Walk through a war for some peace of mind

I wanna talk to you guys seriously for a bit. I’ve been in kind of a contemplative mood these last few months. It’s not a bad thing, but it does keep me thinking. Things have been spinning in my head for quite a while and they’re things I want to share with you. I feel like it’s time.

I know I’ve written numerous entries on my relationship with my parents in the past. My father and I had a seriously tumultuous relationship from the time I was about 2 until I was roughly 22. Once I learned to speak and had an opinion of my own, that was the end of me. (I’m going somewhere with this, so hang in there.) I remember being 8 or so and thinking that it wasn’t fair, constantly being in trouble for the smallest things that meant nothing. By 10, I was thinking that every family was like that. It seemed odd to me to go to a friend’s house and he or she wouldn’t get in trouble if they accidentally spilled a glass of water on the floor or washed their hands and left the counter around the sink a bit wet. It wasn’t until I was 12 that I realized that we were the abnormal ones. It wasn’t until 13 that I started to feel like I deserved everything that my father yelled at me for. I was NOT a bad kid, but I was made to feel completely alienated. I accepted it. I deserved it. It wasn’t until 14 that I contemplated suicide. I wanted out. I was done. Teenage hormones didn’t help. That and the fact that I was constantly reminded on a daily basis that I wasn’t worth the time of day. I was never told that in so many words. Only in actions. I constantly felt like I existed just so my father had someone to take his aggression out on. I was never physically abused, but it was so bad in my head that I wished time after time that I was so I could point to a bruise and tell someone. But…you can’t tell about emotional and mental abuse. Not when you deserve it. So I kept it all to myself, only ever venturing to tell my grandmother when I could sneak the cordless phone up to my bedroom. No one else ever knew.

It wasn’t until I was 15 that my father was diagnosed with a VERY treatable form of cancer. Understandably, he was scared and worried. But in the same breath, that turned into rage and I became his verbal punching bag even moreso than before. I was threatened multiple times. “I will END you.” I was called a bitch for the first time in my life because I tried to help him do something and didn’t do it right. I was humiliated and defeated. I deserved it.

To get myself out of the house, I agreed to help my father’s mother with yardwork and housework for days on end because it was the lesser of two evils and I couldn’t stand being in the house with my father. I was scared. I was broken. I was in a very steep downward spiral. I deserved it. We were raking her yard when she asked me how things were at home. I told her a tiny bit about how I was feeling and the response was, “you know your father never wanted kids, right? You came along and ruined his life.” No wonder I deserved it. Whether that was ever true or not, I’ll never know. But to my 14 year old mind, after all I’d been through, I believed it. It made the most sense to me out of everything I’d ever been told. It was like a switch had been flipped on and it was my “ah ha!” moment. I made the conscious choice never to tell anyone I knew. It felt like my little secret. Every time I was treated badly, I could just remember that. I had lots of questions, though, but…I couldn’t ask because I couldn’t tell. I lived with that secret for another year.

It wasn’t until 16 that I picked up a knife. I was outwardly angry and surly and depressed every minute of every day. My head was a chaotic mess that I couldn’t make sense of. I was never big into cutting, but I would make little nicks on my fingertips that I could explain away. I had my bought with that for about six months. The last day was in the middle of May of that same year. The night before, my father had screamed at me for half an hour because I couldn’t get our puppy back inside at midnight. The dog was playing games and I needed help. I had apparently woken him up and that was cause for him to back me into a wall with his finger in my face, threatening yet again to “end me”. I sobbed. I hyperventilated. I deserved it. The next day I sat on my bed with that same knife in my hand. I knew it was “down the road, not across the street.” I was a lot of things, but I wasn’t stupid. I was desperate. I was done. I had nothing left in me anymore. I was tired of being depressed, I was tired of fighting, I was tired of trying, I was tired of living with the idea/knowledge that I wasn’t wanted and I was tired of that idea being proven to me day after day after day. I was too chicken to pack up and run away because I didn’t want to be brought back. And I was too scared that I’d have to explain why I ran away and what the consequences would be once I WAS brought back. So…the only way to avoid consequences was to not have any. I had mentally composed suicide notes over and over in my head for years. I knew what I wanted to say. I was going to explain exactly what was going on inside my head because I wanted my father to live with the fact that he caused that. And I wanted my mother to know that she helped because she made me feel crazy, constantly questioning whether I was just being dramatic or if things “actually happened the way I thought,” if I ever chose to talk about a particularly bad incident. It was over.

A little blood loss later, something inside me said, “fuck you. Fuck them.” I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it. My goal in life from then on out was to stay alive JUST to spite the people who never wanted me. I put the knife away and cleaned up. From then on, I talked back. I argued. I stood up for myself all because I knew it pissed off my father. I stood for everything he was against on purpose. Luckily, that’s lead me down some great paths, but at the time, it was pure rebellion.

It wasn’t until 17 that I had a busy schedule with school, a volunteer job and an after school job. It wasn’t until then that I developed anorexia. It started innocently enough. I was just too busy to stop to eat. I was gone from 6:45am until 9:30pm five days a week. I volunteered elsewhere on Sundays. Saturdays I spent all day hibernating in my bedroom so I wouldn’t have to deal with anything. Depression, man… It was all innocent enough until I realized that I was looking better and feeling better. I lived on nothing but Mentos and Mountain Dew for a year and a half. It wasn’t until I was almost 18 that bulimia came into play. That was also ‘innocent’ enough. I never meant for that to happen. It was just that I physically couldn’t eat without getting sick. I was so used to existing on nothing but a Mountain Dew and a pack of Mentos a day that I had to force myself to fake any family meals and then I’d head off to the bathroom afterwards because I physically could not handle having food in my body. It wasn’t a mental thing, but I guess in that light, you could still call it binging and purging, regardless of the intention behind it.

