I am depressed. Very depressed. So depressed that I would like nothing more than to stay in bed all day drifting in and out of sleep. Thoughts of suicide have flitted across my mind. But don’t worry, I am in no danger of staying in bed all day or committing suicide. I have children – two little boys that I love very much.
My children are the reason I get out of bed every morning. They are the reason that I will never commit suicide. I get up partly because I have to go to work, that place that sucks forty hours from me every week and ensures that I can support my children. The other reason that I get up is because I usually have a small (almost three!) child yelling for me to do so. He’s rather hard to ignore.
The reason I will never commit suicide (other than my dislike of knives, guns, ropes, and overdosing on meds) is that I want to watch my boys grow up. I want to see what kind of men they will become, the people with whom they will fall in love, what kind of babies they will have. I also realize that the only person that suicide “helps” is the person who committed it. Everybody that cared about that person is affected. I don’t want my little boys to grow up without a mom.
So, I’m not going to stay in bed all day, and I’m not going to commit suicide. I’m glad we covered that. So how else could my depression manifest itself? Cutting? Nah – I don’t like pain or blood. Anorexia? Nope, unless giving up all food but cheesecake and chocolate counts, and then I might reconsider… Bulimia? I can’t make myself throw up, but tequila helps (please know that I believe eating disorders are very serious, and am in no way making light of eating disorders or people who have them, I’m just trying to explain why I would not go down that path). And speaking of tequila, what about becoming an alcoholic? I have enough liquor in the house (I think my husband is trying to tell me something). While I have gone out drinking due to depression in the past, I was young and single. I didn’t have children who needed me sober. So that’s out, too.
So what do I do, other than just be depressed all the time? Well, I’m very irritable, I’m tired all the time, I lack motivation to do things I used to enjoy. I want to spend all my free time clicking mindlessly on Facebook (hey, my frontier/city/cafe/island/farm/mafia are all extremely important, they need me). I have stacks of magazines and books I haven’t read. I’ve gained weight. I’m uninterested in sex. I get headaches a lot (including two migraines so far, which are a new development).
I’m exercising and counting calories. I’m depressed that despite my hard work, the scale isn’t really budging. I’m on medication, which I don’t think is working. I see a therapist every other week but I haven’t really delved into my issues, and instead focus on my relationship with my oldest son (which is material for at least a few posts).
Nothing seems to be working. I’m depressed and it isn’t getting any better. There’s nothing in my life that is really a cause for my depression. My marriage is fine, my children are healthy and smart and beautiful, I have a good job, a nice house. So why, why am I so unhappy?
It could be the fact that it’s hereditary (special shout out to my parents). It could be the fact that it’s winter, and a lot of people get depressed this time of year. It could be that despite nothing being really “wrong” or “bad” in my life, nothing is really great, either. The one bright spot is my youngest son, who is totally a mama’s boy, and his hugs and kisses and love is often the only highlight of my day.
I’m so tired of being depressed. I want to be happy.
Some days it’s easy to ignore the realities life throws in your direction. Other days, reality hits you so hard it’s difficult to breathe.
As I was lying in bed last night, I thought about what it would be like to lose my dad. He’s always been there, calm and ready to listen. My mom and I talked on the phone yesterday. He seems to be doing better, almost as if nothing happened. But something did happen. We just don’t know what or how much damage it may have caused. Maybe it was nothing and we’re making it out to be more than what it really is. But what if we’re not?
She talked about finding his life insurance papers and needing to start making funeral arrangements. Sounds grossly morbid, but when my grandmother died, she had most of it already planned (burial plot, casket, funeral home, etc) which made the process for my mom and my uncles a little easier to bear. So I suppose that’s what she’s doing as well. It may help in the process of mentally dealing with the impending loss.
I was born to parents who didn’t want me so my adopted mom and dad took me in when I was just a baby. They’re all I’ve ever known. My dad started a new family after the death of his first wife. He supported my mom in the decision to adopt two children and start over late in life, even after having four children of his own. My mom always said he was so supportive. He would get up early in the morning to get me out of bed and walk me around their apartment and tell me all the stories about the photos hanging on their walls so that my mom could sleep just a little bit longer.
