The album cover for Brand New's The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me, the best illustration of the veil I have.

I was diagnosed with Bipolar II and PTSD in January of this year. It is now July.

I was diagnosed with Major Depression at the age of 13. I am now approaching my 21st birthday.

I have often called this a misdiagnosis since my January diagnosis, but am realizing that is an oversimplification to say the least.

I am not a psychologist, psychiatrist, social worker, etc. The only experiences I have to speak on are my own. The only perception I can see is my own and I remind myself of that on a daily basis. Some may call it existential dread, but it has become a comfort zone for me. Knowing that I am the only person that can understand and articulate how I feel, and that I don’t need to spend time focusing on completely understanding how others feel anymore, as it is not my place and it is not an achievable goal.

This perception, my perception, is a grey one the majority of the time.

When I say grey, I mean the feeling of the all-encompassing depression that I experience most days. I wake up wishing I was dead most days, I go on my lunch break idly thinking of suicide, but I know I won’t commit to it. I know I am safe and I will make it back to my apartment tonight. I know that my typing this on my office computer will not send me into a spiral. I know I will get by and do not want anyone reading this to worry of my health. This is a feeling I have grown accustomed to, that I have almost grown to like in its familiarity.

I mostly don’t know how to describe this grey feeling beyond that, despite experiencing it most of my days for going on eight years. It used to feel heavier; it used to sit on my chest and with its entire weight try to break my ribcage. It used to feel like a constrictor wrapped around my brain, easing itself into the lobes of the organ and permeating my vision. I almost succumbed to it twice, but now it feels more like a veil over my entire body than anything else.

This veil holds me in its arms while I sit up straight with my nightmares at 4:00 a.m., my back pressed against the wall next to my bed, hyperventilating and waiting for my body to stop shaking so I can go take a benzo and drift into the dreamless oblivion that I feel I live for at this point. I am dependent both on the veil and on the prescriptions that have made me functional since January.

Bipolar is tricky, because it’s a spectrum in itself. I view all diagnoses as such, as no one’s perceptions and being can fit into those cute DSM labels, but bipolar in particular, from my experience and the words of my psychiatrist, has a large array of complexities and manifestations.

Bipolar II is often portrayed to be the weaker of the I and II, the lesser of the two in terms of how it affects a person. This is, like my calling my diagnosis with major depression a misdiagnosis, a drastic oversimplification.

Yes, typically Bipolar II does not come with the long-lasting bouts of mania as Bipolar I does, at least according to the boxes the psychiatric industry tries to force us into. But what it typically does come with is the veil. The daily dose of depression that can often not be treated with anti-depressants due to them being dangerous for many people, but from my research particularly those on the bipolar spectrum and with borderline personality disorder, which are often mistaken for each other, but that is another conversation in itself that I do not have the qualifications or experience to go into, I just know from observation and what readings I have found valid that it is a common occurrence.

I was diagnosed with PTSD earlier than being put on the bipolar spectrum, in September of this previous year. I was getting panic attacks on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times a day. Panic attacks take many forms and affect every person differently, that perception situation again, but mine are mostly physical. I would erupt into shakes and hyperventilate with no directly accountable “trigger,” often collapsing on the floor and gasping that I couldn’t breathe because it felt like my throat was closing up. This would last for a few minutes at the most, and be followed by a constant feeling of dread and fear that could last hours. They were preventing me from adjusting to the university I had just transferred to and moved across the state to attend. They were preventing me from achieving at work, holding friendships, and communicating with my family. After one day too many of cowering on the floor of a public bathroom stall after running in there in an attempt to make my anxiety attack less visible to those around me, hoping no one would hear my gasps and sobs as I banged my head off the cold floor, I decided to get help.

