Three years ago, my husband attempted to rape me. I didn’t really think of it that way at the time. I did shove him off me with a hand to his throat, and he was extremely angry. A few months later, he completed the rape.
He’s always been terrible with boundaries and when I would say no to sex, he would keep trying until I gave in. I didn’t like it, but didn’t recognize it as anything more than annoying.
It was a red flag I guess, but didn’t seem like “real abuse” because I wasn’t being harmed.
We have managed to stay together, but, as you’d expect, It hasn’t been easy.
He still struggles with boundaries, which are obviously so important to our relationship. Unfortunately, he will touch me sexually even after I’ve explicitly said that I don’t want to be touched that way (when my anxiety is at a high I do not want to be touched at all; much less sexually).
He’s started having sex with me in his sleep despite me saying no – when he’s aware of what’s going on he stops, thankfully. When he is very much in the mood, he won’t come to bed with me because he’s afraid he can’t control himself. I suppose I should just be grateful that he stays away but I don’t like hearing him say he can’t control himself. It freaks me out.
He has been (for the most part) patient and understands why I’m like this now. He’d do absolutely anything to make me happy.
I feel guilty because a large part of me hates him. He has told me that he doesn’t think about the rape unless I’m struggling, which is devastating to me. Something that changed me at my core so much. Traumatized me. Destroyed trust, my ability to enjoy intimacy, gave me massive, crippling anxiety and he…?
He doesn’t even think about.
We are in marriage counseling again; but we haven’t yet told the counselor what happened.
We’ve only had two sessions so far, and I haven’t been ready to discuss the rape.
The counselor is giving us all these tools to work on things and I just…I don’t know. I don’t know how to make it work.
I can’t afford to care for my kids alone. I’m a stay-at-home mom, no good work experience, no family to help me out. I MUST make this work.
And my husband really does try to make me happy and I feel so guilty that he can’t.
As we have traveled (and travailed) through our journey (ha!) with infertility struggles, I’ve learned a lot from the infertility blogs that I’ve read, and from our family and friends. While I do have to put myself on hiatus from infertility blogs on a regular basis, I am so thankful that we have not been alone through this continuing nightmare.
I had a conversation recently with my mother about my blog, and why I choose to make such a private issue so public by putting it all online. Well, if one person finds the Lord, learns anything about their own infertility and what to expect, or is helped in any way whatsoever, then this has not been in vain. That may mean just helping someone who is not infertile to understand what the people around them are going through.
Or letting someone several years into this roller-coaster know that they are not alone, either.
As others have done for me, I will do for them. This post is in that vein….
Infertility Is…
…Depressing. There is no end to the feelings of failure, shame, and envy. Every Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, or any other important holiday that passes without a baby in our lives is a kick in the teeth. Some days simply getting out of bed is too much effort. But we do it, so as to appear normal.
…Frustrating. To not be able to do something so simple is incredibly frustrating. We cannot do what our bodies were designed to do, and everyone around us can.
…Humiliating. Everyone has seen parts of me that should be private. Everyone knows intimate details of our sex life and feels that discussing them is totally acceptable. Our pharmacist is nosy. Our doctor asks questions that make me blush, and I am not easily embarrassed. There is no modesty in infertility. Even at our very thoughtful clinic, I am stripped from the waist down and given a sheet roughly a half yard wide to “cover” up with. My bare butt faces the door.
…Learning to laugh. A man who loves you when Clomid makes you grouchy and when you have to prop your hips up afterward will love you through anything. If you can discuss cervical fluid and peeing on a stick, he’s a keeper. If we don’t laugh at the absurd, we will cry over everything.
…Isolating. Even though over 10% of all couples in the US experience infertility, you may never meet or talk to another. None of your friends can fully understand, and your family may not try. When your infertility is all you can think about, they may not feel comfortable talking about it at all. Our infertility is never mentioned for the prayer requests at church. It is the elephant in the corner at every baby shower. In the waiting room of our fertility clinic, no patients make eye contact, ever. Infertility is not something you tell folks about unless you know you can trust them with your heart.
