Prankster, my heart goes out to you. I wish that I could wrap you up in a big hug so that you knew that you were loved. Because you are so loved. You are worth everything. I know that telling you that you need to stop won’t help and will further reinforce all that you do to yourself, so I won’t, but I am reading what you don’t say here, and it breaks my heart. You are worth saving. You can fight your dragon and you can win. Someday you will win.
We will be here waiting to celebrate when you do.
Much, much love,
Aunt Becky
I’m a sucker for it. And I could speculate about all the things that have caused it. My childhood wasn’t great. I’ve dealt with depression and all the shit it brings. I’m impulsive… but I have this feeling, deep down inside, that it’s just the way I’m wired.
The first time it happened I was 14, angry and frustrated and it just made sense. The scissors were right there… and just like that, an addiction was born. I was a cutter. I self-injured.
Of course, 14 year-olds aren’t the most logical thinkers, so I got ‘caught’. We did the whole therapy deal with a crappy counselor and I was expected to stop immediately, so I did.
But I wasn’t stupid. Since the age of 15, I’ve been dealing with an eating disorder. I’ve seen 2 shrinks since the first, and neither know about my eating disorder.
As with all addictions, I’ll never be cured. I never truly stopped, but my parents like to think I did, so I let them. I just got better at hiding it.
While I don’t cut nearly as often as I use to, I picked up a nice little friend, named trichotillomania (self-pulling of hair). It’s so great [sarcasm].
This would be one reason I think it’s instilled in me, I don’t want to give it up. It’s mine, all mine, and I don’t have to share it with anyone, which feels great.
So, maybe the day will come and I’ll be ready to give up the ghost. And if it does, I’ll come back, and I’ll let all of you know.
I was fifteen, and I thought I had met the love of my life.
Of course, when you’re fifteen, everything is the end-all, be-all of your life. You think that the day you fail your history exam is the worst day of your life; that your first job will kick-start your career as a successful businessperson; and the boy sitting at the outdoor table by the bus ramp with a cute smile and big arms is your future husband. At fifteen years old, I was sure I would love no one else but him for as long as I lived.
Because I was not raised a Christian, abstinence to me was always more of a personal preference than a spiritual promise. At fifteen I was not ready to have sex. I’d had only two boyfriends before, and only one of them ever got close enough to kiss me.
And then it all changed.
He was 6’3″, Hispanic, and had no plans for the rest of his life. He had a beautiful smile, was the ultimate smooth talker, and he loved to hold my hand. In short, I was doomed to fall for this guy. I met him at lunch one day; he offered me his seat. I guess that was the first time I ever liked a guy at first sight. Four days later he asked me out. Within two months of dating, I knew I loved him.
He was not a virgin, while I was as virgin as it got. I told myself I was okay with that, but honestly, it kind of bothered me. It made me feel like I had some sort of unknown standard to live up to. Within three months of dating, sex naturally came up as a topic of discussion. It made sense, of course; I was a girl, he was a boy, and we were in high school.
Still, I was really not ready to have sex.
We had been dating about six months when he started to complain about not having sex. I made it very clear to him I wasn’t ready. He’d tell me he understood, and that would end the conversation for the day. By the second or third time we’d argued about it, he told me he was tired of doing it for himself. He wanted his girlfriend, the woman he loved to make love to him.
When we had been dating about seven months, he sent me a text message saying that I was the best thing in his life and if I left him, he’d probably kill himself. I was in class when I got the text and had to ask to be excused so I could figure out what was going on.
That was the last time he mentioned it, but it stayed on my mind always.
By nine months, I would catch his hand traveling a little too far for my comfort and I’d stop him. One night, after the homecoming dance, he asked me to take off my dress, but swore he wasn’t trying to sleep with me.
Later, his family moved and he had to change schools. I promised him we’d find a way to see each other. I’d visit him at his new home every weekend. We would lay on the couch and he would hold me all day. Our relationship was more innocent than it had ever been.
For a while, we were just content to spend time together. For our first anniversary, he took me to a nice dinner and asked me to prom. We had a relationship based on honesty, and I told him he was the one I wanted to marry.
After that, he began to bring up sex in conversation again.
We would argue about it, and then not talk for days. But no matter how I fought or said no, I could feel my defenses slipping. He knew what to say to make me feel like maybe I was wrong:
“But you love me, and I love you, and I want to show you that.”
“It wouldn’t be a terrible thing, it would be you and me becoming one.”
“It’s meant for two people who love each other. You do love me right?”
We would argue and then he would stop speaking to me. He would start to say something about sex and then stop, making me feel like he felt he couldn’t talk to me about it. I thought I was losing him.
Finally, I compromised: we would do it on prom night. Not long after saying that, his hands began to wander again. When I’d stop him, we’d fight and he’d pull away from me.
