My Beloved Sophie, Part 1

My family's second Bernese Mountain Dog and the beginning of the decade.

Apr 13, 2022

I’ve been avoiding the next few chapters. Yup, I said it. I have been avoiding these chapters. I don’t blame myself. These are some HELLISH chapters and honestly, I think that someday these few chapters could make up a whole book. But, that book is for the future so for now, I begin here.

Before I dive in, I do want to be very up front about a few things. This chapter is dark. It discusses my first plan for suicide and my experience with electroconvulsive therapy. For the sake of my own well-being, I have written it to be fairly clinical in nature. In my current state of depression, diving in all the way would be too much of an emotional tsunami for me to swim through at the moment. That said, even as it is written, this chapter is still very heavy.

So please, before you decide to read on, choose yourself right now. If you can do that and read through these challenging topics, then, by all means, please continue. However, if the content matter will not allow you to ‘have a day’, then please leave this page. Please. Leave this page.

All I have ever wanted for every single one of you is to have the bravery to choose yourself – over and over again. So whatever that looks like for you today, know I see you in that courage and I love you for it.

One more quick but oh so important note.

There is no shame in mental illness.

There is no shame in pain.

They are both human and,

There is no wrong way to be human.

That said, the society we live in does not always make us feel this way. It often makes us feel the exact opposite, in fact, like our illness and pain do not belong here.

If you are feeling in any way, shape or form like your beautiful being does not belong on this earth, please know this:

Your mind is lying to you.

Do you know how I know? Because I want you here.

Let me say that again. I want you here and you belong with me.

Now, I don’t presume to get it, to understand your fight AND I do know, this number helped save my life many times. So, if you’d do me the honor, please give it a call.

800-273-8255

My Beloved Sophie, Part 1

My family brought home Sophie, our second Bernese Mountain Dog, during my off term before I left for college. While my peers went to school and, in some cases, went on adventures around the world, I stayed at home, worked as a waitress, and tried to find a medication that worked for my mood swings and ever-growing depression. Sophie kept me company.

Sophie was unlike any Bernese Mountain Dog I had ever met. And even today, although I have met many of the breed, she still remains entirely unique. She was a natural born athlete and had an energy and stamina that rivaled a collie or lab. She would leap feet up in the air without even trying. The name ‘Tigger’ would have probably suited her far better those first few years. When Sophie came home, bright, bouncy and pure fluff, we became fast friends. For the few months I was home, when I wasn’t waitressing or ill in the bathroom with nausea from the new medications I was trying, I was with Sophie. We adventured. We played. We took long naps together in my bed even though it was against my parents’ rules and we filled each others days with love and sillies.

My relationship with Sophie evolved over the years, much like my health did. During my first term at Middlebury, I was rarely home, even though my health changed drastically. My moods became increasingly unpredictable and volatile. They started fluctuating like a sine wave and as every month went by, I experienced more and more raging episodes - bouts of fury, paranoia and relentless anger. By the end of the term, after I had gone a week without sleeping and went on a 32-mile run that I had not trained for whatsoever, I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder type-2. To compound this, just two days before, my boyfriend of two and a half years had broken up with me after an unruly rage episode. When I received that diagnosis, and heard that word, ‘Bipolar’, well, it felt like it was all I could hold onto and all that I had left.

I was 18 years old and suddenly, just like that, I had a serious mental illness. I had bipolar disorder, an illness that ravaged my grandmother and my family along with her. At first, I didn’t let the diagnosis rule me. I decided that, instead, I would rule it. I decided to conquer ‘bipolar’, to slay its power by relinquishing all the secrecy and stigma surrounding it. I was determined not to follow in my grandmother’s footsteps of silencing the demons she fought so bravely in shame so I vowed to become the fiercest mental health advocate the world had ever seen.

I started my quest to normalize mental illness loudly and proudly. I practically announced my condition upon meeting new people. Pretty soon, most of my peers at Middlebury College knew who I was. I was Kate and I lived with Bipolar Disorder. This was 16 years ago, and at the time, that fierce transparency was not received kindly. Most everyone found it overwhelming, if not shocking, but I refused to let this phase me. I refused to let the illness and its many consequences stop me from living my life, stop me from being wholly me.