Around the same time that started, I got into a car accident in which I hit and killed a pedestrian. This man was intoxicated and walking across a six lane highway against the green light. He walked out in front of me and I never saw him. He was blocked by the van in front of me, who just barely managed to miss him. When the smoke cleared from that, my lawyer (who I had to see because I was threatened with a lawsuit) told me upon first meeting him that I “didn’t look happy. Why? Kill somebody?” I had to be physically restrained and dragged back into the room. The school psychologist told me in no uncertain terms that I *would* be “going crazy” (his words) and that it was inevitable, not an option. I told two people about the accident, no one else. My family spread it around to the rest of the family like wildfire. Everyone came out of the woodwork to tell me to, “go get help.”

Keep in mind that at 17, I was still a horribly depressed, angry teen due to my home life that I just couldn’t get away from. Any time I got angry about anything, my mother threatened to send me to a counselor. That helped about as much as you can imagine. Every time there was a car accident on TV or in a movie, everyone would look at me as if I was a time bomb just waiting for me to shatter. My uncle told his two sons about the accident and they were told not to talk to me about it because I “might cry and get upset.” None of these things happened. I can talk about it. It makes me anxious and give me a slight panic attack when I do explain, but it’s only because I sort of hate that initial gasp I get when people first hear. I should expect it by now.

That whole story aided to the anorexia/bulimia issue. I was just…tired by that point. Everything I had was drained. I was tired of thinking about the accident, I was tired of recounting the story to the lawyer and again to the cops who showed up to record my story. I was tired of waiting to be sued.

And at the same time, I had gotten engaged to a man I loved, but was a military brat and had been moved back to the state he was born in. He broke up with me to hook up with a girl he had a crush on back in the 7th grade. That was my final straw. I was numb. I didn’t feel anything anymore. I learned to compartmentalize and to take myself out of a given situation. In short, I learned to ignore things and move on without processing.

These days, I still have triggers. I still have cycles of depression. My default defense is still anger. I’m a horrible insomniac. I’m often up for 2-3 days at a time without sleep and I survive most times on 2-3 hours of sleep per day, although the hours I do sleep are staggered. I’ve (more than) moved on from the eating disorders, but I still have times when I have those old feelings come back. I can control it for the most part, luckily enough. But you know what bothers me the most? It’s not that I went through this. It’s that no one ever knew. It’s so easy to hide things. SO easy. “It started with a handgun, loaded with excuses…” I could lie my way out of anything. “Nah…not hungry.” “Paper cut.” “Just tired.” It helped that I was never home, so no one had to see me deteriorating as much as I was both mentally and physically.

These last few weeks have been particularly difficult for me because I’ve been dealing with some triggers that have come out of the blue. I’m ok. I’m dealing with them and I’m moving on. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. I can’t do normal yet, but I’m trying.

But what I want you all to know is, after laying all of that on the line for you, that no matter what goes on in your life…no matter what problems you might be facing, PLEASE don’t be afraid to tell someone. I know it’s scary. I know it’s daunting. I know it’s embarrassing. I know it’s guilt-inducing. “How did I ever let it come to this?” I know it’s not ideal. Believe me…I know. I don’t regret anything in my past because I’ve been able to learn from it and use it to help others, but there are times growing up that I wished I had the nerve to tell someone what was going on with me. I wished someone could have come to me and said, “look, I know something is going on. I know you’re not right. What’s going on?” I wished someone had taken the time to care instead of criticize.

I wished someone had turned to me and said, “You don’t deserve this.” That’s all it would have taken.

So, you guys…what I want to do is to make sure none of you ever feel like this. This despair thing…it’s not fun. Being hopeless, being scared, having secrets you can’t talk about…it’s not ok.

I’m lucky these days because I have friends that I love who love me back. People I can count on if I’m having a hard time and can’t deal with it on my own. I’m not alone and I’ll always be ok.

This is all one of the reasons why I’m such an advocate of honesty. I don’t want you to hide who you are. I care about you no matter what you’re going through, whether I know you or not. No matter what your life story is, no matter what your problem is, no matter who you are…I want you to be ok. And I never want you to hide your problems because you think it makes you ‘look better’. It’s all important and it’s all part of who you are.

No matter what negative thing might be hanging over your head, I want you to know…YOU DON’T DESERVE IT. It’s nothing you’ve done. It will change, it will get better. Hang in there, little fighter. Don’t give up. Own everything. It’s all part of you. It’s ok to tell someone your problems. Let people help you. Let them know you. Most importantly, let them love you- flaws and all. You won’t have to go through anything alone again.

Public entry, all notes. Come find me if you need someone to listen and to care, whether I know you or not. If this can at all help someone, PLEASE feel free to share it, make it Reader’s Choice…anything you want or need to do, you have full permission. Even if you simply think it’ll make a difference to someone, share away. I’m no role model, but I do hope to make a difference.