by Band Back Together | Aug 1, 2017 | Addiction Recovery, Anxiety, Anxiety Disorders, Coping With Anxiety Disorders, Coping With Depression, Generalized Anxiety Disorder Resources, How To Help A Loved One Who Self-Injures, Major Depressive Disorder, Self Injury, Self-Destructive Behavior, Shame, Stress, Uncategorized |
Clench my teeth
brief sensation of pain
Wait for it to come
it takes a second
Bringing with it relief
here it comes
Pain flows out
trickling down my arm
In little red rivulets
so warm and wet
I have no problems
That cheery little poem is mine. Oh, it’s from many years ago. Back when I was still living with my parents, in fact. That last line? Is total crap. Yes, the blood brought relief of some feelings, but the guilt and anxiety that was left every time I looked at the scars….yeah, sometimes even THAT was enough of a trigger.
I’ve been pretty up-front about dealing with Postpartum Depression, Generalized Anxiety Disorder and major depressive disorder.
But, to add to the list of things that I don’t talk about, I’m also a cutter.
I probably ought to say “was”…..because I haven’t actually cut myself in years. But you know how some people say that they will always be a recovering alcoholic, and never recovered. It’s like that.
The urge to give in is there. It’s not my first reaction to bad news, anymore, but when I’m at my lowest, or most anxious, I still want to.
There are certain movies that I couldn’t watch all the way through for a long time, like Thirteen or Girl, Interrupted because they make me want to cut myself.
This is a big step for me. Other than my parents, one or two friends from way back then, and my husband and now half-the-freaking-internet, no one knows this. Come to think of it, I don’t know if I bother to tell my therapists. Yes, I know. I’m a horrible patient.
After I decided to stop, which wasn’t until I was pregnant with my first, AND it was totally selfish at first; too many doctor’s exams that required getting naked. I kept waiting to outgrow the feelings. You know, the way I outgrew angsty poetry, and emo-ish music? But I’m still waiting.
Still fighting.
Still coping.
Kinda.
by Band Back Together | Sep 30, 2016 | Anger, Anxiety, Compassion, Denial, Depression, Emotional Regulation, Faith, Family, Fear, Feelings, Grief, Guilt, Help For Grief And Grieving, How To Cope With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Self Loathing, Shame |
This is her story:
I’ve been suffering, silently, for going on eight months…I guess. And, I’ve needed and wanted to write about it. But, I’ve been afraid. Mostly, I’ve been afraid of the emotions that come flooding back to me when I think, talk, or picture the experiences that led up to this day.
Actually, I don’t know when it started. But, I finally said something last week to Mr. B and my Momma.
This suffering stems from an accident, on July 19, that involved my 7-year-old son.
Bubs was in a golf cart accident with his grandfather. The 800-pound cart, fell on a 45-pound baby and drug him on concrete for quite a distance. Bubs was air-cared to the local Children’s Hospital. And I, well I was 39 weeks pregnant. And, I fell when I saw him. Literally.
I fell because my son, my first born, and my best friend was trapped. Under a machine. He was covered in blood from “road rash” and he was broken. everywhere. He suffered with a dislocated hip, broken femur, butterfly fractured femur, crush-fracture of his foot, dislocated toes, puncture wounds and road rash all over his body and a removed quadriceps muscle. When I stood from falling, there he was, screaming for help and frantically searching for his mommy. And my heart couldn’t take it. It was broken.
In that instant, I was changed. Forever. I can’t forget the pain of driving to the scene. The soul crushing fear that flooded through my body the way I imagine Hurricane Katrina taking over New Orleans – engulfing your body with no hope or relief in sight. The fear and pain took me to a place that had not existed prior to this accident. And now I can’t seem to find my way out of it.
I still remember the scene like it was a dream. There were people rushing all around me, ambulances screaming to the scene, a helicopter circling overhead, paramedics asking questions…about him…and about me, paramedics taking blood pressure, police officers begging me to go to the hospital. I was swarmed but still felt invisible. All I wanted to do was go back in time. Just 20 minutes earlier. To make this moment disappear. All I could think about was this “never happening” and how it “couldn’t be happening” to us.
I am ashamed to admit…but, I didn’t care about the baby inside of me in that moment. Because the boy who had my heart first was seriously hurt. More serious than I even knew or wanted to know in that moment. More serious than anyone was willing to “tell the pregnant mom.” It was hard for me to consider the unborn child. I “knew” right where she was and I “knew” she was okay. All I knew was I heard words like “internal bleeding”, “head trauma,” “internal damage” and “spinal cord injuries” being thrown around…regarding my baby. MY baby. It was as if I was having an out-of-body experience.
