Before I begin the story of my weekend and the last few days I want to make a big trigger warning statement. If reading about someone struggling with mental illness in their darkest times hurt you, or trigger you in anyway, please stop reading here and read a softer more fun blog post of mine. This one is a dark one. I am hoping it is as dark as I will ever have to go and I hope I won’t ever have to post something like this again. I just needed a place to go, and well, sadly this hidden blog is all I have.
I am not ready to disclose what I have or have not been diagnosed with yet. It isn’t because I want to hide it or that I am ashamed, it is more that my psychologists and psychiatrists of the last 6 years can’t seem to agree what is going on just yet so I have cycled in and out of about six different diagnoses these past years. So let’s continue just knowing I have some messed up behaviors that are severely distressing and are highly impairing my everyday life. This is going to probably be a longer than normal post, but that is because I feel this uncontrollable need to share a bit of my back story with you to better understand why all of this is so distressing to me. If it even can be understood by anyone other than myself anyway.
Let’s briefly look at awkward, shy, eager to please me at age fifteen. Before this point much has happened but I want to take a minute to focus here just because this was my first truly emotional traumatic event. Finding out my sister, who was two at the time, had cancer. We will dig through the details of that bag of damage on another day, but this event caused my family to completely uproot our lives in our home state and move to Washington to be closer to proper medical facilities. I knew this was a necessary move, I knew it needed to happen for my sister, and I love her with every piece of me so the guilt I felt for feeling like my world was being torn away from me was indescribable. So I did what any teenager without good coping tools would do. I packed all those bad feelings in a box and locked it away, never to be seen again, so I could focus on being there for my sister and also my baby sister who was just a wee infant at the time. From this moment, any time I felt angry, upset, hurt, sad, frustrated, unloved, unwanted, etc. I put it all in that box and would hide it away. Like those feelings never existed. Little did I know, doing this for seven years would break me in ways I could not have imagined. Trust me. That box got full and fast, I had a few major events in my life after this point that really changed me, but again, another story for another day. The thing was, I never thought I would have to deal with those feelings after hiding them away, but that was just wishful thinking of a naive girl.
See, I have always been raised with the “someone has it worse than you so you have no reason to complain” mentality my whole life. It worked too, because it’s true. Someone DOES have it worse than me. I am sure hundreds of millions have it worse than me. So obviously if that part of the statement was true, then the rest had to be. Hence the box full of bad feelings. Only people worse off than I were allowed to have those kinds of feelings, people like me are not allowed. People who have homes, clothes, and food when they need or want it. People who have a car and a job. People who can fend for themselves successfully, more or less. These people aren’t allowed to have days with bad feelings because someone else has it worse. I truly believed this until I finally broke for the first time.
It was the week I was supposed to get married. Well, the week of my wedding. We technically had already been married a year legally. However, this was the event that family had flown in from out of state for, to celebrate at a cherished place that many of us had fond memories. My grandparents cabin on the lake. Only, we had to postpone due to the wildfire decimating the area. My grandparents had to evacuate and all we could do was wait and hope they wouldn’t lose their home. It was at this time that I was having to deal with toxic family matters. Things were getting blown out of proportion, I was feeling attacked, and was quickly filling that negative emotion box as quickly as I could. One day, we were discussing when we would postpone the celebration to, and how we were going to accommodate guests and I got thrown into a he said she said match over who could have campers at the cabin, and before I knew it, everyone was screaming at me like it was my fault. I couldn’t take it anymore. This was it, this was the straw that broke the camels back.
I yelled for everyone to shut up and went on what felt like a fifteen minute rant about everything I had been going through those past weeks. You know what I got in return? It absolutely was not compassion and understanding. It wasn’t love or sympathy. It was anger, frustration, and worry (as in, worried I was crazy and going to hurt myself or them). They were angry that I would dare speak to them that way. That I could even think it was remotely acceptable to treat them in that manner. They, the people who raised me, deserved better than my outburst.
