by Band Back Together | Aug 6, 2015 | Anger, Breakups, Grief, Guilt, Help For Grief And Grieving, Loss, Parent Loss, Sadness, Suicide, Survivor Guilt |
My ex husband killed himself two months ago, and I’m not coping.
He has left behind a four year old daughter, and as we are still married, I am his next of kin.
I left him 18 months ago, he seemed happy and he seemed to get on with his life.
Since leaving him, I have been dating someone new.
I found my ex hanging from his loft. Since then, he is almost all I can think about.
My partner has been great, amazing, incredible, but I really cannot shake a feeling of guilt, and sadness, wondering why he did it, and how if I hadn’t left him, he would still be alive.
It’s breaking my heart, and it’s breaking my soul. Every time I feel strong again, the slightest thing sends me right back to square one. I saw him hours before he died. Why didn’t I notice any signs or see anything wrong? He seemed happy and normal and himself.
I am so cross with him. How could he do this to our baby? How could he not see that she adores him and hangs off his every word?
He will never know how many regrets I have. He will never know he is so missed. I don’t know how to rebuild my life, as a 20-something widow, single mum of a grieving four year old.
by Band Back Together | Jul 27, 2015 | Adult Children of Addicts, Alcohol Addiction, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, How To Cope With A Suicide, Partner/Spouse Loss, Stroke, Suicide |
There are only so many things a person can take before they break. Sometimes, there’s only so much a person can take.
This is her story:
When our son was a baby and you went through that rehab program, they sat me down for Family Day and made me come up with an ultimatum to “help” you with your sobriety.
“If you go back to drinking and X happens, I’ll leave.”
I hated it. I didn’t want to say anything like that. I believed there was nothing you and I couldn’t get through together. We love each other very much, and I could never picture a scenario where I would need to leave you.
Since then, you’ve had several medical scares, three suicide attempts, and a second, more intense rehab. You had that spell last winter, where for three days you had no idea who or where you were. Then, after a year of sobriety, you went back to drinking again. I’ve been there for the hospitalizations, your treatments, the roller coaster of your mental illness, and the nightmares caused by the traumas of the things you have seen and done in your past.
I stood by you and loved you through all of it.
I can’t do it anymore.
It’s been a very long time since I’ve been able to really confide in you anything going on with me. You can’t handle it. I had a major emotional upheaval last summer and I can’t even tell you about it because you would never be able to deal with it. It’s still continuing, and it is gaining in intensity.
It’s causing me constant distress, and you have no idea. Because of that, I had a nervous breakdown last winter. I was even having panic attacks. I’m taking antidepressants and seeing a counselor every week to deal with what’s going on with me. You know about my counseling and medication, but you don’t know the real reason why I need them.
While I was still fragile from my nervous breakdown, another horrible incident happened. We were constantly being taken advantage of by your friend. At one point, I was sick with the flu, but you still couldn’t say no to his request. But due to your drinking and your mental illness, you were unable to deal with the responsibility you had taken on that night.
Still very sick, I had to go take care of it and I got stuck in a blizzard. Between my emotional stuff, the flu, all the constant worry about you, and the terror of the white-out blizzard, I had a mini-stroke the next day.
You couldn’t even handle calling for paramedics even though I was incapacitated.
What if it had been something worse? What if it had been a full-blown stroke, or a heart attack, and being able to know you have to call 911 for me could literally mean the difference between my life and my death? What would you do if I died? You can’t even take care of yourself, how are you going to take care of the kids and make sure the bills get paid?
You’ve admitted that you have no hope of being able to quit drinking. You’ve written off rehab, calling it a “temporary fix.” You won’t go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and you won’t take any steps to try to stop drinking on your own. Then there was that one night last spring when you were drunk and admitted to me that you still think about suicide all the time.
You promptly denied it once you were sober, but considering that you listed all the ways you had thought about doing it, I’m pretty sure your confession was the truth.
Without you finding a way to stop drinking, it’s only going to continue to get worse and worse. It’s to the point now where we live inside the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde because you’re a totally different person when you’ve been drinking all day on the weekends.
I know your brain is a scary mess. I know I couldn’t handle five minutes inside your head. You have been through things so horrible that I can’t even process them. It’s no wonder the worst horror movie doesn’t bother you – you’ve been through worse.
It feels like the Grim Reaper has been following you around as long as I’ve known you. On top of all your mental and medical issues, you’re so accident prone. I’ve lost track of all the times I felt like I was looking at the last months, weeks, or even hours of your life.
