I Don't Think You Understand

I don't think you properly understand how much I want to die.

I was so little. I'm not even sure it is a true memory. I remember it always being dark, and now I realize it's because that's when my mom would get drunk. I remember cowering in dark corners and crying for her to stop, but it quickly became clear that she wouldn't or couldn't so I prayed to God to make my pain stop. Sunday School had taught me that He loved me and didn't want me to be in pain. I thought maybe He could just take me to heaven where I'd never hurt any more.

I don't think you could truly and fully understand how much I want to die.

School was always hard for me socially. No one could really get to know me because no one could really know what was going on at home. I was already an outsider because my mom was an immigrant. I was a liar because my mom was an abusive alcoholic. I remember the phone call that broke me. My friends were tired of my lies and suddenly I had no friends. That's when I put on a lot of weight. That's when I stayed in my room a lot and cried more than I ever had in any other period of my life. In a couple of years, I was sitting in my kitchen and staring at a knife I got from the drawer and trying to work up the courage to make it all stop.

I don't think you can see how much I want to die.

I made deals with God that I could be gay (I thought I was straight at the time) if it meant I was happy. While I hadn't internalized my mom's homophobia growing up I knew the societal implications all the same. I made another deal that if I didn't get to go away to college I would walk out into the ocean until I drowned. I read that in a book in high school. I also hid a bottle of asprin in my room. The deal was that if the pain stuck around too long, I was allowed to take them and He'd just have to understand. No one had the slightest clue, least of all my mom. I was bubbly, smart, and capable.

I don't think you can truly believe how much I want to die.

College wasn't much better. Though there was physical distance my trauma was always a phone call away. Summer and winter breaks at home were torture, even though it had been a few years since my mom had put hands on me. I lived in fear of her wrath returning despite the deal she made in front of my brother and I, her pastor, and God that she'd never lay a hand on us again. I started partying in sophomore year of college. I would always turn in early when my social energy was all out from maintaining my bubbly, smart, and capable persona. I'd curl up in my bed alone and cry myself to sleep. Even physically removed from my trauma, it was still hurting me and I became despondent. I thought it would never end unless I could get up the courage to end it. I tried overriding my protective mechanisms by driving drunk a couple of times, hoping to be truly reckless and do something that would take me and only me out. I was so ashamed, so it only happened a couple of times, but... nothing happened.

I don't think you can understand how much I want to die and fight it every day.

It got the worst its ever been a couple of years ago. My muscles tensed and got ready to pull my vehicle into oncoming traffic or off of the bridge but years of therapy and perhaps the new meds I was on helped to override this overwhelming feeling and forced me to drive to my husband's workplace. I thought I was going to the hospital. We got me help without all of that. Since then it's been sharp, oddly-timed, intrusive thoughts like suddenly being very hungry except wanting to die. I've had to hand over my keys, hand over medications, be aware of my sharps, and have people watch me.

I don't think you can properly understand how much I want to die because I didn't really properly understand it myself.

I failed to see some of my thoughts and behaviors as red flags. I pushed down a lot of memories and pretended I never thought that way or did those things. Now I'm ready to let my inner demons out and embrace them until they can be coaxed into peace, then I have a few moments of peace.

I want to die, but I want to live. I want the pain to stop, but I want the joy I'd be missing out on. Every hug and kiss, every child who adores me, every bit of growth I see in the people I love including my mother have made my efforts to stick around worth it.

But I still want to die nearly every day. No matter how I look or what else I might say, this will probably always be true but it is also true that I don't plan on dying any time soon. Maybe I'm working with a new set of deals with a god I no longer believe in. Maybe the deal hasn't been broken yet. I pray they never will be.

I don't think you properly understand how much I want to die, but I'm slowly figuring out how to put it to words.

The Ground Floor

I think people assume that those who suffer from severe mental illness like myself are all starting out on the ground floor every day. You know, like typical people do. Start the day off like normal, achieve from there. It's much easier to climb up and achieve your goals, however big or small, when you're starting out on the ground floor as opposed to, say, several dozen sub-floors below.