…A learning experience. Not many things give you the chance to learn to self-inject medications and learn words like hysterosalpingogram or ovarian drilling.
…Painful. Physical changes make my body hurt. Side effects cause aches, pains, and headaches. Injections and blood draws hurt, internal ultrasounds and hysterosalpingograms are very painful. Childbirth actually sounds like a cakewalk after some of this.
…Strengthening. If I can handle this, I can handle anything. So can my marriage, and my faith. Infertility is not for wussies.
…Taxing. “Trying” or “practicing” sounds fun, right? Try it for about two weeks and see how romantic you feel. Don’t forget to time it just right and to prop your hips up afterward.
…Disappointing. Every holiday without a baby, every month with a period, every new check up at the clinic because last month was a bust is a huge disappointment. Telling my husband we’ve failed again is miserable.
…Scary. Words like premature ovarian failure, premature rupture of membranes, incompetent cervix, and intrauterine fetal demise are terrifying for anyone to hear, especially when it’s your ovaries, cervix, or baby.
…Hope. Hope is new again each month, thank God.
…Expensive. Having to give up on your dream to have a baby or having to plan your baby around your credit line is just sad. Especially when you’re paying good money for useless insurance.
…All-consuming. If you don’t learn to stop and find other outlets, infertility will eat you alive.
…Unfair. 14 year old junkies have babies they don’t want. People who lock their kids in closets get pregnant all the time. Why can’t I?
…Eye opening. Many men will leave you when they find out you can’t have babies. The extra-awesome one will stay, look you in the eye and say “That’s okay.”
…Finding a way to trust God and His timing even when I am on the floor, crying and broken.
There is a picture of me, somewhere out there, probably still on my dad’s phone unless they’ve turned into Christmas Card people, in which case, the picture is most definitely out there in the world for all to see.
I hope it is not.
I didn’t see the picture until I was 5 months sober, staying in the unfinished basement at my parents house, grateful that I was no longer homeless, while I hunted for a job. Before this, I’d been staying there after a stint at a ramshackle, rundown motel, the kind of place you probably could dismantle a dead body, leave the head on the pillow, and no one would think anything of it. But it was my room, and despite the lice they gifted me, I loved it. Until money dried up and suddenly I was, once again, homeless. I’d moved in there after I was discharged from the inpatient psych ward, in which I was able to successfully detox after a suicide attempt. Got some free ECT to boot.
(WINNING)
Despite what you see on the After School Special’s of our childhood, I didn’t take a single Vicodin, fall into a stupor, and become insta-addict – just add narcotics! No, my entry into addiction was a slow and steady downward spiral of which I am deeply ashamed. It’s left my brain full of wreckage and ruin, fragmented bits of my life that don’t follow a single pattern. Between the opiates, the Ketamine, and the ECT, I cannot even be certain that what I am telling you is the truth; what I’ve gathered are bits and pieces of the addict I so desperately hate from other people who are around, fuzzy recollections, and my own social media posts.
About a year and a half before I moved from my yellow house to the apartments by the river, Dave and I had separated; he’d told me that while he cared for me, he no longer loved me. While we lived in the same house, we’d had completely separate lives for years, so he moved to the basement while I stayed upstairs. I’d been miserable before his confession and after? I was nearly broken. Using the Vicodin, then Norco, I was able to numb my pain and get out of my head, which, while remarkably stupid, was effective. For awhile.
Let me stop you, Dear Reader, and ask you to keep what I am about to say in mind as you read through this massive tome. I’m simply trying to make certain that you understand several key things about my addiction and subsequent recovery. I alone was the one who chose to take the drugs. No one forced me to abuse opiates, and even later, (SPOILER ALERT) Ketamine. This isn’t a post about blaming others for my misdoings, rejecting any accountability, nor making any excuses for the stupid, awful things I’ve done. I alone fucked up. My addiction was my own fault. However, in the same vein, no one “saved” me but myself. There was no cheeky interventionist. No room full of people who loved me weeping stoically, telling me how my addiction hurt them. No letters. Nothing. It was just me. I was alone, and I chose to get – and remain – sober.
