When you say things like this, I want you to remember a face.
This is my daughter. In this picture, she’s playing soccer. With a Special Olympics team.
You see, she was born with a metabolic disorder that caused brain damage when she was only a week old. She may never read over a third grade level. She still has a speech impairment despite 12 years of therapy. She’s socially inept at times.
Yeah, she’s what some people would call “a retard.”
Only that word is complete and utter bullshit.
Hearing that word cuts both her and me worse than any knife could. There is absolutely no reason to use that word. EVER. Don’t give me the bullshit that it’s a medical term. If you do, I’m liable to scream “shut the fuck up” in your face. Well, maybe not, but I will be screaming it in my head.
If you’re going to use the word retard, you might as well use words like nig****, fag****, dyke, cunt… Oh, but you won’t use those words. Those are bad words.
But retard? Well, that’s not so bad. After all, the only people that’s only insulting the mentally impaired. And they don’t know what is going on, do they?
I have news for you though. They do know what’s going on. Mentally impaired people have feelings, hopes, and dreams just like the rest of us. If you take a few minutes and actually get to know someone who is mentally impaired, you’ll discover that.
This isn’t about being politically correct. It’s about showing some RESPECT.
Depression often lies to us, tricking us into going off our much-needed medications.
This is her story:
I wanted to see how I could be without the Prozac. So did my therapist. I had been on it for about 7 years – the same 20 mg dosage the whole time. My therapist openly disapproved of the medication. So I self-weaned off. I felt great for the first few weeks. Then the depression set in. It was mild at first. Just moodiness and more yelling. Then it would lift and life would be great. The cycles went like that for a while. Then there was The Week From Hell.
I ignored my husband completely. I did the bare-bones necessities to get through the day. I did not want to see friends or family. I didn’t want to do anything. I cried all the time, about nothing. I was never like this before. I wanted to eat salmon (which I am severally allergic to) so my throat would close and I would die. Nothing brought me joy. Nothing.
I didn’t talk about this with anyone. When I mentioned suicide to my therapist, he didn’t even blink or comment. This threw me into a greater depression. You know you are doomed when even your therapist doesn’t care.
My husband cried and said he wanted me to talk to him. I told him it didn’t help to talk. I needed medication. So I made an appointment with a psychiatrist (my previous Prozac came from my OB/GYN as medication to handle PMS). It took weeks to get in.
Even though I had been battling depression for years, this was the first time I ever saw a psychiatrist. She was very nice and knowledgeable. She went through all the background questions. When she asked about family history, I laughed and asked how much time we had. She nodded in understanding.
Her diagnosis was that I had mild depression that could go into a severe depressive state if I didn’t medicate myself. She said that since the Prozac did work for me without any side effects that she was putting me back on it, going from 10 mg up to 30 mg gradually.
Today I am at the 20 mg dosage. I feel pretty good. However, my darkest swings are 1-2 weeks before my period, which is still a while away. I am worried that the Prozac won’t be enough anymore. The psychiatrist said there are other similar medications I could take if Prozac didn’t do the job.
I am also worried that I am putting my trust too much into a pill. Why can’t I just be happy? I look at the people around me who smile and laugh and have it all, and want to be like them. But I am just not a happy person. Never have been, and probably never will be.
So I say, Hello Prozac my old friend…. I’ve come to take you again.
The first night after my breast cancer chemo treatment was awful. Nugget sobbed hysterically in my arms, giving way to heavy sighs between her defeated attempts for true comfort until she finally fell asleep. I cried, and cried, and cried. Between the tears i apologized over and over to my sweet baby girl for being sick.
Last night was thankfully less painful. She fell asleep with my mother and only had to be quietly lulled back down once. Thank god for small miracles.
As for me, I felt pretty nauseated yesterday and today, and the meds to combat that make me tired. Today, I really started to feel exhausted. We went out for some quick errands this morning, but I’ve since spent the remainder of the day in bed.
Several months ago I had to lay to rest -and mourn- the death of a dream that I didn’t even know I had. Or would ever have. Every now and then, however, it shimmers into my periphery, and I have to once more let it go.
I don’t know why it came into mind this morning. But it did, just for a moment, as My True Love and I were stumbling around in quasi-waking states getting ready for work. I turned and saw him brushing his teeth, and my gut clenched for a split second.
I will never have a biological child with My True Love.
We will never have a child that is born from us, together, fully ours.
My grief doesn’t even make logical sense, really.
I don’t want another pregnancy. I don’t want to deal with a newborn again. There are ways in which I fear it, because of the PPD that shadowed those three long years. I also don’t want a vertical c-section scar, as shallow a reason as this is, but that is what I would get: I was told that if I had another pregnancy, they wouldn’t want to use the same bikini-cut entry point because three abdominal surgeries have built up too much scar tissue there. And with my medical history, we can’t risk labor.
MTL had a vasectomy years ago. Combined with my (much-loved and effective) Mirena IUD, the chances of getting pregnant are so infinitesimal that if it happened, we’d know it was God saying Thou SHALT have a child. So there. And I imagine that it would cause some serious initial issues, since (1) getting pregnant with an IUD is generally a Bad Idea and (2) MTL would be seriously wondering about paternity.
All that aside: we don’t want more children. We have five, combined. We have enough.
Apparently there’s a part of me that doesn’t care. There’s a part of me that hates the fact that we will never have a child that is our love made flesh. There’s a part of me that, as much as I love my boys, as much as I am growing to love his children, yearns for that biological connection to him and is angry that we will never have it. There’s a part of me that resents that other people have that connection to him and to me instead.