See, people like me can often feel like it's a mammoth climb just to get to the ground floor every day. Sure, we can continue to climb up from there but we didn't start in the same place as those without mental illness or who have only experienced depression and/or anxiety as a mood state as opposed to an illness.

"Well, I was down in the dumps once too and I made it!" Yes, I believe you believe that's true, but when this kind of thing is your daily reality for years and years, climbing to the ground floor can feel tedious and tiring. Sometimes we have nothing left once we've made it to the ground floor, if indeed we made it there at all. Sometimes we learn how to get shit done in the sub-floors. Sometimes we're so sore and tired that we don't climb that day at all.

I just can't climb out right now. The ground floor isn't even visible from where I am.

Showing Up

My mom always said that you might think you know who your friends are, but you need to pay attention to the ones who show up. Those are your true friends. My boyfriend also told me last night that the reason I haven't been hearing from many of my friends in the last three months is because I made my friendship inconvenient for them. I removed myself from events and groups where they could most easily access me, and perhaps my friendships were maintained by convenience and they don't really miss me, but miss what I did for them. I don't think either of them are wrong, but it makes how I feel and what I've been thinking more painful.

Sure, some people have reached out, and others have stuck by me. I've even formed newer, closer bonds that either didn't exist or weren't nearly as close as before. Still, most have seemingly disappeared from my life altogether and that hurts. I knew it would happen. I said it would happen. I tried to prepare myself for the inevitability, but it didn't protect me.

I miss my friends so much, and the sting of betrayal and foul stench of hypocrisy is more than I can bear. I'm sure many of them feel justified in their decision or neglect. I'm wrong. My husband is wrong. They have never turned a blind eye just because it was inconvenient or scary for them to take a stand that one time. They can't recall a single thing I ever did for them, just how quickly I dropped what I was doing or how I was feeling to support them. They can't even see how checking in on me might mean the world to me.

I've mostly felt guilty for all of my thoughts. People have lives. It's my responsibility if I built up my relationships in my head to be more than they were. Maybe I'm just not as good as I think I am. Maybe I don't deserve anything.

What I've noticed is that most of the support I get outside of my husband are people who've known me for a relatively short period of time, or don't know me very well at all. That's scary, because I don't have a very high opinion of myself and it just feeds the tapes inside of my head. I'm not good enough. I've never been good enough. The more a person gets to know me, the more disposable I am. I'm worthless. I've always been worthless.

Logically, I know it's not true. I can think of times I hadn't shown up and the complicating factors. I know that there are obvious exceptions to the hare-brained theories my depressed mind is coming up with.

I can't stop it.

I kind of don't want to.

I've not been okay.

Remembering and Misremembering

I had a long heart-to-heart with my mom over dinner on Friday night. It wasn't planned. She had a bit of liquid courage in her from the wine we had with our steak, and I suppose I should be worried about this as she is a recovering alcoholic, but I don't think she overdid it. Anyway, she started seemingly out of nowhere by asking me if I remembered when I was little and my brother and I were at a young friend's house. I had been playing around in the cutlery drawer, which I shouldn't have been doing. I was famous for that: doing what I wasn't supposed to, but I suppose that's all children. Anyway, I had cut myself pretty badly on a knife and decided to lie and tell the parents watching me and my mom that my brother had cut me. Somehow my mom found out that I had lied, probably because she eventually figured out that I was a compulsive liar and my little brother had a hard time lying about anything because his anxiety convinced him he'd get caught anyway. I assume that when my brother insisted that I was lying and he didn't do anything my mom rightfully chose to believe him. She brought this up because she was wondering if I remembered that she put myself and my brother in the car, drove up to the mountains and into the middle of the forest, and kicked me out of the car. She then drove away, listening to me screaming and crying in terror.

