When the Holidays Are Marred by Loss and Complex Grief

Written For The Mighty on 11/19/2020.

Holidays are usually seen as a happy time, when friends and family get together to celebrate. They are a time filled with the warm glow of decorations, delicious foods to fill our stomachs and wonderful memories in the making with the people we love. 

But sometimes everything is not that simple. When you lose someone you hold dear during the holidays, it creates a dark cloud that looms over the entire celebration, making it harder to enjoy it as you otherwise would.

Loss is hard any time of the year. But a loss during the holidays can be especially painful because everyone else expects you to be happy during the holidays. It is hard to celebrate anything when you don’t feel festive inside. It can feel near-impossible to smile when all you want to do is cry. It is hard to be around others who are happy and festive when you feel anything but, leaving you to wonder if it is just better to stay home and not ruin anyone else’s time.

Holidays are often rooted in nostalgia. Current celebrations bring back memories of other times, better times, when your loved ones were still there to celebrate with you. The sights, sounds, tastes and scents alone can make their absence even more glaring and jarring. What once were joyful recollections you shared together of other years become gut punches that leave you fighting back tears.

It can be doubly hard when you carry conflicting feelings about the person you lost. People often say that you should never speak ill of the dead, disregarding the fact that rarely in life is anything solely black or white, good or bad. The vast majority of relationships in our life exist somewhere within the realm of grays, where they are not one or the other but rather a complex combination of both. When your grief is complex, it makes mourning that much more difficult. 

My mother passed away 10 years ago Thanksgiving day. 

All my childhood holiday memories revolve primarily around my mother. She was the cook, the baker, the decorator, the present-wrapper. The holidays were largely constructed and orchestrated by her two hands. Almost every holiday tradition I’ve carried with me throughout my life originates with her. There is not a single major holiday I celebrate that does not have her fingerprints all over it.

She was my mother. She taught me to cook and bake, to sew, knit, embroider, darn and craft. She implanted in me my stubborn will to keep fighting and my love for the holidays as a whole. She is a big part of the person I am today.

She was also one of my primary abusers throughout my childhood, physically, verbally and mentally. She is one of the reasons I struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. She is proof that very few things exist simply as black or white. 

She is my mother. I love her as every little girl loves her mother. And at the same time I hate her. I love her for all that she has taught and given me, and I hate her for all that she’s put me through. I miss her with every fiber of my being and at the same time I could never forgive her for the darkness she put over the holidays for me. 

To better help you understand our relationship, I feel it is important to divulge a little background. Growing up, my mother was very abusive. She was struggling with often untreated, always undertreated bipolar disorder with frequent bouts of rage and I was her primary target. Our entire house was a war zone where the only way to be heard was to yell louder than the next person, and the only way to shut someone up was to lash out with the meanest, cruelest thing you could think of. After over 20 years of combat, my father walked out on our family shortly before I turned 16. My mother retaliated by driving to his work and shooting him twice. She spent the next few years bouncing between jail and mental institutions until it was ultimately pleaded out. But the damage had already been done and my life had been changed forever.

Her actions that day made it very clear to me exactly what she was capable of doing during her bouts of rage. Yet she still refused to seek help, frequently breaking down into tears or exploding with anger with no prior warning at the drop of a dime. For years, I watched in fear for my own life and the lives of my children until I finally admitted to myself that I did not feel safe. My mother and I had been estranged for a couple years when she passed away.

My mother’s death was officially listed as an accidental overdose of prescription drugs. My mother suffered from a lot of maladies and had medicine for all of them. She took dozens of different medications over the course of the day. Presumably, she had taken her medication for the day, forgotten, taken them again, forgotten and repeated this pattern multiple times before succumbing to an overdose.

I do not believe it was an accident. My mother had always been meticulous with her medication, separating it into containers designating not only days of the week, but times of the day, as well, so that she never missed a dose. 

I believe she killed herself that Thanksgiving morning 10 years ago and that, in the process, she robbed my holidays from me. 

Every year now when the holidays roll around, I struggle to enjoy them. My entire holiday season is marred by her loss.

I love her. Everything I do during the holidays comes directly from her. Yet she also hurt me worse than any other person ever has and made me feel largely unsafe in this world. She wasn’t all bad. I miss her. I feel guilty for not being there when she died. There’s an emptiness in my heart that nothing seems to fill, yet I also carry so much anger towards her. From Thanksgiving through New Years, my emotions are continuously all over the place, repeatedly being pulled one way then the other. I want to be happy, be festive, to enjoy the holidays with my family, but it’s a constant struggle.

It’s become a matter of taking everything one day at a time, sometimes one minute at a time. Allowing myself to feel everything that I am feeling because all my feelings are valid. And accepting that sometimes I’m just not in the right mindset and I need to pull back, regroup and recharge. I have learned to be gentle with myself. I do what I can when I can, and forgive myself for the things I am just not able to do during the holidays. I do my best to live in the moment and embrace the joy, but I don’t pretend that the darkness isn’t still lurking in the shadows, as well. It isn’t easy, but it is better to acknowledge and face all of my feelings, good and bad, than to shove them down deep inside and pretend they aren’t there. I celebrate when I can and step away when I cannot.

After all, none of us has to be festive all of the time — especially when we are not feeling it.

Republished on MSN on 11/20/2020.

Republished on Zenith News on 11/19/2020.

Republished on The Mental Guide on 11/2020.

Why Tess Holliday Was Right About Abusive Relationships and Responsibility

*** This Piece Was Originally Written For The Mighty on 8/7/20 ***

I’m admittedly a hopeless romantic at heart with a strong Florence Nightingale effect. I’ve always been drawn to the misunderstood, wounded soul with the tragic backstory, ultimately wanting to help save them from both their hard lives and themselves. I stayed in a dysfunctional relationship for 11 years, tolerating both repeated abuse and infidelity, because I firmly yet mistakenly believed it was my responsibility to stay the course and make things work. I desperately wanted to help him heal from the hardships of his past. I believed if I just loved him enough and was supportive enough, somehow we could make it work.