I’ve been thrown in and out of outpatient programs and therapists since the age of nine when my mother died of a drug overdose in front of me. I stopped seeing my last therapist at the age of seventeen; I thought I was getting better. What I really was getting was the first symptoms of my new life partner, bipolar. I started getting bouts of energy, becoming extremely productive, writing twenty poems in one night, sleeping four hours a night but not being tired despite working two part time jobs and attending community college full time. I felt on top of the world and I thought I had finally ripped off the scabs of depression that had encompassed my body for years. I thought this was it, all the trauma was behind me, all the bullshit, I was done.

I stayed thinking these states were good for a while, until they started cycling. I would have a day of this amazing feeling, this hypomania before I knew the term for it, and then I would crash back into my scabbed suit of depression. Except when you crash down from that sweet high spot, you hit the ground harder. Before I was just lying on the ground with that grey feeling, now I was dropping to it from the top of a building. The depression did not feel manageable anymore, the suicidal thoughts got worse, and the anxiety attacks came forward stronger.

This went on for a year, year and a half; I’ve never felt the need to focus on time like that, until I moved to the other side of the state after getting my associates degree from that community college, and as I said before I decided it was time to confront all of this. I had no faith in therapists, I still don’t, I still am transferred back and forth from shrink to shrink because I am “resistant to talk therapy” and I “do not cooperate with programs.” Essentially, I either don’t talk or I lie my ass off, not because I lie normally but because I do not trust someone who is being paid to speak with me, it is really that simple.

I’ve come back in this circle of thought to where I started, speaking about the veil. I sought help back in September and began to be “treated” for PTSD, something I brushed aside until recent events. I always thought my trauma was buried far enough it didn’t affect me, I didn’t see it as being the cause of my anxiety attacks, I thought they were from the stress of working 30-50 hours a week and attending college full time, which was definitely a factor, but I’ve learned it is deeper than stress and it is deeper than trauma. I do not know the root entirely, but I’ve been chipping away at the top of it that peeks out of the dirt, and I am learning how to chip away in a manner that does not send me into a downward spiral. That is the only reason I have been able to write this.

I was put on Zoloft, an anti-depressant, the December after that September diagnosis. I was thought to still “just” have major-depression. As soon as the Zoloft set in, a feeling I had never known was now my living day. I was violent, not towards myself as I had been in the past and that always came from that ribcage breaking depression I used to experience, but towards other people. I had only felt this way on a couple occasions before, and they were always in reaction to violence other people were imposing on me, but now I felt as if I wanted to start the violence, I wanted to hurt people and I was laughing at the idea of it. I punched my boyfriend at the time in the face for no reason and cried after on the phone to an on-call clinician. They told me to stop my doses immediately and I flushed the script down the toilet. I was put on anti-psychotics for two weeks until the Zoloft left my system, diagnosed with bipolar, and put on Lamictal, a daily medication that has honestly saved my life.

And that is where I sit now, unable to take anti-depressants, not that I would ever want to, but with my moods stabilized and my moments of pure happiness and productivity that came from my hypomania gone, I am left with only that grey veil. Yeah, I’m more stable, yeah, my GPA has gone back up, and yeah I am still working, maintaining my household, and kind of maintaining my relationships but that will always be a battle; but this grey veil is not going to leave. This is why saying major depression was a misdiagnosis is an oversimplification. This is why saying my anxiety attacks are due to stress and trauma is an oversimplification.

It all circles back to perception, and it isn’t unfortunate when I say this, but I am unable to understand my own, I can grasp it, but I can’t hold it. I do not know what is me and what is the veil, or if they are one working in the same with each other. What I do know is that I am reaching a state of healthy that is likely the end point of my improvement, and while that sounds bleak I find comfort in knowing I will not be thrown from the top of a building down to the grey pavement again. I find comfort in knowing I am aware of what I live with and I am able to get through each day with it. I find comfort in the familiarity and I am safe.

I wrote this mostly to try and straighten out my own thoughts on the past few years and what they have taught me about my perception and my place within it. I also wrote this because I did not find the words anywhere else, as I know I couldn’t have, and I wanted to share the words with anyone else who may be here in this grey veil with me.

Remember you are loved, always.