My sister just had a child. Both MTL and I have been all aflutter about how adorable he is and getting mushy about babies in general. We both have a soft spot for them. We miss the smell and feel of our babies, all the things about them that go to that mushy center.
(We don’t miss the poop or the crying or the sleepless nights, though. We’re not that crazy.)
And that part of me, the part that doesn’t care about all that, the part that isn’t based on logic, is insanely jealous. Not only that she has a baby, but that she has a baby with the man she loves.
(I know faith is a personal issue. This post is about the effect abuse had on my faith journey. I am not trying to convert or offend anyone, only to tell another part of my journey.)
As a young child who suffered physical and sexual abuse at the hands of my step-father I was looking for a way out.
By the time I was 8 or 9 years old, I began walking to a little country church about 3/4 a mile from our home. I began, in all honesty, out of curiosity and as a way to be out of my house. In church I found a Father who didn’t abuse me. I found a Father who loved me. I found a Father who saw each tear I cried, without being the one who caused them.
My relationship with God became a life-line, a source of hope where there had seemed to be very little reason to hope. I knew that even though I was weak and small, God was big and mighty. After I had been going for a month or so, my little sister wanted to come along. My mind smiles at the memory of those walks. My sister and I, hand in hand, walking to church in our “best dress” and “fancy shoes”. (In reality, our clothes and shoes weren’t fancy at all, but they were to us).
My relationship with God saw me through that awful childhood and continued into my adulthood. When I was an adult I went to counseling to deal with the pain and shame of my past. During the beginning stages of therapy, I remember telling my therapist that it felt like there was a tornado in my head. So many thoughts, feelings, and issues to discuss and I had no idea which to deal with first. I chose one issue at a time and began working our way through them. Somewhere in the midst of dealing with all of these issues I began thinking “Where was God? How could a loving God allow these terrible things to happen to a child? Why didn’t He stop him? Why didn’t He protect me?”
It was a very painful time. Now, on top of everything else I had to work through, I was angry at God. I told my therapist that I was angry at God and that I didn’t know how to work through that. We talked a lot about it. One day she asked me if I had told God how I felt. I said no. How could I tell God I was angry? Me, a mere human telling God I was angry at Him? She said “He is a big God. He can take it. Tell Him how you feel.”
Simple words – big effect.
I did tell God how I felt. I yelled. I screamed. I asked Him “How could you?” I told Him every angry, rotten thought I had about His role in my childhood.
It took some time. God and I had that conversation more than once, many times. Eventually, I got all the anger out of my heart and mind and in it’s place was truth.
The truth is – I would have never made it through my childhood without God. He certainly did save me. Many, many times. Looking back at the drunken rages when my step-father would be swinging a gun around. The drunken high-speed car rides with him. The many beatings where so many things could have happened to turn a severe beating into a death.
It took quite a while for me to work through this and come to my own understanding of why awful things happened even though I have a loving God. My step-father had free will. We all do. He could choose to do evil and he did. But for God to stop him, He would have had to take away my step-father’s free will and MAKE him do what God wanted him to do. God will not take away our free will. If He did, we would all be robots doing exactly what God wants us to do. God does not want robots. He wants us to love Him and do what is right because we choose to love Him. Could God force us to love Him? If God took away free will and “made” all of us love Him and make the choices He would like us to make, that isn’t us loving Him. It is doing what we are told to do because we have no choice. God wants us to CHOOSE to love Him, or it isn’t really love. It’s obedience.
So, where do I believe God was when awful things were happening to me? I believe He saw it all. I believe He wept, just as we weep when our children suffer. Then He helped me find a way to Him through our little country church. He helped me to feel His love and comfort and gave me the courage and strength that got me through that horrible nightmare.
Thank you God, for being “a big enough God to take it” when I raged at you.
Thank you for helping me find a path to You when I was a scared little girl.
Thank you for protecting my mind and heart enough that I knew abuse is horrific and didn’t repeat the cycle with my own kids.
Thank you for leading me to a wonderful husband who stuck with me through some very difficult times and showed me human men are capable of loving without hurting.
Thank you for leading me to a counselor who “clicked” with me and became a guide through the misery.
And, thank you for helping me become the woman I am today.
I really don’t know where to begin, so I’ll start with a question.
When does it stop being a funk and become depression?
This year has been a doozy. My personal maelstrom hasn’t been nearly as bad as so many of you here, but it’s rocked my little world to the core. Up until recently my view on life has been pretty optimistic, but I can feel bitterness and cynicism in everything I say and do now. My job has put me through the ringer, but I don’t see any other options at the moment. I’ve been losing the struggle to be positive when it comes to body image. I feel like shit. I’ve had no energy or motivation. I’ve had no desire to be social and whereas I’ve always been fairly outgoing, I find a new and disturbing anxiety at the thought of approaching anyone new. And, to top it all off, the loss of my grandfather last month knocked whatever little wind I had left in my sails fluttering to the depths of the cold, dark sea.
I keep telling myself that I can’t be depressed. That I’m just being a baby. I’m too strong and too independent for that. That things will get better on their own… Yet, here I sit, the beginnings of tears burning the backs of my eyes and that now familiar lump rising in my throat. I don’t think it’s going to go away. I’m terrified it won’t. I feel helpless and powerless and I haven’t the slightest idea where to start, what to do.