I spent years giving of myself and chipping away at my own self-worth until I completely lost myself in the process. In the end, no matter how much love or support I gave, no matter how many times I forgave his transgressions, the relationship ultimately failed. And even though it was his cheating and his abuse that destroyed everything, I was left with the overwhelming feeling that I had somehow failed, that if I had tried harder or loved more, maybe things would have changed; maybe he would have changed.

It took extensive therapy to accept that I was not at fault. In my desire to save everyone else, I had forgotten to bother trying to save myself. In wanting to help fix him, I had broken myself almost to a point beyond repair. In loving him despite all the abuse, I had stopped loving myself.

That’s why I know model Tess Holliday was completely spot-on when she recently said, “women shouldn’t be responsible for rehabilitating men,” and that, “women often get blamed for not doing ‘enough’ to ‘save’ their relationships. Guess what? We don’t have to carry that. We are only responsible for ourselves and our actions.”

And that goes for all people, not just women toward men.

We can love someone to the moon and back but it doesn’t change the fact that abuse is present. Abuse is never acceptable, nor is it a fee anyone has to endure and pay in order to eventually be worthy of love. It is not anyone else’s responsibility to love someone else enough that they eventually decide to change for the better. Nobody deserves to be abused and nobody has the right to subject anyone else to abuse.

Change has to come from within and the person doing the changing is solely responsible for both their actions and their choice to change. Nobody is required to endure abuse in order to be loved or save anyone else from themselves. The only person each of us is responsible for, the only person each of us has an obligation to save, is ourselves.

These days, I have found myself with another tortured soul who has had a relatively hard life. There are quite a few distinct differences, however, between my last relationship and this one. For starters, I will no longer tolerate anyone being abusive or otherwise treating me poorly because I understand now that abuse is not love. Secondly, I am no longer trying to save him, nor am I asking him to save me, but rather we are loving and standing by each other as we both attempt to save ourselves. Last, and perhaps most importantly, I have learned both to accept responsibility for my own actions and to refuse ownership of his or anyone else’s. I also know now that it is not solely my responsibility, nor his, to make this relationship work. Make it or break it, we both must be all-in and committed. Relationships are a partnership, not a rehab.

Originally Published on The Mighty on 8/7/20.

More than Just a Faceless Number in the Pandemic

There’s nothing quite like those moments of enlightenment when you realize that your feelings and motives go deeper and are more personal than you previously realized or openly admitted.  Why do I care so deeply about people being responsible and staying home as much as possible during this pandemic?

Whenever I was asked, my first impulse answer was always that I didn’t want anything to happen to those I care about and their loved ones, that there are people in my life that are older or are immuno-compromised, friends who are considered high risk because they just got over cancer or who have just had a baby. I care a lot, perhaps too much at times, about other people, mostly because I know what it is like to struggle and suffer and I don’t want anyone else to needlessly go through any heartache or pain.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how much everything affects others that I often forget to consider my own personal situation. Perhaps I also struggle to consider myself among those who need extra protection, those who are determined to be at a higher risk, those in the biggest danger. I have come to see myself as a fighter, a survivor, and being lumped into that category is like accepting that I am fragile, weak, that I am less than the strong person I believe myself to be.

I have been through a lot in my life.  As a child, I endured every type of abuse imaginable.  Physical, mental and emotional abuse lent to my PTSD diagnosis.  Sexual abuse led to my doctors telling me I might never be able to have children.  Yet I persevered.

At sixteen, my abusive childhood culminated with my mother shooting my father.  I was bounced around among family members for a little over a year before finding myself on my own before I was even eighteen years old. Yet I survived.

Even though addiction ran in my family in the form of both drug and alcohol abuse, and trauma like mine often serves as a catalyst for substance abuse, I managed to avoid both and powered on.

I have struggled with severe depression my entire life, due in part to abuse and trauma, and partly due to a genetic mutation that deprives my brain of the substances it needs to adequately moderate my moods, yet I found ways to continue to function and continue to fight.

I have suffered much heartache over the years, from failed unhealthy and abusive relationships, to multiple miscarriages, yet refused to let any of it ultimately break me.

Cancer runs in both sides of my family.  It stole my mother’s brother way too young.  I watched as it slowly ate away at my father until there was nothing left of him and as it almost killed my mother.  Starting in my twenties, I have had numerous cancer-related health scares of my own.  I had two pre-cancerous atypical pap smears that required cryosurgery and was told afterwards that they were caught just in the nick of time.  In my thirties, they found a mass on the side of my breast extending under my arm that was deemed non-cancerous.  At forty, I had to have one of my ovaries removed because there was a large cyst on it with a fibrous mass inside.  Thankfully, the biopsy after my oophorectomy showed the mass to be benign.  And finally, a little less than two years ago, doctors found not one but two meningioma tumors on my brain.  Yet I continue on and refuse to lose hope.

I continue on because I am a survivor. That is what I do.  I keep going. I power on.  I fight whatever life throws my way.

And I do so with kindness in my heart.  I never want my own life experiences to make me jaded or cruel.  I know what it feels like to suffer and I would not wish my struggles on anyone else.  I try to always show others kindness regardless of whether it was ever shown to me in my own times of need.  I have always firmly believed that there is too much suffering in this world and it is our responsibility to be kind to one another, to watch out for each other, and to ease each other’s pain whenever possible.

And somewhere along the way, I rediscovered myself.  I found a miraculous inner strength, a renewed sense of purpose and even was blessed enough to have wonderful children and find a deep and true lasting love.  I have transformed my own pain into mental health advocacy for others.  I write and speak out to encourage others to keep going, to never give up.  I empathize with the struggles of others and let them know they are not alone.  My writing has been showcased worldwide, discussed on television, radio and internet media programs and shared by numerous government agencies, private practices, and advocacy groups along the way.  I have managed to reach and help more people than I ever imagined possible.  My children and my writing are a legacy I am proud to leave behind.

I have come a long way in life and I have overcome many obstacles along the way.  I am a fighter.  A survivor.

However, to the medical community, I am reduced to a simple list of stats.  Though in normal times, doctors often make an effort to acquaint themselves with their patients to better serve their needs, we are currently in the middle of a worldwide viral pandemic.  The number of infected is increasing daily by the thousands in my country.  And to make matters worse, I happen to live in New York – the current epicenter of the virus in the United States.  Doctors don’t have the time or the energy to get to know all of their patients well right now in an emergency setting.  They have to make split decisions based on medical history prior to infection.