The delusions started when I moved out, sitting in my empty apartment alone, paralyzed by the thought of getting off the couch to go to the bathroom. Always a night-owl, I’d wake at some ungodly hour of the morning, shaking. It wasn’t withdrawal, no, it was pure unfettered anxiety.
It was the aftermath of using so many pills, all the fun you think you’re having comes back to bite you with crippling anxiety and depression.
Which is why I’d do more.
Yes, opiates are powerful, and yes, I abused them, but things really didn’t become dire until I added Ketamine to my life.
Ketamine, if you’re unaware, is a club drug, a horse tranquilizer, and a date rape drug. You use too much? You may wake up at some hipster coffee bar, trying to sing “You’re Having My Baby” to the dude in the front row who may or may not actually exist. In other words, it’s the best way to forget how fucked you are.
The delusions worsen as time passed. I could see into the future. I could read your mind. I was going to be famous. I was super fucking rich. In this fucked-up world, I could even forget about me, and the life that I’d so carelessly shattered. I remember sitting in Divorce Class at the courthouse, something required of all divorces in Kane County, weeping at all that I’d thrown away – using a total of three boxes of the low-quality, government tissues. I left with a shiny pink face and completely chapped nose and eyes that appeared to be making a break from their sockets. I went home, took some pills, took some Ketamine, and passed out.
I retreated ever-inward. I didn’t talk to many people. I didn’t share my struggles. I was alone, and it was my fault.
The hallucinations started soon after Divorce Class ended and my ex and I split up. He’d left my house in a rage after a fight and went to live with his sister. I got scared. His temper, magnified by the drugs, the hallucinations, and the delusions, grew increasingly frightening. Once he’d moved out, the attacks began. I’d wake up naked in my bedroom, my body sore and bruised, and my brain put the two unrelated events together as one – he was attacking me. It happened every few days, these “attacks,” until I found myself at the police station, reporting them. I was dangerously sick and I had no idea.
My friends on the Internet (those whom I had left), sent me money for surveillance cameras. I bought them, installed them – trying to capture the culprit – and when I saw what I saw, I immediately called the police and told them the culprit.
The videos in my bedroom captured an incredibly stoned, dead-eyed, version of myself, violently attacking myself, brutally tearing at my flesh. In particular, THAT me liked to beat my face with one of my prized possessions – a candlestick set from our wedding, take another pill or hit up some Ketamine, then violating myself with the candlestick. It lasted hours. I’d wake up with no memory of events, sore and tired and unsure of how I’d gotten there.
I’d never engaged in self-injury before – not once – so the very idea that I’d hurt myself was unbelievable, but right there, on my grainy old laptop, was proof of how unhinged I’d become. Charged with filing a false report, I plead guilty.
In early September of 2015, I decided to get fixed, and made arrangements with work to take a few weeks off to do an inpatient detox, and, for the first time in a long time, I woke up happily, rather than cursing the gods that I was still alive.
It was to be short-lived.
Several days later, sober, I was idly chatting with my neighbor about her upcoming vacation (funny the things your brain remembers and what it does not), standing by my screen door, when karma came calling. It sounded like the shucking noise of an ear of corn, or maybe the sound that a huge thing of broccoli makes when you rip it apart – hard. It felt like a bullet to the femur. I crumpled on top of my neighbor and began screaming wildly about calling an ambulance, yelling over and over like some perverse, yet truthful, Chicken Little: “my leg is broken, my LEG is broken!”
I don’t remember much after that. I woke up in (physical rehab) and learned that my femur (hereafter to be called my “Blasfemur,”) had broken, fairly high up on the bone, where the biggest, strongest bone in your body is at its peak of strength. Whaaaa?
The doctors and nurses shrugged it off my questions, with a flippant “It just happens” and sent me home, armed with a Norco prescription, in November, to heal. I added the Ketamine, just to make sure.
