When I was 30, soon after I got married, I tried to kill myself. I was in a psych unit in upper Manhattan and went into a bipolar mixed state that made me suicidal. I decided I was done with life. In my somewhat psychotic state, I climbed up on to the top of a wardrobe in my room and fell off on to my head, hoping I would break my neck and die. I achieved part of my goal: I shattered my C5 vertebra in my neck and fractured my T6 into three pieces. I needed surgery to repair my neck because the bone had shattered and they needed to use a mesh wiring to keep everything together. It was a long, gruesome recovery. But I lived and that’s what brings me here today.
I have struggled with mental illness since I was about thirteen years old. I attempted suicide for the first time when I was fourteen and spent a month in a psychiatric hospital unit for adolescents. It was a traumatic experience that I won’t ever forget, but it opened my eyes to the world of mental healthcare and public stigma. My time in the hospital was dark and at some point I realized that I wasn’t being treated properly. I’d been put in a straightjacket, forcibly injected with sedatives, and at one point I had four people holding me down on the floor, including one man who sat on top of me to keep me still. This was no way to handle a self-harming, mostly docile 14 year old. It made me angry. Once I was released (AMA because they wanted to hold me indefinitely for self harm) I had to face the reality of my peers and relevant adults being aware of my episode. The people I knew in high school were wary of me or unkind, because the gossip spread everywhere. Some were understanding, but I didn’t walk around talking about it because I believed no one else understood and they would end up judging me harshly. My best friend at the time completely cut contact with me, and has remained radio silent for about 15 years.
I’ve been focused on my mental health for 20 years. At some point when I was younger it occurred to me that if I could make an impact on just one person, improving their life in some way because of the knowledge and experience I had due to mental illness, I would say that my life was worth it and the struggle wasn’t just for nothing. Today I run a network of mental health peer support chatrooms on an application called Discord that caters to people who want to connect with others who live with mental illness. The Haven consists of three servers: Haven Lite which is for people 13 and up