I fought with myself on a daily basis, telling myself that if I didn’t do it, he’d leave me. I thought I couldn’t live without him. And so one day, I didn’t say no. He convinced me that I’d enjoy it, so I gave him my virginity.
That night, I cried myself to sleep. I wasn’t ready, and it sucked. He said he felt closer to me, and I said the same. But I never told him how I really felt. He started to ask more often, even demanding it once. I’d give some lame excuse, he’d see right through it, and I’d sleep with him. This happened for another six months.
Just before our second anniversary, he had gone a short while without asking for sex. I found out he had been sleeping with his ex-girlfriend. She confronted me at school one day, revealing it to me publicly.
I was mortified.
I left him eight months ago. I recognize that even though I loved him, I was not ready to lose my virginity at such a young age. For a long time, I blamed myself for it, saying I’m the one who should have said no, I should have stayed strong. But then again, I was afraid he would leave me.
Now I know I am not at fault. I learned that what he did is called sexual coercion. I was nothing more than another conquest. I have trouble getting close to men, and not trusting many people. I am clinically depressed and in college, still in love with a guy I wrongfully had sex with. I am seeking help. In sharing my story, I have found myself again.
I am depressed. Very depressed. So depressed that I would like nothing more than to stay in bed all day drifting in and out of sleep. Thoughts of suicide have flitted across my mind. But don’t worry, I am in no danger of staying in bed all day or committing suicide. I have children – two little boys that I love very much.
My children are the reason I get out of bed every morning. They are the reason that I will never commit suicide. I get up partly because I have to go to work, that place that sucks forty hours from me every week and ensures that I can support my children. The other reason that I get up is because I usually have a small (almost three!) child yelling for me to do so. He’s rather hard to ignore.
The reason I will never commit suicide (other than my dislike of knives, guns, ropes, and overdosing on meds) is that I want to watch my boys grow up. I want to see what kind of men they will become, the people with whom they will fall in love, what kind of babies they will have. I also realize that the only person that suicide “helps” is the person who committed it. Everybody that cared about that person is affected. I don’t want my little boys to grow up without a mom.
So, I’m not going to stay in bed all day, and I’m not going to commit suicide. I’m glad we covered that. So how else could my depression manifest itself? Cutting? Nah – I don’t like pain or blood. Anorexia? Nope, unless giving up all food but cheesecake and chocolate counts, and then I might reconsider… Bulimia? I can’t make myself throw up, but tequila helps (please know that I believe eating disorders are very serious, and am in no way making light of eating disorders or people who have them, I’m just trying to explain why I would not go down that path). And speaking of tequila, what about becoming an alcoholic? I have enough liquor in the house (I think my husband is trying to tell me something). While I have gone out drinking due to depression in the past, I was young and single. I didn’t have children who needed me sober. So that’s out, too.
So what do I do, other than just be depressed all the time? Well, I’m very irritable, I’m tired all the time, I lack motivation to do things I used to enjoy. I want to spend all my free time clicking mindlessly on Facebook (hey, my frontier/city/cafe/island/farm/mafia are all extremely important, they need me). I have stacks of magazines and books I haven’t read. I’ve gained weight. I’m uninterested in sex. I get headaches a lot (including two migraines so far, which are a new development).
I’m exercising and counting calories. I’m depressed that despite my hard work, the scale isn’t really budging. I’m on medication, which I don’t think is working. I see a therapist every other week but I haven’t really delved into my issues, and instead focus on my relationship with my oldest son (which is material for at least a few posts).
Nothing seems to be working. I’m depressed and it isn’t getting any better. There’s nothing in my life that is really a cause for my depression. My marriage is fine, my children are healthy and smart and beautiful, I have a good job, a nice house. So why, why am I so unhappy?
It could be the fact that it’s hereditary (special shout out to my parents). It could be the fact that it’s winter, and a lot of people get depressed this time of year. It could be that despite nothing being really “wrong” or “bad” in my life, nothing is really great, either. The one bright spot is my youngest son, who is totally a mama’s boy, and his hugs and kisses and love is often the only highlight of my day.
I’m so tired of being depressed. I want to be happy.
Technically, we all are here, but that’s not the point. You are here, you are on the struggle bus, you are in good company. Today’s post is literally just links to a bunch of our glorious resource pages. Feel free, encouraged even, to share this post far and wide. We’ll start with mental health:
We love you. We are here for you. If what you need isn’t listed above, please let me know at stacey@bandbacktogether.com and I will do my level best to fix it! Stay safe, wash your hands, stop licking hand rails.
My therapist has asked me to write down a list of my emotional traumas.
A list of all the emotionally and physically traumatic experiences that have happened to me in my life, that have contributed to my Bipolar Disorder and PTSD.