A couple of weeks later at the end of November, I was putting up the Christmas tree with the kids and my mother. It was all merry and fucking bright until I sat down on the couch and felt that familiar crunch. Screams came out of me I didn’t know were possible, but I’d lost my actual words. My mother stood over me yelling “what’s wrong? what’s wrong?” and I couldn’t find the words. I overheard her telling my babies that I was “probably just faking it” as she walked out the door, my screams fading into an ice cold silence. They left me alone in that apartment where I screamed and cried and screamed. Finally, I managed to call 911 and when they asked me questions, all I could scream was my address.
I woke up in January in a nursing home. When I woke up, I found myself sitting at a table in a vast dining room, full of old people. For weeks to come, I thought that I’d died and gone…wherever it is that you go.
This time, I learned, my (blas)femur and it’s associated hardware had become infected after the first surgery, which weakened the bone, causing it to snap like a tree. They put me all back together like the bionic woman, but the surgery had introduced the wee colony of Strep D in the bone into my bloodstream, creating an infection on meth. I’d been in a coma for weeks. Once again, I learned to walk, and once again, I was sent home in late January with another Norco prescription. The nursing home really wanted me to have someone stay with me to help out, but I insisted that I was fine alone. In truth, I had nobody to help me out, but was far too ashamed to tell them.
The picture I referenced above was taken some time in May, as far as my fuzzy memory allows me to remember, after my third femur fracture in March. This time, I’d been so high that I fell asleep on the toilet and rolled off. Glamorous, no? Just like Fat Elvis. Luckily, my eldest son was there and he called 911 and my parents to whisk him away. I remember my father on the phone, telling Ben that I was a liar and I was faking it. I was swept away in the ambulance for even more hardware, and finally? A diagnosis:
HypoPARAthyroidism.
It’s an autoimmune disease that leaches calcium from the bones, resulting in brittle bones. It is managed, not treated. There is no cure.
But, I had the answer. Finally.
After my third fracture, I once again was sent to the nursing home, and quickly discharged with even higher doses of Norco, when my insurance balked, I’d used up all my rehab days for the year. By this time, I’d lost my apartment, my stuff was in storage (except the things that we’re thrown away, which my father gloated about while I was flat on my back) and my parents let me stay with them, which was about the only option I had. They couldn’t really kick me out if my leg was only freshly attached. I feel deeper into a depression, self-loathing, and drug abuse as I realized what a mess I’d made with my life. How many bad choices I’d made. How many people I’d hurt. How much I’d hurt myself. How much I loathed myself. How I once had a life that in no way resembled sleeping in my parents dining room. How I’d been a home owner. How I’d been married. How lucky I’d been. How I threw it all away. My life turned into a series of “once did” and “used to.”
The only one who hated me more was my father.
While we were once close confidants, in the years after my marriage to Dave, his disdain had become palpable. My uncle had to intervene one Christmas, after my father mocked me incessantly for taking a temp job filling out gift cards while I was pregnant with Alex. It may seem normal to some of you, this behavior, but in THEIR house, NO ONE was EVER SAD and NOTHING was EVER WRONG. WASPs to the core, my family is.
When I moved back in, broken, dejected, and high, our fights became epic. For the first time in my life, I stood UP to one of my parents. Then, I was promptly kicked out.
Guess I’m not so WASPy after all.
I want to say that the picture was taken around May of 2016, but my estimate may be thoroughly skewed, so if you’re counting on dates being correct and cohesive, you’ve got the wrong girl.
This is a picture of me, though you probably wouldn’t recognize me. I am wearing the blue scrubs that you associate with a hospital: not exactly sky blue, not teal, not navy, just generic blue hospital scrubs. These are, I remember, the only clothes I have to my name. I was given them in both the hospital and the nursing home, a gift, I suppose, of being a frequent flier, tinged with a bit of pity – this girl has no clothes, we can help. Whomever gave them to me, know that you gave me a bit of dignity, which I will never forget. Thank you.
