Hi, I'm Katie, and I'm going to tell you a bit about my story. I grew up in a big family and had a really normal childhood. It was great really. When I started high school, I got diagnosed with bipolar, at 12 years old.
When I turned 18 and finished high school, I met this guy who soon became my boyfriend. I thought that we he was absolutely amazing. He was so confident and absolutely adored me. I thought that was such an amazing thing, and especially with having such low self-esteem from my bipolar.
When it was about three months in, I thought he was just super-protective and that he adored me so much, he was worried. The little things like getting jealous, I didn't see it as a big sign, and it all just turned into something so drastic so quickly. Over time, I gradually started cutting off all my connections. I stopped talking to my friends and family because he thought that they were against me and he was the one who knew what was right, and I believed him.
The first time he eventually talked me into it, it took hours. He kept saying like, "Okay, before you get rid of it, why don't you try it? Why won't you try it for me? I'll protect you, I know what it's like. I won't let anything happen to you." The way he eventually won me over was saying, "Well, if you try it, you can know what I'm going through." I thought it would be harmless, one time, that's it. That was the first time I tried Ice. At first, I felt no difference whatsoever. I think the main part of that was my bipolar.
But then the downside was, the come-down. It was just like a depression hit all at once. It was unbearable. As he became more controlling, the anger and jealousy turned into rage. At this stage, I was isolated from my friends, my family. Even though he was hurting me, Eventually, he ended up taking me to the drug dealer's house. He'd taken my phone, he had passwords to my Facebook account, all my social media accounts, he even had the password to my bank account. So I would go to work and every payday, it was straight to the ATM, take all my money out. I had no control over it.
I remember finally having a shower and looking at my body, and there were bruises everywhere. I didn't know how I got them. I remember one day I started panicking and I started seeing images in my head of things that had happened to me but I didn't remember them happening. The drug dealers pulled me aside one day and said, "He told me that he was going to sell you for drugs if you couldn't come back with money."
I woke up one morning, and at this stage we were living in his car and I had an allergic reaction to something. When we got there, I had my phone, and I got a phone call from my cousin.
I wanted to get out, and I told my cousin that if she could find a way to get me out, that I would go. It turns out my sister had been looking for me for about a month, and I thought that no one was. I thought that they didn't care. Within the hour, my sister was at the doctor's and I pretended that I was just going to the car for something. I grabbed a box and my birth certificate, my nursing certificates, and that was literally the only possessions I had because he burnt everything else because he was paranoid. When my sister arrived, he got so angry he's like, "You can't take her," and she threatened to call the police, which wouldn't have been the first time.
We got in the car and we drove for hours until we got at the country. At my cousin's house, I thought I might scare my little cousins because my eyes were still swollen and I was so skinny my bones were practically sticking out. I hadn't been eating and I didn't want them to see that. I stayed at my cousin's for a month while I got back on my feet. When I was stable enough, I ended up getting my own house that I was renting.
After everything that's happened and a lot of moving, I've found a great job back in a nursing home, and I've never really wanted to do anything else. I've got stability. It took me a while to get over the circumstances that I went through, and it took me years to accept my diagnoses, but now that I'm on medication, I live a stable life, I go to work, I have fun with friends, I see my family, and I support myself, which is something I never thought I'd be able to do.
I've learned that even though something is really hard and you feel like you're never going to get through it, eventually you'll find that part of you that's willing to fight. It started off with me as being excited that I've lived in a house again, and now it's the fact that I can run a normal life. No matter who you come across, no matter how they look or act, you honestly don't know. People never suspect what I've been through. I think you should just take everyone as how they treat you, not on what you think of them.