At first, my honesty felt like a superpower - like armor. It felt like no one had any power over me whatsoever. I had told everyone I met that I had the illness, so there was nothing they could say that I hadn’t already brought up myself, hadn’t already disclosed or shared. I owned all of me. My life, my story was on my terms. But then… then I got sicker.

What started as mild mood lability became violent mood lability. Wild and near constant mood fluctuations dictated my day. I was hyper, happy, and charismatic one moment and then I was weeping, exhausted and cynical another. And the rages - the rages got worse. They got so bad that I bought boxing gloves so I wouldn’t bust my knuckles while I would beat the floor with my fists. There was a fury to the rages; a fire and a vengeance that scared me. And then, on top of all of that, there were also the side effects of all the medication I was taking. I had double vision, a constant hand tremor, persistent nausea, chronic headaches and such consistent incontinence that I carried fresh clothes with me from class to class.

As my health declined, my ability to advocate for myself and distance myself from the jeering remarks of my peers grew weaker. Slowly, the toil of chronic illness and medication side effects caught up to me and then, the stigma did too. There were only so many times I could be bullied for my colorful moods or laughed at for taking medications at breakfast or made fun of for changing my clothes mid-day. I don't think my peers meant any harm. I don’t even think they thought about how harmful their words were. Nevertheless, even though I knew that their remarks were born in their own insecurity and pain, they eroded the strong foundation of self that I had built and in time, the comments wore me down completely. They wore me untenably raw.

I don’t know what the final tipping point was – whether it was one bout of incontinence too many or one snarky remark at my depressed demeanor that went too far - but at some point, something within me snapped. I just didn’t want to do it anymore. I didn’t want every single second of every single day to be left up to chance, to some unexpected and uncharted mood swing. I didn’t want to feel like I had the flu always and to always carry two changes of clothes and a towel between my three morning classes because the incontinence would require an outfit change at least twice before noon. I didn’t want to fight to function and also fight to study and learn. And I certainly didn’t want to be looked at, to be pointed at, to be talked about, to be the joke, the “insano,” the “girl that was out of control,” or “the one who had finally lost all her marbles.”

Above all, I didn’t want to hurt people anymore. I didn’t want to see my parents’ heartbreak when I walked in the door, and they saw my hands laden with tremors and eyes black from sleepless nights. I didn’t want my little sister to have to worry anymore - to have to carry such a heavy burden - the pain of an elder sister plagued by illness. I didn’t want my care team to sigh upon of my new symptoms and shake their head in demoralized frustration. I just didn’t want to do it anymore - any of it - at all. So, I came up with a plan.

At first, I thought I’d drive off a bridge. There was a bridge on the way to therapy. Every week, I drove an hour and a half home from Middlebury for my therapy and psychiatry appointments and the last bridge before I got off the highway had an 1000 foot drop. It was perfect. It would be over in seconds. Except the more I thought about it, the more I obsessed I became that driving my truck off the bridge would be a selfish waste of a good truck. A total selfish waste. That couldn’t be my last act. Then, I realized that I could park the car and jump myself. Hopefully, my parents would donate the truck to a good family, to one that needed it. Yes, that solved it and that became my plan.

It was a Tuesday. I wrote the note and everything. I agonized over the hand writing. I wanted it to be legible and I even included my parents phone numbers on it. I thought of everything and then I pinned it to the passenger seat of the truck with a gold pin my grandmother gave me. In it, I apologized for failing my family - for not being able to get better, for hurting them with my illness, for causing them all the pain. I told them that I was trying to save them from it all and I was deeply sorry it had taken me so long to realize that this action was the answer all along. In the postscript, I made sure to mention that they give the truck to a good home. Please, give it to a good home. It deserves that.

Despite all my planning, incredibly, the world had other plans for me that day. As I approached the bridge, a few cars got close to me and cornered me in my lane. A car close behind and a car to the left of me stayed glued at my pace. I tried to slow down, to follow my plan - to pull to the side - to park and then jump - but the cars trapped me in motion. The plan was never to hurt another person, ever, and stopping would have forced the car behind me to rear end me, which would likely hurt the driver. So, determined not to injure anyone but myself, I kept driving over the bridge.