The age difference between my mom and dad has become more pronounced over the last several years, but even more so now. He looks like an old, sickly man instead of the strong man he used to be. It’s terrifying to imagine what losing him will be like. Maybe we’re all getting ahead of ourselves. Maybe he’ll be fine for a long time still. Who knows? With all the advances of modern medicine, people still die of terrible things while taking dozens of pills until they finally just give up. Sounds deeply depressing, but it’s true.
I talked to him on the phone last night, and he didn’t even mention that anything had happened. Denial maybe? Or he just doesn’t want to talk about it because it’s scary thinking about the future. I desperately want him to call my cell phone and leave a message. After last week’s Postsecret update, so many people have voicemails from lost ones so that they can remember them and hear their voices. The cell phone carriers also work with people to get those messages saved so they will have them forever. I want that.
Thinking about the past, there aren’t that many photos of us together. We weren’t much about taking photos when we got older. Regret surrounds me. All the what-ifs and should-haves. I get the sinking feeling that the sand is slowly coming to an end in the hourglass.
It brings me back to the death of my grandma a few years back. It was the only death I had been keenly aware of and I was present for the last few hours of her life. I remember it vividly. We knew she was sick and wasn’t getting better. She took a turn for the worse when I was getting ready to visit my college of choice for undergrad. It was a Spring day in April 2004. Spring was coming and the forsythia was blooming. I remember thinking how beautiful it was and how she would have loved to see them in full bloom. We got back late that night, and I went to visit her in the nursing home. It was like I entered an alternate universe seeing someone I didn’t know gasping for breath. It was horrifying.
I’m scared. I’m not ready for this. Not yet. I really didn’t think it’d be so soon.
I’m beside myself… My 11 year-old daughter recently decided she wants to live with her dad, citing that she’s not happy living with me. Unsurprisingly, this has elicited within me feelings of failure as a mother… I’ve loved her and always provided for her as best I could as a single mother (with a hell of a mother wound myself) since the day I found out I was pregnant with her. I’ve sacrificed, fought back tears from her dagger-like words and given SO MUCH of myself that some days I don’t know who I am anymore.
I’ve been in therapy for a year working on my past traumas, as has she. I have offered myself as a safe space to her and have used every parenting tactic known to the human race… I don’t know what to do. I feel helpless, hopeless and want to crawl in a hole and bury myself. She has told me she wants me all to herself, doesn’t want to share me with her sister or anyone else. She’s also been mean, verbally abusive and morbid as long as I can remember. Her dad can’t believe the behaviors I’ve described to him, as she’s never that way around him.
I feel like giving up, folding my cards and letting them fall as they may. My health, both physically and mentally, has deteriorated tremendously over the last several years and I simply don’t have the energy to keep fighting.
The day I started dying inside, I was nineteen. I was shy and socially awkward; a late-blooming virgin, clueless about relationships. He was married with children, almost twice my age. I met him on campus where he worked as a security guard. He reeled me in by pretending to be my friend when I was feeling lonely.
Then, like a swimmer struggling against a tide, I found myself steered into a relationship that I did not want. A relationship I knew was wrong.
At first there were brief, stolen kisses and awkward gropes when no one was watching. Two weeks later, I found myself alone in my apartment with him. I didn’t think anything was going to happen. I’d planned to pick up a book and return to the campus library to complete an assignment due the following day.
He suggested that we hang out for awhile; sit on the balcony and have coffee. I thought, “Why not? What harm can there be in taking twenty minutes to have coffee?”
I was so naive.
I went into the kitchen to set up the coffee maker. As the coffee dripped slowly into the carafe, I went back into the living room – and stopped dead in my tracks. He had closed the blinds so the room was dimly lit. He had stripped down to his underwear and placed a box of condoms on the coffee table.
I was speechless, flustered, panicky. My heart beat so loudly so I was sure he could hear it from the other side of the room.
“We’ll need those,” he said, pointing at the condoms.
He walked slowly towards me, with an odd smile on his face.
“NO!” I said, the fear evident in my voice. “I don’t WANT to!”
I suddenly noticed the difference in our sizes. He was almost a full foot taller than me and built like a tank. I felt very small beside him.
Then, somehow I was lying on my back on the floor with him straddling me. He ran one finger down the length of my neck as he quietly but menacingly said, “We’re going to do this whether you want to or not.”
I let him do it then.
I did not fight him.
I did not try to stop him.