I still remember the paramedic who took me to the hospital. His attempts at consoling me, while my son flew overhead, were heroic. He was kind and gentle and was a true professional. There are no words that can describe these moments. No words created by man that can put your thoughts and fears on paper to describe the instant you think you may lose your child. It’s a pain like I’ve never known. A pain that was sharp and reckless and it had no concern for me or the perfect family I had built.
And now, it has been replaced with fear.
As I sat in the hospital waiting room, waiting for his six hour surgery to be complete, and cried. I cried for my unborn baby, who would be born into a world interrupted. I cried for me. Because I was afraid and exhausted and broken-hearted. But mostly, I cried for my baby boy. Because I didn’t know what the future held anymore. 10 hours prior, I knew. And now my world was crashing in around me. I couldn’t breath.
See, Bubs and I started on this journey alone. Mr. B was our answered prayer that came four years later. For four years it was just us…and nothing will ever match those four years for our small family. Nothing will ever match the bond we built. He is my best friend. My confidant. My companion.
I am suffering silently with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I am struggling every.single.day with constant fear and irrational thoughts. I become overwhelmed with illusions, memories and possibilities…which all hold me back from living. These fears consume everything I do. Everything I let my family do. And, they consume every thought I have. I catch myself living in a world of “what-ifs” rather than just living and loving life. (Loving the life that God so graciously spared last summer.)
And, even with Bubs upstairs sleeping in his bed. Even if we made it through 12 weeks in a wheel chair and two weeks in a walker and one week of God-fearin’, earth rattling pain and torture…I still can’t shake the memory.
I still live in fear of losing someone. And not just Bubs now… Mr. B, Bubette, my mom, dad, step-dad, cousins, aunts…it is growing. And, for that reason, I have decided to talk to someone who knows more about this than I do. A professional….which makes me feel like a nut job.
Because prior to July 19, I lived in a beautiful world where horrible things happen “to other people.” and now…well, I can’t help but think that those horrible things “could happen to me.”
…because they did.
And I can’t seem to find my old self again.
by Band Back Together | Sep 22, 2016 | Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents, Child Abuse, Childhood Fears, Emotional Boundaries, Fear, Mental Illness Stigma, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Passive/Aggressive Behavior, Psychological Manipulation, Shame, Stress, Trauma |
Once upon a time, I had a narcissism blog I never published. Mostly because it had a lame name and most of the posts were responses I had written on a message board where I was once a member. When the service was shutting down, I wanted to keep some of the things I had written, so I put them in the draft heap. There they sat.
See, to me blogging isn’t just a medium to get ‘my story’ out. While there’s a certain catharsis to that, it’s more the conversation and feedback I get from you guys, the readers, that I treasure most. There’s nothing more validating and healing than that. It’s where we learn that we’re not alone and the tricks our Narcissists used to make us believe they were so special and unique fall apart. We all have stories to tell, and countless nights I’d stay up way too late reading, commenting, and nodding my head in agreement.
There’s so much I don’t have to explain to you. You already get it.
Years ago, all I knew was that my parents weren’t normal. My mother was a totalitarian dictator who thought that somehow my life belonged to her. When she tried to ‘punish’ me for not adhering to her life plan, my husband stepped in and told her off. He gave me a choice…either it was my family or my marriage. In retrospect I don’t blame him. My mother is an absolute tyrant, enabled by my narcissistic father who fears her. But honestly, at the time I was scared to death. I understood that in going cutting all contact with my parents, it would also be with the rest of my family as well.
My mother would make sure of that. My husband did what was necessary.
What I couldn’t do myself.
What saved my sanity was a little tiny blurb on the sidebar of a crafting blog. It was a link to information about Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). I hit it out of curiosity, and spent the whole night, and many nights thereafter, learning and researching. I finally had a term I could plug into a search engine that explained my mother’s behavior.
After 30 years, I learned it wasn’t my fault.
In our ‘real life’ exchanges, narcissism is like a dirty little secret. To explain it, most people can’t comprehend how a parent can be so predatory. They can comprehend it only on a ‘it-happens-to-other-people-they-don’t-know’ level, but not as it happening to someone in front of them. And certainly not to the kids that lived on the nicest house on the street, or the ones who went to church every Sunday. No, it’s much easier to believe the mother who complains about her ungrateful children who keep her grandchildren from her. It’s so believable after all, because they live in such a nice house and go to church every Sunday. The hypocrisy of it all leaves us silenced.
I don’t know the person who wrote the blog I happened across, but I am forever grateful to her. It was a small voice in a barren land of silence. It led to exchanges with others seeking the same healing we seek. A virtual hug of sorts, where we lean and learn from each other. We don’t share to play the victim card, we share to heal. We feel compelled to write for our own healing, to comprehend our past and somehow move forward from it. We lend our listening ears through our eyes and offer our experience to help others.
Compassion and courage.
