by Band Back Together | Dec 1, 2010 | Anger, Depression, Grandparent Loss, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, How To Cope With A Suicide, Sadness, Stress, Suicide |
Just yesterday I was reading posts at this site. Shedding sympathetic tears and yet at the same time being so grateful that I had nothing to post here. My gratefulness was premature.
For all intense and purposes, my grandfather died at 8:30 last night. He actually died at 6:20 this morning.
At 8:30 last night my grandfather shot himself in the head. Even after that and being on no life support it took the rest of his body 10 hours to die. 10 hours that my father and mother waited at the hospital all the while knowing that what they were waiting for was a pronouncement of death for my father’s father.
When my mom called me last night, I knew intelligently, that my mom calls my pop-pop “Pop”, and when she called I could tell by her tone that something had happened. Someone had died and at 91, my grandfather was – of course – the most logical answer. But he was healthy. Healthier than most men 10 years his junior and his mind was sharp as a tack, but I knew that it had to be him. However, when I heard the words “Pop shot himself tonight.”
I was thrown immediately into an hysterical state and just started screaming, “Pop-pop or my dad?!?!? Pop-pop or my dad?!?!?”
I’m numb. I’m at work today because I need normal. I need routine. When I actually stop and really think about it, my body shuts down and I go into a near catatonic state. My body’s defenses are too high right now. Too ready to go into flight mode. I need normal. For at least today.
But nothing will ever be normal again. My grandfather killed himself. And my aunt who lives with him was home at the time. I don’t know what to think. I’m devastated. I’m angry. And I feel so awful for my dad. Beyond awful.
When dad called me this morning to tell me that Pop-pop had finally passed away, he broke down and asked me not to hate Pop-pop. Which I never could. I loved that man more than anything. He asked to please not think less of him. And I don’t. Then he asked me to please not be angry at Pop-pop. I told him I wasn’t. I told him I didn’t understand, but that I wasn’t angry.
I hope it’s not always wrong to lie.
If you or anyone you know is feeling suicidal, please remember that suicide is never the answer.
Call the National Suicide Hotline (US): 1-800-273-8255
by Band Back Together | Nov 30, 2010 | Anorexia Nervosa, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Bulimia Nervosa, Eating Disorders, How To Help With Low Self-Esteem, Self Loathing, Self-Esteem, Shame |
Dear Shrink That I Don’t Have:
I’ve been spending a lot of time on the interwebs lately. I don’t know if that’s a good thing. I’ve been learning a lot about Body Dysmorphic Disorder and Anorexia. Mostly via YouTube videos. Do you know how many people suffer from those? Seemingly quite a few. But I don’t.
I mean, in seventh grade I began eating as little as possible to get by. I was already active, so I didn’t exercise as obsessively as some do. I kept this up until I moved in with my dad at 16. Even then it was only a little better.
My mom came to visit once and said I was filling out and looked nice. All I heard was ‘filling out.’
That was a setback.
I dated an asshole, the things he did to make me hate myself are too many for this letter. Another setback.
Then, slowly, I started being able to eat more than salad in front of others. I met my current boyfriend and my eating habit progressed further.
Except now I’m 135 lbs. Do you know what 135lbs is? It’s AVERAGE for a woman of 5’6”. For some reason my brain keeps changing ‘Average,’ in my head into ‘Fucking Fat Cow.’
People tell me I’m beautiful, but I can’t hear them, because I’m too busy seeing all the things I hate about myself. I’m 22, are 22 year old supposed to have cellulite there? I’m pretty sure that’s cellulite. Why is my skin shitty? Oh because I eat sugar. God, my face is too round, why is it so round? Remember when you used to have ABS there? You shouldn’t ever have a child… you’re going to balloon up and it’s going to be hideous. Plus, what child would want to be raised by someone like you? Why can’t you just STOP EATING ALREADY?
The thing is that I’m slip-slip sliding back to a place that I used to be. A place my boyfriend doesn’t even know exists. It’s a deep, dark, scary place.
But you see, dear shrink, I don’t have a problem. Because the doctor I went to for my many health problems between the ages of 12 and 16 told me I needed to make time to eat, but never saw that maybe my not eating was a deeper problem. (Seriously, woman… since when is a middle-schooler or even early high-schooler TOO BUSY TO EAT, ARE YOU DENSE?)
