AS TOLD TO BC PIRES
My name is Marcia Tinto and, in Mental Health Awareness Month, I’m going to talk about my own mental health.
I was born in San Fernando, but came to live in Port of Spain when I was five. I was considered privileged, although we had no money. I went to Maria Regina Grade School. And did all the things people who have money do. But there was the opportunity. I think I have been blessed – fortunate, rather – to be exposed to so much of our cultural diversity, our sociocultural differences, ethnicity, religion.
Secondary school was St Joseph’s Convent, Port of Spain. I never thought I had a “Corn-vent accent.” Until I started working in the public service in my late 20s. Before that, I worked with Newsday; before that, I taught; before that, I was away studying.
My mother was a librarian at UNDP for over 30-something years, when 70 per cent of the staff was international. I always had friends from different countries, children of the expats. So my vision is very global.
When I was abroad, I never really missed the “Trini things” because there were so many other people to meet, so much to explore and find out more. Quite a number of us would go abroad and gravitate towards the West Indian communities, but that was just not me.
My mother was a single mother, but more Catholic than the Pope, so she never got divorced from my father. At the same time, she was miserable and took it out on me. That may have some impact on my mental illness. I do see a psychiatrist. I go to Gerard Hutchinson and I have been on medication since 1989.
I call myself a nomadic Catholic. Don’t tell me to go to church every Sunday. I follow Mass on YouTube.
Had I not been diagnosed while at Barry University in Miami, it would not have happened. Because when I told my mother, she was appalled. She said, “You might be a little ‘own way,’ but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you!”
She would never have accepted the fact that there was mental illness.
Back then, they never said bipolar. They said manic depression. I was having some roommate problems. A lot of students went to Florida for sun and fun, spring break all year round. So while I’m trying to study to maintain my GPA, my roommate is partying. We spoke about it over and over but she never took me on. One night, I was studying and she had friends over. And dorm rooms are small. She told me her parents were paying for the room as well. The blood just rushed to my head. She was bigger and taller and I just jammed her to the wall and started choking her. Her “friends” fled. Our suite-mates came flying in and both had to pull me back. I was thinking I’d be deported, lose everything, the end of me.
I was quite shamed by my behaviour. There were thumbprints around the girl’s throat. So they said I needed to go to the psychiatrist to be evaluated. I went to a lovely little woman from India,
Dr Chitra Bhandari, and she evaluated it as manic depression. That’s how it all started. I would have been bipolar B.
I work to relax. Which is horrid. I don’t th
