It will be four years in July. July 26th to be exact. Four years since I lost my Piper and for a while, myself. I’ve been on anti-depressants for nearly as long. It was needed. I needed them. At first they helped me get out of bed. They helped me re-join the world. To see that I didn’t cause what happened. To help me see that I could make a difference in what I was currently doing.
Since then, I’ve battled depression. It never seems to fully leave. At times it lays dormant, just laying in wait for the next opportunity to pounce.
I’ve dealt with more in the past four years than I could begin to put into words. PPD twice. Childhood abuse issues. A pretty much complete distance from my dad, step-mother and her children. Separation. Child sharing. Divorce. Life after divorce. That’s just the surface words. The reality was much harsher.
I’ve lowered and upped my doses for years depending on what was in my face in the moment. I’ve battled many horrible bouts of depression in the past four years. I’ve also battled some not as bad ones. I’ve spent weeks hiding in bed. I’ve had days that I honestly believed the sun would never shine again. Depression does that. It takes over your entire world. It makes you tired. It physically hurts. It makes you doubt everything good in your life. Those commercials with the dark cloud following the cartoon person around? Those are a fairly accurate picture. When I’m depressed, I’m pretty horrible to myself. My head gets all messed up and I over think everything said to me and everything I say to the point of making myself and everyone around me crazy.
I’ve also had some amazing depression free periods. Some last days, some weeks and lately it has been months. Months in-between bouts with darkness. Even the darkness, when it comes hasn’t been as long. Days instead of weeks. An occasional week, instead of months. Life has gotten better. My life is a lot more sunshine these days. My head is a lot more mellow.
On Friday, I went to an Endocrinologist for a plethora of reasons. I plan on explaining some of what was said at a later time. For now, let’s just say, I adore the woman. One thing she said to me, was that she’d like me to think about getting off my depression medication.
I’ve thought about it for days. I have been on the lowest dose possible for the past three months. The longest time I’ve gone that low since starting it. I’ve weighed all of the options. I know what could happen. I know it could throw me into a depression. I know the physical side effects of getting off of it. I know what my head may do. How I may get. I know all of this.
Yet, I’m going to try anyway. I’d like to give it a full six weeks before I consider if I can do it for good, or if I need to return to it. Six weeks. I’ve picked a time of sunshine and warmth. I’ve made a list for myself of fun thing that are happening in the next six weeks and a second list of things to do when I start feeling bad.
I’m going to try. I want off of this. It wasn’t what I wanted when I got on it. It was what I needed. The hard truth is that I may always battle depression. That doesn’t mean I need to be medicated forever though. If needed at a later date, I will go back on it, knowing that I gave it a good shot. Whether that’s in six weeks, six months or six years. It’s okay.
I’m scared. I’m terrified that I’m making a huge mistake. I’m worried that it will set of my anxiety. I think I’m most scared that I’m deluding myself. That I really do still need the medication to function. I have to give it a shot though.
Today is day one.
Bailey: MOMMY you WILL drive me to Pixie’s house for the sleepover RIGHT NOW or I will walk there my own self! MAKE A CHOICE MOMMY!
Me: Oh my choice? Funny that you should ask. My choice is you give me your iTouch right now, since it’s now mine until Saturday and you go sit on your bed. That’s my choice. NOW! Until you can act like a calm human.
Bailey: You are the worstest mommy EVER! *slams door*
Me: *opens door* For that door slam, your iTouch is mine till Sunday. Would you like to try for longer?
Bailey: *glares* I didn’t say HATE! BUT I COULD!
Me: You are seriously pushing it.
Let’s just say it wasn’t the best evening. She wanted to go somewhere, a last second un-planned sleepover. Yesterday was the last day of school, but it didn’t matter, I didn’t want her to go. Anyone with a child can understand the rest. She sat on her bed randomly screaming things at me for a bit, before she calmed down. She normally does, the easily calming down. She’s actually my easiest child. So far at least. Her iTouch is mine for a few days and she did apologize to me for her behavior. All ended on an okay note.
The hard part came later. The hard questions at bedtime. Mommy, I know I was rude and I’m sorry but why can’t you ever say yes to me going to Pixie’s house? You never do, you know? Every time you say, maybe next time. When does next time come?