It has all led to me having to think about your death constantly. I’ve had to plan for the worst. If you were to die in your sleep tonight, I know exactly what to do. I know what to do in regards to your funeral and burial. I know where the kids and I will go to mourn, lick our wounds, and then regroup. I have a plan for what will happen once I get back on my feet. I have hope for a beautiful future.
That future no longer has you in it.
Our kids need at least one stable parent. If things keep going the way they are, I won’t be mentally or physically healthy enough to take care of them. I can’t keep worrying about you. I can’t keep taking care of you.
You and I both believe in an afterlife. I believe that once you have died, you will finally have the peace you’ve never had. I hate that I think about your death all the time. It makes me sick that I have to admit to myself that your death is what’s best for all of us – you, so you can have peace, me, so I can become healthy again, and the kids, so they don’t have to watch you destroy yourself.
I’m purging the house because I don’t want to move all that crap in the basement again. I’ve started a list of the things I will sell when you’re gone. I’ve made my arrangements for where the kids and I will go. I’ve looked into schools there for them. I’ve even figured out places I’m going to apply for jobs. And meanwhile, I pray that God will be merciful and let you die peacefully in your sleep.
Because I know there is only so much more I can take. If I have to break down and just leave, it will break your heart.
And that will definitely lead to you killing yourself.
by Band Back Together | Jul 24, 2015 | Abuse, Adult Bullying, Alcohol Addiction, Anxiety, Bullying, Child Abuse, Compulsive Eating Disorders, Depression, Infidelity, Loneliness, Self-Esteem, Stress, Suicide, Violence |
The name is Kat, and I’m a 29 year old college graduate. I feel bad about being so “big” and still being bullied. I thought it was something that just happens to kids and teens, but thanks to The Band, I’ve felt a little more comfortable admitting that yeah, I’m 29 and I’m still being bullied.
My parents have always had problems. When I was smaller, they would get into huge, violent fights that would end up in them beating each other (mostly my dad towards my mother) and cussing at each other. My two younger sisters and I grew up in a very violent atmosphere but were always close.
We also lived with our grandparents in the same house, and they would defend us a lot from my parents’ rage. My dad was an alcoholic and cheated on my mother. She would take it out on my sisters and me, mostly on me, since I was the one that always talked back to her, protecting my sisters.
Thanks to the constant abuses, I grew up insecure about myself. I was actually pretty creative, but also very violent. The slightest insult towards me, and I would attack other kids. Whenever my mom and I fought, I would feel the need to eat, so I was a little chubby. That got me bullied even more.
Back home, my mom used to beat my sisters and me with a wooden flat stick, saying that the Bible told her to “correct” her children like that. Aside from that, she would slap, choke, and punch me in the face, in many of our confrontations.
As a teen, I had a lot of trouble with authority and got into many fights with kids, claiming they only wanted to hurt me. My first boyfriend went to jail, and I changed universities a lot.
At 23, I had enough, and left the house. I got a great paying job and moved into an apartment, away from my mother. Once out, I got thin, got a new wonderful boyfriend and had a “perfect” life. But I still wanted to finish my career, which meant I had to quit my job, go back home, find another job that allowed me to study, and get into college once again.
Back home, I got chubby again. My mother constantly fights with me and tells me she doesn’t want me in her house. She values the pet more than me since she tells me that if her pet is sleeping on my bed, I’m not allowed to push her off. Sometimes I can’t sleep because of it. Her new husband shouts at me and loves getting me in trouble with her. I had to fight and struggle through college because of the stress at home.
I graduated three months ago, and I’m desperately looking for a job, so I can get out of this hell. My mom and I fight at least four times a week, and she always tells me to get the fuck out of her house. I have nowhere to go. I don’t want to involve my friends in this, and my father has another family. I’m desperate, I feel lonely, I lost my boyfriend, and she and her husband are constantly bullying me.
It may sound horrible and harsh, but its the truth. It took me 29 years to figure out why I eat compulsively. Just now, we had another fight. As soon as it ended, I raided the fridge, even though I wasn’t hungry at all. It’s not about filling “the void,” its about the desperation and anxiety I feel that make me want to eat like crazy.
However, I still remain strong. I wish for you gentle people who read my story to stay strong. I may be a little depressive, but I’m not suicidal. I love life and I want to move on. I know there are many amazing things waiting for me, and I just have to go ahead and do them.
Thanks for reading my story.
by Band Back Together | Jun 11, 2015 | Abuse, Bullying, Coping With Depression, Depression, Fear, Insomnia, Loss, Major Depressive Disorder, Murder, Suicide, Workplace Bullying |
I used to work as a planning engineer at a big construction company. I am a pure vegetarian. I didn’t like the non-vegegarian food near me, so I used to stay away from all the people who used to eat non-veg food. We all stayed in a company provided guest house, and they were the majority.
