I alternate between believing both that “my parents gave me everything; I had a happy childhood; I don’t have any reason to be this messed up,” and “my parents emotionally neglected me; I had an awful childhood; no wonder I am this messed up.“
I fantasize about being in the hospital because that seems like the ultimate (and only) way that people might finally see me and care about me. Logically, I know that it’s not true, but my emotional brain is convinced that being sick or hurt is the way to get the love, attention, and care that is not present in my daily life.
I am ashamed.
I’m a 22-year old who is still desperately attached to my mangled childhood stuffed animal, Lambie.
I surreptitiously, but uncontrollably, pull out my own hair. I know have trichotillomania (and dermotillomania while we’re at it), but it’s one of my most shameful “secrets.”
I am pained getting out of bed in the morning. It’s hard to relate to people who casually say, “Yeah, I didn’t want to get up this morning,” but may not understand the gravity of depression. It hurts to the bone.
I have trouble taking my daily antidepressants because a hidden part of me doesn’t believe I’m worthy of feeling better.
I am obsessed with filling my brain with as much information about mental illness as possible.
And yet, no matter how much I read books, articles, and studies about eating disorders, depression, eating disorders, anxiety, or impulse-control disorders, I struggle to control my own mental health.
I have a hard time with “I’m depressed.” Maybe because I don’t believe that the real me is just buried under mental illness. It’s more like “I’m a person living with depression.” It has taken so much of my personality and soul out of me, but without depression, I am a lively, joyful girl.
I am taking care of myself (or I’m learning to).
I practically begged my parents to see a therapist, nutritionist, and psychiatrist, when I was only 15 years old. It certainly wasn’t easy, especially because we didn’t talk about anything “emotionally charged,” but I knew that it was a step I had to take in order to alleviate my pain.
I reach out to others when I need it most. Even though I isolate, too, I also know that in moments of desperation, I do instinctively ask for help and support from those I trust.
I treat myself to occasional manicures, special purchases (a dress, a pillow, some art supplies), and a lazy Sunday.
As much as my brain tries to trick me into thinking that I am worthless and unlovable, I try to actively do things for myself that remind myself that I deserve care.
I am brave.
I share my story with very few people, but when I do, it is the most rewarding experience. Sharing real experiences and thoughts is how I create deep connections with people.
I moved to Denmark for my first job out of college. I don’t speak the language, I’ve never been away from home for more than four months, and I left my entire support network at home.
I am working full-force in therapy at facing the demons and insecurities I have hidden for years. I am taking charge of my life by learning to be vulnerable, accept my flaws, and love myself in spite of them, and find happiness for the first time in my life.
She was a freaking PRO at latching-on, and breastfeeding went spectacularly. My recently-born third child is also proving himself to be quite the little breastfeeding champ.
My second child? Not so much. He couldn’t get the hang of latching-on, even with special equipment, like those freaky-looking nipple shields.
The stress of a cross-country move three weeks postpartum, moving in with my in-laws, while my husband had to take an extended job out-of-state (he spent eight months of my son’s first year out-of-state), my supply of breastmilk steadily decreased.
I was too poor to get a decent breast pump, we were in-between insurance, which meant that pumping my breasts to keep up my breastmilk supply was not an option.
Multiple lactation consultants and doctors were seen – no success. We began supplementing with formula, and while he was still a colicky baby, he was a little happier as he wasn’t hungry anymore.
I went on medication for postpartum depression when he was a few months old. That officially brought an end to our breastfeeding journey.
I spent several years working through the guilt of being unable to continue with breastfeeding. Every asthma attack he had triggered that guilt. When he developed speech problems, I worried that his difficulty speaking was related to not bonding through breastfeeding, or because I had postpartum depression.
Fast-forward to this past February as my four-year old climbed into the dentist’s chair for his first visit to the dentist.
As she was checking out his teeth, the dentist asked, “Does he ever have trouble with his speech?”
Startled, I told her, “Not really. He had a little trouble when he first started, but his last evaluation was good.”
While poking around in his mouth, she said, “Oh, good. I see that he’s tongue-tied. Not badly, borderline even, but sometimes makes it hard for children to learn to speak.”
I’m not sure what I said in return, because my mind was already jumping – tongue-tied. His frenulum is short, so his tongue’s movement is restricted. Not only can it cause problems with speech, having a tongue-tie can make breastfeeding and latching on difficult.
And just like that, all those feelings of guilt rushed back.
All the doctors and consultants that we had seen – not one had caught that he’d been tongue-tied. A tongue-tie is easily correctable. The frenulum is clipped and, tada, the tongue can move more freely.
Logically, I know that we’d still have had other hurdles to overcome to be able to breastfeed successfully. I know that he’s a smart, (more-or-less) healthy little boy, who wasn’t negatively impacted by being formula fed. I know that, given all the circumstances, formula was the best option for ALL of us. I know that he and I are no less bonded together because his food came from a silicone nipple instead of my own.
But my heart is less practical.
My heart is grieving that loss; that missed opportunity all over again.
Just before her adoption, we were asked to also foster her little sister, who was about to be born.
I was hesitant. I didn’t want to take on a child who had a high chance of returning to her birth parents. But I couldn’t let my little girl’s sister go to strangers, so we said yes.
As time passed, the birth parents weren’t doing their part, and I felt more and more like she was my baby, and I would have her forever.
I should have been happy. I had everything I’d ever wanted!
The money the state paid us to take care of foster children made it possible for me to be home with those two pretty little girls all day. I had always wanted to be a stay-at-home-mom. And now I had not one, but two children to take care of! The girls were happy, and the best sound in the world was their laughter as they played together.