Sigh. I’ll tell you what, I will think about that one, if you will think about how you can act differently next time, when I say that no means no. Deal?
Deal.
For tonight? We’re going to go with, it wasn’t a good night for it.
I left her room knowing that I sucked at parenting in the moment. I know that I made that entire thing worse by not being able to explain my real reasons to her. I know that I tell her maybe next time every freaking time she asks. I let her go other places. I let her sleepover with other friends. If it had been any other friend, she’d of probably been there last night. The girl has playdates. She goes to birthday parties. But not there. Not with this friend.
How do you explain a gut feeling to a six year old? How do you say, her dad creeps me out and you will never ever be allowed to play over there?
Because that’s the truth. That girl is welcome here. I think she’s a bit odd, but she’s nice enough. Her dad gives me that feeling though and I will never allow my child to be at their house. Not for a birthday party, not for a playdate and certainly not to spend the night.
Chris Rock once made a joke about his only goal in life was to keep his daughters off the pole. Funny, yes. Accurate, not quite.
My goal as a mother is to raise happy, intelligent, self-confident, responsible, caring, loving individuals. To send them out into the world one day and know that they will make good adults. That’s one of my main goals as a parent.
The other? Is to keep them safe. I can’t foresee so many things. I am not a higher power, nor do I have one on speed dial. But dammit it’s my number one goal to not let anyone touch my babies. Not a single person harming my children. Never. I know first hand the damage that causes. I will never knowingly put my kids in that situation. The only way I can even try to make that happen is by being super vigilant. I’m over the top neurotic on who my kids are left with. Trust me when I say, that I know this may not be enough. But the only way I do this each day, the only way I let them leave my house each day not in a protective bubble with a electrocuted barrier around it, is to be like this. To never falter in my job. My job of saying no. My job of never letting them go with the people who give me the creeps. Not even for a minute.
It makes me a bit unpopular at times. I’m okay with that. I’m lucky that my ex-husband is 100% behind this. Before he lets the kids go anywhere with new friends, he always asks me first.
But to explain that to my almost seven year old? I don’t know how I’m supposed to do that. Not to her. Not to her big sister. Not to their baby brother. I do not know how to do it. How do you tell your children, I need to protect you the way I wish I was protected…without ever burdening them in that way? I have no clue.
Last night I chose to say, no means no. Last night I chose having my daughter mad at me all evening. Last night? I chose the easy door.
He loves to spring the hard stuff on me at random times. My brother, he’s good at that.
We’d been hanging out at his house for a few hours. I’d played with his dog and kitties. My step-sister had come and gone. We were getting ready to go out to eat when he said it. So…I know more about our brother. Which brother I asked? (Legit question. As we have a brother that we don’t see (his family is his drugs) and a step-brother monster that I choose not to see.) The brother we have never known, was his answer.
*silence*
Oh that one. The one my dad helped create, yet never cared a second for. The one my step-mom said had been given up for adoption at birth by his mother, in Sweden no less. That brother. Huh. For a minute I considered just changing the subject. Of course, my curiosity never lets me do that. Okay dude, tell me.
What she (step-mom) told us was complete bull crap. He wasn’t adopted. His mother kept him.
I am not surprised by any of those things actually. You’d think I would have been. But no. I know my step-mom is a liar. Even in a drunken rampage of everyone’s emotions she can still pick and choose what she says.
But then he dropped the bomb. He lived in the Valley his entire life.
For those who don’t know? The Valley is the San Fernando Valley in California. It’s a large part of Los Angeles. Mere miles from where I grew up. Say 15 at most. I have relatives who live in The Valley. I spent a lot of time there as a child. Apparently my little brother lives there. Always has.
Here’s the thing though. My bro and I? We’ve (since finding out ten years ago) always wondered how we could find him. Now, we know where he lives. We know people who knew his mother back then and all logic tells us that they know her now. At least they could tell us her name and we could search her out.
I’ve spent ten years trying to remember her name, as I do remember her. She was a passing figure in my dad’s life for a month or two when I was five years old. Yet, I can’t seem to remember.
We talked about this the entire walk to dinner. We talked about finding him. About knowing him. About the probability that he’s the spiting image of my dad. We wondered how tall he might be. If he has other siblings. What he’s done with his life. All valid questions.