My roommate there tortured me physically where we were staying, and mentally at our workplace, on a daily basis. Since I was inexperienced and rather new to the industry, he used to bully me and downgrade me by calling me a clerk even though I was a Senior Engineer there. I wanted to report the physical torture to my superiors, but my roommate threatened that he would have people torture my family if I did.
In the same office I fell in love with a girl I worked with. I told her that I was being bullied, but she thought I was joking. My roommate’s bullying caused me to leave my job and kept me from having a healthy relationship with the girl I loved. He was telling her bad things about me, and I didn’t want to tell her everything he had been doing to me. I had thoughts of committing suicide and sometimes I even thought about killing him. These thoughts would run over and over in my dreams like nightmares.
Because of him, I am depressed, I lost my job, and I lost the girl I love. I want to report him to the police. I want to kill myself. I can’t sleep from all the nightmares. I don’t know who to talk to because I am afraid and embarrassed. Please help me if you have been through something like this.
by Band Back Together | Apr 24, 2015 | Bullying, How To Heal From Being Bullied, Suicide, Teen Bullying |
So it’s 1976, I’m 15 and reading Stephen King’s “Carrie” in a corner of the library. The library is a fairly safe place. She doesn’t spend much time here. That’s not a guarantee though. She has spread the word and sometimes names or spitballs or random crap comes at me from some kid I don’t even know, but who knows Her.
I’m near the end, and I’m right there with Carrie, crowned, loved, feeling beautiful, on top of the world, until that first glut of smelly blood hits her face. I’m there with her, except she has something I can’t find: her rage. A rage so big that with her mind–not moving a muscle, but with the power of her anger, she destroys an entire gymnasium full of people. And they deserve it. All of them. That’s what I’m thinking, sitting there in the library. For a moment, I’m seeing everyone, even the people I like, dead on the floor and me above them, raging, holding the power in my hands. For once. For once.
Like Sweeney Todd, when he sings “They all deserve to die …because in all of the whole human race, Mrs. Lovett, there are two kinds of men …the one staying put in his proper place, and the one with his foot in the other one’s face: look at me, Mrs. Lovett, look at you!” Like Lotte Lenya as Pirate Jenny, in that old 1930’s record my father plays: “Noon by the clock, and so still on the dock, you can hear a fog horn, miles away. In that silence up there, I say: kill them all. And they’re piling up the bodies and I say: hoopla! And the ship, the black freighter, disappears out to sea, and on it is me.”
That’s the fantasy, except in the library, for a moment, it’s not a fantasy, it’s the most sincere wish I can make.
Then She comes in to the library, God knows why, she never studies in here. And I’m the first thing She sees. I freeze. Now it’s just a question of how bad it’ll be today.
I’m not Carrie. I’m not a vengeful Sweeney Todd, or Pirate Jenny sailing away. I’m fat, with long hair that is always greasy because the water pressure in our house sucks. I’m wearing my “Shakespeare is the One” sweatshirt and it smells because I wear it so much.
She zeroes in on me, of course. She and her gang all pretend to be getting books, but what they’re doing is stalking me, surrounding me, like jackals. “Hi Gerber Baby,” She says, “watcha reading?” in that fake sweet voice. “You reading Shakespeare? Huh?” I won’t look up. I won’t look at her. The book is ripped from my hand. “Fucking look at me, bitch. Don’t fucking ignore me, Gerber-head.”
She looks at the cover, and grins. “‘Carrie!’ That’s a great book. I bet you like her, Gerber. Know why?” She gets in my space and pokes me with her sharpened pencil on every word. “Because. You. Are. A. Pig. Just like Carrie.”
So it goes. Every day, so it goes. As far as I know, that’s how it will always be. Little by little, I will be destroyed. Today it’s mild, poking and prodding in the library. Tomorrow it will be science lab chemicals thrown on my skin. My books will be on the floor more often than on a desk. I will be chased down stairwells, trapped in bathroom stalls, and punched. There will be no part of my body or face or personality unmocked. Spitballs will be stuck in my hair. I will eat more, to try and drown it out, but I can’t. School is inescapable, and it’s the same people, year in, year out.
I have tried to tell Authorities. A guidance counselor carefully explains what a terrible background She comes from. I am told that life is no bowl of cherries for anyone in this world.
My teachers look away, turn on a movie, disappear from the hallways into break rooms as soon as they see Her starting in on someone (usually me). I have a vague impression that the teachers are scared of her too.
