m close to. Other times, in my darker moments I just wish everything could end.

The first time my situation escalated, I went to the hospital where they had absolutely no psychiatrist available on site, so there I was sitting across from a crisis worker, telling her why I ended up there. To be very honest with you, I feel like the conversation between her and I didn’t help. She was just another ear there to listen and once they gave me the approval to leave that was that.

Prior to my situation, I had heard about how long it takes to find a psychiatrist – usually it took a couple of months from what I had heard but that wasn’t the case for me.

I had to wait one year. One whole year just to get my assessment done by a psychiatrist who saw me and basically told me that I need to make all the neurons in my brain positive so I can have a positive lifestyle. So because all the neurons in my brain were negative, that’s why I am depressed and frequently have episodes. Then he went on to speak about Rumi and Ghandi – it was more of a philosophy learning session than anything. Basically what I took from the conversation is to cure severe depression I have to become a very positive person. Oh, if only that was easy.

I walked out of there thinking “what the hell was that?” sure it felt nice to hear that I wasn’t the problem which I already knew to begin with – I have a long history of why I have depression but we’ll go into that another day. But at the end of the day, I am the one who has episodes and feel the way I do during those times – so how are we going to fix that? I wasn’t offered any counselling or therapy services nor medication, to be honest with you I was a bit confused after the entire ordeal. I had to take it in my hands to find a counsellor and ensure that I had some sort of therapy happening before my condition got worse.

Putting aside the feedback I got from that very special psychiatrist I just find It very appalling I had to wait one year to get an appointment. I’m not going to lie to you guys, I had some very bad moments throughout that year where things could’ve gotten out of hand.

But what about those who don’t have that little light left in them to pick themselves back up? Those who feel like they have absolutely nothing and no one and as a result, they don’t make it to the scheduled appointment which is months away because their mental illness got the best of them?

I think this is an issue that all of us with mental illness realize is getting out of hand by the government and health care system. We have people dying each and every day due to the fact that they can’t speak to a professional on time because these appointments are scheduled several months away. It’s an issue that needs to become more public and aware so we can prevent deaths and allow everyone to get the professional help they need in a timely manner.