I tried getting sober, I swear I did better this time.

Healing from a mental disorder isn’t always a linear road, but I wish I knew the finish line.

As obvious as it seems, I grew up in a storm that left when my siblings grew up, and my parents got old — they changed for the better, yet the sadness is still here, swirling in the void on my chest. I love them, I am thankful for the relationship we built but on some nights, I wish they were nicer while I was growing up, so I won’t have to see my psychiatrist now every month, changing medications to see if it will be more effective than the last.

My first appointment at a public hospital for psychiatric consultation was when I was 18, it was days before my birthday and the nurse was hesitant about whether to let me in or call my guardian. Good thing I will be growing a little older anyways so I was in. I am alone; nobody knew I filed for a free mental health check-up, cried while they were taking notes of my symptom as I feel ashamed of being vulnerable in front of others, and got my first diagnosis.

It was a bittersweet feeling, I found myself sitting inside the hospital’s church while holding the paper of my diagnosis and prescription. I asked God if he was there for the last time, but it seems like I was only talking to myself, giving myself the faith I needed to heal and drink Fluoxetine.

The walk to that footbridge in the middle of EDSA was a fever dream. It feels like I was floating above the speeding cars in the middle of a warm afternoon. I’m not okay (I promise) by MCR was playing on repeat from when I rode the jeepney until I got home. I feel so alone. I wish I had someone to accompany me in this difficult journey of healing that I am not sure I want or not, because if I do, I will be just erasing the pain people have caused me all these years by being okay, or at least that’s what I thought.

Fluoxetine made me feel so high. My emotions are fluctuating every day. Every morning until afternoon, I feel trapped and isolated from the world. I feel like the concept of people is a foreign concept to me, I don’t feel like one. Every late afternoon until night, I feel unstoppable. It seems like when I jump from the tallest building, I would just fly. My emotions were out of my control, I was laughing and crying at the same time. Is this what healing is supposed to feel like?

I don’t want it. I still have a lot of deadlines from university workloads and handling my emotions was just another problem to solve. I told my psychiatrist and asked for laboratory tests so she could prescribe a suitable antidepressant for me. However, like a cruel joke, I just got another 2 medical diagnoses: PCOS and WPW syndrome.

Karma, I say. The diagnosis papers were all laughing at me, maybe it was karma from lying about having terminal illnesses when I was in elementary, telling my friends I had cancer. I feel so alone and it was scary. All my life, people have known me as a reliable figure who could solve their problems, listen to their pains, and be a guide to them whenever they feel lost. Instead, for the first time in my life, I feel extremely lost. I thought being stuck was the only way for me.

Asking for help is a miserable thing to do, especially to my parents. I was the kid they never had to worry about, they were confident I could do everything alone ever since I received awards for my academic achievements, but asking them to pay for my medicine and check-ups was a lot humiliating for a kid thinking it was weak to ask for help. Swallowing my pride and blowing on my scarred ego made me realize I am not as strong as I thought I was. In fact, I am always this weak, I am just good at hiding it. I am still in the back of the door of my sister’s bedroom, crying with my chest hurting, whimpering like an abandoned dog.

And then, my Doctor changed my medication to sertraline. It was okay at first, but it was slowly sneaking to take control of my busy life.

While I was dealing with all of that, my Grandmother died, so I took care of my younger cousins for a month, all while managing our store and taking care of house chores. Sometimes, I would help them with their assignments too, being the good big sister I wish I had. My time with them made me realize taking care of kids wasn’t as hard as I thought, it made me realize how mean adults around me were when it was my turn to be a kid. I was not an annoying kid, I thought I was, I was not hard to love and unwanted. Loving a kid is actually easy because they will always love you back, even if you hurt them. I always loved the adults around me, even if they hurt me. I never blamed them, only myself until I had to admit that I was, in fact, ill because of how mean they were.

Sertraline made me more depressed. If fluoxetine were triggering my highs and lows at the same time, sertraline is pulling me back to the void. My depression worsened for two weeks and I lost contact with my psychiatrist. She didn’t respond when I messaged her after she told me she would be taking an exam or something. When I tried messaging her again, my message stopped sending.

Ah, maybe she quit on me, I thought. It was a public hospital, and there were too many psychiatric patients she was handling at once so maybe she gave up on me. Maybe our last session, in which I cried and told her I wanted to give up and have this mental disorder, will be forever and I won’t be healed anymore. Maybe she thought it was true so it’s better not to say anything, leave quietly rather than saying it to my face. How cruel it is to have a psychiatrist give up on you too after giving up on yourself first?