I am wearing scrubs, the light of the refrigerator is slowly bleaching out half of my now-enormous body, as opposed to the darkness outside. There is a tube of fat around my neck, nearly destroying any evidence of my face, but if you look closely, you can make out my glasses, my nostrils, my hair cascading down. My neck is stretched back at nearly a 90 degree angle from my body, my head listlessly resting on the back of my wheelchair. My mouth gaped wide, which, should I been engaging in fly catching, would have netted far more than the average Venus flytrap. I am clearly, unmistakably, and without a single shred of doubt, passed the fuck out.
It is both me and not me.
High as i was, I don’t remember a thing about the photo being taken. But there I was, in all my pixelated glory.
By the time I saw the photo, I was once again in my “will do” and “can do” space. I’d kicked drugs in September 2016 and had found a job that I enjoyed. I stayed with my parents while I began to sort out my medical debt and save toward a new car and an apartment of my own. My spirits were high, my depression finally abated to the background, and I was tentatively happy. I’d apologized until my throat was sore, but my fragmented memory saved me from the worst of it, but I was not forgiven. I don’t think I ever expected to be. And now, I never will.
It’s okay. I can’t expect this. I know I fucked up.
My father, who’d actually grown increasingly disdainful of me, the more sober and well I became, confronted me when I came home one day after work, preparing to do my AFTER work, work.
My mother shuffled along behind him, Ben, the caboose. All three of them were in hysterics, tears rolling down their cheeks as I sat down in my normal spot on the couch. After showing them a video of two turtles humping a couple of days before, I eagerly waited to see what they were showing me.
What it was was that picture. Of the not me, me.
They could hardly contain their laughter, my father happier than ever, braying, “Isn’t this the best picture of you?” and “You PASSED OUT, (heave, heave) IN FRONT OF THE FRIDGE!” punctuated, with “I’m going to frame this picture!” The tears welled in my eyes while my teeth clenched, they laughed even harder at my reaction.
Like I said, if they’ve become Christmas Card sending people, this will be the picture of me they show, expecting others to laugh uproariously. Before I moved out, in fact, my father made certain to show the picture to anyone who came over. “Wanna see something hilarious?” he’d ask. Expecting memes or a funny cat playing the piano, they’d agree. I could see it when they saw it, my dad chortling with laughter, nearly choking on his giggles, the looks on their faces: a mixture of confusion and pity. Even in my drug-hazed “glory,” I’d never felt so low.
Maybe that picture is splashed all over the internet, in the dark recesses I don’t explore, and maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s hung on their wall, replacing all of the other pictures. Maybe it’s not.
Note: some of you may recognize parts of this story. I ask that you please respect the thin veneer of anonymity I’ve created by posting this here and only reply in the comments here, on this post. Thank you.
Why am I always the reliable one? I’m tired of people depending on me.
When my ex and I first got together, I announced that I was going to be teacher as a means to support my novel-writing. She thought that sounded swell, so she was going to be a nurse to support her art. That lasted a year or so. She finally had a little mental “snap” and quit school, just two classes short of a degree in English and art.
“If it’s what you want,” I said, “then do it.”
A friend later claimed that my now-ex had “supported” me as I went through grad school. Wrong. I worked full-time through grad school just as I had through college. I brought in at least half of our income. I paid my bills. On time, no less.
My ex’s little “snap” got worse. There were times she was catatonic on the couch. I pleaded. I begged. As a last resort, I yelled and that seemed to be what she wanted at that moment. Not something I could do ongoing – so I pleaded and begged her to get counseling. “Sure,” was the response, but it never happened. She met someone else. He convinced her to get help. So she did. For him.
She showed me a journal entry not long after she started therapy. The first blow was when she said that I was her financial stability while the other guy met her emotional needs. I thought this was her way of announcing she wanted a divorce. Apparently, however, she didn’t see anything wrong with this and pointed to the most disturbing part of the entry – “This, THIS is what I wanted you to really see!” This was the part about how she was so full of love that she loved everyone, and more than that, that she could bed anyone. Including her mother and grandmother.
