by Band Back Together | Sep 6, 2018 | Adult Child Loss, Bipolar Disorder, Caregiver, Coping With Depression, Coping With Losing A Child, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Leukemia, Loneliness, Love, Major Depressive Disorder, Mental Health, Sadness, Stress, Suicide, Uncategorized |
In June of 2017 my daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. She passed away in November. My husband and I have custody of our 11 year old granddaughter. Grieving is taking it’s toll. Last month I was admitted to the hospital for being suicidal.
I think about my daughter all the time. I spent every minute in the hospital with her for 5 months. Telling my granddaughter that her mom was dead was the worst thing I’ve ever had to do. Whenever I go outside for a smoke, I think of my daughter. Whenever I drive the car, it reminds me of the drive to the hospital.
My mind won’t stop thinking suicidal thoughts. My brain constantly hammering me with negative thoughts. I’m hopeless, sad and feel out of my body. I don’t recognize my thoughts or myself. I am so lost. The emptiness is everywhere and I don’t know what to do.
I’ve been treated for depression for years and have had suicidal thoughts the entire time. I spent 2 days in the psych ward. I slept most of the time. I attend an outpatient program and went to a new psychiatrist today. He said my bipolar diagnosis was incorrect and adjusted my medications.
by Band Back Together | Jul 12, 2016 | Alcohol Addiction, Anger, Divorce, Fear, Grief, Infidelity, Suicide |
It is very difficult to watch someone you love go through the pain of a divorce. There really isn’t much you can do to help them, especially when they are in denial and are making poor choices.
He’s my best friend in the world. I love him dearly. His marriage was never anything extra special, in fact, it was almost always rocky. A few years ago, he was pretty sure his wife was cheating on him. They talked it out, and were working on their marriage. The only resolution I could see as an outside observer was that suddenly, all of HIS phone calls were being monitored. Including with me, his best friend. But since I’m a girl, I was under suspicion. Which I found quite ironic since SHE was the one suspected of cheating, not him.
So it really wasn’t a surprise to me when everything came crashing down this winter. She had been planning ahead: getting her own bank account and transferring her direct deposit into that account, packing up little things here and there. He was knocked completely sideways when she announced she was moving out. Not surprising, he tried very hard to get her to stay.
For a while.
Until he found out she was, indeed, cheating on him.
He isn’t an alcoholic, but he has always been a heavy drinker when he was in the right mood. Her leaving pushed him to the point of drinking all the time. He called me one night, more drunk than I’d ever heard him, and told me he was puking up blood and was suicidal. It scared me to death. I seriously considered driving the hundreds of miles between us to check on him.
Instead, I made him check in with me all the time. He was angry with her and took it out on me, saying I was smothering him. I know now that I probably did push too hard, but it was out of love and concern for him. He became angry enough that he quit talking to me altogether.
Months passed.
I needed to deal with some things in our hometown, so I went to see him. As I already knew, he was – mostly – ready to forgive me. Our friendship is still a little unstable, so for now, I need to be very gentle on him and give him some space.
In talking to him, I did discover that he is still very damaged. It’s not the loss of the marriage that has hurt him so much as it is the loss of the dream of what he thought their marriage was going to be. Even though he has “moved on” and has a new girlfriend, he couldn’t stop talking about his ex and everything she did. His pain is still very raw, although he’s too stubborn to admit it. I know a new relationship is probably not the best thing for him right now, but I know that, like the alcohol, he is using the new girlfriend as a crutch. She’s not his type at all, and from what I can tell is a walking train wreck. I hope she’s not going to end up making everything worse.
So I’m going to love him and pray for him from a distance. I’m hoping that once he heals more, he will cut back on the drinking, and hopefully see this other girl for who she really is.
This really hurts me to watch, but I’m glad he’s at least allowing me to do that much again.
by Band Back Together | May 17, 2016 | Anxiety, Depression, Suicide, Unemployment |
I am unemployed. I have been unemployed since I was fired on February 10th. I worked at a pretty famous law firm, but it was in areas of law that I wasn’t familiar with. I also made dumb mistakes. Also, I felt that the other secretary (besides me) sabotaged my efforts to fit in at law firm. I was only hired in early November. I want to emphasize getting fired was my fault. I made too many mistakes; I’m not blaming anyone but myself.