Three days later I admitted myself into a hospital psyche ward with the help of my husband and his amazing mother. I tried for three days to close that box. It just stayed open. There was such seething hatred festering and growing in that box in my mind that when it snapped open it broke the latch and let it all out. It was so overwhelming I almost felt numb, except that I hurt so much I wanted to die. I had planned how I would end my life, I was certain that anyone would be a better fit at raising my daughter because I obviously was crazy. I mean my family told me all the time how often I was wrong and didn’t remember something right. I was always the problem, so the obvious answer to fix everything was to remove myself. Everyone would be so much happier. So then I wrote letters. I almost didn’t want to leave them though. I was so angry, I didn’t feel anyone deserved an explanation for my leaving them. And quite frankly, I didn’t think they would care enough. Then I thought of my husband and daughter. I only had the one at the time. I knew he would blame himself, he is just that way, and I needed him to know that was not true. I needed to be sure he would tell our daughter that it wasn’t because I didn’t love her enough or that her love for me wasn’t enough. It was that I was so broken I couldn’t be fixed and I wanted so much better for them. On the third day after my outburst, I planned on going to work for a half day, then at lunch, go home and take my life. This way my husband was at work and my daughter at daycare. I went to work, grungy as all hell. baggiest sweater I own hanging to my knees, leggings, and unwashed hair in a bun. I saw at my desk and at the first break time the real me ripped through just for a moment. And she was TERRIFIED. She saw what I was about to do. This permanent “remedy” to all my problems, was going to make an insane mountain of problems for the people I cared about most, and would also erase any chance I ever had I being happy and full of life. Those four minutes were what I needed to tell my boss my dark truth and then have my mother-in-law and husband come take me to the hospital to make sure I stayed lucid.
I know I said I was going to talk about my weekend and these past few days, but this is important to understand what it I want to talk about. Those days I spent in the emergency psyche ward were the most eye opening and scary days of my life, I will share some of that too at a later time. I promised nothing would ever send me back there, and nothing ever came close either. Until this weekend.
I have no words at this time to describe what it is I am currently going through, but with Covid making it to where we can’t go anywhere, working part-time, raising a sensory sensitive three year old, homeschooling my seven year old, keeping the house clean, and taking four classes at the University, I am not mentally capable of handling stress well anymore. But I think what broke me, to the point of getting my family out of the house and then calling the crisis hotline, was realizing I don’t have anyone to talk to about any of this. My husband tries so very hard, as does his mother, but I am so worried about tarnishing those two relationships that I don’t want to share with them the full truth of how bad things are. I would hate for them to worry, especially because my biggest problem is that I can feel so horrific right now, like so bad I genuinely want to end my life, to feeling like I can do this in a matter of hours. I then start to question if I truly do feel like I am suicidal and I don’t have an answer. Because in the heat of the moment, it feels like my truth. Like I know without a shadow of a doubt, it is the solution to everyone’s problems. But if I can just wait it out and get to the next hour, then I know it will fade and I won’t feel to hopeless. The hard part is waiting because during that whole time it beats down on you like it’s the only thing that will save you and the one’s you love and you want to do what’s right. It’s not right though, it is the worse thing you could do. And I do know this. I just have such a difficult time remembering when those overwhelming thoughts are in my head. Anyway, I know I am rambling now. My reason for writing this is, I feel alone. I just wish I could have someone who understands. Not through a screen, who can send me messages about how things are going to get better, or the fake smiles and half-assed support my friends and family want to dish out so they can feel good about themselves for being there for me, but the real stuff. The “I so get it and I am here for you at 2am” stuff. Someone who will drop it all and just help me pick up the pieces until I can glue a couple back together, and then cheer me on while I sort the rest out. My husband is a great man, and he is this person for me, but I am so scared of losing him that I don’t want to rely on him too much. I tried reaching out to those I thought were closest to me, but per usual, after talking about my week, silence. I am hurting and in desperate need of aid and I am shunned until I am stable again. Then I will be greeted with smiles, hugs, and pats on the back. Greeted with everyone saying “wow, you are so strong, if you need anything please just let me know” when you already did let them know and they acted like they didn’t hear you…
If you’ve read this far, thank you. I know it wasn’t very interesting, and most likely didn’t add you your life in any real way, but knowing that someone even cared enough to read this much into my life makes the day a little less bleak. I feel like my mind is a chaotic mess and I thought maybe writing would help it regain order. Honestly feels more chaotic now than it did before but I think that is because I have brought everything to the forefront tonight. Maybe I can pick at it and heal the pieces I need to so I can get past these feelings. Anyway, I want to make this blog so people who maybe feel like me some days, can get through to the next day, and the next. To take that chaotic static in their minds and tease it out into something usable and productive even. Also, so that if anyone does start to relate to these, and potentially reaches out, I won’t feel like I am the only one either. Thanks again for making it this far, just trying to turn chaos into unlimited growth, one day at a time.
Entropic Mama 