Home is my safe haven. I would rather die than tell my parents that their smart, pretty, talented only child is, in reality, a Big Fat Loser being tortured every day by the school nutcase. The fact that She is African-American would just make it worse. My folks were Civil Rights activists and I was raised on stories of racial oppression. They’d probably tell me how hard it is for Her, one of maybe five African-American kids in the school. And I’d agree.
No. Home must stay safe. I will not let Her have my home.
Sunday night, and I’m cold inside because I have to go back to school the next day. After dinner, we’re watching Masterpiece Theatre. “Upstairs, Downstairs.” I adore that show. I wish I could be an Edwardian servant. It looks better than Warren Junior High School.
The phone rings. My mother answers it, annoyed. “It’s for you, honey.” I go to the phone, annoyed. “Hello?” “Hi Gerber-baby,” She says sweetly. “Watcha doin? I bet you’re writing a paper. About pigs. I hope you’ll read it out loud to me tomorrow. You better fuckin do it.” Horrified, I drop the phone, then slam it on the receiver.
I go back to the living room. “Sweetie, are you OK?” says my Mom, “You’re very white.”
“I’m fine. I’m going to bed.”
I lie in bed. There are a lot of ways to die. I fall asleep wondering how many aspirin would do it, or if I could step in front of a subway train. Maybe that wouldn’t hurt. Maybe it would happen so fast that you wouldn’t know it.
“And the ship, the black freighter, disappears out to sea …and on it is me.”
ADDENDUM
It is 35 years later. I’m successful. I make my living as an actress and writer. I have lots of love and friends in my life, and everything I need materially, but I never married, or had children. I’ve always kept people slightly at a distance. I prefer to perform for them, I prefer to control what they see. I have fought with food, alcohol, and depression. Sometimes I win. What I just wrote, I’ve never said in full to anyone. And you know, all the school shootings now: every time, I think, there but for the grace of God go I.
by Band Back Together | Jan 21, 2015 | Coping With Losing A Partner, Fear, Help For Grief And Grieving, How To Cope With A Suicide, Partner/Spouse Loss, Sadness, Suicide |
The love of my life chose to end his life two weeks ago today. There are no words to convey the loss and desperate emptiness I feel. He has struggled for years. I share here the words that I wrote during his last attempt, in August, as he struggled on a ventilator. I could do nothing but alternate between simply staring and listening and scribbling each moment as they came, clinging to each memory, as I feared that it would be our last.
He had threatened so many times that, sadly, the last time I saw him, I did not truly believe that it would be the last. You had to have seen the movie “Where Dreams May Come” to truly understand his final words to me.
“We are soulmates. I will always find you.”
We had a standing promise that no matter where life or death took either of us, we would find some way to find each other. This movie resonated strongly with us. For now, I digress and share my sad, almost prophetic words from my last experience as a tribute to him, as I know nothing else to do anymore but preserve and express my love for him and privately and also as publicly as possible.
A Tribute:
I write this as I look at you. Rise and fall. Mechanical clicking partially drowned out by The Fray’s “Happiness”. I thought I had felt pain before. Well, I have. This surpasses pain. Just like “love”. I don’t know the appropriate word to convey this emotion. If I were Catholic, I suppose I would be sitting in Limbo. Joy on one side, torture on the other. Once again, these words do not fit.
I write these words not knowing if you will ever hear them. I suppose either way, you will somehow.
I have had so much to talk to you about …so much to say to you. I began it in a text, which sits unread on your phone. I couldn’t wait for today, but to be sitting here now? My heart can’t handle it. It’s laying trapped in a chest two feet from me, still keeping the rhythmic pumping and it dances with yours. For how long?
I have told you before, but I couldn’t feel it like this until this moment. I am connected to you. I can’t come up with the words to explain how. I watch my own life hang in the balance. I know that if you die, I do, too. Maybe not my physical body, but the part of me that matters.
I knew that this would be a horrific feeling, but I had no idea how badly someone could hurt on the inside. I feel like I am being turned inside out. The world stopped turning. Perhaps literally, as there was an earthquake and pending hurricane. Perhaps, the earth itself groans in pain. The sun does not shine. There is no light. It has lost its meaning.
Being separated from you before was terrible, but I could still feel you out there. You were and are omnipresent to me. You are in the air. I never comprehended that something so simple as the scent of your hair could impact me so much. Colors fade. Light is darkness. But the music, I still find you there. It is something that is somehow not taken. The emotion with it is horrible right now, but I find you there, and so that is where I will stay for now. As I listen, perhaps you are the DJ. Every note, every word somehow fits each moment. “If there is no one else beside you where your soul embarks, I will follow you into the dark.”