I didn't remember this at first, but as I let the story sink in I did. I remembered that it was around dusk, and there was nothing around me except for the path my mom had driven up. I was terrified. I was scared of the dark, and I thought monsters or animals would come and attack me. I was screaming for somebody to please help me. What's worse is because I was a child, I believed I deserved this treatment. She screamed at me when I wouldn't get out of the car at first. She said I was a liar and she didn't want a liar for a child, so she wanted me to get out and not to dare come back. I don't know how long she left me there, but I don't think it was long. I think she continued to yell at me on the drive back. That's all I really remember.

She asked me this because she wanted to apologize for that. This memory haunts her. I think she can still hear me screaming in her memories, and that's why she came back so quickly. I don't think any parent in their right mind can hear their child suffer like that and not come to their senses pretty quickly. My mom explained that she wasn't looking to excuse her actions at all, as they were inexcusable. Having my brother and I gave her a reason to live when she was really and truly suicidal during that time in her life, but having two young children to raise on her own was also the cause of an enormous amount of stress and she often snapped under the weight of it. Now that she's older and owning her shit she wants to let me know the mistakes that stick with her, and this was one of them.

My mom then asked me what I did remember. Among other things, I talked to her about the time DYFS had been called and we met them at school. I misremembered the reason why they had been called. Apparently I had let slip to my teacher that my mom left my brother and I alone at night while she worked the graveyard shift at the factory she was working at when I was in Kindergarten. She couldn't afford a babysitter, but she had maneuvered things so that she was only ever gone when we were sleeping, and working from home when we were awake. My mother managed to scramble and say that the same young friend's parents (the house where I accidentally cut myself) would be watching us from then on. They lived in the same apartment complex as us. I have distinct memories of being carried out to the car by the father, I was barely awake and was taken back down the block at some unknown hour to our own apartment. I don't know how long that went on, but according to what my mom said it was long enough for DYFS to conclude their investigation on my mom and her friend to make sure she was watching us.

During this same conversation we talked about a lot of things like how she agonized over whether or not she made the right decision not to let my father's air force captain adopt us away from her, or if her stress had somehow made my brother a quiet baby and troubled young man. This  ultimately led to me being able to tell my mom that I am non-binary. She didn't really react to that. She neither reacted in disgust and horror nor did she accept me with open arms. She just received the information and didn't really question it. She learned why and when I became really depressed - when my friends called to tell me that they couldn't take my lying any more and didn't want to be my friends the summer between middle school and high school. It dawned on her that that's when I really started gaining weight, because I was overeating and not really leaving my room, but she hadn't known what was going on so she couldn't put the pieces together.

I was kind of hoping to get to talk to my mother more on this visit and truly get to know her better, but also have more frank discussions with her about who I am and what we've been through. Slowly over time, we are getting there. I'm learning more about my extended family than I ever realized, like the fact that her father was also "strict" and abusive (so that's where she learned it from), and my aunt (her little sister) had been abused by her husband and that's why she came to live with us sometimes before she was killed by a drunk driver. I worry a lot that my mom will have some secret health problems and will suddenly pass away without me having the chance to really get to know her, or her getting to really know me, but I hope that we keep picking up momentum and build a real relationship moving forward so that I can get some resolution and clarity on my memories and history.

A Line in the Sand

You know, things change. Facts are acquired and decisions can be altered so I'm not fool enough to say that my mind is made up and that's that, but this is where I'm at as of right fucking now and I need people to be crystal fucking clear about this.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: my husband is the best person I know. Time and again he's put me first. He's helped me, supported me, and never, ever hurt me. In three months and a day we'll have been together for 8 years, married for 3. I half-expect him to change out of nowhere. This is an improvement from the beginning of our relationship when I fully expected him to change and start to treat me badly or realize I wasn't worth the effort and leave me. The fact is, he hasn't changed. He's been steady. He even got better somehow.

After a week away from him on vacation and coming in later than expected my husband had dinner ready, the house picked up, and was fully ready to take care of me in every way possible. From doing emotional labor with me based on difficulties during my vacation to giving me a full body massage to ease my stress and even giving me space to zone out, he has been utterly perfect. That's not to say that I believe my husband is perfect. He's just perfect for me. He's my best friend, my person, and he makes me so incredibly happy.