I am taking being unemployed very hard. I feel like something has been ripped out of me. Part of my identity is my career, and it’s been taken from me, until I find a decent job. While I was growing up, my father owned a successful farm, and my siblings (I have six other siblings), parents, and whole family worked together on the farm. My parents farmed well and made a lot of money. They treated the farm like a 2nd religion. It was thought about, talked about, dealt with every single day! We had dairy cows and those dairy cows HAD TO BE milked every day (unless they were within a couple of months giving birth), twice a day. If they weren’t, they would suffer a disease called mastitis (which women can also suffer from). I didn’t like farming. I didn’t like working every single day from Sunday to Sunday. I hated getting up during the 5 o’clock hour, and still do to this day. I was the fourth son out of five, and the first son not to farm.
What I’m trying to say is that working has always been very, very important to me and growing up it was treated very, very seriously. So, when I see how my Dad and my siblings have flourished and I have been fired several times, it just hurts so bad. I’m just not as good as they are. I love working, and making money in my chosen legal profession means so much to me. Succeeding means a lot, possibly, too much.
The place I worked is somewhat famous. It was covered by major local newspapers, Crains, Reuters, and even once on Comedy Central this summer. I felt this was a golden opportunity. If I could succeed there, then it would be like a gold star on my resume. When I worked there, I had a sense of accomplishment. If I could even work there for a year or more, it would have helped immeasurably. But I didn’t. I came up short, my opportunity GONE.
My Mom, my brother, sister and I all have/had depression (Mom died). It’s part of my heredity, and mine has been made worse because I am now unemployed. I won’t commit suicide, because I owe it to my girlfriend and kids not to kill myself. I know how that would hurt them.
But, I wish I were dead. If if someone were to shoot me and kill me, and if I were allowed to speak just before I died, I would say, “Thank you!!” to my murderer. I wake up feeling bad. My depression is somewhat better because of my girlfriend. No one could ever ask for a better life partner. She’s so altruistic. I had a great mother, but even she was not as altruistic as my girlfriend.
I go to a psychiatrist. I take an anti-depressant. I have anxiety disorder and take medication for that as well. I go to a counselor. I go to Church every week, and that helps a lot. I know I should be happy that God loves me, Jesus died for my sins, and I am grateful for being saved, but I am suffering right here, right now.
I want/crave a legal job or something of comparable pay. I want it so bad. The very thing I want, is the very thing I’m being deprived of. It’s cut me down. I’m diminished as a result.
by Band Back Together | Apr 22, 2016 | Borderline Personality Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Histrionic Personality Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Self Injury, Suicide |
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.
As it stands, my story isn’t on this website. That’s because I’m not quite ready to go into it. What is relevant right now is that I’m the newest host in my body’s Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) system. I’ve been here for almost a year.
All I’ve really succeeded in was coming to terms with all of the mental stuff we didn’t want to admit to before. Like DID, Borderline Personality Disorder, Histrionic Personality Disorder, Avoidant Personality Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and the fact that the shadow people are actually hallucinations (among with other fun psychosis things). That’s a lot to tackle, and the fact that we’re still here makes me feel proud.
I’m both 21 years old and 11 months old. I was thrown into a breakdown where the former host isolated themselves from all but one of their trusted friends. I’ve gotten into a relationship with said friend, and he is the kindest soul I’ve ever (virtually) met. He supports me and makes me feel like I am not completely drowning.
I’m working on freelancing to save up to go back to school (they flunked out of college and now I’m here, aware of most of my limitations and certain to make sure that we succeed this time).
It’s almost been a year, a year of preparation for our lives. A year of learning about myself and my headmates. It’s been a fucking miserable mess of a year, one with lots of breakdowns, self harm, and suicidal thoughts 24/7. But I think I’m going to make it.
I want us to make it.