Ummmmmmmm.
We went back to her counselor to answer the question that had been posed the previous week: why are you married? My answer was: I want a divorce. There was just no coming back from that journal entry. Not when she couldn’t see how screwed up it was. Not when she only thought of me as her financial stability.
My next wife couldn’t believe I’d put up with so much from the ex, much less for ten years. But I don’t believe you leave just because someone is ill. I stick to the commitments I make and I take that responsibility seriously.
My current wife moved in with me because, well, because she was falling apart and because I keep things together. It’s what I do, what I’ve done since I was very small. We fell in love. And then we got catastrophic news – I had cancer. No health insurance, not even breaking $20,000 a year, despite having a coveted professional job at a very prestigious place. My new wife worked, but didn’t have a career and was not sure what she wanted to do next. We were dead broke.
But just as I fought my way through childhood sexual abuse, I beat the shit out of the cancer as well. About then, I was offered full-time employ at another prestigious organization. I thought I had a career. I began to relax into my life.
We fussed over the hours I kept. We fussed because I have difficulties taking breaks and tend to work myself into a state of exhaustion. We fussed over keeping the house picked up. We fussed over what to do on vacations.
We never really fought or had an outright argument, not really. We were good at dialoguing and compromising. I’m not saying sometimes there weren’t sometimes emphatic words, but we worked hard at being reasonable and at not actually yelling.
Until I woke up one day and realized that I felt like I’d made all the compromises.
Please note that I said I felt like I’d made all the compromises. I don’t think that’s strictly true; I’m sure she has her list.
I lost my beloved career. Part of me thinks it’s because she complained about the hours I kept. But I have the feeling that’s not true – there were political reasons for getting rid of someone like me, many of them. But I can’t help that feeling ….
I found a new job eventually. It was dull and boring and I said I was only doing it until she was done with school and ready to head to graduate school. Then I could – perhaps – afford to be more picky with my choice of employ. So I waited. And I grew to love my job. The longer I worked there, the more they fitted tasks to me instead of trying to fit me into a particular little round hole when I’m so obviously a triangle. She asked me to quit talking about it because she hated her job.
She had one class left. The one class I was most fit to help her with. But she put it off. Dropped out. Took it by correspondence class, but then didn’t keep up with the work. And somehow, still got her diploma in the mail.
But she didn’t apply to grad school.
She continued at the job she hated. Insisted that there were no jobs in her field. Her workplace is making her sick constantly, but rather than look for any job just to get out of there – even a temporary job instead of something in her career field – she continues with this one. Fusses about it.
The job I’d started out hating but had grown to enjoy and was launching a new career for me, abruptly and unexpectedly closed just before the economy really tanked. I eventually found a new job at the most dysfunctional company I can imagine and have spend the last three and a half years trying to find something else locally.
And now she has completely folded in on herself. It’s been painful to watch in every single way. Neither of us are outgoing people but she used to go out with friends. I realized the other day not only do I not have any friends (long-standing issue having to do with my shyness and social confusion, not with her), but she no longer has friends either. It’s like pulling teeth to get her to agree to go out without me, even just to the grocery store to pick up something that she needs. (Don’t assume I don’t go to the grocery store – I do. I’m talking about a run for the one vital ingredient she forgot or the one medicine she ran out of two days ago and keeps forgetting she needs until it’s time to take it again.)
Like my ex-wife, she, too, has ground to a halt. Stopped functioning in any meaningful way. She wants praise when she remembers to do a load of laundry. (Again, please don’t think I don’t have chores – I take care of the dishes and kitchen, she does the laundry. We have split all of the household chores.) I appreciate having chores done – but I don’t see the need to congratulate her every time she does the things she is supposed to do. I don’t want to be thanked for doing the dishes or scooping out the cat box. Those are my chores; I am supposed to do them.
