by Band Back Together | Nov 22, 2010 | Coping With Depression, Major Depressive Disorder |
It was a cold winter’s night. The heater was working hard trying to remove the chill from the air, but I still felt frozen. We were whipping along the expressway at 80 miles an hour, but in my mind, everything was moving too slowly, weighted down by the sadness, the madness in my head.
“I can’t,” I whispered.
He groped to grab my hand in the dark. “Yes. Yes, you can. I’m right here. I’ll be here.”
I shrank back, trying to disappear into my seat. “No, you don’t understand. I really can’t. I can’t face it.”
We were on our way to dinner. With both sets of parents. Dinner with the parents, when everyone knew I was slowly going mad. Had watched as I took a baseball bat to everything that was good in my life and set about destroying it.
“You have to, Amber. They’re waiting for us.”
“But I’m brooooooooooken,” I howled through the sobs that suddenly overwhelmed me. “I’m broken and I can’t DO this.”
“What? What can’t you do?”
“This. Life. I just can’t, anymore. I can’t do it,” I said, then clutched my head hard enough to hurt and began to sob in earnest.
His hands turned white on the steering wheel, and I could tell he was struggling not to cry himself.
“Stop. Stop talking like that. We’ll get through this, together. We will. I promise.”
Again he reached out, and this time, I let him take my hand. Slowly, my sobs quieted, the agony once more retreating inside my head. When we got to the restaurant, I took a deep breath, stuffed the pain into its closet, and stepped out of the car.
We made it through dinner, his hand clutching mine under the table. Everyone ignored my red eyes. Pretended not to see when I bolted to the bathroom to cry. They forced their smiles and carried on with the celebration, determined to cling to a shell of normalcy.
As for me? I was dying inside. Sunk deep in a pit of depression so crushing that I could hardly breathe. I’d like to tell you that that was the worst of it. The end of it. But it wasn’t. Not by a long shot.
Before it was over, I had destroyed friendships, sabotaged my career,and dragged my husband to the darkest depths of Hell with me.
This is just one of many, many memories I wish I could erase. But I can’t. And that’s a good thing. Because they serve as a reminder—a warning. Now, when the symptoms start, I don’t ignore them. I slow down, reach out and ask for help.
I was lucky. I survived. Not everyone does. So if you think you might be depressed, don’t wait. Get the help you need.
It could mean the difference between living…and not.
by Band Back Together | Nov 21, 2010 | Addiction, Addiction Recovery, Bipolar Disorder, Substance Abuse, Suicide |
I have been a survivor of Bipolar Disorder for over twenty years. I call myself a survivor because there have been many times that I allowed this disease to come close to killing me.
In hindsight, it was always there, slowly building, until it turned me into a self-medicating, selfish, wallowing hot mess. It wasn’t until I was in my early 20′s that I was ready to admit that something was seriously wrong. Even though I spent a year institutionalized as a teen (I call it my Girl, Interrupted phase) and told I was very sick, I kept my head in the sand about it for a long time.
When the suicide attempts and month-long meltdowns started coming more frequently, I had to admit that I needed help.
I have tried so many medications, I can’t even name them all. In fact, much of 2008 is a blur because I was so medicated.
What actually saved me was getting sober and realizing that I was not so much addicted to alcohol and drugs. Instead, I was addicted to myself and my disease. I am Bipolar II, which means that manic episodes are not as frequent, but they do happen and let me tell you, there isn’t a high that can make you feel so good. And for free. Hell, sign me up!
I know now that I had learned how to prolong the episodes by forcing myself to stay awake for days on end, drinking, not eating..you name it. It took a lot to admit to myself that if only I had realized this a long time ago, I may not have lost jobs, relationships and other material things.
Where would I be now? is something I had to stop asking because the guilt would eat me alive.
I am happy now; in love, and sober. It isn’t always easy, but I am learning to protect me from myself. It’s working and that is the best I can do.
by Band Back Together | Nov 19, 2010 | Abuse, Emotional Abuse |
That is the question that is burning in my mind. Has been for several months. Should I stay and try yet again to “work it out” or should I cut my losses and figure out how to do it on my own? Should I go to school full-time, raise three kids, and find a job that will pay the bills?
