I just want you to know that I read each and every one of the posts that go up on here. Each post makes me feel an array of different emotions and I wish I could reach through the screen and hug every single one of you. You are so strong and courageous for putting your stories up for the world to see.
Now, having said that. I have a few things I want you guys to think about.
Life is too short to continue doing things that don’t make you happy. If you are in a sour relationship that you don’t foresee going anywhere, get out! It may be hard at first, but you will be so much happier once you drop the dead weight. You and only you hold the power to your own happiness. Why waste months or even years with someone who doesn’t make you happy? Each day is a gift. A gift that shouldn’t be wasted.
Are you sick and tired of doing the same thing day in and day out? Change it! Have the courage to jump out of the endless cycle you’ve found yourself in and start something new! Whether it be a career change, or a new hobby, just do it!
I don’t want you to look back at your life years from now and wish you had done something different. Now is the time to do that something different.
Want to go back to school, learn a new trade? Do it! What is stopping you? If it’s money that is holding you back, look into all of the grants and loans you could get. Start somewhere.
Surround yourself with people who love and care about you and want you to be happy. If there is someone or multiple people bringing you down, let them go. All they are doing is holding you back from who you want to be.
No matter how long you have traveled down this road you are on, there is always an escape route. You can turn around at any point and find a new way. It will be scary to travel into the unknown, but I know you can do it!
If you suffer from depression, know that there is a way out. Talk to someone, maybe even get on to a medication if you can. You don’t have to suffer any longer. Get out and change it. Find something you love and do it! Do what makes you happy. Always.
If you have been knocked down in life, get back up! You may feel like your life is in pieces scattered all over the floor, but you can pick them up and put them back together. You can heal. You can overcome anything that comes your way. You got this!
Happiness is achievable, you just have to work for it. There isn’t a little fairy that will come around and sprinkle happy dust on you, you have to get out there and find your own happiness. You are all worth it and all deserve happiness. If you sit back and look at your life and find that you aren’t happy, find the problem and fix it. Life is far too short to waste precious moments doing things or being with someone who doesn’t make you happy.
You are worth it.
You are strong.
You are courageous.
You can do this!
I believe in every single one of you. Now go find your happy!
Even seven years after he left me, I have come to realize that my ex-husband still takes up residence inside my head. In an attempt to clear him out of there, I’m going to start telling more of my stories. Maybe if I send my stories out into the world, they will get out of my brain.
He loved to pick fights with me. Easily, 75% of our fights were about food. Clearly, they were never REALLY about food, but that’s how he chose to express his anger with me.
There was an excuse for why food was such a hot point for him. For most of his childhood, he was raised by his grandmother. She didn’t have the financial means to support her children still living at home, as well as the grandchildren she was then responsible for. They were poor. Food was hard to come by. But she was also very frugal and knew how to make every last scrap of food last.
My family didn’t have a lot of money, but by comparison, we were definitely not poor. If a little bit of leftovers went to waste, it wasn’t the end of the world.
The day that some ground beef went to waste, he started a screaming match with me in the front yard. I’m sure the neighbors loved that!
But easily, the worst fight over food was Thanksgiving, 1999.
Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday, and I always went all out to make it special for my husband. I took charge of the entire meal – except for mashing the potatoes. He enjoyed doing that. We had had a lovely morning, we even took the dog for a long walk between basting times on the turkey. As I finished the cooking, he was downstairs, looking through family photos.
When the potatoes were done boiling, I called down to him that it was time to mash them. He said he would be right up, so I left the water in the pan for him to drain and set them aside.
I was busy. There were a lot of other things to do.
I didn’t notice that he didn’t come right back up.
When he finally did, the potatoes had gotten cold and a little slimy.
He was PISSED.
He screamed at me about how the potatoes were ruined and it was my fault and I should have drained them. I should have called him again when he didn’t come up. He stomped around the kitchen, swearing, yelling, and slamming pots and pans around.
He icily told me, “Thanks for ruining my favorite holiday,” and then he got in his truck and left.
I continued to cook as best I could through my tears. I cut up more potatoes and got them boiling. I finished the stuffing – just the way he liked it. I made the gravy. When the potatoes were done, I mashed them myself. They were lumpy, but at least they tasted good.
And then I waited.
He didn’t come home for about four hours.
I know now that when he was downstairs, he must have been talking quietly on the phone to his girlfriend, and she convinced him to have Thanksgiving with her instead. He picked a fight with me so he could justify leaving. If it hadn’t been the potatoes, it would have been something else.
When he got home, we ate in silence, and I held back tears.
From my first memory, I have felt like I have been made of some sort of flypaper for trauma.
I am basically housebound and have a major fear of meeting, connecting, and attaching with other people in any way other than online. People hurt.