And the simple fact is that I have cancer.  I have two tumors on my brain.  I’m honestly not sure it even matters that the tumors are benign or that right before the pandemic was declared a national emergency, my neurosurgeon informed us that my tumors have shown little to no noticeable growth in the last eighteen months’ of MRI scans.  The cancer diagnosis alone means that I am considered high risk and my treatment is considered a lesser priority than someone else without preexisting conditions.

The fact that I have continuously fought hard and survived many things over the course of my entire life is irrelevant.

The fact that I have dedicated years to helping and advocating for others is irrelevant.

The fact that I am otherwise relatively healthy is irrelevant.

Even the fact that I am a mother and a fiance is irrelevant because every single person that comes through the hospital doors is family to someone.  They are all a son or a daughter.  Many are parents, grandparents, spouses, friends.  We all have a story.

But my story can be reduced to one word, a word that makes my treatment less of a priority during a pandemic. Cancer.

As much as I want to say, want to believe, that the primary reason if not the only reason I want people to stay inside and be responsible is to protect others, I have to accept that I need protecting, too.  My health and well-being is important, as well.  I am part of that at risk, high risk group.  If I get sick, my treatment will possibly, if not likely, be deemed less of a priority.

I don’t want to see myself as someone needing protection because I don’t want to be seen as a victim. I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me.  I am a fighter.  A survivor.  I have beaten the odds again and again.  I have a lot of living left to do and a lot of fight left in me.  I have children who I long to see grow into their own.  I have a wedding to plan.  I have more writing and advocacy to do.  And I have this cancer to beat.

My staying home unless absolutely necessary only goes so far to flatten the curve.  I am depending on others to be responsible, as well.  Every person out there interacting is a possible carrier and the more people congregating in a given area, the bigger and more likely the spread.  The more this virus spreads, the more likely I am to get it.  Hospitals in my state are already struggling to the point where do not resuscitate orders have been put in place if somebody dies.  If the hospitals become even more overwhelmed, they will be put in the same place Italy was at the apex of their crisis – with doctors having to choose who gets treatment and who dies based solely on their prior medical history.  And having tumors means if the hospitals are overwhelmed, I might be deemed not worth saving because they don’t have the manpower, equipment, time or energy to save everyone.

It’s easy to consider terms such as “acceptable losses” or to shrug off deaths of the elderly and sick as “the thinning of the herd” when you think in terms of abstract numbers instead of considering the actual people behind those numbers.  It is different when you consider the faces and stories of those people and the families they will be leaving behind.  Even one person needlessly contracting this virus and dying should be one person too many.  We all have families and stories.  We aren’t just faceless numbers.  And many of us still have a lot of life left to live and a greater purpose left to fulfill.

I didn’t come this far to only come this far.  I’m continuing to fight the good fight because I want to eventually leave this world a better, kinder place than it was when I entered it.

I don’t want to die.

I don’t want any of you to die either.

Republished on The Mighty on 5/4/20.

Republished on Yahoo News on 5/4/20.

 

What it is Like When PTSD Gives You Flashbacks of Abuse

I had a flashback today.  They don’t happen very often, but when they do, they shake me to the core.

It started with an argument at home.  In a moment of anger and frustration as he stormed out of the room, he shoved a floor fan on the other side of the bed, knocking it over.  He hadn’t meant to scare or startle me.  In that brief moment of frustration, he had lashed out without thinking, not even realizing the effect it might have on me.

It was an instant trigger for me.

I know he has never hit me or laid his hands on me in any way and that he would never do such a thing.  I know he isn’t even normally explosive like that.  I know he’d never hurt me nor would he ever intentionally do anything to scare or trigger me. Yet, in that moment, everything I knew flew right out the window.

I was suddenly that 8 year old girl again, that girl that knew when things went flying it was only a matter of moments until the pain began.  I was that little girl again, scrambling off the bed and cowering in the corner of the room in a tight ball, wishing I could shrink down to nothing and fade away.  I was that girl again, panicked because my arms were too tiny to shield myself, that I didn’t have enough arms to block the whirlwind of hits and kicks I knew was inevitably coming.

I don’t know if my flashbacks are the same as other people’s because I wouldn’t dream to even ask anyone else with PTSD how their attacks play out.  I do know, though, that my mind works differently than many people’s.  You see, among other issues, I have a condition called aphantasia.  In simplest terms, I cannot visualize.  When most people are told to imagine an apple, they can create an image of an apple in their mind.  Though I know what an apple is and can list all types of factual things about an apple, I cannot form an image of one in my mind.  The same goes with memories.  I can list all types of facts about an occasion but I cannot create an image of it from memory.

Because of that fact, my flashbacks do not have images from my past.  My body, however, remembers other things.  I’ve always considered it a type of muscle memory of sorts, triggered by my PTSD.  My mind has retained how those blows felt raining down again and again so when I am pulled back into my past for a flashback, it is those sensations and memories and not visualizations that I experience again.

As I lay curled up in a ball in the corner, I swear I could feel that barrage of swings and kicks as if they were happening right that moment.  My ribs ached from blows delivered back when I was a child.  I struggled to catch my breath as the wind I breathed decades ago felt knocked out of me again.  I felt I needed to protect myself, shield my head and my body, bracing myself for damage long healed.  I could feel bruises blossoming on my skin as a far off voice that felt disconnected and not my own pleaded to not be hurt, cried for it to stop, begged to be left alone. I was trapped in that moment, reliving the abuse of my childhood.

I was vaguely aware of his presence and of disjointed words being said that seemed to disperse before they ever reached my ears.  Though some small part of me recognized his presence, he felt no more real at that moment than I did.  The only thing that felt real was that scared little child who desperately wanted to protect herself from any more hurt.

It felt very akin in a way to the sunken place described in that movie Get Out, where a part of myself was watching and witnessing from afar, though disconnected and unable to do a thing.  I felt trapped in the past, cemented into a nightmare from my childhood, lost within my own head.

A small fragment of my consciousness wanted to scream that this isn’t real, to force myself awake and claw my way back to reality.  But it felt so real.  It was like I was trapped drowning in a memory, unable to catch my own breath.