Except for one thing. He’s 25 years old. (Or maybe 24. Hard to know exactly.) He’s never come looking for our dad or for us. There is a very good possibility that he was raised by a man who he believes to be his dad.
While we know that in time we could get the right people drunk and find out his mother’s name and locate him…the true question is, how do we ruin someone’s life like that? Just because we want to know him, doesn’t mean he’d want to know us.
We have no answers. We may never do a thing. Maybe just knowing he was raised in the same area as we were, is enough. That he wasn’t given up in Sweden. Maybe knowing that he’s alive and could easily locate us if he wanted too, is enough.
I know how to be a good sister to my bro. We were raised together. I know what he means when he says something odd. I know he’s the only person more stubborn than me and that’s saying a lot. I know that when he calls me late at night, he’s lonely. I know that he’s one of the hardest working men in this world. I know that he tells everyone he doesn’t want kids, but will make an amazing dad one day. I know him. He knows me. We are very close.
We decided to sit on this decision for awhile. Maybe a few years. We both said, we’d let it go for now. Until we have an answer to the question, if it were us, would we want to meet us? Would we want two adults showing up and claiming to be long lost siblings, if we’d never been told our dad wasn’t our real dad? If we knew nothing, would we want two strangers ruining the life we thought we had?
Until we know, we wait.
WARNING: I need you guys to know something before you read this. I am okay. I really am. I’ve started writing these things down, as a way to get them out of my head. As a way to try and process why I am the way I am. For me, writing helps. Writing is better than therapy. It’s almost like a way to release some of this. As I’m dealing with some things that have come up lately, there may be more posts like this. I’ll try to post one and then post other things before posting another. Please know, I am okay.
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I am six. It is my second memory of her. It is morning and there are cartoons on in the background. She asks which cereal we each want and I choose Coco Pebbles. I see the chocolate milk on the counter and ask if I can have that on my cereal. She asks if I do that at home and I say, oh my mom always let’s me. Why I had to say that, I’ll never know. Maybe I just thought it sounded good. Maybe I wanted brown milk.
My dad comes into the room and asks what in the world I’m eating and she tells him what I said. He laughs and then says, she’s never even had sugar cereal, her mom would freak out at this breakfast. I hide my face guilty in my hands. She laughs it off.
She makes me pay for it later.
Years later she still tells the story at times. How funny that she believed a silly lie from a six year old child. She leaves out the scalding hot bath and the clumps of hair she yanked from my head, in brushing it that night. Yep. She always leaves that part out.
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I get sick and throw up in bed one night. I may have been seven. I don’t remember the details of what she said and did. I just remember being forced to clean up the mess myself. I remember bathing myself. I remember trying to change sheets myself. I remember setting a beach bucket by my pillow myself. I remember crying myself back to sleep. Wishing for my mommy.
Any time I get sick after that, I go back to my moms. I tell my dad, I’m sick and need mommy. He takes me home. Somehow I think he understands.
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She makes a scene one night at a restaurant. We get sent to the car any time we act out in public but she can scream at my dad at full volume. His offense? He’d come and picked my mom and us up earlier in the day when my moms car broke down on the highway. He’s a mechanic. This is what he does. I should have left my children stranded on the side of the 101 because they were with her. YES she screams.
I cry because I picture us next time stranded for weeks. She sees me and starts freaking out even more. Stop crying you little brat she screams. He loves you best, he’d never do that to you. He loves me best huh? He didn’t stop her from grabbing my arm and shaking me to stop crying.
The manager of the restaurant kindly requests us to leave.
At seven I learn to zone out and pretend to not be there every time she screams.
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For every birthday until I was ten she bought me the most beautiful dresses from Nieman Marcus. Oh they were so beautiful. I could always imagine myself twirling in them. I never got to though. She’d send them home to my moms house. My mom would get all pissed off realizing that the dress was always two sizes too small.
It was all for show. To show my mom what she could do, because she had money. My mom would try to go and exchange the dress. But no, yet again it was out of season and long gone. The replacement dresses were never the same.
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I get scared in the line for Space Mountain and refuse to go on the ride. It’s really no big deal, the Disney guy tells me. Happens all the time. I stand with him, until the rest of them get off the ride. She belittles me to everyone for the entire day, yet refuses to look at me. You know, lots of kids are scared of roller coasters at nine years old.
