by Band Back Together | Oct 7, 2010 | Anxiety Disorders, Coping With Depression, How To Cope With A Suicide, How To Help With Low Self-Esteem, Major Depressive Disorder, Sadness, Self Loathing, Self-Esteem, Suicide |
I’ve battled depression since I was a teen. I didn’t know what it was until late into my twenties. I just felt as if something was wrong with me or like I was a bad person.
I’ve been on medication for the last year. It was working. Working really well. My mood had greatly improved. I was no longer hearing a baby cry random times of the day. My anxiety had lessened. But the last couple of months it’s stopped working. I thought I was just in a funk. It happens from time to time. When I’m in a funk, I feel down and I lose all interest in housework, my kids, my husband, and my life in general. The one thing that keeps me going is school. I love going to school. I love doing the homework. It gives me purpose.
I started to feel down this summer.
I don’t have any friends. People say “you must have some friends,” but the truth is: I haven’t had a friend in over 10 years. When I met my husband it was wonderful. He was my friend and that was all I needed. Truthfully, I think I need more friends. I need someone to connect with. Someone to talk to besides him. I hate this feeling of being alone. I know my anxiety keeps me from talking to people and I need to work on it.
I was in therapy the first seven months that I was taking my medication. My counselor thought I was doing wonderfully. I wanted to be doing wonderfully. But the truth is, I was still having anxiety. Anxiety about leaving the house. About meeting new people. About about being a good enough parent or spouse.
I’m back to the dark place. I’m having thoughts of suicide again. Sometimes, I think sometimes everyone would be better off without me. I’ll think of how easy it would be to wreck my car while I’m driving to school so everyone would just think it was an accident.
I know I need to change my meds again. I need to call and set an appointment up. But I have anxiety about that, too. I don’t want to admit I am a failure. That once again I am not okay. And I worry, what if they don’t believe me? What if I am just overreacting?
What if I get in to see the doctor and I don’t have enough courage to say what I’ve said here?
(ed note: why don’t you bring this post in with you if you’re afraid you can’t talk about it? Any doctor will take you seriously.
Much, much love. Please remember that suicide is never, ever the answer. The Dark Place is a place that many of us have been before. There is hope.
If you are seriously considering suicide, this is the phone number for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline:
1-800-273-8255
Please know that you are loved. And you are never alone.)
by Band Back Together | Sep 14, 2010 | Coping With Domestic Abuse, Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, How To Help With Low Self-Esteem, Infidelity, Psychological Manipulation, Self Loathing, Self-Esteem, September 11, 2001 |
I dated a man that was prettier then I was, and he took it upon himself to tell me everyday for three years. He also enjoyed telling me nobody else wanted me, that I was lucky to find him (as if he was doing charity work for dating me), and that I would be alone in life forever if I did not stay by his side with my mouth shut for the rest of my life.
I felt smaller then the tiniest grain of dirt. My self-esteem and self-worth out the window. I was worthless without him. He signified my worth and my inner bank balance was $0.
When I cooked him homemade meals to prove I would make an excellent wife, he scraped half of my portion off telling me I was too fat. Who could ever imagine a size 0 being too fat? When he came home from Rome (where he is from) telling me on New Years they kiss their friends on the lips (I found a photo of him kissing a friend), I believed him (really Aimee, frenchkissing?). When he went to school in Milan for 6 months and I paid all of his bills in the U.S.A, and made all of his phone calls, and held down the fort, I trusted he was doing right by me. When I found proof of his lying, snake ways, he talked himself out of it and made me believe I was making it up in my head. I was the crazy one.
This is abuse. Abuse people never speak of, or think does “real damage”. Verbal abuse certainly does damage, and a lot of it.
We broke up on 9/10/01, just a day before the attacks on 9/11/01. I had just moved to Boston to try and regain some self strength, and he just started a new job at the World Trade Center. When the postman at my new job told me the news I freaked out. I frantically called him for hours, and I began to think the worst. He did call hours later telling me he was alright. He ran out as bodies fell from the tower windows, and jumped over body parts, office supplies, and the pavement soaked in jet fuel. He ran 8 miles as fast as he could without stopping because he thought he would lose his life if he hadn’t. Sadly so many made it out of the building that day, but stayed to “watch” and didn’t make it any further.
In our relief, we rekindled our relationship. I had high hopes this moment had changed him – that since God had let him live and gave him a second shot at it, he would find it within himself to be a better man.
I stood beside him a week later at Ground Zero holding his hand. We wept. The heavy smell of death encircled us and permeating all of our being. The city was in silence. All you could hear were machines cutting steel trying to find bodies. The hospital close by had a wall of “missing” posters filled with people that were now part of the largest burial ground in American history. He wondered why he survived and why they didn’t.
We broke up a year later when he told me about his girlfriend in Italy and the prostitutes he had slept with. I cut all ties and moved on with my life. A few years ago I got an odd e-mail from his new girlfriend asking me questions in broken English. He wrote me and said, and I quote, “If you ever cared about me and 9/11 you won’t tell her anything”.
Yes, he was trying to use 9/11 to shut me up. A day that he should have gained perspective and feel blessed, he was using to hide behind as a last attempt shield to not let his new girlfriend find out about his cheating, abusive ways. I was disgusted, and copy and pasted his e-mail and sent it right to her. I also told her every little bit I could about my past with him.
How could he go on to take this day as “his”? How can he accept emails today that say “thinking of you” or “this day must be so hard for you” and still go on unscathed. Why must I remember such an asshole who didn’t really deserve a second chance over so many good hearted people that died that day. Why did I accept his abuse for so long, and let him be all of who I am? And why must such a significant day always be about him?
I am pissed. He doesn’t deserve the day.