After what felt like an eternity, I was slowly able to wrestle my way back to myself.  I sat there in the corner, shaking and sobbing, rubbing and squeezing my arms and legs, trying to convince myself that I was myself again, back in the present.  I kept reminding myself it was over, I was safe, that none of that had really just happened.  But it felt so real.  My ribs still ached as if blows had recently landed and my limbs all still stung as if they were bruised.

I sat on the floor, shaking and crying for almost an hour, searching deep within for the strength to even pull myself up off the floor and onto the bed.  I was mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted from my journey back in time.  I felt like I was freezing.  My teeth chattered whenever I tried to close my mouth, though it was not from the cold.  I was shaken to the core by the whole experience.

I eventually eased myself back up onto the bed and pulled the covers protectively around myself though they did nothing to stop the chill that went down to my bones or to quiet the sobs that still wracked my body.  He held me, doing his best to comfort and soothe me, apologizing again and again for ever even getting upset, pleading for me to talk to him, to let him know I was okay.  It was the first flashback episode of mine that he had witnessed and it scared and shook him to the core as much as it had me.

I laid here in bed, thinking about how badly I needed to share this experience, to try and explain what it was like while it was still fresh in my mind.  I wanted to explain the fear and the terror before the inevitable numbness set in and I shut down in order to recover and recuperate.  I know I didn’t truly go back in time, but I felt just like that little girl again, experiencing one of the many beatings I had endured all over again as if it was happening right in that moment.

I had a PTSD flashback today.

It may have been all in my mind, but it felt devastatingly real to me.

Republished on MamaMia on 4/14/18.

Republished on The Mighty on 4/18/18.

Resolving Trauma Doesn’t Cure Mental Illness

When I explain that I am struggling with mental illness, I am often faced with people questioning why.  I usually start off with a fairly terse and technical response about it being a combination of genetics and life experiences but that answer rarely seems to appease anyone.  Though I am not quite sure why so many people feel I owe them an explanation about my medical condition, more often than not, people continue probing, wanting to know what could have possibly happened in my life that could cause a lifelong mental illness.

It is at this point that I usually explain that I grew up in a dysfunctional, often abusive, household.  I have endured physical, mental, emotional and sexual abuse multiple times each over the years.  I have been knocked down, stepped on, crushed to the core and had my very soul completely obliterated so many times I have lost count.

In response, I usually get the inevitable lecture about not holding onto the past, learning how to forgive, let go and move on.  Sometimes, they even throw in an additional reminder that I shouldn’t allow myself to be a victim for the rest of my life.

What I cannot seem to get through to anyone, though, is that my life experiences are only one small part of a bigger picture.  The traumas in my life did not cause my mental illness but rather they exacerbated it.  They also contributed unhealthy and dysfunctional behaviors and thought patterns.  Though they made a very difficult  situation much worse, resolving the traumas I have endured would not magically make my mental illness disappear.

The truth is that I have come a very long way to resolving and coming to terms with many of the traumas of my past.  I have gone through a lot of therapy over the years and have come to terms with many hard truths.  For instance, I have accepted that my mother shooting my father was in great part due to her often untreated, always undertreated mental illness.  I have accepted that one of the main reasons I had tolerated  repeated infidelity from my romantic partners in the past was due to the fact that I never was able to hold my own father accountable for his transgressions against my mother.  I have accepted that everything in life is not clear cut black or white, good or bad, and have done my best to put myself in the shoes of others and accept the past as something that cannot be changed, letting go of the torment within myself and even forgiving in some instances.

I have even taken things a step further, systematically pulling apart many of my thought processes trying to rout out any dysfunctional or unhealthy behaviors and patterns.  I have put myself under the self-awareness microscope again and again, examining why I react like I do and making a conscious effort to change anything that I believed to be self-destructive or unhealthy.

Most importantly, I have learned to forgive myself and to accept myself for who I am.  I have accepted that I had done nothing wrong to deserve any of the abuse that I was subjected to over the years.  I have even learned to like myself as a person and to identify different traits I possess as being assets.

I don’t consider myself a victim.  I consider myself a survivor.  Though the traumas I have been through have greatly contributed to the person I am and they deserve acknowledgement for that fact, I refuse to let them control my life or dictate the person I am going to be.  I am not looking for pity.  I just want acceptance and understanding.

Though I have fought extremely hard to work through many of the traumas I have endured in my life and consider myself very self-aware, I still struggle with mental illness every single day.  Why?  Because it is a medical condition.  Much like a person’s diabetes may be made worse by a large intake of sugary foods, removing those foods will not magically make their diabetes disappear any more than working through my traumas will make my mental illness disappear.

Part of my diagnosis is a genetic mutation.  This mutation greatly hinders my body’s ability to make a substance my brain needs to moderate my moods.  In essence, my brain has been starving for what it needs my entire life, getting at best 20% of a specific chemical it needs.  Though the traumas I have experienced contributed greatly to the severity of my condition and have negatively impacted my life, my mental illness would have existed even if none of them ever occurred.

Another portion of my mental illness is genetic in general.  Both my parents struggled with various mental illnesses over the years.  My mother suffered from bipolar disorder and my father struggled with depression throughout his life.  Though a parent having a mental illness does not guarantee the diagnosis in their children, studies have shown that the five major mental illnesses can be traced the the same inherited genetic variations.  So much like parents can pass along their eye or hair color, they can also pass along the predisposition for mental illness.

I struggle every single day with my mental illness.  Regardless of whether the rational part of my brain tells me that today should be a good day, another large part of my brain is constantly sending out negative emotions and responses, which in turn sometimes presents itself in physical ways.  I am in a constant battle with my own brain and body.  Though difficult times might contribute to the severity of my downward spiral on a given day, the absence of bad days does not negate my mental illness.  It is always there.

Yet that technical explanation is rarely enough to placate anyone looking for answers.  Many people seem to believe that mental illnesses like depression occur when something bad happens and can be just as easily solved by resolving the underlying issue.  They look for key life events to target, assuming the person struggling will magically be cured if they can just get past that traumatic event.