I am tired of the bullshit excuses. Blame for everything that goes wrong. Being ignored when I try to speak up and be heard.
I wrote you a letter yesterday. I poured my heart out typing it up. I cried the whole time I did it. You read it and simply asked me what I planned to do. You made no apologies for what you have done. Didn’t beg me to stay and work it out. I got nothing from you.
Today, you are going about your day like nothing has happened.
I’ve been waiting for you to come downstairs and ask me what I’m making you for lunch. You’re incapable of feeding yourself. I am tired of raising you like a child. Telling you what to do and when to do it. Otherwise, you do nothing.
I have done nothing but sacrifice myself for you and I have nothing to show for it. No gifts of appreciation. Nothing. I am ready to move on with my life. I am ready to be happy instead of feeling like crap all the time. My depression is gone now that I added new medication but I am still not happy. Who would be in my situation?
You told your brother that you were going to go back to acting like you did when we first got together. That is only going to push me away. I don’t want an even more irresponsible person to take care of. I wanted an equal. I have been fighting for that for over a year.
Funny thing is, I still want to protect you like you are my child.
I know that have been enabling this relationship for too long. Now? I feel like I have one foot out the door already.
by Band Back Together | Nov 17, 2010 | Abuse, Addiction, Alcohol Addiction, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Coping With Divorce, Coping With Domestic Abuse, Divorce, Domestic Abuse, Economic Abuse, Estrangement |
I am forty-three years old – an Interior Designer who has done well for herself over the course of sixteen years. I married thirteen years ago and have four beautiful children. My husband has had a series of losses in his life which turned him into a raging drunk, drug user and abuser (emotionally and physically towards the children and I).
After a series of abusive situations involving the children, I finally made my way to the attorney’s office and filed for divorce. Was that the right thing? I have been nothing but punished since that day in July 2009.
He destroyed the business I have had for seventeen years. He took all the money I had to support me and the children. He stole from the house and took all the money in our accounts.
He has not only hit me a few times, but he hit the children to the point that child services got involved. After they interviewed the children, they told me I would be charged for never turning in all these abuses in the past year. The children and I are all in counseling.
My first attorney did everything wrong, My second attorney took what money I had left and dumped me because I couldn’t pay any more. A guardian ad litem was finally appointed to our family and I had to pay for that out of the investments I had left. She actually believed him and never interviewed half my witnesses. She also never talked to the boys. Then, I was sent to another attorney (a third one) who said he would finish up the divorce for a flat rate. Well, I can’t come up with the rest of the money. He and my -soon-to-be ex’s attorney seem friendly and I feel like I am just getting screwed.
The worst part about all this is that the children are so messed up from the divorce and the abuse they suffered from their father. I have done everything I can to protect them but the Florida courts don’t seem to care.
We are getting ready for trial now and I can’t seem to get anyone to understand how bad this is for me and my children.
They hide in their rooms when he comes to get them.
My nine-year old ran nine blocks away and called me from a gas station because she was afraid to be with her dad.
My four-year old has seen his father throw me up against my desk and hold my head down as he threatened me. He nearly drowned at his cousin’s house and his father was nowhere to be found.
On his second birthday, he took my son out of his car seat because he was crying and stuck him out the window as I was driving down the highway.
My six-year old keeps getting thrown into walls by his father, his dad calls him pussy boy and tells him he cries like a school girl.
He makes him sleep on a sofa at his house to punish him for his mother filing for divorce.
My eleven-year old is pulling out her eyelashes and eyebrows.
Where am I to turn? I don’t know how to get people to understand what is going on and change this for my children.
I bought my house when I was single and have fixed it up, paid the mortgage on it for eleven of the fourteen years I’ve owned it.
In 2004, I walked into my house to find a lender and a lady sitting there because he wanted to refinance the house. I was stupid and signed the papers not really knowing how bad I was going to be screwed – until now, when I can’t afford food, let alone the house. I am about to be forced out onto the streets.
His attorney is trying to get me out of the house so he can move in. The only reason I would do this is for my children so I know they have a bed to sleep in and a roof over their head, but in the process I have nothing.
No money, no place to live, no support and an attorney who told me to marry better next time. My whole family lives up north and the few friends I have here have their own problems.
I never thought this would be happening to me.
