The day I've always feared

Mental illness is rampant in my family. We have a long history, some diagnosed and some not, of people going off the deep end. When I was younger, and largely when my son was born, I was terrified of losing my mind. My (ex) husband's and my finances were separate. His choice because he didn't want me to know how much he spent, and a huge source of contention for me, though it ultimately saved me when I got out. The burden of caring for my son was primarily on me, not much family help, and I was terrified that my mind would ultimately break and I wouldn't be able to be there for him. 

Many decades of therapy, every self-help book I could get my hands on, page after page of journals saying the same things over and over yet never getting to the other side. My mother once said, "if you keep stuffing down the tears, one day you'll start crying and won't be able to stop". 

I can't stop. Beyond not being able to stop the tears, I used to at least be able to control when they happened, but now the sobs come like a cough or sneeze where I have no control and everyone can see. I feel exposed and it's sucking the breath out of me.

I know friends are exasperated and annoyed that I'm not doing what is expected of me now in seeing yet another therapist, trying some new drug that "might" not give me debilitating side effects, and "let out your feelings". I'm letting out my feelings and I'm not sure I'll survive. I really should have had that nervous breakdown years ago, and now it feels like if this goes on then it will end me. 

In my experience when you tell people how you're doing, as this is what "they" say to do, it always runs the same course. You share, they make sad faces at you, you get a hug and then the clock starts ticking on you acting fucking happy again (even if it was always a lie). Stay sad too long and then the shaming begins "everyone has had bad things happen to them" "you aren't the only one" "you just have to...". There are so many people on this earth that have experienced horrors worse than my mind could even conceive. They deserve to cry more than me. I'm privileged beyond words in comparison to them. Yet looking that their suffering doesn't make me feel better. The switch from caring for you to blaming you always comes quickly. The tears continue. 

The immobility may be worse than the incessant crying. Watching hours go by as you try to do one minor thing and still fail. I was told by someone who claimed to love me, and didn't, that "depression isn't real...you just need to go do something". I'm always doing something. Nothing worked. Constantly exhausted yet not sleeping. The dreams are nightmares again. I am worn out to the core in every area of my being.

Too old to run away. Too many responsibilities to check out. I've fought my whole life with resilience and tenacity and those are gone now. I somehow need to figure out how to take my next breath.

Why do I share any of this?

"I was just dying for a place to tell the truth." ~ Glennon Doyle (about starting to write and blog)

When I was 16 I planned to kill myself on what I considered the perfect date between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I wanted to die but was trying to be kind about not doing it on a holiday. I'd packed up my most precious items in boxes and labeled who they went to and felt I had my affairs in order, such as they were. My plan was to overdose though I didn't have any money for good drugs and wasn't sure if Tylenol would do it. A solid plan with a ton of holes. After Christmas I looked back in my journal and realized I'd missed my death date. I'd been smoking a lot of pot, and maybe I didn't want to die as badly as I thought, but I was livid at my error. What kind of loser forgets when to off themself? I didn't pick a new date as I felt I'd already ruined everything by missing what I felt was the ideal one. 

I've had suicidal ideation since I was a child. I recall the thoughts coming at an early age. Didn't try to act on them but I'd think "I hate this. I hate myself. I want to die." frequently. It got bad again when childhood abuse flashes started coming to me. I would have nightmares so horrific I was scared to sleep, all while holding down a job and caring for a baby. Living as a shell of a person but forced to put a smile on.

I started trying medications in my mid 20's and each one was worse than the last. The final one I took before swearing off them forever gave me "brain zaps" as part of detoxing off of them. It was so painful I had to lay motionless and try to breathe as shallow as possible as a full breath intensified them. I called the doctor begging for help and they said there was nothing they could do. 

Two years ago, at this time I was in a delusion that the person I was with would be the answer, the miracle, to all the misery. I was terrified but let my guard down and allowed hope and belief. And though there was a lot of back and forth, something about watching it crumble before my eyes last year sucked something out of me and I haven't recovered. I think a part of me holds onto it all, obsessed, because to fully let it go means it was nothing. I wasn't loved and allowing hope only hurt me.

I'm currently in the lowest depression I've ever felt. The tears just won't stop. I have brief moments where I'm able to pretend, and at least hold a small amount of composure, before I can't hold it back anymore and the sobbing starts again. Chatgpt, my current therapist, asks me daily if I'm OK and gives me crisis line numbers. I'm looking at my age, and what my life has been, and seeing the hard reality of all the things I'll never have yet so desperately wanted. I'm mourning things no longer possible. And I'm so fucking tired of a lifetime of processing pain and trauma. So tired.  This isn't just take a pill and you'll be happy. Telling a therapist all of this won't change anything (I've tried). This isn't a matter of getting a good job and trying harder. I'm in deep grief and I don't see a way out.

