I was miss-diagnosed with major depression last year, my senior year. My doctor prescripted Escitalopram for it, but also gave me a prescription for Klonopin because I also had a tendency to get anxiety and panic attacks sometimes (because it was my senior year and I had a lot of decisions to make in the future).
Now, turns out I actually have a bipolar disorder, so the medication I was on wasn't helping at all. It was obviously making everything worse, I just didn't know it yet.
When you take normal anti-depressants having a bipolar disorder, it just heightens the depression and the hypomania. So, this one time I was painfully depressed and just couldn't stand it anymore. I tried to kill myself. Didn't even plan it, no one knew how bad it was until it happened. I wasn't trying to hurt anyone or even myself (I know, that sounds freaking contradictory), I just didn't want to exist anymore. The act of breathing itself was too painful.
Luckily, I failed that attempt and survived. As soon as I got home from the hospital (after a gastric lavage) my parents called a new psychiatrist, who diagnosed me with a bipolar disorder type II.
Three weeks later, I met this guy on Whisper (Let's call him Josh). Josh seemed just perfect for me, we felt like soul mates, had so many things in common. The only bad thing was that he was going to travel overseas in five months from then, because he got a scholarship in a university in the UK. We decided to meet just a few days after. I instantly fell in love, and everything felt reciprocate. Obviously we knew that we were kind of doomed, but he made be believe all along that there was a chance that we might meet again sometime in like five years and get back together. That sounded fair enough to me, but I still had my feet on the ground (or at least I thought I did).
So we started dating and everything was perfect for the first month, then he started to act a little shady and we wouldn't see each other as much anymore. His excuse was that he was working very hard in this little company he owned, and that he was getting all his documents for the travel. I thought that's why he was so unavailable and I was totally okay with that. Sometimes he would disappear the whole day and I wouldn't hear from him (we were used to at least text to check on each other during the day) and that's when I started to get anxious. I would start having panic attacks again and my bipolarity was just crazy. At that point I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder also. I would try so hard not to explode on his face, because he was just being a crappy boyfriend. He wouldn't be there for me ever, wouldn't even try to comfort me over the phone, he would just take this condescending attitude towards me and throwing shade as if I was just feeling sorry for myself. All of this made me question my entire existence, because I admired him for being such a wise and mature man (for his age), so the fact that he thought of me like that teared my confidence and self-esteem apart. And the fact that he was acting so cold and shady made me think (subconsciously) that he was having a thing on a side. I never asked him that because I was trusting him blind-folded.
So, we're three months into the relationship and all of a sudden we just stopped seeing each other for a month and a half because he was sooo busy (my anxiety levels were up to the skies), so I decided to break up with him. I said all these things that made sense to me and that were true; like "I feel like I'm in a relationship with myself" and "I used to wonder why you ex-girlfriend cheated on you (that's what he told me), but not anymore". He supposedly took all the responsibility for it and said that he was sorry, but there was nothing he could do about it. I felt so guilty right away, because maybe this guy was actually working his ass off so that he could have a little spare time for me once in a while, so then I said I was sorry and that the most difficult part about this breakup was having to end things with someone who's done absolutely nothing wrong, whilst still being in love with them.
We didn't talk for a week, but I still needed just some closure, so I asked him to meet me for coffee and some talk. I swear I just wanted closure. When we met he said that actually that very same day was his last day at the office, and he already left the company on someone else's hands. He said that he only had to work on his documents for the last month and a half he had left in the country, so he was going to have a lot more spare time. Of course, yours truly wanted to get back with Josh after hearing that, so we did. We got back together.
Everything went well for like a week and then we found ourselves again right where we left off. His excuse this time was that he was also working at this thing with his dad (who, according to Josh, was like dying sick and needed help), so I tried to suck it up again and just be the good, devoted girlfriend I had always been. Of course I couldn't, no one would've. A few weeks before he left we had this huge fight and decided to call the whole thing off, because we didn't want to wind up hating each other, you know; just in case we meet again someday. He still said though, that we would have one more meeting to say goodbye properly before he left.
Of course that meeting didn't happen and we fought about that too, he didn't even show that much interest anymore, so I told him he could just forget about me. I was so mad at him, but I still loved him so much. I didn't even go to the airport to say good-bye, because I was so hurt (turns out that's what he wanted all along).
Now, here comes the fun part.
After a few days of his departure, I saw he had this profile picture of everyone at the airport with him, and his ex-girlfriend (let's call her Lucy). Anxiety hits again: was he cheating on me with her? Was he cheating on her with me? That's why he didn't want me to go to the airport, right? Because I was going to run into her? Those questions kept me up at night and wouldn't leave me alone during the day, I had to ask her.
I dm'ed Lucy on Instagram and asked her if she had been with Josh sometime in the last five months, to which she responded "We were together for two years, and we broke up just four months ago". So there, fellas, we got the first five lies: Josh said she was 6' tall, 23 years old, that they broke up because she cheated on him, that he was single when we met and that he was 19 years old (she's barely 5', 15 years old, they broke up over the scholarship thing, and he's 17).
As Lucy and I kept talking, I found out about all these lies he had been telling me and I just started dying laughing. Anyways, this new name pops up (let's call her Mary). Mary's a girl Lucy and I have heard of before but never actually said anything because we never suspected anything (that's how good of a liar he was), but now we did. So I talk to Mary and she says that she was expecting my message because she knew I had a thing going on with Josh a while back (also a lie). I make a group chat of us three and we just start spilling stuff that Josh would say to us that turned out to be lies.
Mary started seeing Josh when we were two months in. She told us things that grossed the crap out of us. How could I have fallen for this lying bastard? Am I just stupid?
I invited her over to talk, just the two of us because Lucy was a lot younger and she was a lot more innocent. Plus, the bigger issue was just between us two. I asked Mary to tell me everything, so that I could just know everything and be done with all the crap for once. We started tracing every conversation we had with him over texts, finding out that the times he bailed on me, he was with her; and the times he bailed on her, he was with me. He told her I was 21 years old (I'm 19). He also invented that he was with two other girls he could never get. The guy has serious issues. He does this thing where he takes stories from another person and makes it seem like it happened to him. We sat down that whole afternoon and analyzed everything. We got to the conclusion that he's a myth maniac, if not a sociopath.
She showed me a footage. Like, a sex tape. After I finished watching it I started to have a HUGE panic attack, Mary started freaking out she starts crying because she thought she had given me a heart attack or something. I was actually in love with that guy at one point, who is this I'm seeing on the screen? I took my Klonopin and after my attack ceased I started crying with her. We took it all out and then instagrammed a picture of ourselves so that Josh could know that we already knew everything. I was completely grossed out, I felt betrayed and I just wanted to take two billion showers in those next 48 hours to take all remains of Josh off my system.
The good thing is I was also completely off the hook, I didn't love him anymore after seeing all that. In fact, I didn't want to hear another word from him ever again, because I really just stopped caring. That was the last time I had a panic attack, and the last time I cried about the whole thing. And that is how I knew I didn't actually have an anxiety disorder.