Now, if we’ve been really busy and she makes an extra effort to do 18 loads of laundry in an evening (I exaggerate!), then I do tell her thank you. That genuine, kind of surprised, wow, honey, that was a lot, thank you!
But I’ve felt like she’s disappearing. I’ve pointed it out, cautiously, gingerly. I’ve talked around asking her about counseling, but she has always insisted that talk therapy does nothing for her. She finally announced six or so months ago that she decided she needs counseling. But she never followed through.
And now? Since the middle of August she has been to work twice. TWICE.
She went a week and a half before telling me. Turns out work called and left a message on the machine telling her that she needed to contact them and get put on short-term disability. Or -the implied threat- lose her job. She finally did contact her doctor. She was put on short-term disability. Had a slew of doctor appointments. The “stress specialist” said given her symptoms and her general twitchy demeanor, she is genetically predisposed to panic attacks. He’s giving her exercises to do. She’s also been prescribed medicines to take to help when it gets bad. The stress doctor would rather she stay off work for a total of four weeks since he started seeing her, but for some reason, she was to go back last week, after just two weeks. She made it two days (I think. I fear it was only one day, but I don’t remember and I’m afraid to ask.)
She sits at home and honestly, it’s become a cliche. She reads romance novels and pets the cats. I have to ask her if she will please do the smallest amount of one of her chores. She is home all day, doing nothing. She doesn’t do whatever small chore until after I get home from work. (Except for the day in which her chore was to make a phone call.) I have had to do several of her chores just to make sure they get done – on top of my chores, on top of my work week, on top of my work-from-home extra job. I have cringed when she makes a commitment at the church, fearful that she will fall down and I will have to keep that commitment for her (or put up with the fallout) – and been amazed when she keeps a commitment made to others … but not the ones she makes to me.
I am wracking my brain to figure out what I’ve done wrong. Did I just fall in love with women who happened to have similar issues? Did I do something wrong to trigger such behaviors? Am I so toxic that I poison them somehow?
I fear that she will lose her job soon. There are a lot of plans we made together which were time-sensitive which will die completely if this happens, including one that I have wanted with all my heart and soul since I was a very small child, but if it doesn’t get put into motion within the next year, the window of opportunity will slam permanently shut. She’s the one who told me we could do that, not to give up hope.
And I can’t help but feeling that this breakdown is tied to the timing of that plan. That her heart is not in it, but she can’t tell me and so the breakdown. The problem is, I had given up on that plan. I had put it aside completely and given up on it. And she brought that plan back to life two months ago. Dragged it out of its moth balls, dusted it off and set wheels in motion so that I believed with all my heart that it would happen after all.
And now I fear it will not. And I fear that we will not survive as a couple if her breakdown kills that plan.
I don’t understand inactivity. And so I have a difficult time understanding how she can just not walk into work every day. I am trying to be supportive. But for God’s sake, people are relying on you to go to work every day. I am relying on her to go to work every day. I do it. I hate my current job, but I go every day. I don’t understand how she can not only not go to work, but then not accomplish anything at home either. There are so many projects that need to be done. And she reads trash fiction all day.
I am trying to be supportive. She needs me to be supportive so she can get through this. And as long as she is working to get better….
But I am so very tired and this scenario just feels so very, very familiar.
And I am so tired of being the responsible one upon whom everyone relies.
I’m having some kind of weird mid-life crisis, though I don’t know if being just shy of thirty counts as “mid.” Either way, my main problem is that I just want to be left the hell alone. Of course, wanting to be left alone and actually being left alone are two completely different things, and the sad truth is that I will never be left alone.
It’s not due to the bipolar depression, although I know damn well it’s a contributing factor on my worse days; it’s simply because I’m tired. I’m tired of going through the motions of my daily life, getting up early to tend to all manner of things. I’m tired of everyone in my household demanding something from me at all times, whether it’s my daughters, who want/need all of my attention since they are both so young, or my husband wanting to constantly have sex, or even the damn cat for bitching about not having food even though his food bowl is completely full. (The cat is an idiot).
