by Band Back Together | Apr 18, 2016 | Alcohol Addiction, Coping With Depression, Depression |
Mental Illnesses are prevalent in our world. They greatly affect not only the individual involved, but the people around them. In the month of April, we focus our spotlight on Mental Health, in order to heal together and break down stigmas.
We want your stories. How has your own, or someone else’s mental illness affected your life? How are you rising above stigmas?
Please share your stories with us during the month of April.
I lost my adult son to depression and alcohol and feel very guilty that I didn’t see his struggle. The days before his death I could have caught him, helped him, saved him. One email, one text. 2 years on, every day I wake and think of him and think of how I failed him. I lost not only my son but my self. When I got the call I fell to my knees and I have never really got up again. My wife left me because she did not want to help me grieve, and I cannot blame her. Will I recover? One day, one day far away I hope I will.
The purpose of this note is however not about me. I’m just like any of a million other parents this year, and next year, and the year after. Its about the other survivors like you. You need to know that you should support every charity, every effort, to work out why this this life toll, that outweighs road deaths by 2-1, happens in this modern day.
You should look at that drink in your hand, or that of your friend, who drinks too much. My son died of extreme alcohol withdrawal and I would wish that on no-one. At the last he must have been terrified. You might be one step away from someone who needs help. Help them.
Thank you for reading and listening.
by Band Back Together | Apr 15, 2016 | Anger, Date/Acquaintance Rape |
In the United States, every 107 seconds, someone is sexually assaulted. Four of every five sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the victim. 68% of all sexual assaults go unreported to the proper authorities.
Why? Why do so many sexual assaults go unreported?
Shame. Self blame. Embarrassment. Fear that no one would believe their story. Fear that they may have caused it. Not wanting to be the victim. Wanting to move past the sexual assault. There are a multitude of reasons why sexual assaults go unreported.
Just as there are a number of types of rape (gang rape, date/acquaintance rape, intimate partner rape, statutory rape, sexual assault), there are a multitude of responses to sexual assault. Each of which is completely normal.
This April, The Band Back Together Project is shining a light into the darkness of sexual assault. Please share your story of sexual assault so that we can Light the Darkness.
All are welcome.
I was raped about three and a half years ago. There are still times I think about it, but it doesn’t generally run my life.
Today was a hard day for me, though. I wrote my rapist a letter (obviously not one that he’ll ever see) and realized some things about myself in it, and in doing so, I became very emotionally overwhelmed.
My current boyfriend, who knows about what happened to me, got mad at me for being so upset tonight, even after I told him why I was. I don’t remember his exact words, but he said something along the lines of, “It’s been three years already!” implying that I should already be over it.
Should I be?
Am I just pointlessly obsessing over something that is obviously never going to change?
If so, how do I make it stop?
I don’t like it either, and I’m not choosing to have the memories I have.
by Band Back Together | Apr 12, 2016 | Abuse, Anger, Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Divorce, Parenting, Special Needs Parenting |
Today I contemplate everything I thought I knew.
- I have three amazing kids
- My husband is my best friend
- He will always have my back
- When I’m struggling he will be the rock I can depend on
It’s funny how circumstances in life change and put things in perspective. It was just 7 short years ago that I went through a truly nasty divorce from a truly abusive person. Something that seemed impossible to overcome. But I did and I came out stronger then ever. Through that I had my rock, my best friend and now my husband. But, I guess happiness is all relative to the situations at hand.
I have three children. Two from my first marriage and one from my second. They are all great kids. Each has their strengths and, like every other human, they have their weaknesses. My daughter she is incredibly smart and athletic but she is extremely over dramatic and some what self centered. My youngest son is the sweetest thing you will every meet and hilariously funny but we have had struggles with some medical problems with him. Recently we found out he isn’t being defiant about using the potty but is instead struggling with an issues that doesn’t allow him to have control over it. Imagine how guilty I felt after yelling for a year about the accidents. Then, there’s my middle son, part of the reason I’m really here. He so incredibly affectionate, he craves attention and seeks approval. But, we just found out he has ADHD. Which now makes the issues in school, the tempter tantrums, the lack of impulse control all make sense. Again, imagine my guilt when I realized he’s not trying to drive Mommy crazy today, he just can’t control some of these things.
So, I need to change. I have to learn to be the support system he needs to deal with the issues in front of him and those he will face in the future. I need to understand he may not do things or react to things the same way his siblings do. I need to accept that it is OK to handle things differently with each child because people are different and we all need different things in life. All of this I can accept. I can adjust and move forward with my children’s best interests in mind. But, what about everyone else.