I can tell you that it rarely is that easy.  Yes, there are some cases of mental illness that are predominately situation-based where the person’s mental health greatly improves when the trauma is resolved, like increased depression caused by bullying, for example.  Likewise, there are milder cases of diabetes where the person’s sugar levels can be moderated predominately by life changes such as diet and exercise alone.  But that does not make that person any less of a diabetic.  For the majority of diabetics, though, addressing their lifestyle is not enough.  They need ongoing treatment and monitoring in order to stay healthy because their illness causes one of the organs in their body to not work properly.  The same can be said for mental illness.  The only difference is that it is our brain that is malfunctioning.

Providing a detailed list of our traumas does not give a run down of how to magically cure our mental illnesses.  Time and again, we throw out our trauma lists out of frustration because some people cannot seem to wrap their head around the fact that we have a medical condition that affects the way our brains work.  It is approached as “mind over matter”, that if we just try hard enough to work through things and learn to let go, we’ll be happy again.  Unfortunately, it does not work that way.

There is no shame in having a mental illness.  It is a medical condition that statistics show now affects one in five people in the world to varying degrees.  We need to stop the stigma surrounding mental illness and stop judging everyone who is struggling to live with one.  Nobody would ask a diabetic why they had their condition because it is accepted that sometimes bodies don’t work as they should and people have to seek medical treatment in order to live a healthier life.  People accept that giving up candy bars or soda won’t magically cure a diabetic.  Likewise, working through the traumas in my past will not magically make my mental illness disappear.  No one should have to justify why they have a mental illness nor should they be met with accusations that they are just not trying hard enough to get past their medical condition.  We don’t owe anyone an explanation nor do we deserve being blamed for our illness.

Republished on The Mighty on 5/3/18.

Republished on Yahoo Lifestyle on 5/3/18.

Republished on Yahoo News – India on 5/3/18.

Republished on Yahoo News – Singapore on 5/3/18.

The Frustration of Explaining Mental Illness to Those Who Have Never Experienced it Themselves

I would not wish mental illness on anyone else.  Having a mental illness is like waging a continuous war within yourself where half the time you are not even sure what is being fought over, only that the battle rages on.  There is never a true moment of peace.  You may have good days, yes, but even on those blessed days there is never peace because you can feel its presence, always looming, weighing down on your soul, preparing to strike again.  There might be small periods of respite here and there, the calm before the storm, but anyone fighting their own battle with mental illness knows it is only a matter of time before another downward spiral or another period of numbness, appears.  One of the worst things about having a mental illness is that we don’t even fully understand what is going on within our own minds and bodies, let alone have the words to adequately explain it to others.  Even more frustrating is when someone else puts us on the defensive because they do not fully understand what we are going through but assume they do because they have been exposed to it from a sideline view.

Someone who has never been in a car crash cannot reasonably say “I know what it is like because one of my family members has been in one” or “because I’ve taken care of someone who has had one”.

Someone who has never had cancer cannot reasonably say “I know what it is like because one of my family members has had cancer” or “because I’ve helped to take care of people who have had cancer”.

Likewise, someone who has never had a mental illness cannot truly understand what it is like to live with one, regardless of whether they worked with people who had one or had a family member diagnosed with one.

You can sympathize with someone else who is struggling but you cannot truly understand what it is like to live with mental illness merely by being exposed to it second-hand in others.  Witnessing others being traumatized is not the same as experiencing the trauma yourself.  It is not something you can experience vicariously and fully understand the suffering.  As much as we might try to explain what it is like in order to help others somewhat understand, there are no words we possess that would adequately explain all that we are going through.  And anything we say is usually just the tip of the iceberg, minimized for the benefit of others because we don’t want to overwhelm or scare anyone else with the horrors of our reality.   Mental illness is something that you truly have to experience firsthand to fully understand.

Nothing is more frustrating than having someone verbally attack the core of our illness as “making no sense”, expecting us to fully explain something that we ourselves have trouble understanding.  Or to be called out, as if we are somehow inherently wrong for even being mentally ill at all.

I have been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, major depression and P.T.S.D.

Due to severe anxiety attacks during periods of high stress, one of the agencies I work with recently arranged a home visit as an alternative to my having an office visit.  I had someone interject that their mother is bipolar and has done the same thing, claiming that it is ridiculous that her mother can attend highly populated events such as street fairs but cannot go to a downtown office to complete some paperwork.  She then demanded to know whether I was equally unreasonable, attending random public events while claiming I was incapable of going out to an appointment.

I tried to explain that it isn’t how generalized anxiety works.  I am not anxious being around people.  I do not have social anxiety.  With generalized anxiety, I live in a constant state of heightened anxiety that is worsened by stressful situations.  On a scale of 1-10, most people start off an average day around a one or a two.  If there is nothing to worry about, there’s no reason for an average person to be anxious.  If someone’s rent is coming due and money is tight, their anxiety level might be raised to a two or three.  If, on top of that, they’re worried about being laid off, their anxiety might be raised to a three or four.  Not getting enough time with your kids, needing unplanned repairs on a home or vehicle that you cannot afford, unexpected illnesses and deaths all increase anxiety.  With each newly added stress, anxiety continues to compound and raise.

Now imagine starting every day at a 4 or a 5.  Even worse, most of the time you’re not even sure why exactly you’re anxious.  You just know that feeling is there.  You’re notably on edge, you’re distracted, you’re hyper-vigilant.  Your body is physically reacting to the stress.  You are visibly flustered, your chest is tightened, you find yourself shaking or bouncing your limbs or no reason, you have trouble focusing your thoughts and forming coherent words.  Each new added stress only raises everything higher.  It doesn’t take much until you find yourself at a 7 or 8, in a full blown anxiety attack.

Consider going to an office to do paperwork, starting at the 4 or 5 those with anxiety might begin each day with.  If a previous visit there did not go well, your mind relates the two and it adheres the past to the present situation.  If there were subsequent visits that did not go well, each of them is an added stress, as well.  Your mind is hyper-vigilant, constantly reviewing situations and drawing connections, trying to protect you from duplicating a previous bad experience.  After a few bad experiences somewhere or with someone, that compounded anxiety becomes too much to bear.   Your mind begins firing off danger warnings and your body reacts accordingly.  Your fight or flight response kicks in.  You want to run away, to scream, to avoid it at all costs.  You freeze like a deer caught in the headlights or you become agitated and aggressive because you feel an overwhelming need to protect and defend yourself.  It all occurs subconsciously in the brain.  Your anxiety rises on its own without any conscious decision on your part.  You are not intentionally overreacting or being melodramatic.  Your mind and body are just reacting to the situation at hand based on the data it has compiled.  It is the truth of living with anxiety.

