When I told my mother in 7th grade I was suicidal, and she told me I’d get over it, she did make an appointment.
With my younger brother’s therapist, who he saw regularly. Because of course a 5 year old must’ve been so badly affected by the divorce (I doubt he understood much of what was happening – other than christmas presents doubled the first few years out of guilt).
At Main Line Psychological and Educational Associates – ardmore on coulter ave. Where they’d also had a full (very expensive) battery of tests done on my brother which confirmed he was neither stupid, nor gifted, nor had a learning disability. He was just lazy. I’d had a significant reading delay coupled with an exceptionally high iq test result. No further evals on me. Must be nice to be the prodigal son. Anyway, I digress.
Anyway. His therapist was the director of the program because of course he was – very expensive and fully out of pocket. Doctor Richard Reisboard.
At 13 I was sent to him. I remember the session, sitting on his couch alone.
He was an old man at the time – older than my parents. A freudian look, his office the same. He had a note pad. He asked questions but showed no warmth. I was crying. And he was just writing with no expression. And here I was, 13, thinking, this man probably thinks what problems could a silly 13 year old girl have. What is the point in being here. I felt trapped and like I couldn’t breathe. I hated crying in front of others. Especially with that expressionless face that looked only at his notepad, writing, not meeting my eyes. I don’t think he told me anything in that meeting. I don’t know what he told my parents.
So I refused to go back.
And almost 10 years later when I broke down at work my mother took me back to him. She sat in on the session. In under an hour I don’t think he really listed to anything I said. He told me I was depressed and needed medication. After 1 intake session. No one asked about my drug use (I had been abusing benadryl to sleep or maybe die – I was skirting the edge with the amount I was taking), my extreme dieting and exercise the prior year and associated eating disorder which was preceeded
by a course of accutane. (I was in denial about it – thin was in – but if ivy league women think you have an eating disorder 9/10 you do and they had an intervention).
And I was 22. Which is young for SSRI. And more likely to have a bad reaction period.
But no one asked pointed direct questions. “Do you do drugs” would’ve had me thinking of cocaine not the benadryl I took in excess. I still ate because I overexercised to an extreme so I didn’t seem my eating as a problem. But even those questions were not asked.
So what may have been a simple bad reaction to SSRI turned into a decade plus of antipsychotics and lost years and health that I can’t get back.
I will not stop being angry. I don’t forgive all the ways in which this happened. It should not have.
Laughs and Lobotomies 