According to the last pro I saw, I have C-PTSD with conversion disorder. My trauma timeline (a literal timeline of traumatic incidents, memories, etc that we built in therapy) began at age 2. I have a history of long-term, consistent psychological/emotional abuses from multiple family members, gaslighting, covert pseudo-incestual victimization, and a mixed bag of years of homelessness/poverty as well as clusters of single-event traumas (natural disaster, single-incident sexual assaults from an early age on, spousal/partner abuse, bullying in school, hell – you name it). The longest consistent abusive relationship I had lasted from birth until I was 31.
I also spent long periods of my youth in and out of hospitals with various physical illnesses. (I don’t think that’s a coincidence, either.) Doctors and hospitals are some of my biggest triggers.
I have lots of triggers.
I began converting when I was 22, only I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time. Since then, I’ve had some symptoms come and go and others that have never left, like constant neuralgia. I was told it was like my body went all “TILT” and some of my systems got fried. I spent some time wheelchair-bound, unable to walk.
So besides the severe PTSD symptoms, I also have neuralgia, myasthenia gravis, and tremors.
My biggest triggers, besides the medical world at-large, are pretty basic and direct. Others are really complex:
any governmental/bureaucratic institution (like court, the Medicaid office, the police, the DMV),
phone calls or visitors when not scheduled ahead of time
sudden, loud noises
being touched without my permission
alpha-type individuals with large, forceful personalities
being late in any way
having to “explain myself” without reason
being judged
severe storms that could produce tornadoes
certain smells, words and phrases
anything unexpected
That last one is almost the hardest one of all to deal with. Sometimes I feel almost a kind of autism or something. Like my today has to be just like my yesterday – or at least as planned, and if not – if something throws a monkey wrench into my plan for today, I totally lose my shit. It can be something as simple as a bill that was higher than it should be or oversleeping. Not that sleep is something I get a lot of, but sometimes the insomnia flips itself inside out and all I do is sleep. Though at least with insomnia, I don’t oversleep, so I prefer it.
I heard this line once, from a favorite show of mine, “People with this thing (PTSD), they don’t believe in a just Universe.” Man, ain’t that the truth.
As I’m sure it is with everyone, my story is unique. There isn’t a single situation I have ever experienced that isn’t somehow affected by this damn illness. I don’t know how to let any of it go, either.
I also do not know how to relax. Other than right after orgasm. Which on the one hand, makes orgasm extra nice (when I can get one – yes, of course I have trouble there, too) but on the other hand, as soon as my body goes back to normal, I’m back to tension and worry. My muscles hurt all the time because I’m constantly tensed up.
I get bothered by things that have anything to do with control. Control being mine, that is. Of course, I can’t handle when I have no control, either.
I am on disability, and housebound as I said before, so I spend a lot of time with distraction. I have a couple of hobbies that bring me as much peace as possible, but sometimes even they don’t help.
I have bad days and better days. Once in a while, I have a good day. I never just kick back and enjoy a good day, though, ’cause I seem to be suspicious of it. It’s like I’m thinking, “What is going to come along and ruin this?” …because something usually does. It’s that no-relaxing thing.
It’s like if you’re on letter M, and letters A through L have been horrible? You can’t exactly just get cozy on M… and even thinking about what fun letter T would be would be all kinds of dangerous.
I guess that about covers it. Separating out the ingredients of the soup of this illness is really tough sometimes.
I don’t know if in future I’ll post specific events or not. Thanks for letting me put this all down like this, though.
While I am terrified of people, I am usually pretty lonely.
It’s like so much of it all has some vicious cycle to it, doesn’t it?
A childhood steeped in hatred and abuse can threaten to break us.
And yet, we go on:
I was six months old when I was beaten the first time.
This beating required an Emergency Room visit. When you are beaten from such a young age, you learn that your body has no boundaries, you are not entitled to safety.
I was molested before six years old, my mother witnessed this at bath times…and did nothing. I was raped from six to eight years of age. Mom reminds me, regularly, that she was a victim, too. Therefore, I do not have permission to blame her for these things.
Back then, violence was a multiple days a week occurrence. Dad was quiet most of the time. And then, without rhyme or reason that I could detect (and I tried to identify the cause, to stop it), BLAM! Heaven forbid we did a normal kid thing that was bad.
Nighttime was parent fighting time. From my bed, I could hear the screaming, Mom crying. I could hear bodies tumbling and grunting, from him reaching for her and hitting her. He would rape her. He would break furniture on her.
By the time I was six until I was eight, he stayed in the guest room on a frequent basis. EVERY night he was in that room, I was too. I got to hear graphic details of Vietnam, before the touching and raping.
When Dad moved into his own home, this decreased to weekends.
But then Mom started. She was depressed and suicidal. She couldn’t handle our noise, our needs, or even us asking for permission to do things. She would strike out, smack us with books, knock our knees with her foot, pushing us away in frustration.