Attending a populated event is another situation entirely.  In all honesty, each situation is different depending on our previous experiences with the location, the people involved and many other contributing factors.  We cannot even reasonably predict ahead of time whether a situation will feel safe or not because literally anything could trigger a raise in anxiety.  It never takes long before that heightened anxiety reaches dangerous levels and an anxiety attack ensues.  We have very limited control over situations.  Our mind and body are steering the car and we are just along for the ride.

My explanation fell on deaf ears.

Perhaps even worse than trying to help others understand anxiety is trying to explain depression.  Too many people who have either never experienced depression or who have only experienced a temporary or situational, mild bout, have a habit of aggressively attacking those suffering from more severe, debilitating depression for not being able to “bounce back” quickly enough to meet their standards.

We are accused of being lazy and having pity parties.  We are told that they “know what it’s like but..” you have to stop feeling sorry for yourself, you have to be more positive and at least try, you have to pull your shit together and do what has to be done.  We are accused of not trying hard enough, of not even trying at all.  We are asked why we are not even working part time and told of a myriad of other people who were able to magically pull themselves together, shamed into feeling like we are horrible people for being unable to function as well as they or someone else they know did.

I have tried explaining the realities of severe depression, only to have it fall on deaf ears, as well.

Those of us suffering from depression are not having pity parties.  Depression is far more than just being sad or feeling negative about our circumstances in life.  There are days when the world feels bleak and hopeless, where you are convinced you are completely alone and become trapped in an empty numbness that renders you virtually immobile.  It isn’t that you are not aware of everything that needs to be done or that you don’t want to do it – you are trapped within yourself, unable to pull yourself up to do even the simplest of tasks.  You might lay there for hours, beating yourself up as your inner dialogue drums into your consciousness everything you could be doing, should be doing, and how broken, worthless and useless you are for being incapable of doing anything at all.  There are days you spiral down into negativity, tearing yourself apart viciously for being garbage because some part of your brain believes that is what you deserve.  You tear yourself apart for being broken, damaged, and flawed worse than anyone else could ever do.  There are days when the tears keep flowing even though you cannot pinpoint exactly why, beyond “life itself” and days you’ll sit in a fog, doing nothing or randomly puttering, losing hours at a time.

Whether we’re trapped in numbness or spiraling down, our minds are constantly whirling, reminding us of all we should be doing and how much of a failure we are for not accomplishing everything we believe we should.  We desperately want to do more, to do better, to do anything at all.  We hate ourselves for not being able to do everything we believe we should be able to do.  We feel like a failure that has let everyone down.  But our minds have betrayed us.  We are in a constant battle within our own heads.  We have so many emotions, so much hurt, pain, anger, self-loathing, sadness and confusion swirling within our heads that it is hard to sort it all out and think straight.  Though we can pinpoint the cause of some of it, the majority is so broad and vague that we don’t even understand where it is coming from let alone know how to begin explaining or addressing it all.

Any job, even part-time, is difficult when we cannot plan from one hour to the next, let alone one day to the next, whether we will be spiraling down into that abyss or frozen in numbness.  Yes, e may have good, functional days, but they do not appear on any set schedule.  We have no idea how or when our depression will strike next or how long it will last. We are not being lazy or just not trying hard enough.  We just cannot reasonably commit ourselves to a schedule when we don’t know how well we’ll be able to function an hour from now, let alone a week from Tuesday from 8am to 4pm.

Perhaps the most asinine assertion I have ever heard from people who did not understand and had never experienced what I was struggling with was the claim I hve heard numerous times that “only soldiers suffer from P.T.S.D.”, as if I was somehow disparaging the armed forces with my diagnosis.  Post traumatic stress disorder is more broad-reaching than the military.  It is fairly common with those who have suffered from years of abuse, especially during their childhood as I have, or have experienced traumatic or violent events in their lives such as rape, as I have.  Flashbacks, nightmares and night terrors are not exclusive to those in a uniform.  Do not minimize my trauma because I fought a different kind of war on a different type of battlefield.

I truly appreciate when people acknowledge my diagnosis and attempt to empathize with all that I am struggling with because it really is a daily battle.  It is heart-wrenching and honestly makes me want to cry whenever someone has been through something so similar that they can truly relate to what I am going through because I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.  My heart goes out to everyone fighting a battle within themselves that they cannot seem to fully explain and constantly feel judged for having because I have been there and understand how exhausting it is to have to defend yourself for your diagnosis.  But please don’t ever use the second-hand experiences you’ve witnessed others having to minimize what I am going through.  Knowing someone who has mental illness or even working around people that have been diagnosed with a mental illness is not the same thing as living with one yourself.  Even individual diagnosis can differ greatly, as well, so you cannot measure two personal experiences by the same bar.  You cannot truly understand what a person is going through before walking a mile in their shoes so please stop judging me for my diagnosis when you have no idea of the battles I am fighting inside.  I truly appreciate compassion and empathy but please leave your judgment at the door.

I’m Sorry But It Doesn’t Work That Way…

Not too long ago, someone who used to mean a lot to me tried unsuccessfully to re-enter my life.  Though they wholly admitted to treating me horribly for the last year or so that they were previously in my life, they then tried to minimalize the pain they had caused, claiming that all the good they had done for years before that should outweigh the bad of that last year.

We talked briefly for that one night that they dropped that bombshell.  I was beside myself with shock and honestly wasn’t sure even what to say to that sentiment.  I knew, however, that they had become a toxic presence in my life so I chose to pull away completely, blocking them and ceasing all contact.  I had begun my journey towards a healthier and happier life and refused to let them derail me.  What they said, though, took up residence in my head, a little kernel bouncing around, waiting to pop and expand into something more.