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She is very careful what she does. It’s all underhanded. She’d never let my dad see it. She love to have a row with my mom, but she wouldn’t do things that would leave a mark. Or not a mark one can see.
Sometimes she won’t brush my hair for a week. Sometimes she yanks it out. After a time, I make my mom teach me to brush my own hair.
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Get your nose out of that stupid book and pay attention to what is happening in the real world. Why would I do that, I said to her, this world sucks. I am ten and we are on vacation. She is shocked in the moment, because I rarely spoke back to her. In fact I had learned to speak to her as little as possible.
The next morning every book I’d brought on our two week trip is gone. She yells at me for not paying better care to my stuff. Because of that, she takes away my snacks for four days and my Game Boy and Walkman for the remainer of the trip.
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I am equally scared of her and somehow still want her approval. At times she is very nice to me. At times she compliments me. She likes me. She buys me things. She takes me to the store, just her and I. Sometimes when crossing a street, she holds my hand. At times she tells people I am her daughter, instead of his kid. I know it won’t last, it never does. Yet it keeps me from hating her for years and years.
I need that approval. I try and earn it. I get good grades. I am in general, a pretty dam good kid. I volunteer to read to the boys, to help them learn to read. I always do dishes there and clean up after myself. I never back talk or cause trouble. None of it really matters.
When she’s nice, she’s nice. When she’s evil, she’s evil. It can and does change in seconds.
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It’s the summer of our big US adventure. 18 states I believe. We saw 18 states in a month. I’m twelve. This had actually been a better vacation than most. Her daughter was allowed to bring a friend. Paula. Sweetest girl my step-sister was ever friends with. Her dad had died suddenly that March, so we invited her on vacation with us. She needed distraction. Her mother needed some time. Paula being there made it easier for me. Everything is about appearances, you see. Appearances for appearances sake, kept me safe that summer. Safe from her. Safe from her monster of a son.
Yet one day, I get my period. First time ever. I remember that a few years prior she made a big deal of her daughter becoming a woman. I tell her and she smacks me. I’m lying and I just want attention. Don’t I know that nothing is about me this year? Suck it up was her response. I spend my video game money buying tampons. Thank god I read instructions well.
The following month, I am at home with my mom. Hey mom, guess what? I got my period!!! She is so happy that she cries. My baby, a woman. She buys me a phone for my bedroom, with my very own line. We celebrate.
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My step-mother hates me. She always has, she always will. I am a reminder that my father had a life before her. I am also a girl and she’s not fond of girls. I have little to no contact with her anymore. I rarely speak to my father. It’s sad, but it’s better for me.
She’s a functioning alcoholic. I’m not saying that to make excuses. It’s just fact. She’s a hateful horrible alcoholic. She takes good care of my dad though. This will sound really bad, but in my head I think, if she dies before him…which she will, as he’s not a drunk…maybe then I can have a relationship with my dad.
I miss him. I miss my dad. Every day.
When I hit puberty I started putting on weight. I didn’t know why. I didn’t eat anymore than I had before. By the time I was 18, I’d tried every diet in the book. I once even ate nothing but oranges, carrots and crackers, for two months straight. Some odd diet a friend came up with. The Orange Diet. Snort.
Nothing ever worked. I’d lose five pounds and gain five pounds. The same five pounds over and over and over again. I’d beat myself up. I’d belittle myself. My step-mother tormented me. She would give me books called FAT for Christmas and insist that I open them in front of everyone. I’d pretend not to care and then cry myself to sleep for the next three days.
Logan only knew me as me and he prefers big girls. He never, not a single day in our entire lives made me feel anything but beautiful.
I learned to live with who I was. I was the fat chick. The big girl. I built a wall around my insecurities about weight and learned not to care. I decided that I had to embrace it or I’d hate myself forever. I built a stone wall and locked that fucker up and threw the key into the Pacific Ocean.
I have never been a big eater. I don’t eat much fast food. I may joke about chocolate and cupcakes and cake all the time on Twitter. But I don’t eat a ton of them. Maybe more than I should…but I actually eat pretty decent. I’m not making excuses for my weight. It is what it is. I’ve ignored it since before Morgan was born.