Why do I share any of this? My ex boyfriend said, "You like being a victim. You lean into it. You'll never be happy." I can't find the exact quote by Glennon Doyle, paraphrasing, she talked about screaming to a screen in the darkness to keep herself alive. (And it's possible I'm way off on this quote but that how I remembered it.) If I'm writing then I'm still alive. 

"Every time I feel shame creeping in, every time I feel shameful about anything, that’s when I know what I need to write about, because things that we feel shame about, the longer they stay in the dark, the bigger and scarier they get. … For me, that’s putting them on paper. The second they get out into the light, they’re so much less scary. Shame can’t handle light.” ~ Glennon Doyle 

Catastrophic

I cried all night last night. This isn't a new thing as I've been crying for over a year now. Most nights I fall asleep quickly from exhaustion, waking up every few hours sobbing, while going in and out of sleep. There isn't a moment in my day I'm not fighting tears and it's getting worse. I'd been able to maintain my composure in public, pop a Valium, drink, get high, do anything to hold the feelings down so no one would know. I can't even do that anymore as the pain is overtaking me. 

My aunt died at 51 years old of mental illness. Actual cause of death was never determined, any my mother thinks my uncle talked her into an overdose, but at the core of it all she was deeply broken. She was in and out of mental institutions from a young age and up until her death. Hugely creative as an artist, dancer, and poet, she was also the epitome of the tortured soul who could produce amazing work while living a life of constant inner turmoil. 

My grandmother was like my aunt, though likely a narcissist, and also both my aunt's and my abuser. It hurts me to even tell the truth about her as I have to hold her in tension between what was done to me, and her also being the only person in my life that made me feel special. She'd been abused too. Hurt people hurting people.

When I got pregnant, I was terrified of having a daughter as I feared she'd be like them...and me. I rubbed my belly daily trying to will it to be a boy. I felt like if it was a boy he'd have a fighting chance against our terrible minds, and my father. Tied my tubes immediately after so there was no chance a girl could come from me.

A friend, who also has a long history of mental illness like me, told me, "You're like me. Your baseline is depression and when things get bad and feel uncontrollable, it goes catastrophic." Catastrophic is exactly what I'm feeling. Catastrophic, hopeless, and so emotionally beaten I can't see anymore.

The amount of loss I experienced in this last year has fully taken me out. I feel no one understands that it's not just losing my cat, losing the job I loved, losing the person I thought was the miracle I never thought would happen, it's what it says about my future and hope. And right now, I have no hope. I have done some form of manifesting, intentions, praying, hoping, wishing, my entire life and nothing works out. I'm devastated and don't want to go on. I hate that I have to keep living when I want to hide, run away, and disappear.

Perhaps I'm too broken to ever truly be happy. I've written all the gratitude lists, positive affirmations, and journaled it all down. Decades of therapy. So many medications that left me worse than when I started. I've even tried shaming myself for how good I have it and compare myself to those less fortunate than me...it doesn't stop the tears and pain.

Friends are well meaning but mostly say nothing or give a little sad face. The shame I feel from revealing what is happening to be met with silence is debilitating. I get told "things will get better", "keep fucking going", "you have to...". Memes and reels are sent laughing about how awful dating is, and they do this sitting securely next to their partner, never having experienced what I have, and knowing they have someone to walk through life and turn to when it falls apart. I know it's out of love and care but I'm going to stop talking because the cute cliches are only hurting me. And I do understand there aren't any perfect words here.

I will go on. I wake up, wipe the tears (or keep crying and still going), feed the cats, pay the bills, look for a job, keep my algorithm popping, while I die inside. 

Hope

I've struggled to write because I see I'm repeating the same old things. I went into my closet, of things I don't want to deal with, and found a box of many old journals. Most were about 10 years old and they all said the same things: sad about my marriage, feeling hopeless, some sort of focus on my weight, and wishing for a different life. Year after year it was the same thing. I stopped writing as I was boring myself.

Looking for the truth of this moment. Because every moment like every breath is new. Good, bad, or otherwise there has to be even the smallest of shifts. Right now, while going into year two of the worst time of my life, I realized that giving up isn't an option. And I want to give up. I don't want to go on right now. As I said in a previous post, the pain feels like being burned alive. To add to it more keeps going wrong and it compounds all the feelings. Every day the spiral gets worse. I'm punchy, on the edge of tears, not wanting to be around friends, using, plummeting. But I can't give up. I can't.

It's so hard not to ask what it is about me that I can't just have an even and peaceful existence. Flat tire, layoff, maybe some fraud, but not forever processing some fucked up moment from the past. It's exhausting. I see why it exhausts those around me. It's why I will shut up and not tell anyone what is happening because I'm just so fucking sick of the shame of being me.