As is often the case, that kernel got pushed aside to a back burner.  Life happened.  Family happened.  Love happened.  Holidays happened.  But I knew that eventually, no matter how much was happening around me, that kernel would reappear.  And just as expected, late this evening, it finally did, fully formed and realized.

As I sat there considering it all, that one line from that commercial with the old lady posting pictures onto the wall in her living room came to mind.

“That’s not how this works! That’s not how any of this works!”

There was just no way that a prior decade of good times and happy memories could erase, overwrite or minimize that one final year of cruelty.

That is not to say that I was not grateful for all the good times that I shared with this person or that I didn’t value all the times they were there for me when I had no one else to lean on.  I will always cherish all those memories and will truly appreciate all that they gave of themselves over the years.

That is not to say, also, that relationships aren’t comprised of ups and downs, highs and lows, good and bad.  People don’t always get along.  Conflicts happen.  People disagree and argue.  When someone truly matters, you try to take the good with the bad, for better or worse.  There is a fair amount of forgive and forget in friendships and relationships.  It all comes with the territory.

However..

There are some actions that rise above and beyond the normal wear and tear of relationships, actions that exist outside the realm of random daily disagreements and headbutting. When someone, in an essence, declares war on another person’s heart, emotions and trust, disregarding their feelings and intentionally going out of their way to repeatedly, without qualms or remorse, lash out and hurt someone else, it is no longer a matter of forgive and forget, for better or worse.

All the good does not negate or erase the bad in those cases.  When he made it his mission to hurt me repeatedly over the course of that last year, it forever changed things between us.  There is never an excuse for intentionally lashing out, trying to damage and break someone that you supposedly love.  All the good he may have done previously does not take away all the heartache in those final months.  All the prior good does not excuse all the times I was ignored and mistreated, all the cruel words and actions hurled my way, and all the times I was ghosted and discarded at the end.

Though with his words he swore I meant the world to him for years, his actions over the last year spoke volumes in the opposite direction.  No matter how good he used to be to me and how sweetly he used to spin his words, none of it can erase the fact that he treated me like garbage for that last year.

That’s not how it works.

If a person lays their hands on another person, they cannot then say “what about all the years before I beat you?  Don’t they count for anything?”

If a person cheats on another person, they cannot then say “what about all the years I didn’t sleep around?  Why aren’t you taking them into consideration?”

If a person tears you down again and again, discards you repeatedly and treats you like you’re worthless, they cannot then say “what about all those years before I showed you what you truly meant to me, before I treated you like you were nothing? Shouldn’t that balance everything out?”

If someone who claims to love you is repeatedly and systematically cruel and uncaring towards you, it does not matter whether or not they used to be sweet and loving once upon a time.  A broken heart is still a broken heart just as much as a broken bone is still a broken bone and a split lip is still a split lip.  Once you abuse that trust and break my heart, I cannot push it aside and pretend it did not happen.  Though it does not erase all the good, it changes things irreparably.

A decade of kindness and love, no matter how wonderful, cannot erase that final year of heartache and heartbreak.

Many people preach forgiveness.  I’m sure that will come in time.  I can honestly say I do not hate him, nor do I wish him any ill will.  But all the trust is gone.  I cannot have him in my life to any extent.  Walls are up.  The place he used to have in my heart has been boarded up and is closed for good.  I’ve reached the point of no return.  There is no going back to how things used to be.

Broken trust and a shattered heart, much like a fractured bone, is not easily mended.  And even when everything does eventually fuse back together, that damage beneath never disappears.  It is always there, just under the surface, forever evidence to the damage that was done.

Perhaps if the order had been reversed, things might have been different.  If the years of kindness had followed after the year of cruelty as a sincere attempt to make amends for prior bad acts, it probably would have counted for more.  That way, at least, there would be an act of contrition and penance for being unnecessarily cruel.  But to expect to be given a free pass for a year of wanton and reckless heartbreak on the basis that you used to be better to me is beyond ludicrous and unreasonable.

Actions speak louder than words and his actions over that final year he was a part of my life spoke volumes about just how low I ranked in his life and heart.  Having an “Oops my bad” moment of admission, especially without any real action of remorse to back it up right after the fact, could not even come close to touching or resolving any of the pain he caused over the last couple years.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am grateful for all those years of friendship and love that were given.  I’ll always cherish the times that he was there for me.  It just doesn’t erase or negate any of the hurt of that final year.  It doesn’t work that way, at least not for me.

Allowing Love and Happiness Into My Life

Recently, in one of the online support groups I am in, I stumbled onto someone who was experiencing something very similar to some of the struggles I have gone through.  As we began to talk in earnest about our lives, it felt more and more like I was speaking with my former self, the person I was not so long ago before I began my journey for mental wellness.

They talked about being unlovable.  Not FEELING unlovable. BEING unlovable.  It resonated with me because I have spent the majority of my life feeling the exact same way.  As I began responding to her, I found myself writing to my former self, as well, and to everyone else struggling with those feelings of worthlessness associated with mental illness.  I said:

… Please don’t believe even for one moment that you are unlovable.. trust me, I have been there.. lived with that feeling for years. Growing up, my mother (who suffered from often untreated, always undertreated mental illness herself and had a lot of abuse in her own life she never fully processed or healed from) was extremely abusive, particularly toward me..

The first time I remember her telling me she hated me and wished I was never born I was eight.. She used to tell me often that I was “inherently unlovable”.. that there were some people that, through no fault of their own, just did not possess anything truly good or lovable within them.. She used to tell me to never let anyone see or know the real me or they would see the truth of it themselves and leave.. I grew up thoroughly convinced I was broken, faulty, completely unlovable on a genetic level..

When you feel that way inside, when you convince yourself that it is an undeniable truth about yourself, you put up walls that prevent anyone else from ever being able to get in and love you..

I was the queen of walls.. I shut everyone out.. Even people who believed they were close to me barely even made it into the courtyard outside.. I was always there for others because I’ve never wanted anyone else to experience even a small portion of the pain I had been through in my own life.. but deep inside, I felt unlovable.. I felt unworthy of love.. so I never allowed myself to experience it..

It took far too many years for me to come to terms with my childhood and the abuse I endured.. far too many years for me to be able to even say I liked anything about myself let alone even consider the possibility of loving anything about myself or to accept that I needed to treat myself with the same kindness and compassion that I gave others..