I turned off at the exit right after it and the cars sped on. I stopped at the next stop sign and before I could turn and head back on the highway towards the bridge, I launched into a full body panic attack. Weeping, hyperventilating, and beating my hands on the wheel, I screamed. I screamed and I screamed.

Fuck you Fuck this Fuck everything. Fuck me. I can’t even die right. I can’t do anything fucking right and this illness is fucking eating me alive.

Once my breathing slowed down, I drove to my therapy appointment weeping. I failed at suicide. How bad at life could I be? I had failed to protect my family, to save them, to give them the life without pain that they deserved. I had failed.

I trudged up the dark, steep stairs to my therapist's office and walked in without knocking. Falling to my knees, I handed him my note in sobs. There was nothing left to say after that. He called my dad and also the hospital to get me a bed in the psych ward. My dad came and picked me up and we just left the truck there.

My dad took the long way to the hospital along the river. He tried to talk to me about how we’d be biking on that very road by the river soon - how it would get better - how he wasn’t mad at me at all and how much he loved me and was glad I was still there. I couldn’t find any words to say to him. I couldn’t even say I love you back. I just bowed my head and watched the world go by. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I couldn’t fight this hard and be this sick anymore.

It was a direct admit and my first stay as an inpatient in the psychiatric unit. I didn’t know what to make of the ward at first. There were groups and nurses and the check-in in a tiny closet room with all the doctors and medical students. They asked a lot of questions and I learned quickly that once you contract for your safety, you are left mostly alone. Those first few days, the doctors tried to get me to make medication changes. They tried over and over to push more pills into my little dixie cup. But I refused. Not because I was suicidal. I refused because I wanted my body back. I wanted the body that ran through the woods and climbed mountains back. I wanted the place I could trust and rely on to feel okay back, even as the storms of my mood raged on.

In a plea to be given at least a chance at a life without crippling and chronic side effects, my doctors approved a course of electroconvulsive therapy. My parents were outspoken in their opposition to this plan, but there was no changing my mind. I was 18. I had the right to choose my treatment and I kept saying over and over:

This illness stole my mind – it stole my days – it stole my moods – it stole any semblance of normalcy but these medications – these medications stole my body and I want it back. I want it back. I want at least one thing back.

Before I went in for the ECT procedure, my parents brought Sophie for a visit. I got to take her for a walk. I remember her leaping - with a love and a liveliness that felt foreign and entirely otherworldly. She kissed my face and I shuffled as she sniffed the mile loop around the hospital. After she left, I wrote in my journal for a while. I cataloged my observations of the ward and wrote the note the doctors required I write before I begin treatment. Electroconvulsive therapy had a history of causing memory issues, so they asked me to write a note to familiarize myself with who I was should anything go wrong. Short term memory concerns were widespread but long term issues were thought to be quite rare so I didn’t worry myself.

I wrote a vague note about who my best friend was, that my doctor knew everything, and that my favorite color was turquoise and the next day, I had the first treatment. A week later, I had the second treatment and amazingly my mood began to lift. The suicidal ideation disappeared and soon enough, my mood lifted so much that they discharged me to finish up ECT as an outpatient. I was relieved that it had worked and my parents were overjoyed that my memory didn’t seem affected.

For the last course of ECT, a family friend drove me to the appointment. I’m told that that treatment was just like the others except when I woke up, it was not the same. My memory of the prior two years was entirely gone. My four terms at Middlebury were completely erased. My friends' names had vanished. My Spanish speaking ability had disappeared. My 11 years of playing the violin were gone. Just like that, part of me ceased to exist. It was like college never even happened and pieces of me never even lived.

I didn’t know the extent of the memory loss, at first. I didn’t get it. But that day when we got home, I said hi to Trouble not Sophie. When my family friend corrected me, I laughed it off but later that afternoon, as I drifted off for a nap with Sophie, sleeping beside me, an eerie fear took hold, a fear that would consume the next eight years of my life. If I couldn’t even know the love that is my dog, how could I know me either?