So let me be clear: you cannot support me and not support my husband. I do not accept that. I am sick and tired of people treating my husband like shit and letting the both of us down based on lies or people not able to deal with their feelings like goddamn adults. My husband deserves praise and love just like I do. He doesn't deserve the scorn, lies, and abandonment he's gotten. I've been there to support him while people put him down just for reaching out and checking in on them once a fucking month. What the actual fuck, people? Why can't people see this is like the very bare minimum to try to be a good friend? When was the last time you reached out? Alex likes to internalize a lot of how people let us down and make it about him and his flaws but he's owning too much that doesn't belong to him because others won't own their shit and I'm tired of it.

Accept the both of us - our friendship, our love, and our united front - or see yourself to the door. I'm completely fed up.

Dark Hours

It's not that I feel a need to explain myself, but more just figure myself out. Today did not start out well. The weekends are not going well for me in general because I lack the usual stressful social chaos that used to be my life. With this time, my brain has time to ruminate. I tried to make some sort of routine for myself. That didn't go anywhere.

It starts with having trouble wanting to get out of bed in the morning. Hours can pass so quickly. I swear I'm not there so long, but before I know it it's close to noon and I meant to get out of bed at eight. "What is the point?" I think to myself. My depressed mind seduces me with all sorts of awful, mean thoughts about how the people I cared about never really cared about me, how my life was a lie, and how the people who remain are growing tired of me. They would be better off without me.

I know I should reach out, but I'm completely frozen. What if they're having a hard time, too? What if they're having a harder time? I have friends and loved ones losing parents, dealing with homelessness, and having their social lives ripped apart through no choice of their own, unlike me. I feel guilty for engaging in Pain Olympics, even mentally. If they wanted to hear from me, they would have reached out. How long has it been since they did? I check. I get sad. I feel guilty again. People have lives, and I knew how social entropy would work here. I made my choices and I am sticking to them.

The pain builds so much that I start crying just to relieve something, and then I get up and manage to drag myself downstairs to do basic things like take my medications and eat. I even brew up some tea. Now people are reaching out and I can't feel anything. I can't smile. I can't laugh, and I don't want to. I cry again. Now my brain is thinking some more seductive and very scary thoughts, the making arrangements and writing a note kind. I let my mind mull over that for a little while as my tea gets cold and consider not telling anyone what I'm thinking. I tell my husband anyway.

After a long delay, I drag myself to the shower and wash my hair for the first time since I got it re-dyed, which means a lot of dye leaking out of my hair. Feels kind of therapeutic. I decide to do every bit of grooming and moisturizing I can from head to toe, and then I dry my hair and decide to do my makeup. Now I'm starting to feel normal again.

In the middle of doing my makeup, my husband comes up with a vase of flowers from my boyfriend. This is my life now. Yeah, it feels weird to me too, but it definitely makes me feel better. I finish my makeup and head out for a planned pedicure and not a moment too soon apparently. Toenails were about to revolt.

By the time I get home and my husband and I get to the movies, I feel completely like my normal self, but at the beginning of the day I thought that there was no way to salvage a day that started out as badly as this one did seemingly without cause.

I don't know if this is the way it is for everyone. I know what to do, or what I should do, to cope and get myself out of those dark hours when I'm feeling so low that I don't know if I can get back up again. I have a tried and true crisis plan, and I know what works for me. Sometimes, despite my experience to the contrary, I lose faith that my plans and tactics work, or that my support system will be able to catch me this time. Sometimes I wish they wouldn't.

Today was hard. I survived anyway.

My Champion

Alex and I went on our first date in early September of 2010 and were "official" by the end of that September. Within the next year I was meeting his friends and acquaintances and they were starting to become my friends and acquaintances, but this was a mixed bag. Many of them had complicated histories when it came to their interactions with my husband, and they wanted to tell me all about them. Not wanting to be rude to these people I just met, I often let them go on, but like with most people, I didn't let others' opinions or stories about a person sway my opinion of Alex much. He had not treated me unkindly. He was not super weird with me. He was charming and smart and lovely.