Both of the therapists I went to when I was 19, told me that I was of sound mind, despite the fact that my boyfriend talked me into going because he didn’t know how to deal with my depression. I didn’t have any problems…maybe I should try some breathing exercises. (Gee, thanks…because my much cheaper yoga class couldn’t have taught me that.)
Is there something about me that causes those in the medical field to disregard me as healthy in every way? I don’t feel healthy in every way. The fact that I feel like I have problem should indicate a problem even if no real problem exists. But no, they always send me on my way with dismissive looks and half-hearted advice.
So I don’t get “help,” I let my friends and family think I’m just crazy and I bury the worst of it. I deal with the accusations of being irrational. I deal with people getting mad at me because I’m ‘not happy with my body’ and I wait for the upswing. I watch videos on YouTube by people with Anorexia and with BDD and secretly I’m a little jealous. They’re DIAGNOSED, they have problems. They’re not just that whiny chick who isn’t smart enough to be happy with herself.
Because as far as the world knows, I have no problems…I’m just irrational.
So thanks, Shrink That I Don’t Have… I’m so glad that we’re on the same page here.
-C
P.S. Too bad I can’t afford to visit you either. I’m bummed that I’m missing out on our quality time together.
by Band Back Together | Nov 29, 2010 | Baby Loss, Coping With Baby Loss, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Livng Through A Miscarriage, Loss, Miscarriage, Sadness |
I lay curled up on the bed, looking up into my husbands’ face.
“It’s leaving me, baby. It’s leaving me…”
“I know”, he said.
He crawled in next to me, placed his hand on my belly and whispered, “Goodbye…”
And we cried.
I cried the cry that comes up from your tailbone. The cry that hurts the arches of your feet. The cry that doesn’t stop. And when my eyeballs felt like they would fall out of my face, I cried some more.
My mother was in town, thank goodness, but I could hear my son calling for me in the living room.
There is nothing more emotionally confusing than entertaining one child, while physically feeling the one you were growing leave you.
The next day, the doctor confirmed what we already knew.
“I’m sorry, your uterus is empty.”
It was a clean miscarriage, I would not need any kind of removal procedure.
I have never seen an ultrasound without a baby in it. It looked exactly how she said… empty.
“Not even two months along.”
“Not really a baby yet…”
“A collection of cells gone wrong…”
But it was a baby to us.
We made it on purpose. We made it out of hope.
My husband had already started whispering “I love you” to my belly.
My son was already patting my tummy and saying, “Baby in there.”
We made space for it in our lives.
And now that space is empty.
And I feel it. I physically feel it… missing.
My almost-baby.
We will heal.
We will try again.
But right now, I sit here…
just empty.
*****
I’ve just gotten my first period since the loss, and the sight of the blood has me reeling a little.
Thanks, Band – for being here.
by Band Back Together | Nov 29, 2010 | Abuse, Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Sadness, Stress, Trauma |
10 years ago today…He is 10 today.
10 years ago today– body and mind split completely open. Each minute brought more pain. Each moment split my mind further away from my body.
Despair it wouldn’t happen
relief it was happening
despair it wouldn’t end
relief it was ending,
despair it was over.
Despair it was just beginning…and down I went.
I remember the feel of my grandfather’s dresser under my hands as I felt the beginning. Black cardigan sweater. Blue shirt, elastic waist black Kmart pants. Two days later they would be bagged up and handed to me much like forensic evidence of what had gone down. What had been killed. Blood soaked underwear, puke-stained shirt. How did I ever get them off of me? Who took them off? How did anyone keep track of them? Why do I want them back? How am I going to ever get them clean?
My water broke. I was still good…still in love with my husband, still believing I was going to be okay. The last image of my marriage as I had known it was my dear one walking me across the street to the hospital emergency room. It was a normal birth. I was a healthy woman. I had a healthy baby. I loved my husband, I loved my baby.
Everything was going great. I was okay. I was birthing the son I loved more than anything I had known. The son who had come to me months earlier as I walked around a lake and said “I am ready, Mama.” First time we tried, he came to me. My dear Zig. My dear one. We tried, he and I. We tried to follow the rules, follow the body, follow the doctors. I followed with some idealistic faith in store-bought images of motherhood not meaning the end of me. But I forgot something on my birth plan.
I forgot to remember to not forget she wasn’t there. My mother, any mother, was not there. No mother to see me through it, to protect me. I forgot to watch my back. So I missed it altogether. Idiot. I should have KNOWN. I wasn’t looking, too distracted by pain, and the slipping away of parts of my mind. I wasn’t aware when the dark figure of the lifelong fear of my father took its place in my birth room.