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 6, 2016 | Coping With Depression, Dissociative Identity Disorder, How To Cope With A Suicide, Inpatient Psychiatric Care, Major Depressive Disorder, Suicide |
I’m sitting in an ambulance. The blonde-haired paramedic gazes at me in the blue light, asking me if it is alright that the proper lights are off. I suppose something in my face alarms her enough to gasp: “Is it too dark?” I reassure her with a shake of my head that no, it isn’t too dark.
I feel childlike in my Adventure Time leggings and sweatshirt-tunic. I never noticed the white lines on ambulance windows were full of glitter. One of the littles hops up to front in a gush of joy. Glitter, of all things, glitter! I swallow a glomp of air and push her back in the garden with the rest. L peeks through the slit below the door of the Limbo Room somewhere deep inside.
Emergency Rooms, ambulances and psychiatric ward workers have always looked at us weirdly. The paramedic tap-taps on a Panasonic Toughbook. “Your care worker said you have these personalities?” she says, the question mark imminent in the air around her. Yes, I think to myself before even considering saying it out loud, my head moving in what could be called a nod. “I have Dissociative Identity Disorder,” I say out of habit. I should have used a plural pronoun.
It is the first time being admitted since this past February, when my dissociation had me walking into busy roads without looking. This time is different, though. This time it is even more confusing to the paramedics and the psychiatric nurses. The paramedic waits patiently as I try to remember which day of the week it is. L would know. L was here on Wednesday, that’s several days ago – Saturday, I blurt out slowly. What month, what year? Holy fricking shitballs. I find the right answer somewhere in L’s frontal lobe. November, 2015.
The waiting room is full, as per usual. Nosebleeds, broken ankles. Normal problems. The psychiatric nurse sees me after 45 minutes. A young fellow, agitated and, somehow, a bit amused. I try to tell everything, but it is difficult. “Do you remember [this]?” No, no I don’t remember doing that, that was another alter. “Why do you think L is gone for good this time?” I just have the feeling. I tell the guy that I’m the replacement. That I’m the one to take charge in case L is gone for good. His face is full of confusion.
In the waiting room again. The nurse called the doc. A foreigner, for a change. Not that I mind. I like the little lisp in their voice as they utter their sentences. The doc wants to hear the same story. I look at the nurse by the computer, apparently with enough agony on my face to make him state my dilemma instead. I add in a few details and listen to the doctor’s remarks, with a tight pull in my stomach each time he sounds less and less convinced. Finally we get to it: suicidality. I explain the monsters that are Dawn and Claudia, the cuts that have been made, the writing in blood in my journal, the knife brought to work with us. This peaks the doctor’s interest. “Oh yes, if that is the case, then we should take you in for a few days, as a crisis admission.”
The ward I know well. I’ve been here several times. I wouldn’t call it a second home, but I would call it safe grounds. We hand in our tweezers and nail clippers. Make sure nothing else sharp is left on us. Our psychiatric nurse at the ward is a young lady with a pretty braid in the front of her hair, dangling around as she speaks with a multitude of head gestures. She wants to hear the same story, but I tell her I’m too tired. After prying some things out of me, she retreats to the nurses’ station. It is only hours after that, we get our precious hospital bracelet, a Beck Depression Inventory and other forms to fill. What she doesn’t know is I would need ten BDIs, one for everyone. Maybe eight since the littles would just be confuzzled at the idea of a weird form to fill and even weirder questions to answer. I tick in some boxes that make me look severely depressed. Lydia must be close to front.
I unpack Bunny’s teddy bear and unicorn and feel her refreshing presence. The little five-year-old treats things with such openness and curiosity that I cannot help but smile and let her come closer and closer to front. I know she’ll be upset to be alone in a big three-person hospital room, but I am far too tired to take care of the body any longer. I step back in the garden and let her go forth, watching as she bundles herself up in pink hospital pajamas and her unicorn hoodie, giggling as she brushes her teeth with such vigor (need to kill all those germs). Finally, as she settles in bed, I let my guard down, retreating up the stairs inside the Clock and to my room.
By-theclocksystem