My mother, who I personally think struggles with her own un-diagnosed disorder. It’s like her and my son fuel each others anger. Other parents who may not understand that he isn’t a “bad” kid. Other kids who won’t understand why he reacts to things the way he does. But, what about my husband, the rock that is supposed to be there for me. What do I do when he doesn’t get it. I think that’s the hardest part.
I know what I need to do and it my choice to take steps to do it. I choose to put my children first and do everything in my power to help them. But, I can’t make someone else’s choice for them. Today I feel like I have a new choice, my husband or my child. But, that is no choice. My husband is a grown man who should have the capacity to act like an adult and my child is, well, a child who needs his mom.
My son had a bad day yesterday. He was as his grandparents to eat dinner with them and was lashing out and very argumentative. My husband went to get him and bring him home. As soon as they walked in my husband was yelling. I don’t know what happened but I couldn’t have asked if I wanted to over the yelling. So I raised my voice and yell that’s enough. Next thing I know dinner is thrown across the floor and my husband storms out of the house and slams the door. I call him and the only response I get is don’t call me. I send him a message about how we need to handle things differently and yelling is not the answer because it only make him more angry and agitated. I explain ADHD is a neurological disorder not just a kid who doesn’t feel like listening today. And, the reply back is “if this behavior is going to be tolerated I can’t be with you I need a DIVORCE because I can’t do this anymore. I wont tolerate disrespect from you or him.” My first thought, who is this person??? My second thought, there’s the fucking door we don’t need you.
This is my best friend, my rock, my support system and here I stand feeling abandoned. He didn’t come home last night. And I feel like I should care, but I don’t. I am angry and hurt and disappointed. I have a child that needs me. I don’t have time to waste on an adult who wants to act like a child.
I think when is comes to wives he doesn’t have it so bad. I will be honest I am not a great cook. I barely cook at all and I’m not a huge fan of house work. But, I go to work every day. Up until recently, I was supporting the family financially. I don’t nag him about money. I don’t really fight with him about anything. I personally think we have a good sex life. Things have been good, for me at least. And then this. The line that keeps playing in my head, I won’t tolerate your disrespect. Me? The wife who supported you through job after job. The one who stood by your side through all the struggles the past 2 years without arguing or nagging or resenting you. Disrespect? For standing up for my child? This is where we throw out divorce? What response is he expecting from that? Am I supposed to be a Stepford Wife. A “a servile, compliant, submissive, spineless wife who happily does her husband’s bidding and serves his every whim dutifully.” If that’s the expectation then he lives in a fantasy world.
Everything I have been through in life has made me stronger. Maybe it was preparing me for this. For the challenge I was going to have to face alone without the support of those who I thought would always be there for me.
All I know is right now I need to put on my cape and play Supermom as best I can. Will I fail? Most definitely. I’m human, but I need to be the adult and try my best everyday to do everything in my power to give my children everything they need. Everyone else can either get on board or get out of my way.
by Band Back Together | Apr 11, 2016 | Loneliness, Self Loathing, Self-Esteem, Teen Self-Loathing |
Hello,
I am an 18 year old girl with no passions whatsoever. You can now already see how bland I am. No one would probably read what I have to say here, but I’ve been living with this for far too long. I can’t let it out to anyone. #1 Fault in me: I push people away once they get too close. It’s a lonely life I have here. It’s not like I can change. It’s funny how a bunch of strangers can read my deepest thoughts, but not my friends.
I basically hate every living inch of myself. Breakdowns are a norm. Being in boarding school doesn’t help much. I’m stuck in these four walls. Having nothing but these four walls staring down at me just rips me apart.
I will be writing this in sequels, so yeah..
by Band Back Together | Apr 8, 2016 | Alcohol Addiction, Codpendence, Self Loathing, Shame, Suicide |
I’m not sure I’ve ever written honestly about my mother’s drinking. No, perhaps what I’m trying to say is that I’ve never written neutrally about my mother’s drinking. No, that’s not right either.
I hate my mother.
There, that’s it.
My mother was my world. And in that world was wine. Bottles and bottles and goddamn bottles of wine. Wine bottles she would throw in the garbage so it didn’t seem like there were too many in the recycling outside. So the neighbors couldn’t see.
But I fished them out of the garbage and threw them in the recycling anyway.
Fuck you, mom. Feel your shame. So I don’t have to feel it for you.
My mother and I were inextricably linked through our personalities, the traits she said I possessed that she had too. Look how similar we are, right? It was so easy to become the same person. We were tightly bound into a cocoon that others couldn’t enter. Might as well have been made of fucking steel, that cocoon. And someone was covering my mouth in there, so I couldn’t scream.