When our bodies were dirty, she would bathe us. She washed my vagina so hard, her nails or the edge of the washcloth would leave slices in my labia. She would pinch between my toes, hard enough to hurt. We had to “get the dirt out.”
Dad ran off when I was eight. Counselors had identified that I was suicidal; what he had done to me. He was confronted and fled to avoid prosecution.
By the time I was nine, Mom had started studying the Holocaust. We were made to watch documentaries with gruesome footage of violence. We had to see pictures of the piles of dead bodies.
We went to museums to meet Holocaust survivors, to hear their stories. The same graphic documentary pictures were always hanging on of the walls.
There were never other children to find, to play. We had to stay by Mom’s side, to witness these things.
We were not permitted anger, or to be sad. No tears, no screaming. We could smile. Or, we could be quiet.
When encouraged, we could explore mud puddles or play on the beach and laugh and giggle with Mom. There were the good times.
We’d always been very poor – with Dad around we were poor, but always had food. After he left, we’d have times of hunger. No food, or too little. I would dish out more to my sister first. Then Mom. Sometimes, I would sacrifice my food so that they could get more. I had become the family cook by the time I was nine. I cleaned. I helped with my sister’s homework. I helped with Mom’s college homework. I was an A-student on my own studies.
Mom used a wooden spoon to spank us. She hit so hard, she would crack handles. We had bruises and welts in the perfect shape of a spoon head on our bottoms and thighs. Sitting in a wooden chair at school was uncomfortable.
When she smacked our heads with her open hand, she would hit our ears. The ringing would startle me.
Her verbal abuse was astounding, sharp and biting. She told me that I was so annoying that it drove her to drink. (Subtext: Daddy was an alcoholic because of you, and I drink because of you too.)
All of these things struggled to silence me, shame me, and remove my human dignity. All of these things demonstrated that I had no rights.
I know a whole lot of people who say they are broke and in their own way, I guess they are. But I get angry and bitter because they still have money to buy stuff. I guess I shouldn’t judge, they could be way overextended on credit cards or whatever, but I still get mad. When my aunt tells me she is so broke that she has to sign up for Toys for Tots and then goes and buys a new wardrobe for her daughter, it really pisses me off.
I am so broke. My phone is shut off. My car is about to get repossessed (I had to take out a title loan to pay the rent), the gas and lights will be turned off any day. Rent is due next week and there’s not enough to pay that either. Christmas just isn’t going to happen at this point. I did sign up for Toys for Tots and they are a God-send.
My child support stopped. My ex lost his job because he is stupid, but that is a whole other story. I don’t get any type of support for my 2 year old. He takes her on weekends and that does help a lot, but having to buy diapers and stuff is just too much by myself, especially because I don’t have a job. I have had jobs but because of bad things that have happened, when I work I have panic attacks thinking about my kids without me. I do work part-time at a friend’s daycare, but $25 a week doesn’t do a whole lot.
I don’t know what to do anymore. I am drowning. No money coming in and way too much going out. I am in the dark and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. I want to cry and scream and yell and tell everyone how bad it is over here. I am so embarrassed. I am 30! I have NOTHING to show for what I do or what I have done. I don’t know how to fix it.
Being broke sucks! It is draining trying to decide what to pay – what is important and what isn’t.
My friends would say that I have a great sense of humor, and I like to think that I do. I’m one of those “ease the tension with a funny line” kind of people. But lately I’m just so jealous and angry and ugly inside – I feel like even my blood and organs have rotted to black.
I am deeply blessed to have a wonderful husband and healthy child. After long bouts of unemployment, my husband and I both have jobs. That should be all I ever want. But dammit if life isn’t harder than I can take sometimes! We have piles of debt, and I hold my breath and pray when I check our bank account balance online. Last week, we were $500 in the hole until payday on Friday. We are under-employed and under-paid, and every purchase, even necessities, requires deliberation.
Yet we’re surrounded by friends who can afford things like vacations, Christmas gifts, babysitters and second children – all things we would love to have, but we can’t. Our friends have successful careers and gym memberships and freaking disposable income – things that we thought we would have too, being smart, college-educated, hard working people.
So I’m jealous. Deep, ugly-cry, Wicked Witch of the West jealous. I find out about one person’s TV appearance or another’s forthcoming baby, and my first reaction is to wince and roll my eyes. I hate myself so much for that. Nobody wants to be around that person, not even me.
I hate that when I count my blessings, I feel like I got shafted. I think I’m pissing off God, setting myself up for something awful to happen because I’m ungrateful, even though logically I know better. I’m just so tired of economic struggles. People say that money doesn’t solve all your problems, but it damn sure solves the problem of not having any f-ing money!
I feel hopeless and furious and also guilty as hell. It’s an awful cycle that I can’t figure out how to end. Is praying for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow worse than any other idea?
