Lately a lot has been happening in my head. I have been trying my best, on my own, to process and sort through a literal deluge of emotional distress and damage, and I’ve found more and more that I’m just struggling unnecessarily. There’s no sorting through this on my own. The more I try, the more convoluted and jumbled things get.

My husband is supportive and sweet, but it only goes so far before the weight of the tide breaks up even his patience. It’s caused a lot of strain on our marriage, which is already teetering on the edge of collapse. I’ve been such a wreck that I’ve singlehandedly broken the trust and comfort we once had. The two of us can’t manage this on our own; I know that. I know things are bad and that we probably need counseling. I know for a fact I need my own individual access to therapy as well. The problem always comes down to accessibility.

Counseling is ridiculously expensive, couples or individual. Doesn’t matter. Then there’s the fact that I’ve had horrific experiences with truly terrible, traumatizing therapists/counselors in the past, and I have a strong distrust for them. It takes me a while of searching and reading to find one I might feel comfortable visiting, and then there’s the fact that they either aren’t taking in new patients, or they have an unnecessarily long wait list.

A decade ago, a shitty psychiatrist I was seeing was on the brink of retiring. He was very clearly done with his work, and had a strong apathetic nature to his treatment of his patients, or at least toward me. I was always under the impression that we (people), as a patients, have the right to proper and humane treatment from doctors. The medication he prescribed me was all wrong for my issues. He prescribed stimulant type antidepressants, and they did nothing to curb my depression and only heightened my panic disorder. There was the rub, anyway: I believe I was misdiagnosed. He put me on Paxil, and another medication I can’t remember. I just recall being distressed because my medicine was giving me horrible heart palpitations and causing me to just feel angry all the time. I was having horrible violent reactions to things that was very uncharacteristic of how I had been before the medication. I tried calling and he wasn’t taking calls. I left a message. Mind, the message was out of desperation because I was in full fight-or-flight panic mode from the ill-prescribed medications he had me on. I was crying through the message, trying to keep myself calm and respectful and asking if he would please call at his earliest convenience because it felt like an emergency.

He never called. When my next appointment rolled around (days later), I mentioned how I had called and he never called me back. I still remember him going on a tirade and reprimanding me, telling me that wasn’t what the answering service was for. He shamed me, chewed me out viciously and belittled me in that meeting. I left in tears after actually sitting through the entire session and paying this piece of human garbage. In the car, on my way to visit my at the time boyfriend, I was so distraught and upset I downed the remaining pills in each bottle. I stupidly did this while driving to his apartment. I was lucky the pills didn’t start to work until I pulled into his complex. By the time I got to his door, I was delirious and out of it, and my pupils were the size of a pin prick.

At the time, we were having trouble as a couple as well. He let me in, and I explained what I had done. I probably begged him not to call anyone so I didn’t end up in a hospital mental ward. I’m not sure. I proceeded to struggle up the stairs and pass out in bed.

I’m lucky to be alive, for sure. Sadly, while I was incapacitated and knocked out for 30+ hours, he proceeded to have sex with my unconscious body. Fucked up. I don’t remember it. I was not awake or lucid for any of it. It wasn’t okay, and it was blatant rape. What’s sad is that this isn’t even the part of that whole situation that upsets me. I’m still upset about the psychiatrist more than my ex.

So yeah. To say that I have a distrust for mental health specialists is downplaying my feelings. There are actually a good dozen other experiences with therapists and the like that are disappointing, but this had to be the worst experience.