I have no friends – all of them live in a different state because we moved away 2 years ago in order for my husband to pursue a new job opportunity in the northwest. We have family not too far from where we are, but we barely see them as it is, so they wouldn’t dare step in and watch the kids in order for me to get the hell away for a little while.
A few days ago, one of my friends told me to come visit her so we could go on a bender, and to be honest, I would fucking LOVE to! It would be an opportunity to get away and have some fun for once, since all of my hobbies have gone to shit since becoming a stay at home mum 5 years ago. However, even if we still lived close by, that bender would never happen because my husband, while a great guy, is insecure as fuck, and at times errs on the possessive side of things. He would be paranoid about me cheating on him even though I’ve been a million percent faithful.
Pretty much all of my time I try to reach some semblance of reprieve by burying myself in my laptop: reading the news, blogs, messaging friends or (my secret shame) reading and writing fan fiction. (Now The Band knows my horrible secret!) Sometimes I listen to music. Music is a major way for me to unwind, and the advent of Spotify has been very useful since I can listen to stuff that I’m too cheap to purchase via iTunes. My husband thinks that I have some kind of bizarre internet addiction, but that’s so far from the truth. I know this is a form of escapism.
This is my dilemma. I just want my family to back the shit off, but at the same time, it makes me feel like a terrible person. I don’t want to play with the kids. I don’t want to engage in “sexy time.” I don’t want to do the goddamn laundry or feed the goddamn cat.
I’m grumpy, I’m exhausted, and I’m just flat-out sick of everything!
I lost my job in October. My job, you know, the one that I hated but worked my ass off for. The job where I worked 50+ hours, made me miss time with my kids, and was so stressful that I often cried myself to sleep. The job that I had to cling to when my husband decided that he wanted to sleep on his cousin’s couch and smoke pot all day and night. And when he wanted to come back, the job that paid for his plane ticket.
We lost our house… My gorgeous 2,100 square foot house that I spent hours painting and sanding and cleaning. Gone. Now we are living in an extended stay motel, which is a fancy term for crack house.
My kids are back with my mom because it’s all I can do to scrape together enough money to feed them right now, and my company is fighting me for unemployment. South Carolina is an at-will state after all. At least I know that they are fed and warm, and safe.
My husband does nothing but bitch about me not having a job.
‘Scuse me?! Aren’t I the same woman who worked two jobs for over a year, while trying to finish my degree and raise three kids, because every job you found “sucked” and you usually quit around the time you got your first check? Aren’t I the same woman who supported you, through EVERY shithead thing you decided to do to me? Didn’t I take you back; PAY for you to come back when you left me for her. Twice?
He doesn’t look at me or touch me or tell me he loves me. He comes “home” and plays on Facebook before passing out. And so I sit, in this single room, every day and every night.
I lost most of my friends when I took him back this last time. They were tired of watching me go through this. So alone I stay.
And every night, while I sit here awake I think about how much better it would be if it all just went away. I no longer look at myself and see the slightly chubby woman who is raising three amazing kids and kicking ass at everything.
I see nothing but this horrible beast of depression. If my husband doesn’t want me, who would? If I can’t raise my kids, what’s the point? If I can’t work, what can I do? I am nothing. A void. Useless.
There aren’t any words anymore, and all I want to do is go to sleep, and not wake up. It seems that I’ve stumbled into this place and I don’t know how to get out.
My husband is against antidepressants. He says that they are a crutch. That I have to get through this on my own, because that’s what people are supposed to do.
I have nothing and I can’t do anything.
And every night I dream that I don’t wake up.
(ed note: Prankster, you are not alone. And you are loved. I’m not going to presume to tell you what to do, but you do know that you are depressed and you do need help You don’t have to do it all alone.I hope that you are able to find the help that you need.
We are none of us alone. You are so, so loved. Please remember that.)
There is a picture of me, somewhere out there, probably still on my dad’s phone unless they’ve turned into Christmas Card people, in which case, the picture is most definitely out there in the world for all to see.
