Trying to Move On

T/W: Depression and Information about Suicide Attempts

Last night was a bad night for my mental health.  Everything about the day had been average and nothing out of the norm but once I turned off the TV for the night and climbed into my bed for the night I started to dwell on my issues.  That’s the worst part of the day for me because it quickly becomes the most dangerous part of the day.  It has been in those hours of the night, when I am meant to be sleeping, that I have tried to take my life three times in the past.

The first was with prescription drugs and shortly after I doubted my intentions and made myself get sick.  The second was also with prescriptions sleeping medicine, I did not take enough but I did pass out and somehow, I miraculously woke up.  When I woke up I was in a rage and I lashed out at someone I had once been close with before I passed out again. The third time was shortly after my 21st birthday.  I was drunk and had begun to doubt everything about my life again.  I felt alone and miserable and i could not stop reliving my trauma and I cut myself very deeply in numerous places.

The night of the third attempt I did not try to stop the bleeding as I lay naked in my bed.  I merely let myself fall asleep, or pass out, or whatever you would call it.  I did wake up though and I was so scared.  I was hungover, I didn’t know if I felt so awful because of the drinking or because of the harm I had physically caused my body.

I called my mother.  And I have already written about how terribly that went.  I never did get back into therapy after my last attempt, I saw my primary doctor and she put me on some medications but once my mother switched jobs we had a gap in our insurance for three months.  I couldn’t afford the medication out of pocket so I stopped taking it.  This didn’t affect me at first but lately, I am wishing that I could be taking my medication again and that I could be seeing a therapist.

My insurance is meant to be starting again.  But therapy appointments are a tricky thing and it is often difficult to get an appointment.  I will certainly try.  I know how important it is to find someone to disclose these thoughts to in a clinical setting.

And so here I am after a night of sobbing into my pillow until five in the morning.  I am exhausted and I feel feeble.  I feel completely alone.  I know that I am not alone, I know that I have people on my side.  I know that my boyfriend supports me with more love than I have ever experienced.  I know that my friends stay loyal to me.  But what I do not know is how much love I can give to myself.

 

Love Carly

Not Safe

T/W: Depression and Suicidality

I’m feeling quite fragile these past few days. Lonely. Feeling like I just don’t know what to do with my life or where to turn.

Of course, I know that I am not alone but it feels that way when my head gets so fogged up with doubt and self-hatred. I haven’t been able to breathe properly all day. It isn’t congestion and I’ve never had allergies or asthma. It’s like I’ve swallowed a pit and I’ve been choking on it all day.

I’ve felt as if my body is obtrusive in other’s space and I feel pretty paranoid lately. I’m continuously questioning myself and who I am and why I am.

I’m content to lay in bed, to pretend that the world is not continuing to move on around me. I know that I need to get up and keep moving and somehow I do, though I don’t know where that strength comes from.

I’ve tried to kill myself multiple times in the past. Once I got close. The next day I called my mother and asked her to come see me and I told her everything. I told her how I was raped and how everything hurt and life was hard. And she scolded me and told me to never cut myself again. She told me to come home and I did. She told me she would take care of me and get me into therapy, she didn’t. She ignored me all summer and never asked how I was at any point. Later she would accuse me of lying to get attention. 

So much of my pain relates back to my mother. Yes, much of it has to do with my rape but I’m still trying to cover up the scars of my childhood.

I want to reach out now that I am feeling so helpless, but I cannot and I will not. I know she cannot and will not help me.

Still, I feel alone. I know that I have people in my corner but I am feeling so fragile and alone lately. I’m just trying to remind myself that the fact that I have been able to get out of bed and do things is a miracle, but I don’t know if I can keep doing it.

Everything hurts.

Weed vs. Alcohol

Here’s a fun little post.  I won’t be getting into the legality of weed or the long-term effects of either drug but only my feelings on each.
My mother is an alcoholic.  A mother who cares deeply about her family when she is sober but would sell them down the river for a fourth gin and tonic.  I grew up in fear of drinking that I would become like her, emotionally and physically abusive and financially exploitative.  But my first week in college someone offered me some horrendous vanilla Burnetts as a pre-game before we went to my first college party and I accepted.  Note: On this night and particular I got stupid drunk from passing a handle of Jack Daniels and a 2 liter of coke between 4 strangers before I stole around 50 bobby-pins from some poor girl’s bathroom.  I look back on this night fondly for some reason even though I ended up challenging my friend to drink more (after she had vomited) and ended up sitting on the floor of a community bathroom to brush my teeth but ya know… make memories guys (and also be safe, never drink and drive or walk alone).

But alcohol, being a depressant, more often made me feel worse about my depression.  I would often cry about this or that and the next day I would be utterly useless to the world (except when we won the championship, on that night in particular I went ham and got up the next day to perform in a play… I have it on DVD and I am TERRIFIED to watch it).  Anyway, after I was raped I tried to stay away from drinking, mostly because I stayed away from my friends, but also because it made me feel like ass.

Let’s skip to my first boyfriend after the assault, he was an angry man who made a point to start and argument with me every two or three days.  He was the worst boyfriend I ever had (he once left me and my blackout roommate 2 miles from my dorm with a dead cellphone and my roommate when MIA and then he crashed his car and blamed me for it/got me to pay for it… more on that in another post someday).  All he ever wanted to do was come over on a Friday night at 9:30 to be at our friends place by 10 in order to get wasted, come back, fuck, wake up at 6am and leave so we drank alot.