However, last month at a regular OB visit, I let it slip that I’d not had a period in over a year. While my PAP was normal and always has been, I’ve always had this problem with not being regular, unless I was on the pill…but I’ve never been on it for long periods of time, because I get horrible leg cramps and well honestly, I like babies. Anyway, my OB had like 22 pints of blood drawn from me and tested me for everything under the sun. She was the first one to ever offer this and I’ve gone in every year or every other year since I was 16 years old. The two biggies that she was sure I had one of, were PCOS or a thyroid problem. Funny how after being told to lose weight at every single doctor visit in the past 15 years, even for broken thumbs (BECAUSE OF COURSE I BROKE MY THUMB FROM BEING TOO FAT) no one had EVER bothered to check for either of those things.
Most of my tests came back in a day. Not a thyroid problem, nor any of the other 15 things she checked for. So I sat and waited and waited and waited. Yesterday, I got conformation for what I, in the past three weeks had already come to realize, I have PCOS. Basically my ovaries are lazy mother fuckers. Oh and my body produces too much testosterone and not enough estrogen.
I’m guaranteed I’ve had it since I was a teen. Some of the symptoms? Acne that never goes away. Hair. Lots of hair. Hi, I’m an Issa Chi Pet. Oily skin. Lack of periods. Cysts on your ovaries. Gaining weigh around your stomach, because of something to do with your body not metabolizing correctly. If you don’t eat small amounts of food throughout the day for some reason, your body starts to think it is starving so it starts to store fat. Fun huh?
It can cause miscarriages. Of which, I’ve had two. My OB thinks the fact that I had kids at all, was because of being on and off the pill before their conception. Which is true. Generally they find it when women have trouble having babies. Since I’ve had a few, no one ever thought of it.
If left untreated it can cause diabetics, thyroid problems, high cholesterol, heart disease. The list goes on. I’m lucky that at the present time, I have none of those problems.
I’ve been put on medication that should help. Medication that I apparently get to take three times a day, forever. I need to learn to eat smaller meals. To actually eat breakfast, something that I hadn’t done in oh forever. Three weeks of eating yogurt and granola every day and I already feel better. Silly small thing, but it has made a difference. I need to cut out some other stuff and eat more veggies.
I also need to learn to exercise. Like last week. To take control of this, before it takes control of me. I’m taking the plunge…I’m going to start the 30 day shred next week. Although, in all reality it may be the 60 day shred. I have to do it though. I have to do something. I have to learn to change.
Yesterday, that brick wall, the one I built years ago, was run into. Boom. Bye bye wall of protection. All those issues and insecurities that I’d put aside 10 years ago have come swimming to the front. It’s in my face, along with my new reality of a life long health problem.
I’ve cried so much today, it’s not even funny. Just from being overwhelmed by how big this seems. It seems HUGE right now. I hate that I ignored something that could have been taken care of years ago. I hate that no doctor ever asked me about my issues. They just told me to lose weight, never bother to ask if I could. I hate the fact that I’ve probably had two miscarriages for something that is completely treatable. On this medication, I’m going to be super fertile. Great timing huh?
I’m overwhelmed and honestly, I’m just scared.
I’m so lucky that I have friends who are holding my hand right now. An amazing friend who knows exactly what I’m dealing with and has patiently listened to every question I could throw at her for weeks. Friends who don’t know but have Googled PCOS to find out what I’m dealing with. Friends who are willing to do the 30 day Shred with me, just so I am not alone in this.
I’m grateful to them. I’m grateful that at least now I know what I’m dealing with. That it was caught before I ended up with too many health problems. That I have time to deal with it. To learn to change.
But I’m still a scared emotional mess who just found out I have a life long medical issue. I don’t know where to go with this. What to do to move past the fear and the hatred of myself in the moment. I have no answers. Only questions.
Today is your birthday. Happy 60th birthday.
Why exactly I’m writing this to you, I’m not completely sure that I know. I think it has something to do with a television comedy I saw a few weeks ago. In it, the main character’s dad dies unexpectedly. The entire episode is dedicated to the question: what were dad’s last words to me? I struggle with this often. I tell people, I have a dad, but I don’t really have a dad. Then I change the subject. In that way, I am like you.