I guess that someone was my mother? Or was it myself, my own hand?
All alcoholic relationships are codependent relationships, right? Or so I’ve been told. All I knew was that when she was up, I was up. And when she was down, I was disgusted with myself. Absolutely disgusted.
I hated myself more than I hated my mother. Or, rather, it was easier to hate myself than hate my mother.
So I did. It was all too fucking easy, hating myself. It’s so fucking easy that I still do.
Writing about this requires that I pull emotions from my chest that have lain dormant for years. After a while, it all starts to go a little flat, you know? The drinking thing gets old. You get used to it. You starve those emotions in your chest for air until they suffocate, but somehow they never actually die. They mutate into fucking zombies. And then some person, perhaps some random fucking person who doesn’t know anything about you, pokes at them and you think oh shit, there they are. Why the fuck do I need those.
That’s your mother, the roaring tiger inside you that you forgot even existed. The tiger clawing at your fucking insides, puncturing holes in your intestines. So you bleed out, become your own zombie.
You know the line of that poem, “I carry your heart (I’Il carry it in my heart)”?
I carry my alcoholic mother in my heart. Always.
And that alcoholic mother hates me. I’m a piece of shit. I’m critical. I’m too much like my father. Why can’t I be understanding, like my brother. I write these words and no emotions come out because I’ve heard these phrases too many times. How could I let myself feel sad every time I heard them? I would have died.
I would have killed myself.
But instead of killing myself, I suffocated my emotions so I was a shell empty of water and star stuff and all the other shit they say makes up your body.
I like to pretend I’m not angry about this.
But I am.
I hate you, mom.
You are not Mom. You are mom.
There, fuck you, you don’t even deserve a capital letter.
I can’t write honestly about this. I can’t remove the layer of disgusting slime that clings to my skin that I believe makes others hate me. Makes me an abhorrent person that nobody loves.
But the thing is, I know you do love me. mom.
And that’s the fucking awful part. I never knew which monster I was facing.
The emotional monster that dragged me kicking and screaming into its lair, into its cocoon of twin selves or the alcoholic monster that aimed their own kicking and screaming at me. I imagine my young self like a little hermit crab without its shell, this soft defenseless thing that people didn’t care about because it wasn’t a real pet anyway.
But goddamit, I was a fucking fighter. Every night I battled with my fucking mother. I wanted her to feel her shame the way I felt it for her. This should not be my job. I felt emotions for both of us so she didn’t have to feel them, didn’t have to face what she was doing. And I was sick and fucking tired of it. So, so tired.
I’m still so tired, and I don’t even live with the woman.
Yes, you’re not even mom. Or mother. You’re woman.
Not Woman.
I hate you.
There, in that sentence you don’t even deserve a name.
Only a statement that tears at your heart the way you tore at mine every.single.fucking.night.
I think you can handle it, right? Me telling you that I hate you.
Because it’s true.
Toughen the fuck up and move on.
I know I did.
by Band Back Together | Apr 7, 2016 | Bullying, Happiness, Munchausen Syndrome, Parenting, Trust |
My mother would often threaten me that she was going to get really sick and die if I didn’t obey her like a good child does. She would often say how horrible of a kid I was, and how my attitude was going to destroy my life in the future.
In front of people she would say how smart and creative I was, but how I would get on her wits and make her loose control.
Funny, how she had strength one day to beat me up and the next she was in bed complaining of how sick she was from who knows what. I spent most of my childhood ignoring her complaints about her health, her overly-frequent visits to doctors and how she would loudly and dramatically announce she had an annual breast exam the next day. She also spent a lot of time saying how unloving I was by not caring for her and giving her the attention and care she needed.
I refused to let her control me. I refused so hard, she made sure to cut out all my other outside-relationships and to leave me hopeless each time I reconstructed my life back together. How she would talk to me about my friends when I was little, claiming they stole things from me or where jealous of me. And how in the blink of an eye, I had no friends anymore. I still have problems trusting friends.
Finally for once in my life, I feel like I have control. Now that I moved a whole sea away from her and that I have cut phone calls, and only Skype every few months for an hour or so. And even still, I can’t stand her.
This last year has been so constructive to my life, I have done a complete twist in myself and feel so much different. I am happy, I have a stable life, and no one is there sabotaging it. She doesn’t have enough resources to try to.
I can’t imagine inviting her to stay over. Why would I want that? She brings it up on every call. I really wouldn’t want her here. I know her, she won’t behave herself.