At that point in my life I was incredibly depressed so when we drank I often got blackout drunk and cried.  Admittedly, most of the time I cried because he would call me some sort of nasty name, make fun of my faults, and/or try to distance me from my friends (who in his defense, did turn out to be complete jerks in the end).  I was starting to feel like my mother.  I took a (permanent) break from my boyfriend and a break from drinking.  The improvements in my life were almost immediate.  For one thing I spent far less money on alcohol and didn’t have the terrible hangovers.

Skipping forward to my current wonderfully supportive boyfriend: I met him by accident and quickly found out that he was a pot-head.  His roommate would try to sell this as a fault but before long we were taking hits out of the ice bong (RIP) and watching Disney’s El Dorado.  Before we began courting (more on this later) I had smoked a total of 3 or 4 times and now I smoke every time we see each other except for when I had to pass a drug test for my job.

So now that we have established that I am a full-blown pothead… weed makes me feel 1000x better than alcohol ever did.  Sure, I had a few nights of the spins and feeling ill but those nights were innumerable when I primarily only drank.

I think that I’m a happier person when I smoke weed and that it helps me to find joy in the small things and remember to laugh.  Not to mention that I feel more creative when I am high and sex feels awesome. Not to encourage anyone to break the law but if you struggle with depression weed may help you out a bit.

Anyway, alcohol is fun sometimes if you’re with some friends in a safe environment but more people get injured or die from consuming alcohol and weed just gives you the munchies and makes the world fucking hilarious.

The weed is loud guys.

Love Carly

The Night Before Oozeball: April 25, 2014

Hi, my name is Carly* and I am primarily starting this site as a place to write about the issues I have been facing for the last few years.  I am also hoping that someone might stumble across this and relate to it so that they can feel a little less alone in a time of need.  The experiences we have in life are different but incredibly similar at the same time and I think that it is important to open up about our stories and understand that the things we have been through are real to us and that the feelings we have as a result are valid.  Often we are faced with the impression that we must keep quiet about our issues and “buck up” but “bucking up” is a very small part of recovery in my opinion.  If you ask me, you can’t “buck up” if you don’t open up about what has been hurting you.  The scars on the inside are just as real as the one’s on the outside and many people who do not struggle with mental illness or trauma struggle understand this concept.

Officially, I am diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder, Anxiety Disorder, and PTSD.  Unofficially, my general physician thinks I may have Bipolar Disorder but this has not been confirmed by a psychologist.  However, I have had some luck with medications that treat both anxiety/depression that people with bipolar have seen success with so I can’t be completely sure either way.

I suppose you can say that I have always struggled with these issues which were deeply affected by my home life as I was growing up, but these issues grew worse as my freshman year in college drew to a close.  I will not name names but at my university the infamous “Spring Weekend” serves as an excuse for college students and their friends to party and make reckless, life altering decisions.  It was during Spring Weekend that my life was forever changed and I was raped by someone I then considered to be my “best friend.”

When it happened I remember waking up from the fog and feeling pretty muddy about the circumstances.  I had been drunk, I had been what he and I jokingly considered “slutty” throughout the previous year and to make things more confusing the two of us had consensual sex in the past – in fact, I had lost my virginity to him.  To add insult to injury, the man who had raped me the night before was my best friend.  Someone who was my best friend could not hurt me like that; someone who I had enjoyed consensual intercourse with in the past could not have become my rapist, could he?

I struggled with this, and at times I still do.  Just today I found myself thinking of the memories we had formed together before this happened, memories I had once found to be happy.  But these memories feel tainted now, and if, on impulse I feel a slight feeling of happiness as I think of them I become overwhelmed with an intense wave of guilt that makes me feel horribly ill.  I do not know how to handle it when these emotions come up, but I do my very best to use a coping skill in the moment and let myself feel these negative emotions because they are real and need to be experienced despite the fact that it makes life seem like it is hard to live through.

It has taken me years, on-going therapy sessions, embracing feminism, and a wonderfully supportive boyfriend and friend to fully understand that what happened to me was not my fault.  No one has the right to violate your body. It does not matter who it is, what state you are in, what you are wearing, what kind of reputation others consider you to have, or the fact that you had given consent at a prior time. Your body is your body and rape is rape.

I will be the first to admit that trauma, society, and the media can affect how victims view themselves.  However, it is important to refrain from giving your abuser continuous power of you by saying that your life has been ruined.  I know it sounds ridiculous, but to say that your life is ruined is to admit defeat and throw in the towel.  Yes, my rapist made my life much harder than it should it been.  Yes, my rapist made my depression much worse than it ever would have been if he hadn’t abused me.  Yes, my rapist destroyed my sense of self worth which led to numerous suicide attempts.  Yes, he made everything in my life hard.  But my life isn’t ruined.  And sometimes it is hard to see that there is life after rape, abuse, or any kind of emotional and physical trauma but it is there.  It can be difficult to find, I know it has been for me.  But just try to keep going, even if it feels like the world is crushing you.  Keep trying, even if you have setbacks with your mental health and you hurt yourself or you want to.  We are worth more than your trauma.

 

Be loud, then be even louder.

Love Carly

*Name has been changed