Right now, my therapist doesn’t feel as though I’m ready for the therapy called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). As far as I understand, I have to relive physical and emotional traumatic experiences, have the proper emotional response, get over it, then have Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) so I can develop some sort of coping mechanism for the future.
But until my medications are adjusted and I’m in a better place, I have to wait.
So, here is my list:
Sexual abuse around age 3 by a family member. I repressed this memory until it slapped me in the face at age 12, causing an intense anxiety attack.
Constant arguing between my parents, thanks to my father’s alcoholism, gambling and pain issues due to needing a hip replacement. The pain issue turned into an anger issue; turned into a power tool being thrown at my mother, missing, and going through the window and landing at my feet; followed by an argument on a holiday with my father resulting in me taking a heavy duty power torch to the head.
As a “gifted child,” I was bullied a lot in primary school and high school. I still carry some of those emotional scars with me.
Funnily enough, my brain is currently trying to stop me from accessing more memories. Suck it, brain; stop being a whiny bitch and let me write this shit out.
When I was 16, my mother – being severely depressed – attempted suicide several times. The last time she tried, she had an argument with my father (now a better man, nothing like his days in my earlier life), and downed a ton of pills. I found her and her suicide note. I actively suppress the things written on that note thanks to the emotional trauma but I know how it began.
That sentence haunts me in my dreams. She is fine now, thankfully, but I refused to talk about it with anyone and pretended it never happened.
I was diagnosed with severe anxiety disorder when I had a panic attack at high school so bad my heart rate was 180, and I had to be rushed to hospital for fear of doing damage to my heart.
Since that day, I regularly have heart palpitations.
I had a psychotic episode at 17, when voices told me to stab my mother. I became paralyzed in my own bed while lights shone down from the ceiling, and I was convinced aliens were coming for me, despite my logical brain telling me I was being stupid.
I was diagnosed with endometriosis and told I should probably have children before 25. I’m currently a week away from my 24th birthday. Talk about another emotional trauma.
I dated a Muslim man for eight months. Toward the end of the relationship, I was emotionally abused, when he called me a dog. I went running into the arms of a male friend.
I decided I was the worst person in the world and went off screwing any guy who looked my way, drinking myself into oblivion, and eating pills like candy, just to numb the pain. I wanted to be used. I asked my male friend – now my fuck buddy – if he was using me for sex. He replied yes. I cried and said, “good.
” Turned out he wasn’t using me: he was in love with me; as a result of my promiscuity, and his inability to tell me how he felt, he quit university, broken-hearted.
I started dating my current partner, whom I have been with for five years now. We lived with his sister, her fiancé, and their daughter. His sister is a lazy bully who cannot look after herself, let alone children (currently a total of three). Her fiancé is a violent, alcoholic gambler. After being made a prisoner in my own bedroom, we got our own place.
My diagnosis of fibromyalgia explained my constant pain and tiredness. Yay for inheriting every single shitty illness my parents have.
Recently, I have started to have feelings for a close friend, who also has a partner. While drunk, we have made twice. I have feelings for him, but he is just attracted to me. I have immense guilt over betraying my partner, who is emotionally stunted. I think I’m just attracted to my friend because he has the social and emotional skills my partner lacks.
I was severely bullied at my last job until I began having daily panic attacks and getting into a screaming matches with a higher-up and former friend.
I decided to self-harm and contemplated suicide when the medication I was taking for five years stopped working. Unfortunately, while the medication stopped working, my now non-existant libido did not return.
Have also suffered dermatillomania (chronic skin-picking) for most of my life, particularly my feet. It is disgusting.
Currently, I am plagued by insomnia, headaches, anxiety, shame, severe depression, guilt, and every other horrible feeling imaginable. According to my therapist, I have feelings of low self-worth. According to my friends, I have a much lower opinion of myself than everyone else does of me.
I am both numb and emotionally unstable. I can’t cry, even though I really want to let it out. I think of myself as selfish and horrible, a terrible person who doesn’t deserve what I have. I theorize that I have some subconscious need to sabotage myself. Every time something is going well, just to add some drama in my life. Why I do this, I don’t know. And as I have written this list in such a cold, emotionless manner, I find it odd that I can be so numb and feel so many negative emotions at the same time. I feel like a robot.
I don’t want sympathy. At least, I don’t think I do. I am just tired. Tired of struggling through every day with these issues. I want the problems to just magically disappear because I’m tired of fighting.
I know it’s a long road ahead to my recovery. And as much as I don’t want to relive the aforementioned memories, I am also excited for the first time in ages because maybe, finally, with proper therapy…
I am depressed. Very depressed. So depressed that I would like nothing more than to stay in bed all day drifting in and out of sleep. Thoughts of 