While I do have tons of memories of spending time at your house…I can count on my hands the times we have spent together. Just us. I do cherish those times. They are memories that I hold onto tightly. They don’t change the bad though. They don’t discount the neglect, emotional abuse and hatred that your wife bestowed onto me. All of which, you let her do.
It would be easy for me to walk away. To pretend you don’t exist. In a lot of ways, you don’t. I don’t think about you when I plan vacations or holidays. I’ve actually been about 30 miles away from your house four times in the last year and haven’t bothered to stop and say hello. Twice I even pointed out your freeway exit to Liz, as we drove by. I don’t think about calling you when something bad happens, or something good for that matter. You are there, but not there, if that makes sense. Which it may not. For me, that has been your role since I was six years old. The man I called daddy, whether you deserved that term of endearment or not.
At times people will ask me why I even bother. Why do I send you birthday and Christmas cards? Why do I call once a month? A lot of times, I have no answer. Right now, I do. In this moment, I have my answer.
In case something were to happen tomorrow, I don’t want my last memory of you to be our last conversation. The conversation where you invited me to your birthday party. The one that is three states away. With only ten days notice. I know and you know, why you did this. Because she doesn’t really want me there. You both know I can’t afford to plan a vacation for the kids and I, with no notice. You wouldn’t have mentioned it at all, except you knew that one day someone would say something about it to me and I’d be pissed. That was literally your parting comment to me. If you died tomorrow, that would be your last words to me. You told me, only to save yourself the trouble later.
You do that often. You engage with me, maybe with everyone, only enough to save yourself drama later. In a lot of ways, it’s a sad way to be. However, after all these years, I understand why you do it. You chose easy. You decided way back when, to do as little as possible to make it through life. When I was six years old, you chose her. Her and her horrible monster children, over us. That’s life. I’ve spent much of my life wondering what I did wrong as a six year old. Logically, I know it wasn’t me. It had nothing to do with me. She did that; your wife. She never liked me, because I was a girl. I can’t change that, nor can I change that you were married once before her. I can only hope that you are happy with your choice.
It’s funny to me that your wife dislikes me as much as she does, because she feels I am too much like mom. In truth, I am much more like you. Except that I am emotional and I love with my whole heart, that I did get from mom.
This wasn’t what I wanted to write about. Really, it wasn’t. I just know why I always try. I know why I call, even though we only discuss the weather. I know why I send cards.
While your last words to me will never be something I hold onto, I always want you to have mine. It’s sort of the opposite. One day when something happens, no matter when it is, it may comfort me. See, every time we hang up or at the end of every card, I say: I love you. Sometimes you say it back. Sometimes you say ditto. Other times you just hang up. It doesn’t matter. It stopped mattering years ago.
I can’t change you, only me and I choose love.
If something unexpected happened tomorrow, I will always know that you knew that I loved you. That will have to be enough.
I do dad, no matter what. I love you.
Happy birthday daddy, I hope it’s a great one.
So my cousin, she says to me. It’s been a year. Over a year now. Are you going to try dating?There are great dating sites out there, maybe you should try one?
Um no, I answer. I’m not ready. I don’t care to date. I’m not sure I will ever care.
You know, ever is an extremely long time.
Yes, I know that. I’m just not even thinking about it yet. Can we talk about something else though? What school did Trevor pick?
The conversation easily changes when I bring up her son and his college goals. He’s a high school football champion, getting a full ride. Boy got offered six full rides. Anyway, we talk kids for the next 15 minutes and then we hang up.
A year. It’s been a year. I don’t….
Can I be honest? Are you guys okay with that?
I’m still in love with Logan. Not in the, I’d get back together with him, way. Nor in the, I’m sitting here pining away for something lost, type of way. Those ships have both sank. Dam icebergs.
Yet, I am still in love with him. I’ve never loved anyone else. I don’t know that I’m capable of moving past this. I don’t know how to date. I’ll be completely honest, it doesn’t interest me in the least right now. The thought of dating really hasn’t crossed my mind. Not in a positive way at least. The thought of trusting someone else? I can’t imagine that. He was all I have ever known. Maybe he was it for me.
I didn’t ask for him to leave me. I’d of stayed with him forever, no matter what. I have learned to live without him. Mostly. I’m still working on that in some ways. I have gotten stronger. I do what I want, when I want and how I want. He might have broken me though. Maybe I broke me. I’m not exactly sure yet.