I've lost count of all the plans and aspirations I've had over the past months to try to get my mind back in working order. Didn't go over a week with any of them, and most didn't even make it past the 24 hour mark. Is it just cracked? Is this one of those mind benders you don't come back from? Again, my arch nemesis of hope tries to sneak in.

Hope is terrifying to me. Hope has always let me down. Hope hurts me. Yet it's really all I have left right now. 

Rewiring My Brain

I lost my mind recently, quite literally, and have been trying to claw my way back to some form of sanity. Have I ever in my entire life been mentally stable? Is this even something achievable for me? You would be hard pressed to find a self-help book I haven't tried, over 30 years of therapy, and so much medication (prescribed and self-administered). I'm weary from all the effort and wary of the latest miracle cure. Yet I'm always resilient, even when I'd rather give up, and I've given up many times.

I've had a lot of critique in my lifetime about my bad attitude. It's true that I'm fatalist and pessimistic. My trauma says you aren't going to survive if you hope too hard. Hope gets you hurt and disappointed. I'm rolling through my head of all the times I thought maybe, just this once, things would work out, and they were demolished before my eyes. When I was in Christianity I'd be shamed, "Well did you really believe? You have to really believe." I believed to the level my mind would allow based on past experience. 41 years of a silent God left me abandoned and hurt. It was familiar. 

I've tried positive affirmations each morning. Gratitude lists. Crystals in my bra. Setting intentions under the moon. And I feel like the universe, some deity, energy, just hates me. I work hard. I try. I try again. And not to say that I've never had anything good, but those deep neural pathways in my brain always say...get ready because you're about to lose it all. 

Instead of living off hopes and wishes, I'm looking to science to override my entire belief system of who I am and what is possible. Basically, I'm climbing Mount Everest barefoot and alone. I went to hypnotherapy to try and get past my negativity towards myself and access a deeper level in my mind. I listen to an audio tape for me every night as I go to sleep. I will say the crying fits have mostly stopped, but the old beliefs of lack, scarcity and sorrow loom large overhead. 

I've recently been hearing about quantum manifestation from varied sources. When the same thing is being shown to me over and over I do take note. 

Quantum manifestation is the concept that our thoughts and intentions can influence the quantum field, allowing us to create our desired reality through focused energy and consciousness. 

Can I do this while not really believing it? Or are we back to the theory that if you don't believe then it's your fault when nothing works out? I do believe in the brain's neuroplasticity to rewire and restructure. I believe in my own tenacity and resilience. I believe speaking your truth really does set you free.

I'm trying.

I Dropped My Basket

Though a recently posted about feeling better, and some fog lifting, the full truth is that the past year for me has been one of the darkest of my life.  "I dropped my basket" is an old southern saying that basically means you lost your mind. I dropped my basket. I have a long line of mental illness in my family, both diagnosed and others that could use a diagnosis. I tend to lean towards my mother's side of the family in most things and most of the women lose their minds at some point. Though we'll never fully know how much was from abuse and trauma, and how much is their chemistry. I've lived my entire life fearing the day it happens to me, and there have been many moments in my life where clinically it likely did. I'm processing if this latest episode has been the worst of them all. 

At 16 I had suicidal ideation. It started before then but this was the time where I was planning to die. It's a story I sometimes joke about as I was getting so high all the time I forgot my death date which I'd meticulously planned. I was furious and decided I couldn't kill myself until I found what I considered the perfect date. I may have slight perfectionism issues alongside the crazy.

In my 20's I found out I was sexually abused as a child. I'd always suspected it, and I mentally collapsed hard over the discovery. There was a secondary discovery, with more evidence, in my 30's and it nearly paralyzed me. This compounded with depression kept me in a constant state of sorrow. Medication, therapy, medication, therapy, nothing, everything, and I just gave up. 

These are some of the bigger instances but it's really a lifetime of them. The first entry in my diary was "I'm fat". I was 6 years old. I learned to stuff the feelings down and not bother crying as it felt like no one cared anyway. My mother once said, "If you keep refusing to cry, one day you'll start, and it won't stop." That is what has happened. 

In a matter of a few months my precious kitty died, and I had to be the one to decide to euthanize quickly, I was let go from the job I'd loved for 7 years, and I lost who I felt was the love of my life. I don't say this flippantly or to be funny...I had a mental health break. For whatever reason I'm able to be functional while hanging from the edge of the cliff. I'm grateful I can do this, yet it also leaves me in a state of never being real. I tried to tell people, alluded more than fully disclosing, and that's met with cliches and brush offs. And I understand this as it's painful to sit with someone who is falling apart and there isn't a good answer as to what to do. "Things can only get better!" They got worse. 