There did come a point when I had had enough. I remember specifically that I was at a LARP when a particularly bad offender told the same story they'd been telling me about how dorky my husband was for this odd quirk he had back in college for at least the third time. Besides the fact that I was fed up with hearing it, I'm sure I was exhausted so I snapped and told them I was done hearing about what my boyfriend (at the time) used to be like. I didn't care what my boyfriend used to be like. I was with him now, and that's not who he was now. I remember that the individual was taken aback by my response and kept their distance for an hour or so, but after that they approached me and apologized for their behavior and I apologized for my shortness. It never happened again, and we've been good friends ever since.

You see, my husband has a dark past, but that's his story to tell, not mine. Many of you know about my dark past, but it gets darker. The things I had to do to survive my past gets really fucked up and I'm not proud of it. Through therapy and time I've learned to forgive myself for the things I'd done because I was a child, a traumatized child, a child with undiagnosed depression and anxiety. Meanwhile, my husband lived with undiagnosed depression and PTSD. People, especially laymen, scoff at the idea of "self-diagnosis" but I feel very strongly that comes from a place of internalized societal stigma, the privilege of those who have access to health insurance and providers, and the plain ignorant. My husband has PTSD - the flashbacks, the nightmares, the avoidance, emotional distress and dysregulation, physical reactivity, exaggerated blame of himself, feeling isolated, decreased interest in activities, difficulty sleeping, difficulty concentrating, the whole shebang.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you, the reader, that I was always perfect when it came to my husband. I was frequently frustrated and upset by his symptoms. I couldn't understand why he wouldn't want to be with me and have fun, why he was unhappy or not comforted by me and I'm a fucking mental health professional. This is why surgeons can't perform on their own family. Sometimes you're just too close to it. It came to a point that, after he finally got health insurance, I gave him an ultimatum: get professional help or I walk. I would not stay only to watch someone I love decompensate and die. He agreed to get help, and has been getting help ever since. To this day I don't know if I was bluffing. I don't know if I would have been strong enough to walk away from him because I was then and am now deeply in love with him.

I can't explain to you how much it hurts my heart when people simply can't understand why he behaves the way he does, and become reactive to his symptoms without being aware that that's what's happening. Furthermore, they're not interested in giving him another chance. I get it - why would they know? Why should they care? First of all, it's an explaination not an excuse and can you imagine if we had to slow down our entire day to analyze our every human interaction and ponder, "Hmm, I wonder if they have some invisible illness that could explain what's going on here?" That's certainly not sustainable, but I think people just don't believe me when I gush about how awesome he is - because he is. My husband is the single most caring, loving, gentle, considerate, sweet, intelligent, creative, fun person I ever met. That's why I put aside my commitment issues and decided to marry him.

Do people think I'm delusional? Do they think my taste in men is abhorrent? Because I know that there are people out there who are familiar with me and who judge my husband harshly because of old behaviors and old symptoms he's worked through and worked on. They want to tell me about what a dork he was and how he did this crazy thing however many years ago. I'm done hearing about it. I don't care what he used to be like. Do you have any idea what I used to be like? Take a good, hard look at me and bring it. You can't be any more cruel to me than I've been to myself. And what about you? What did you used to be like?

I say this all without hyperbole. This man has saved my life, opened me up to the world, given me friends worth all of the riches in all of the world, supported me through the toughest of times, fought for me, and always, always, always takes care of me. He's the exception to nearly every rule I have. If I don't want to talk to people, I want to talk to him. If I don't want anyone to touch me, I want him to hold me. I don't like surprises, but he always knows the exact way to surprise me in a way that makes me deliriously happy. I love him. I love him. He's my hero, and I'll never stop gushing about that. I'll never stop fighting for him. He'll never stop being my champion.