However, I don’t know that I believe in marriage anymore. I don’t know that I’d ever want to do it again. Truly, I can’t imagine dating right now. Maybe I’m just not there yet. Maybe I’ll never be there. Does it matter? Do I fail life if I raise amazing kids and end up alone?
Some days I’m lonely. Some days I wish I had someone there when I went to bed and when I woke up. I had that though and it was amazing. How can anyone ever compete with what I thought I had? Would I ever want anyone too? I don’t have answers. Just tons of unanswered questions.
What I am sure of is this: I am not ready to talk about dating. I am not ready to date. If that means there is something wrong with me as a person, well we’ll just add it to the already long ass list.
There are very few posts that I regret. Yet, yesterdays goes on that list. I feel like I probably needed a breathalyzer for my own blog. One that could see how crazy I was. Then it could have locked down and said, sorry, no entry. Please to be trying again tomorrow.
I’m sorry. For posting. I shouldn’t have.
Yesterday? I lost my shit. It’s no ones fault really. It happens. I was triggered and I lost my shit. I still feel sorta shaky. That’s how bad that panic attack was.
I never know what it will be. Where it will come from. What might set me off. I will be honest, I watched Private Practice last week and was fine. I mean, I was horrified. I cried. But it didn’t make me panic. Didn’t give me nightmares. Most likely, that’s because I wasn’t attacked as an adult. I was abused as a child. By another child. It just is what it is. I have issues. Just not those specific ones.
I have been banned from watching Law & Order SVU. Which is sad, because I adore Elliot. But I can’t watch it. Never again. However, besides that? I never know what will happen. That disgusting book did it yesterday. It just did. I can’t explain it. I can apologize for it. For bringing it to this space. But I can’t explain it. Nor tell you that it will never happen again.
This is all new for me. Not because I ever forgot what happened to me as a child. Just because I’d stuffed it so far, that I’d built a bat cave around it. Now, I’m dealing with it. Slowly. Painfully. Over time.
My issues are my own. I’m sorry that I spazzed them out on everyone else yesterday. You all don’t deserve that.
I have one more thing to add. It may be an unpopular thing to say. Amazon is a large company. They will pull that book or they won’t. That’s on them. They will have to deal with the consequences of their actions. I can hope that they will. They should. But the arguments yesterday? About boycotting and freedom of speech and all that? Semantics. In truth, both sides have a point. It’s an old argument. Who will win out this time? Only time will tell.
Reality is, this morning I, remembering a commercial I saw for a Fisher Price flip car last night, opened Amazon to try and find it. What can I say? I’m a creature of habit. I didn’t think about it, until I’d already opened it up and starting searching.
For me, it wasn’t about that. It’s not who’s selling the book. Not even really who wrote it. It was just about me being triggered. That’s all.
Tell me when it’s over. This current conversation on Twitter. Someone please, let me know when it’s safe. I won’t be back on there until it’s completely over. Or Facebook.
Just clicking that link was a trigger for me. That anyone would write that book, much less think it was okay to publish makes me physically ill. I had the worst panic attack I’ve had in months. In fact? I hadn’t had one in over three months. Until this morning. One link that made me panic so bad, I got physically ill. I shut down.
Four hours later and I’m still shaky. I just threw away my lunch, because the smell of it made me feel nauseous.
Tell me when this ends. Someone. Anyone.
Tell me when I won’t have this happen.
Tell me when I will stop being triggered at things like this.
Tell me when I can watch crime/drama shows on TV without having to read about it on Twitter first, to make sure it’s safe.
Tell me when I won’t panic at this stuff?
Tell me one day it stops. Please. Anyone. Someone. Please.
Just tell me when it’s safe to be back online. Because right now, it just isn’t for me.
I’ve debated this for hours now. Do I add in my words, when others have done it so well? Do my words, does my story really even matter? Last night, when I saw a tweet (Yes, I check Twitter at concerts. I’m an addict. FACT!) that my comment in one person’s post had sparked another person to post, I started thinking about this. Part of me wants to let it go. Part of me wants to scream it from the roof-tops.
I guess I will need to attempt middle ground.