I would still follow you if I had a choice, but perhaps the only clarity of the moment is that I do not. I will be taken, and I will go, but I hope that we do not have to.
Perhaps, this is paraphrasing, but I believe that is was F. Scott Fitzgerald that said, “I wish I had done everything in the world with you.”
I suppose that is still possible, regardless of what happens here. The world does not end at death, but mine does with yours. And so, as I know that my journey continues here for now, I can only hope and pray that you will continue to be my co-pilot.
Somewhere between the mechanical world and the spiritual realm that surround me, it is the organic that brings me the only comfort. The rise and fall of your chest may as well be a million seaside sunsets. I catch myself drifting, lulled by the peaceful repetition of each movement.
Again, I never fathomed that something so “simple” …how quickly and unexpectedly things can gain or lose their meaning.
I made sure to eat three times today. As I am not sleeping, I need something to keep me going for you. I even got some cookies. I tasted nothing. My stomach cramped. I didn’t feel it. The road poured ahead of me. I didn’t see it.
Nothing. There is nothing but this music and the rise and fall and the feeling that I never want either to end.
I am not sure where these words are coming from. I have drawn deeper into myself than, perhaps, I ever have. My motions are mechanical. I’m not sure what is guiding my physical movements. From soul to paper, I don’t feel attached to the space between, and, as I write, it takes me further and further away.
Where am I going? What is happening? Are you taking me with you? I am coming. Wherever you are and wherever this body is, I feel myself drifting somewhere in between.
I’m not sure that these words will make sense to anyone else at any other time, myself included, but, as I write, it is all I can do.
I have been emotionally stripped down. This is as raw as I come.
I’m not sure when they will pull me from your room. It may literally take that. I don’t feel capable of leaving you on my own.
I have no concept of time. I know that a good bit of time has passed from my first word to this one, but it could as easily been a minute as a year. What does it matter?
The rise and fall. The steady rolls of your breaths and the jumps between of your heart. I may experience the beauty or profundity of such things, but, as I bear record here, it will always serve as some form of remembrance in the future, whether it is a tear on my cheek or a curl on your lips, only time can tell.
Time. Time. Even letters look foreign. Words sound garbled. I feel as if somehow I have already known you for an eternity. Or maybe it was only a second. What is time, anyway? It simultaneously means nothing and everything to me right now. As it carries on this moment, it means nothing, but thinking moments into the future make my head spin. All I have is this one, and in this one, you are here, and, for now, THAT is all that matters.
My head quickly fills with horrific thoughts if I let it ponder beyond this second. What if I never hear your voice again? What if you never even read these chaotic words? What if …blank. Fortunately, my mind has pulled me back to now. There is enough time to worry about the future if it comes to that. All that matters now is this moment and the fact that you are still in it.
My eyes draw up. In that instant, your eyes flutter open. I don’t know if you saw me. Words can’t describe what I saw. Not even now. I suppose that this proves that there truly are no words for what I feel when our eyes meet, and I think, no, I know that that’s okay. I know what I feel, and I believe that you do, too, so why waste time struggling with an explanation that surpasses words? Time. We’re back to that. I suppose the future could be worse. It could be the already determined past, and all those wasted moments.
“I want to feel you. I need to hear you. You are the light that is leading me to the place where I find peace. You are the light unto my soul. You are my movements, you are my everything. And how can I stand here with you and not be moved by you? You still my heart, and you steal my breath away. Would you take me in? Take me deeper now.”
I wrote as fast as this pen and hand would move, trying to pick up the pieces before they were laid out. I didn’t know the lyrics as well as I thought I did. Maybe that isn’t exactly what it said, but that was all that I heard.
And, now, as the physical sleepiness sets in, I feel myself being drawn back, back into this world, which somehow, stands still, suspended, and all there is is you. I don’t want these eyes to close. I fear the next thing that I see. But, for now…
You ARE the DJ! I should not have feared the next thing I saw. I looked up. Your eyes. I know that you saw me this time. I reached for your hand. You grabbed mine. I tried to adjust. Tighter. “My hands are holding you,” pour out over the speakers. I hear you, baby. I hear you.
I don’t know what is happening, but after these moments, I feel overwhelming peace. Somehow, it is okay, and I don’t know how, but it is.
I got lost in your blue eyes, your warmth, your touch, and I transcended. I’m not sure where we went, but it was not here, and it is okay. For now, at least, fear is gone. It is okay. Enough words for now. Time for some peaceful, quiet, wordless moments with you before sleep.