How cruel it is to have a medical force that cannot do anything but watch you suffer because they cannot help you anymore?

To be honest, I don’t know how I managed to get through it. I walked every day using my bruised knees just to continue — No, crawl even. I crawled myself out, gained more bruises, collapsed, saved myself again and again. I don’t know how I managed to survive the chaos of every semester, of every bloody finals, and get good grades somehow. I do not know how I managed to be here today, writing this. Everything was blurred, every move was just another begging myself to survive another day.

A year has passed, and I have almost lost myself too many times. I turned 20 with the feeling of cannot taking it anymore, something bad had happened. Something bad has really happened. It affected my world; it was turned upside-down. Not only mine, but also my parents’. To my sisters and those who loved me. It’s something I cannot talk about yet, but it made me accept the illness I’ve been trying to erase without acknowledging it. It made me face the ugliest truths of being diagnosed and why I was diagnosed.

It made me acknowledge how strong I have become, it gave me the power to continue despite everything I went through, and slapped me until I believe I can get back the life I lost to mental illness if I fight it.

I filed for another consultation, and I was granted, so I sent my psychiatrist another message. I said to myself I won’t think I’m annoying anymore just because I needed help. I deserve to get help. The message went through, she told me my schedule, and it turns out it was a technical problem on my side in the first place. She never gave up on me, no one did.

I was given a different medication this time that comes along with the reminder that she might change my medication. I was very determined to take the long journey of healing until I could finally be proud wearing these scars. Ain’t it antidepressants this but antipsychotics.

It costs too much for a student trying to survive a public university under a free tuition fee. But all I know is I want to get better, even if I’m all alone like I always do. My parents did not know I was seeing a psychiatrist, they don’t believe in mental health and mental disorders. If you are depressed, they’ll tell you it’s the devil working. If you give up, meaning the devil completely got to you. I don’t blame them for it, I understand it’s the way they were raised and I decided not to grow up the same way. I want to heal so I can love them for another more day. I don’t want to believe the same way they do, I want to believe in anything — that I still deserve sunshine even if I was raised on storms.

I was completely alone in navigating the health centers to get free medication. I endured the heat and lied about going to the university due to academic stuff, but I was actually going through the trash system of the government for the country’s mental health situation. I feel neglected to walk this path alone, without having someone to cheer me on or say I did a great job by fighting all these hardships.

It’s making me wish I had someone to hold, someone who would recognize my hard work and would just let me cry because I am so tired. Because healing is very hard.

There was a time when I was on the line for my next consultation, I could feel a depressive episode seeping through my bones due to the mental and physical exhaustion I had to deal with before my appointment. I saw a 15-year-old kid with both of her parents holding her hands, which made my heart twitch in pain since she got help at an early age, got understood, and now is being supported, which is all I did not have.

Yes, it is by choice. But I made that choice because it’s the only way I know. I broke down after that appointment; my psychiatrist did change my diagnosis, but I wasn’t satisfied with it. I feel like I am still missing a huge piece in solving what’s wrong with me and what I have right now is just another clue to finally getting the solution. A solution at the end of this long, dark tunnel.

I accepted it, I told myself to try the medication she designed and see if it works. What if I was wrong all along and my psychiatrist was right all along? Maybe it was the ego talking again.

So here I am, writing this piece in hopes of giving myself grace while I’m on the verge of giving up my medication again. Here I am, giving myself reasons to continue and just endure the harsh side effects all over again, hoping it would make me better.

Fighting drowsiness, lightheadedness, and sleepiness takes much more strength than I expected. It is tiring, especially when no one knows what you’re currently going through. I am starting to feel stuck again, on quitting medication. But I am here.

Sometimes, it does get tiring. One day I am feeling okay and the next day I am not. I could not tell it to anybody because I know how heavy it was but I wish I were strong enough to learn that I am not a burden — I am trying to, still I am now.

But still, I hope. I hope with my hands trembling, my body sore, and my heart weak. I know I can heal and I will heal, I just feel don’t tonight. I know tomorrow I’ll have hopes again, I just feel tired tonight. I wish I knew every step to healing, so navigating it all alone won’t be scary. I will continue this medication, but I wish I knew until when.

Healing from a mental disorder isn’t always a linear road, but I wish I knew the finish line. However, I will still be walking my way out. I will breathe one day, and all of this will be over; I am happy, and I am healed. But for tonight, I’ll stand still.