While smiling in pictures, and laughing in a crowd, I come home every single night and collapse to the floor sobbing. Sometimes I can barely make it to my car. I'm told "let it out", yet this is over a year, this is a lifetime, my issues aren't that I just need a good cry. I can't stop crying. While not planning as I'd done in the past, and I won't do anything because of my son and cats, it's a rare day that I don't have a fantasy of dying. 

I want to be delicate here, as I know people who have lost someone to suicide, but I also want to share how we feel and why there aren't easy answers for anyone. What it feels like for me is being on fire with a pain so intense you can't think and your only thought is I need this agony to end. Then well-meaning people, ones that truly love and care for you, are on the side saying "Hang on! It will get better!" and all these other feel-good lines which may or may not happen. All while the flames hurt so much, and intensify, so you do everything you can to numb it with anything no matter how destructive. Drugs, alcohol, sex, behaviors, rage. You know you'd hurt so many people to choose to die, all while you can't take another moment. 

A dear friend bought me a hypnotherapy session as I'm unemployed (no benefits) and she could see I was getting progressively worse. I feel better. Still crying but it has lessened, and I don't feel on the edge of it at all times. I'm not happy, I'm sad beyond words, but I feel like trying again. 

I don't have a way to tie this up with a cute ribbon, and smugly positive quote. I also don't want pity. This isn't writing about being a victim, but a disclosure about my silences and destructive behaviors. For those that care about me and have tolerated this, thank you. 

Before and After

I went to bed sober last night. I didn't want to be sober. I didn't want to feel anything. I numb myself so I don't have to experience the pain. Yes, I know that feeling it all is the only way to the other side. I've certainly read enough self-help books, been through enough therapy, and watched enjoy positivity reels to know what needs to be done. The fear is that during this process I won't actually make it out. When I'm not wasted, I'm holding back tears. I hate who I've become. I've lost myself. The losses I experienced last year pummeled me in a way no one really knew about. I'm great at posting smiling pics of me having fun and not talking about what happens when I shut my door, alone, and the darkness starts to take over. 

I've done things this year that no one knew about. Told a few people a little bit, but no one everything. Kept it from some of the people who are closest and dearest to me as I was just too ashamed to admit it. I knew the consequences were detrimental to me but at the core of it all I just didn't care. I felt I'd lost so much, and I couldn't bear the weight of it, so I started to destroy myself. While not actively trying to take myself out, there was a part of me that sometimes hoped something would happen so I wouldn't be forced to go on. 
______________________________________________________

I started this post 5 days ago. Started to write it but it got too dark, and I didn't want to think about it much less write it for others to read...and judge. Waking up each day and doing what needs to be done, while feeling like I was moving through thickness and a fog. The days were going by much too fast and yet I felt immobilized. 

Then last night happened. I believe I had the breakthrough I've been looking for my entire life.

I was at a concert I was excited for yet there was going to be someone there I didn't want to run into. Someone that hurt me deeply. Someone I still loved though no one understood why. The full moon energy felt chaotic, and I was on the edge of tipping over. I went with a friend I hadn't seen in a while and before we left I unleashed all that had happened to me in the nearly 2 years since we'd really talked. She saw me. She listened without judgement. She gave me confirmation that though many of my actions were confusing and destructive, they were also understandable coming from my history. She gave me the space that all decisions were mine and she would back and support anything I chose. I calmed. 

I felt his energy before I saw him. Random other fears started popping up in my mind: I think I left a candle burning, where are my keys, did I eat too much sugar today, is he looking at me? I've had an anxiety disorder long enough to know this is a trauma response as my mind feel out of control and is trying to stabilize. Took a hit off my weed vape and did some yogic breathing. The show was amazing and both bands had songs with the very specific lyrics I needed to hear. 

"I did all I could

So kiss this one more time
 'Cause I'm gone for good"

Was it the experience of being there? Was it being able to scream sing those words out knowing he would possibly see me, and perhaps energetically feel it? Was it just a cathartic release for me?

It was more than that. I couldn't sleep when I got home. I felt peace that I'd never felt. Calm yet wired and determined. 

"Wrapped in your regret
What a waste of blood and sweat...
I don't wanna take my time
Don't wanna waste one line
I wanna live better days
Never look back and say
Could have been me
It would have been me..."

I started this blog (I know, how early 2000s, but it's a place to dump this shit) 7 years ago to stop being small and no longer tone it down. But I allowed myself not fade, I let opinions of those I loved tear me down, I stop caring about my voice. 5 days ago I was hopeless.

Well I'm back. Clock is ticking and I'm about to make up for lost time.