WHAT MAKES MORE SENSE THAN UPROOTING YOUR FAMILY TO MOVE FROM PITTSBURGH TO CALIFORNIA AT THE DAWNING OF THE TRUMP ERA AS A BROKE ARTIST, MARRIED TO A BROKE ARTIST, WITH NO JOB PROSPECTS OR SAVINGS?

In the summer of 2017, my husband, kids, and I loaded up our two cars and five bedroom house, and moved to Los Angeles. We were scared of what was happening to the country, sure, but I was boiling under the surface: afraid my marriage wasn’t solvent, worried I couldn’t provide what my children need, and so fucking done.

Once we got here, everything that I’d been so carefully shoving back down and throwing really cute pillows from Home Goods on top of, finally bubbled over. The burnout finally eclipsed all of my masking and coping mechanisms.

By December of 2018, shortly after my 36th birthday, I had come completely unraveled. I had been trying different antidepressants to manage my depression and rampant anxiety, but the meds either didn’t work, or the side effects weren’t worth it.

(IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO NOTE HERE, BEFORE WE GO ONE STEP FURTHER, THAT I AM PRO MEDICATION AND PRO MEDICINE, AND THIS WILL NOT BE A SPACE FOR DISMISSING OR JUDGING MEDICATIONS OR THOSE WHO USE THEM.)

Everything came to a head one Wednesday, when I finally fell apart in the most appropriate place I could have, therapy. Never mind that you’re supposed to cry and fall apart in therapy, I usually don’t. And that was exactly the problem: I never fell apart. Not completely. Not all the way. Just like I never sleep now, because I worry that my daughter will get out of bed and go food-seeking. Just like I wasn’t allowed to cry when I was little.

Suddenly, I couldn’t keep it all in.

I couldn’t keep it all together.

My therapist gave me a choice to go to a 72-hr Voluntary Inpatient Facility, or to go to my psychiatrist’s office for immediate assistance.

I drove home in weepy disbelief.

Me? Go to a psych ward voluntarily?

My first response was “Oh Please! Oh PLEASE! Yes!!!” – Because what mom doesn’t dream of being whisked away, even if it is on a stretcher, to sit alone in a quiet place and just…rest?

But what would my kids think? What would we tell them? And what if it ever got used against me? Things like this get turned around on women all the time.

THE TEAM