I wish I could say my husband felt the same way.
He was resentful of that baby as soon as she entered our home.
He hated all the time I was spending with her, instead of him.
This one particular night breaks my heart. I wish I could go back and change things, but he had trained me for years not to question him. Fear of his anger kept me frozen.
The baby had learned to stand. She was so proud of herself! There was no stopping her now!
From the time she was a newborn, she had always hated going to sleep, and getting her to settle down for bed was a long, drawn-out process. But with her newly developed skill of standing, it became much worse. I would lay her down, she would stand up. I would put her down again, she would stand right back up.
One night, he had enough. “I”ll make her learn she has to lay down when it’s bedtime,” he said.
He came into the girls’ bedroom with me when I put her to bed.
I laid her down in her crib, telling her goodnight, same as I always did. She stood up, and he sprayed her right in the face with the water bottle we used on the cats when they were doing something wrong. I was horrified!
But what was I supposed to do? He was my husband, and I was afraid to question him.
The battle of wills between a man in his 40’s and a less-than-year-old baby went on for a while. I would lay her down, she would stand up, he would spray her in the face.
Finally, he pushed me too far. She was soaking wet, dripping on her sheets. I knew even if she did go to sleep, she would end up getting sick from trying to sleep in her wet clothes and bed. I took a chance and said, “That’s enough!”
Amazingly, he walked out the door without saying a word.
I took her out of her bed, pulled her wet clothes off of her, dried her with her little hooded towel, then put clean, dry pajamas on her. Then I changed the bedding in her crib and started the bedtime process again.
When I walked out of the bedroom, she was back to standing in the crib. I walked out to the living room where he was watching TV. I looked him dead in the eye and said, “Your way didn’t work, and you’re never doing that again.”
He didn’t argue, and he never tried that stunt again.
I think he figured out that there was only so far he could push me when it came to the children.
When I was young, I always hated gym. I was never good at it. The running and the throwing of things was just never my bag. I was always short of breath and sometimes even came close to fainting. I always chalked it up to being a fat little kid who was grossly unathletic.
I lived for ninth grade because I only had to take a semester of gym and then it would be over forever, or at least until I got to college. I finished 9th grade and gladly went on my merry gym-free way.
Fast forward to 2007.
I had been out of high school and was in my third year of college. I began experiencing back pain, the likes of which I had never felt. I finally went to the doctor, and while the Nurse Practitioner was listening to my heart, she looked up and asked “You have a heart murmur, don’t you?”
I had never heard such a thing.
After tests, including one where they sedated me, shoved a “probe” down my throat, and looked at my heart (after which I cried for want of a cheeseburger), I was diagnosed with a regular heart murmur with Mitral Valve Regurgitation (which I described to people as “my heart pukes”) and Sub-Aortic Stenosis.
Some time later (2010-ish) my dad, who has CHD, began having Atrial Fibrilation episodes.
He eventually got in to see the doctor his brothers go to, and we loaded up to see if he could fix my dad’s bum ticker.
The next phase of the story I wrote about earlier in this post. During this time I was re-diagnosed with a condition called Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy or HCM for short.
All of the things that I had experienced as a kid, all of the shortness of breath while running, all of the blacking out in PE episodes – they all made sense now (granted, they still don’t account for my athletic abilities or lack thereof).
After my diagnosis, I was scared. I began taking my drugs like a good little girl and prepared myself. I scheduled an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) implantation for July, the month after my dad got his. I recovered just in time to return to work for the school year, and I am feeling better than ever.
After all of that worry and fear I have come to realize some things.
Not every 25 (almost 26) year old can say that she is battery operated.
Before any of this happened, I used to tell my students that I had a plastic heart; now I (sort of) have a metal one.
I tell people that I am part computer, or even bionic.
I make sick jokes about being shocked all the time.
My dad and I even joke about starting a doo-wop group with 2 of his brothers who have ICDs called The Pacers.
I never knew that having HCM and an ICD could be such a source of amusement. I even love to freak people out by letting them touch it under my skin. There is nothing better than the slightly horrified look on someone’s face when they touch the hard, metal rectangle on my chest.
In the end, the laughter and the jokes far outweigh the fear and uncertainty that I had before I got the surgery.
Plus, I hope that in the 6-10 years that it will take for me to need a replacement, they will have integrated an MP3 player into the device.
Or, at least, I think I am. I’d like to think I am. I think about writing all the time – and then I feel ashamed of myself because I’m not writing. I think about all of the stories I could be writing – I think about the text file of ideas for stories on my desktop – and then I get even more depressed because I’m not writing.
The great thing is that I’m not writing because I’m depressed, because I have no job, no friends, am 1300 miles away from all support systems, except for my wonderful soon-to-be husband, and I spend most of my time in an insecure, anxious ball feeling sorry for myself.
I keep seeing over and over again, on Twitter and Facebook and in my MFA program’s forum this statement: “if you don’t write, you aren’t a writer, and you probably shouldn’t be. To be a writer, you must need to write like it’s the way you breathe.” So I second-guess myself; I don’t need that. But I need to need that, if that makes sense.
I miss the feeling of excitement when I pull off a great scene. I miss feeling proud of myself. I miss the sense of self-esteem writing gives me. But right now, depression is taking it away.
I just don’t know how to push through the overwhelming apathy and shame to start writing again. And everyone who tells me to shit or get off the pot – to just start writing regardless – really isn’t helping.
How do I get through this loneliness, depression, anxiety and shame to find myself again?
I’m not sure where I went, but it’d be damn good to see myself again.