I did not scream or call for help.
I just laid there and let him do it.
Even though I hated it, even though the tears were rolling uncontrollably down my face.
Ever since that day, I have felt haunted that I didn’t stop him. I cannot escape the humiliation and the shame I still feel. I wonder maybe if I HAD stopped him, my life wouldn’t have gone into a free fall. I wouldn’t have experienced the next two hellish years.
Because I didn’t stop him that day, because I lay there and let him have his way, I learned to believe him every time he told me that I was a worthless bitch who deserved what she was getting.
A while back, I was spending some time reading the blogs here on Band Back Together. Usually I travel over to Mommy, Alcoholism, or other topics….this time I fell upon some PTSD posts, and thought I should share my story.
Back in February 2010, I was in a car accident that changed my life. I have a multitude of physical injuries with muscles and nerves and emotional/brain issues. At first the doctors were hopeful that time would resolve these with physical therapies but it’s a really slow process. I’m now under the care of a neurologist, undergoing testing. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is something I was diagnosed with when I visited a therapist who sat me down and did a simple checklist with me. Imagine, that one Big Black Thing can be determined… with a checklist.
What it’s like in my head is so difficult to describe, because words get mixed up in my brain. It’s been almost impossible to describe because it is unclear to me. I lose words. As I write blog entries, I have volumes of words in my head and cannot seem to get them out; they elude me. I tend to type paragraphs or sentences while chapters are locked in the prison of my mind. It is a very dark place I rarely explore these issues outside of therapy offices anymore. There, at least, they have the right questions, the ones that can open the cell door a bit.
Life hasn’t changed on a day-to-day basis. If I had a new ball of yarn, tightly and neatly rolled, I could easily begin to knit a scarf. If I took that new ball of yarn and allowed a puppy to play with it for an hour, it would still be a ball of yarn with the same length, color, and overall properties, but it would have imperfections. I can still use this yarn to knit a scarf that will keep me warm but the imperfections can be apparent if you look closely. The strength, however, will not be the same.
For example, I have a phone where all my appointments are stored, as are daily tasks such as picking up my kids from school, eating, sending paperwork, and calling friends to help with paperwork. I lose time. For example, last week I had a form to fill out to send away to the car insurance company. It was a very straightforward form but I would have to access other forms in my file folder to access my policy numbers and other information. I sat down to do this with the file folder beside me – everything I do has to be organized and focused. I got up to get a pen and ended up in a different room of the house doing something entirely different with no idea how I got sidetracked. I didn’t even realize until I walked past the table with the file folder on it.
I was immediately angry at this lost time.
I sat down again to complete the task. A while later my heart rate was up, my right leg was bouncing, I was becoming frantic because I just couldn’t understand it. I had rifled through my file folder countless times to find my policy number, which I knew was on many of the pages. Yet I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t remember how many times I’d looked through it. Did I look through it? I think I did. Try again.
My phone beeped to let me know I had to pick up my daughter from school in an hour.
What? I’d lost 2.5 hours! The pressure was too much. A huge breath exploded from inside me. I pushed up from the kitchen table knocking over my chair. I was furious! My head was pounding. I felt a stabbing pain at the base of my as my back spasmed and my hands were tingly.
The black doom was closing in upon me.
Failure again.
I ran to the bathroom, ran the cold water over my inner wrists, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, crying silent dry heaving sobs.
Then I was numb.
Breathing normally, I washed my splotchy red face and reapplied my makeup. I went to the kitchen for some Extra Strength Tylenol. It does almost nothing but I don’t take the anti-spasmodic medication for my back because it makes me a zombie. I tried to relax in my numbness and lost time until the alarm rang telling me I had 15 minutes to pick up my daughter.
I had 15 minutes until I had to be Mom, the mom I want to be – the smiling, patient mom. Not the numb, auto-pilot mom. So I put on the happy mask and prepared to give my daughters the memories they deserve, knowing that God provides me the strength. Until I can truly experience it, I will mimic it for them.
Just typing this makes me uneasy; it’s the tip of the iceberg for me. I don’t want to address the iceberg.
I implement controls for my daily activities, remaining hopeful that one day the PTSD will give up this lock on me.
I am depressed. Very depressed. So depressed that I would like nothing more than to stay in bed all day drifting in and out of sleep. Thoughts of 
