I have started this post so many times and in so many ways. Mostly, I’ve just written about other things to avoid talking about the “big terrible thing”. I guess it’s just been too big and too terrible to talk about. I’m not sure why now feels different, but it does. I think it might have had something to do with my husband confessing to me, in a humorous but vulnerable way, what he did when he found out I went crazy. I’m not putting CRAZY in quotes because it wasn’t an imaginary thing. It really happened. Not many people can say, with some humor, that they went crazy and came out on the other side of it stronger and more resilient, but I think I can. So, let’s talk about the time I went crazy, and let’s be honest because everyone who has ever lived through this deserves some honesty. Perhaps honesty will help others understand that CRAZY isn’t something a person can control. It happens to a person for several different reasons under several different circumstances.

My particular crazy happened because I became depressed. It wasn’t the depression that people ask about when they inquire as to why you are “blue”. It wasn’t situational, it was chemical. Specifically, it was Major Depressive Disorder with Psychotic Features, otherwise known as Psychotic Depression. Apparently, a person, me, can become so chemically depressed that they start hearing voices and hallucinating. Yes, it’s terrifying! My particular hallucinations started as “memories” that surfaced. I’m putting “memories” in quotes because they actually were not real, unlike the CRAZY.

Most people don’t know but psychosis can take 2-3 years to develop in the brain. It comes from an imbalance in neurotransmitters and starts with altered thinking as the brain struggles to make connections correctly. In its most acute phase, it results in auditory, visual, and sensory hallucinations. Most people don’t get diagnosed until the acute phase because they don’t understand what is happening with their brain. As someone who has been through it, it is very much like dreaming while you are awake, but with intense stress, sadness, anger, and anxiety. As you can imagine, if you are physiologically dreaming while you are awake, it becomes impossible to tell the difference between your hallucinations and reality.

So when I tell you I went crazy, I’m telling you the truth. I ended up in the psyche ward for a week in the acute phase of psychosis because no one, including me, understood what was happening to my brain. People may wonder why I am working so hard to claim CRAZY; well, it’s because I believe that all hard things come with a silver lining. If you don’t claim the hard things then you will never get to the silver lining! Take the Cross for example. It’s the story of how an instrument of torture became a symbol of hope for millions of people. So where’s the hope in my story? The hope came for me in the psyche ward in the form of a Gideon Bible. When you can’t tell the difference between hallucinations and reality, very little can reorient you. My reorientation came in the form of Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd”. It was the only thing I could comprehend in my state of mind. There was some untouched part of my being that still understood that “Yea, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” I understood this to my core, and I was able to grasps for healing. When you are CRAZY, that is one huge leap. I don’t think the door would have even been open if I had not received a copy of the Gideon Bible.

Healing came in the form of anti-depression meds and anti-psychotics. Tough stuff! No joke meds. The blessing here was that having been on these meds for months now, I can say that I haven’t felt this good since I was a kid. I don’t know how else to communicate the weight that depression carries in secret, and it was a secret even to myself. I had no clue that I had it. Until I ended up in the psyche ward, I and others had no idea that anything was wrong. Pretty scary stuff, but I’m going to own it because I know in a soul deep way now that the Lord is my shepherd like I never understood before. So, thank God for tough times! Thank God for CRAZY!