He once asked if I would light a candle in honor of him every year on this day for the rest of my life. I will do one better for you babe–I’ll light up a finger in the air, and you can see it all the way to Rome. Plus I will eat an entire plate of pasta in my size 14 jeans, and sit on the floor and eat up the love I have with my family. My family I created with a wonderful, loving, non-abusive man, that believes I am wonderful just the way I am.
I will always mourn that day, the people who lost their lives, and will never forget seeing and feeling the aftermath. I will always grieve for NYC, a place that will always have my heart and that will never be the same.
And for that…. I will never forget. For that, and only that, I will light a candle.
by Band Back Together | Sep 13, 2010 | Abuse, Child Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Emotional Boundaries, How To Help With Low Self-Esteem, Parentification, Passive/Aggressive Behavior, Psychological Manipulation, Psychological Manipulation, Self Loathing, Self-Esteem |
Preface: This got extremely long and emotional, but I’m not making it friends only because I’m sick to death of hiding and being embarrassed by this part of my past. There are some things in here that are very sensitive and some that are probably a little too blunt. Some parts of it will doubtlessly make me sound very self centered, but I really think all of it needs to be said.
I somehow ended up spending over 2 hours last night talking to a friend about my mother and my childhood. I so rarely have these conversations anymore, but when I do they come completely out of nowhere. She was so good though, just let me talk it out, agreed with me when I needed her to, but didn’t try to comfort me either. I’m at a place about all this, I think, wherein I don’t need to be comforted nearly as much as I need to be heard. And since she won’t listen in real life, here’s another of my open letters:
Mom,
It’s not right. Our roles have always been so ass-backwards, I’m sick of feeling like your mother instead of the other way around. I don’t think any of my friends, as many times as they’ve heard me say it, believed me when I told them your emotional growth was stunted at about age 13. They believe me after the last couple of weeks. You didn’t get what you wanted, sometimes that happens when you treat people like shit for no reason. I wanted you to come out here, I wanted SO badly for you to come out here, but not at the risk of your health or sanity.
I found a way to save $1300 and not have you and C (my brother) have to sit in a hot, miserable U-Haul truck for 4 days while still getting my stuff out here. A way that I talked to you about, and you agreed with at least twice, before I made the arrangements. How, exactly, is that “unilaterally changing the plan without discussing it with anyone”?
And as far as not making this move on my own, no I absolutely did not. Paul drove with me, your sister (even after all the bad blood between the two of you) let me live with her for almost 6 months until the house opened up. Yes I had help, but I haven’t asked you for a damn thing since I moved out here, and you have done nothing but go around quietly undoing everything that I have tried to do to get my stuff out here. You’ve taken things that weren’t yours, you’ve unpacked and gone through the boxes that I left there.
Every suggestion that I’ve made, everything that I’ve tried has been unacceptable, but you’ve yet to come up with a workable solution. You’re holding my stuff hostage, but I will not be manipulated. I meant every word when I told you that for all I cared anymore you could just call Goodwill to come pick it up. It’s not worth it to me. It’s not worth the aggravation, not worth fighting with you over stuff I’ve lived without for a year. I’ve had so many people tell me recently that I’m one of the most independent, self-sufficient people they know.
I suppose I should thank you for making me fend for myself (and for you, and my siblings) for so many years. It kills me, though, that you seem to be the only one who doesn’t see that I really am trying (and succeeding a vast majority of the time) to stand up on my own two feet.
I told B (my college roommate) last night that it just makes me sad that the one person that I’m trying so hard to be enough for is the one person who I will never manage to please. She said that you were the one person who I shouldn’t have to do anything to be enough for, and she’s right.
I’m sick of trying to earn your love. Of working myself half to death and never making you happy. Love is supposed to be unconditional, especially maternal love. I am not a bad person, I was NOT a bad child, I did and said some stupid things sometimes, sure, but so have you.
I’ve been told this by so many people that I’ve actually started to believe it and now I’m going to tell you:
I deserved better from you.
I deserved to be put first sometimes. I deserved to be protected from the man you chose to marry. I deserved to be allowed to be a child without having to carry the weight and the fear of your unhappiness. I should not have had to be a co-parent to my younger siblings. I should not have had to protect you from him. I should not have had to hear you make excuses for him or tell that police officer what a hoodlum I was ( I had just been named student of the month a couple of days beforehand!). Do you know how hard it was to sit in that kitchen with the cop who was taking my statement and taking pictures of the bruises and hear you in the other room actually taking his side?
It’s not fair to expect me to have all the responsibility and none of the decision making power. It’s not right to, in one breath, tell me to act like an adult and in the very next say “I’m putting my foot down and this is what you are going to do.”
You don’t get to say that anymore. You just don’t. I’m 23 years old, I haven’t lived in your house for nearly a year, I pay all my own bills, and deal with the consequences of my own decisions. You don’t have to like those decisions, but if you would like to remain a part of my life you do have to accept them.
I had no option but to be treated this way as a child, but as a woman if I continue to allow you to do so – now it will be as much my fault as it is yours. I am making the conscious decision to no longer be a victim. I want to have a relationship with you, but I will not be manipulated and guilt-tripped and screamed at for no reason. I don’t need it, I don’t deserve it, and I will not tolerate it. I will speak to you when you can do so like a civilized adult, but I refuse to expose myself to you when you cannot do so.
I hope someday you’ll understand that this is not about not loving you, it’s about finally beginning to love me. It’s about realizing that I’m worth standing up for and understanding that I’m the only person I can count on to do so.
I truly hope that we can find a way to move past these wounds and have our relationship change without ending, but I’m afraid they may take a very long time to heal. I think I am going to seek counseling and I don’t think it would hurt you to get some, either.
Love,
Kacey