The dark cloud. Standing behind the door, behind me – lurking. I never had a chance. My bad.
by Band Back Together | Nov 28, 2010 | Coping With Depression, Divorce, Emotional Abuse, How To Help With Low Self-Esteem, Major Depressive Disorder, Self-Esteem, Suicide |
I was never going to write on here. I was going to comment and offer support… but I was never going to write about how I felt.
“It’ll go away later,” I’d tell myself. “There worse things out there in life than feeling down every now and then.” “Everyone gets overwhelmed this time of year.”
But then I wonder if it’s worse than that.
I’ve always been relatively smart. My elementary school wanted me to advance to 2nd grade during Kindergarten. I was in Beta Club and always enjoyed school. Then, in the 3rd grade, my parents split up.I vaguely remember an incident where my dad hit my mom. They got back together when I was in 6th grade. But, things weren’t going well.
We moved after 6th grade. My best friend had moved away a year earlier and I had a hard time making new friends in my new town. I was smart… and smart kids aren’t the cool kids. So, I dumbed myself down.
Things weren’t good at home, either. My parents were not happy and it showed. My mom had a meeting with my teachers my sophomore year to discuss my poor grades and my English teacher told her it was because I was bored with school. It was too easy for me, and I had given up. I had driven myself to the point that I actually told my mother that I wanted to kill myself. To this day, I cannot guarantee that it was an empty threat.
After we moved, everything about me changed. I became my mother… she gets upset too easily. She’s depressed. As far as I know, she’s not gotten help for it. She’s always telling me to stop getting “into tizzies.”
I’ve been in some bad relationships where I was used and cheated on and emotionally abused. I was called a “butterface” (everything is okay about her, but her face), ugly, and fat. I think the worst thing people made fun of me for was my nose. It’s on the larger side and now every time I look at myself in the mirror all I see is that damn nose. How it makes me far from perfect.
I’m engaged now and I love my fiance with all of my heart and I know he loves me, too…but there’s this voice that comes out every now and then and eats away at me. It says that he deserves someone beautiful and he’s going to find her and leave me. I trust that he loves me and won’t leave me… but that voice in my head won’t shut up.
The best way to describe how I feel is when you go to a store like Best Buy. And you go to the back of the store where all the TVs are, and you put each TV on a different channel and close your eyes. All those voices, all the things running through your mind – and I can’t make it stop.
I can’t even make simple decisions like what I want to eat for dinner. If I go to make a speech or presentation in class, I get so shaky I can barely stand up, let alone speak. In some classes I can’t understand the material, so I cry, and when Tony asks me what I don’t understand so he can help, all I can muster is, “I just don’t understand.”
What is the most important thing I don’t understand? Why I went from a smart, outgoing kid to someone who wants to hide in their room with the lights off.
And, then there are days when I feel great and nothing is wrong and I just say to myself, “it went away like usual. See? Everything is better. Sometimes people just get sad.”
Until that voice in the back of my head finds those remotes again
by Band Back Together | Nov 27, 2010 | Bullying, Emotional Abuse, Feelings, Trust |
I have trust issues. I have issues with everything from trusting family to trusting people too easily to others using my words against me. To say that I have trouble finding friends is an understatement. I like to think I’ve finally learned my lesson.
I had a therapist, but it got to where every session was just a discussion of my week, not dealing with any true issues. Then, I made a new friend. And while I didn’t trust her immediately, over time she gained my trust, which is great, right? So, that was among the reasons I decided to part ways with my therapist. And everything was dandy for a while. I trust my friend with a lot of stuff. She’s a great listener, and I listen whenever she needs to sound off.
You know when something happens for someone else, and while it hurts like hell for you, you have to be happy for them? You are happy for them and you just tuck the hurt away, because they didn’t purposely hurt you – life happens, it moves on even when you don’t feel it. My friend moved a few hours away. Better job, happier days, and I’m glad for her, but I miss her. Yes, we have e-mail, Facebook, etc., but it’s not the same.
Another good friend who was an online pal is taking some personal time, so she’s not in contact.
It’s just difficult for me to trust people, and it makes me feel stuck. I’d like to think I can find new friends, but I don’t really know what I want.
How do you make friends? How do you figure out who’s worth your time and vice versa?