I have gone to the courthouse for help with the abuse center. They can’t help me and just send me to the shelter. I can’t find a job and am so confused. I can’t figure out what is going on.
I guess I don’t know what to do at this point. I have tried everything I can except to just take the children and run away. Believe me, I have thought about this so much, but what kind of life is that for them? What if I got caught and then can never see them again?
Do I just give him the kids and walk away? I know that would kill me. I can sleep in my Suburban for a while, but since I can’t secure a place to live because he ruined my credit and took all our money, I will lose the children anyway.
I am a rat stuck in a very bad situation. Crying is not helping me out of this giant mess. Where did the strong business person go? Why can’t I get anyone to understand that I divorced this ass to make my children’s lives better? Where do I go from here?
How do my children survive this nightmare?
by Band Back Together | Nov 17, 2010 | Addiction, Addiction Recovery, Adult Children of Addicts, Emotional Abuse, Family, Psychological Manipulation |
I find it hilarious when someone has a perception of me varies wildly from who I actually am. Sometimes, it makes me want to correct the misconception, yet other times it tickles me sparkly to let them think what they want.
Life is absolutely filled with more humor that way.
When I got pregnant with my first son, I had a role in my family: The Fuck-Up. Disregarding all of the surrounding circumstances (my mother’s relapse slash hatred of me), the blame for all of my actions fell squarely on my shoulders, at least as far as my family was concerned. Although many of my actions were not *ahem* the most mature, my family gave me far less credit than I deserved, especially considering that I was 20.
When my pregnancy was announced, my parents were shockingly supportive of me. Well, at least until I found out much later, of course, that they had asked my brother – who is 10 years my senior – and his future wife if they would adopt my child in the event that I “freaked out.” They had such a low opinion of me that they honestly believed that I wouldn’t assume responsibility for my child.
(note: I am amazed that the keyboard has not ignited with the fury of a thousand suns as I type this).
The rest of my family (save for me, of course. I get a special CHARGE when I get to confront people who have pissed me off.) is so non-confrontational that one might assume that each member is far meeker than they really are, I rarely heard about what a Fuck-Up I was considered to be. Aside from snide comments here and there about “responsibility,” everyone was pretty mum.
It was only when I met, and subsequently married The Daver, that I realized just how poor my family’s opinion of me truly was. You would have thought, by their reactions, that Dave had rescued me from the streets, where I was selling crack and dancing (badly) for spare change.
Somehow he had turned my life around for me. You would never have guessed that I was already at the top of my nursing school class, TA’ing for Organic/BioChem AND tutoring for A & P, while working as a waitress and bartender 20 hours a week BEFORE Dave walked into my life.
My brother, who I have a long and sorted history with, decided that if Dave (whom he adored/s) liked me, then I couldn’t be all THAT bad. My parents finally accepted that I had become a more mature and responsible person, although their time line was off by a factor of about a year and a half. In their minds, I only began to turn my life around once I had met Dave.
I do, of course, appreciate that my family loves him as one of their own. I know that I’ll be left out in the cold the moment Daver and I split up, as both of our families prefer him, but I just wish that they could see that as wonderful as Dave is, he did nothing to change who I am and what I will do with my life.
It dawned on me, as I prepared my home for hosting Thanksgiving this year, that if asked, my family would probably mention that they were “having dinner at Becky’s house” and something to the effect of “she’s really turned her life around, hasn’t she?”
Like I was some sort of street urchin in a Lifetime Original Movie who had some sappy predictable plot line: unmarried, younger girl gives birth to a child out of wedlock, heads down the “wrong path” until she meets “the man of her dreams,” and she miraculously changes her path, learns to cook and clean, and becomes a responsible upstanding citizen with an immaculate home.
Who can -and does- now crochet motherfucking platitudes to hang on the wall.
Yeah, motherfucking right.
I can’t do anything about this, of course. It’d probably be easier to train my cats to unload the dishwasher or teach the coffeemaker to speak Ebonics than it would be to get my family to change their opinion of me.
It just sucks that they have to be so off-base with their perceptions, I mean, why can’t I be mistaken for a Fighter Pilot rather than a Fuck-Up
Or, I suppose, more accurately: The Becky Formerly Known As Fuck-Up?