It’s the people that have brought us to this place out of the FOG (fear, obligation and guilt), not the countless psychology articles we’ve read. We’re used to feeling alone and afraid. Together, we’re a beacon of sanity. It’s what our narcissists feared the most: people in our lives that can positively influence us. They sought to destroy any of our relationships, but didn’t count on the rallying cry of a rag-tag unit of strangers on the internet. Blogging is powerful because it’s real.
Real people writing truth the only way they know how: in their life’s experiences.
It’s a far cry from the overly produced stage we grew up in.
by Band Back Together | Sep 7, 2016 | Bullying, Childhood Bullying, Self Loathing, Self-Esteem, Shame |
I’ve never been a beautiful girl.
My features are manly, and there’s nothing in particular that is beautiful about my face. The bullying started in 6th grade. I began to date a young boy and once his classmates found out they called me “ugly slut”. The name calling went on for the rest of the year, I’d hear the girls and boys whisper as I walked by. Prior to this I never thought of myself as ugly, but their words made me question myself. 7th and 8th grade were just about the same, I felt that all I heard was “ugly,ugly,ugly”.
Then it was time for high school where I thought everything would be better, but it wasn’t. On the first day I was called ugly by the jock who sat in the back. I couldn’t befriend boys because they would soon turn me into the laughing stalk of their friends. No one wanted to talk to me because they were embarrassed to be seen talking to the ugly girl. The few guys who would talk to me were often harassed with “is that your girlfriend, she’s ugly” “4/10”. Yet, I managed to survive all that.
Fast forward a couple years and things seem calm…
Naked pictures of me were spread. Now I wasn’t just an ugly girl, but a shamed, embarrassed and exposed one.
by Band Back Together | Jun 29, 2016 | Anger, Chronic Illness, How To Help A Friend With Chronic Illness, Invisible Illness, Loneliness, Lupus, Shame, Trauma |
I push myself everyday often beyond my better judgment. Lupus and Sjogrens are not diseases that I can beat into submission nor is the depression that comes along with the chronic widespread pain.
Yes, I want to do more, but why can’t you see I can only do so much and some days a lot less?
You need to know something else. When you don’t make the time to visit me? it breaks my spirit in ways I cannot adequately describe. I may be broken, but I still have value. I am worth the trouble it would take to make the trip to my house. I know you love me.
I wish you knew how much I need you to recognize this won’t go away by ignoring it and by default me.
by Band Back Together | Jun 14, 2016 | Coping With Depression, Depression, Fear, Mental Health, Self Loathing, Shame, Therapy |
Well, Bandmates, this is the day. I have an appointment with my general practitioner. I will refuse to leave until I have a path forward and an appointment with a psychiatrist or counselor.
This is it.
If I don’t do anything, I know the outcome will be tragic.
It’s not a matter of willpower any more. I’ve used all that up. The only thing that’s keeping me even slightly together lately is the thought of how much my kiddos would hurt if I killed myself. I am exhausted and at the last shreds of my willpower. This pain I have carried for my whole damned life is destroying me.
I must say that I’m very nervous. I don’t know what is going to happen, but I’m going to spill my guts. I feel shame at the prospect of sharing this pain I have in a non-anonymous setting. I feel shame that this disease has wrecked my life. I am scared to death that I will wreck my kids if I don’t get this shit handled. I am horrified at the state of my life, the feeling that I am capable of so much, yet do so little with my time.
I’m fucking smart. I’m handsome in a kinda scruffy way. I have a decent enough job. But I feel that I am unworthy of anything enjoyable. I’m done ignoring the phone calls from my friends. They’re coming fewer and further between. I’m done procrastinating. I’ve sat here for more than five months, losing more and more of what I have come to cherish. Time with my kids, friends, art and music. I haven’t touched my bass guitar in months. It’s got to the point that I don’t even like to hear music any more, and I have been a musician/singer for most of my life.
I can only write a few paragraphs at a time before these damned hopeless feelings overcome me and cloud my imagination. Even my favorite time-sink of video games has become something I simply don’t enjoy anymore. My only friends are my pets, workmates, my computer, and Netflix. The first thought in my head whenever I wake, be it at a normal time, or at some odd hour of the night, is I hate my life, I hate myself.
Today is the day that enough is enough.
Please, if you feel like I do, get help now! Don’t wait until your life is left in ruin because of a disease. Don’t let your mind tell you that your problems are due to your own failures, that somehow you’re a weak person. That is the disease talking. Every lie this disease tells you has a grain of truth in it. That’s how you come to believe all the negative nonsense. We don’t try hard enough because the disease keeps us from doing so, but the disease doesn’t ever take the blame for keeping our reserves of willpower so low. If you’re at the end of your rope, there’s nothing left but to either give up or try to get the help you need. This disease is going to tell you so many half-truths that you really don’t know what the truth is anymore. That’s why you need to get a helping hand. Please, don’t let the disease hold you back.