The first week of seventh grade, I managed to get on the wrong side of a group of girls. The mean girls. It’s been so long that I can’t exactly remember how it started. I maybe looked at them wrong. Or had on the same shirt as one of them. Maybe I said something the leader of the group didn’t like. Maybe it was because I knew the most popular boy in school (dude, he was my next door neighbor) and he wouldn’t give her the time of day. Maybe I just looked like an easy mark. I had glasses and zits and hadn’t developed yet, where so many of them had. Your guess would be as good as mine.
They made me their target though. From that day on, I was their favorite target. Think of anything that ever happened to you by a bully and know that it happened to me that year. I had my lunch stolen. I had drinks “accidentally” spilled all over my shirt on picture day. I had rumors spread about me. How I was easy. How I’d do anything. I had my phone number written in every boys bathroom. I had my bike destroyed. How they did that, I have no idea. But it was literally bent in half. They were relentless in their threats and horrible words and taunts. My house was egged 6 times. I was shoved, slapped, pinched and pushed into lockers. I was tormented.
For seven months straight, I was tormented daily. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. I nearly failed school that year. I like to tell people, that it was to see if I could. That’s my party line. I was an A student every other year. I took AP classes. School came easy to me. But that year, I nearly failed everything. I made up a story as too why I nearly failed, because it was easier that telling the truth.
Because no one would listen to the truth. No one asked. Teachers would see her doing things and wouldn’t stop her. My mom was never home. She was getting her masters degree. She worked full time and went to school full time. I was the one making dinners and doing laundry and cleaning the house. I took care of my brothers. Me. Just me. She didn’t need that stress added. Besides by then, I’d already learned to keep things from her. To protect her.
I went to teachers. I went to the principal. I went to the school counselor. I heard it all. Oh just ignore her and she’ll stop. If you don’t acknowledge it, they will get bored. Stand up to them. You know, I tried that. It only got worse. This is your fight, not mine. We have to have actual proof that it’s her.
I got hateful notes in my locker every day; on the days that they allowed me to use my own locker. It was in their hallway, so you know, it was up to them if I could use it or not. I failed PE, because they wouldn’t let me in the locker room to change. They’d take my homework out of my hands and rip it to shreds. They tore my backpack off one day and then threw all of my books in the aqueducts. I guess the ocean needed my books more than I did. I didn’t use a bathroom at school for seven months, for fear of being shoved in a toilet. If I absolutely had too, I’d go in the middle of class and run down the hall to the kindergarten teachers bathrooms. Because it had a lock on the door.
I wish I was joking. I wish I was making this all up. I wish I could tell you that they grew up. That an adult stepped in and helped me. That the main chick moved away. That I changed schools. Anything.
The reality though, is harder. One day my brother saw them following me home. One day my ten year old brother, saw them. He became my permanent bodyguard for the next two months of school. Which he could do, because our school was a small, K-12 program.
Private school kids are even worse than public school kids.
He walked me to school. He walked me home. He stood outside bathrooms. He walked me to my locker each day, shoving them all out of the way.
He finally resorted to beating the shit outta one of the girls. When that didn’t stop it, he beat the shit outta the main leader chick. My brother, you see, had always been bigger than anyone else. People always mistook him for about three years older. He is the size of a linebacker now. All tall and broad shoulders. Mostly though? He was scrappy. He always stood up for people who were picked on. He always stood up to bully’s. He still does it now. When he said, stop or I’ll beat the shit out of you, he meant it. After the second time, they believed him.
It’s not what you want to happen. It’s not what I wanted. It had to end though. My baby brother? He ended it for me. The boy is relentless. He didn’t give up. Eventually they moved onto picking on someone else. Someone without a ten year old bodyguard.
I was bullied. Horribly bullied. I am thankful that this was before the days of Facebook and Twitter and mass texting. I can’t imagine how bad it would have been then.
It needs to continue to be talked about. Over and over and over again, until it stops. Some of us were bullied. Some of us were bullies. At this point in our lives, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it stops. What matters is that we recognize it and stop it before it gets so bad that our kids take their own lives.
In most ways, it does get better. I’ve hear the ads. They are all over TV. It does get better. I was only bullied for seven months though. Then it ended for me. What though, happens to the kids that it never ends for? That is what scares me.
We just have to keep talking about it.
What matters is that we stand up and tell our stories. That we use our voice. In hopes that it helps one kid or one adult stop bullying.
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