Please know this though: You are NOT broken. You ARE worthy of love. And you MUST open yourself up to the possibility of accepting and loving yourself first and foremost because as long as you treat yourself as unlovable, you will never allow anyone else to fully love you, either.

I know the concept of loving yourself sounds improbable.. impossible.. baby steps.. Learn to acknowledge that there are things about yourself that you don’t hate.. things about yourself that aren’t all that bad.. Whenever you find yourself beating yourself up or being extremely harsh with yourself, stop and question whether you would ever say those words to anyone else.. Would you ever treat anyone else that way? if you wouldn’t be that hard and unforgiving to someone else, don’t do it to yourself.

Allow the possibility of happiness into your life. We are struggling with mental illness – a physical and mental disability that revolves around our brains not working properly – THAT DOES NOT DEFINE US. IT IS JUST OUR DIAGNOSIS. Having depression and anxiety does not mean we are forbidden from being happy.

We are going to have those blah days where we feel numb and struggle to do anything at all. We’re going to have those devastatingly negative days where our world spirals downward out of control and we feel the world will never be right again – they are all symptoms of our illness. But they are not reality.

We need to train ourselves to look for positives every single day, seek them out, embrace them. They don’t have to be big positives. Just little things to make us smile and remind us the world isn’t a hopeless, terrible, soul-sucking place where nothing good exists.. the feel of a snowflake melting on your nose.. cute fluffy little kittens.. the smell of freshly baked cookies.. We need to allow ourselves to smile.. allow ourselves to enjoy the little things in life.. the happy things..

Because that is a part of loving ourselves.. it makes it easier to consider allowing ourselves to have bigger things, better things.. to allow happiness and love into our lives.. We need to change our mindset.. refuse to let our illness dictate our lives.. I’m determined to be the happiest person with depression anyone ever meets because I refuse to let it control and dictate my life any longer.. It is an illness. It is not me. It is not you, either.

Reading over all I had written, I realized just how far I have come.  It wasn’t very long ago that I was in her shoes,  convinced that I was completely and inherently unlovable and broken beyond repair.  It wasn’t all that long ago that I was held hostage by my mental illness, convinced that my life was hopeless, unable to see any identity for myself beyond my illness.

I know now that life doesn’t have to be that way.  I cannot change my diagnosis or the symptoms that present themselves.  But I can refuse to let it control me or steal away any more of my life.  I AM going to struggle but I am also going to fight it every step of the way.  I not only deserve love and happiness in my life but I truly want it, as well.  I have taken one of the biggest steps towards truly loving myself: Giving myself permission to be happy.

#WhyIWrite

Admittedly, I’m not the most up-to-date person when it comes to my Twitter account.  I don’t usually follow all the trending hashtags.  Some days, I barely log in.  Today, however, one hashtag caught my eye. #WhyIWrite.

Without much thought, I began pumping out responses, one right after another.

It was such an easy, simple statement, yet I found myself with so much to say.  For someone who had gone so long without a voice, I think I had taken for granted how vocal I had become.

When I began writing, I was suicidal.  My life had fallen apart yet again and I was honestly on the verge of giving up.  In order to keep going, things HAD to change.  I had suffered in silence for far too long.  I knew the only way I could move forward, the only way I was going to survive, is if I began to talk.

The floodgates opened.  I spoke out about my past.  Abuse.  Assault.  Rape.  Mental Illness.  Infidelity.  Suicide.  All those topics you’re not supposed to bring up in polite conversation because it might make others uncomfortable.  All those topics that were so ingrained and interwoven into my life that I held inside for far too long.  All those topics that were systematically killing me.

A miraculous thing happened.  I began to heal, to work through trauma that had been plaguing me my entire life.  Even more amazingly, my focus began to shift.  Suddenly, surviving was no longer enough.  I wanted to live, to grow, to change and to flourish.

People began reaching out about my writing.  Thanking me for putting into words how they were thinking and feeling, for letting them know they were not alone.  Just as suddenly, my focus shifted again.  I realized my voice was a gift.  There were so many people in this world, struggling like I had been, without a voice.  I had before me the opportunity to make a difference, to speak out about mental illness, to be a voice for change.

#WhyIWrite seemed like such an easy premise, with multiple answers that flowed from me seamlessly.  I could go on for days with tweet after tweet about all the reasons I write.  All those answers can be summed up into one, though:

I write because writing saved my life and I hope to pay it forward, writing to save other lives, as well.

My voice may be starting out small, but my heart is big and my intentions heartfelt.  I believe that, by speaking out openly and honestly about mental illness, we can add to the collective and together be the voice of change.

 

To the Last Person Who Abused Me..

I have suffered many types of abuse at the hands of many people in my lifetime.  I have been raped, beaten, mentally and emotionally battered.  I have been lied to, cheated on, had my heart torn in two.

There is no doubt in my mind that the abuse I have endured has a direct correlation to my struggles with mental illness.  Over the years, my depression has convinced me that I was worthless and broken, that nobody will ever truly love me, that I will never be good enough.  When someone walks through life weighed down by so much negativity, any attention, any affection, feels like a miracle.  I found myself settling for less than I deserved just to have someone there.

When I was a child, I suffered through abuse because I was too little, too afraid, felt too weak to do anything or change anything.  As an adult, I’ve accepted so much abuse at the hands of people who swore they loved me, minimalizing it with such ridiculous justifications as “it isn’t that bad – it could be worse”, “it’s not like he hit me – I would never put up with that!” or “he didn’t really mean it – he’s just upset or having a bad day”.

The fact is, abuse is abuse.  And all abuse is wrong.  It doesn’t matter if they have laid their hands on me yet or not.  And abuse tends to escalate.  It starts out small.  The more someone forgives, the more they are condoning.  If an abuser believes they can hurt someone without consequence, they will not stop.  I can tell you from experience that, over time, it only gets worse.

You said to me “I hate that you make me hurt you”.  You pulled me in repeatedly, swearing you loved me and wanted to be with me, only to hurt me, shove me away and discard me again and again.  You accused me of pushing you into hurting me by loving you back, by being confused by your actions, by not understanding what was going on whenever you threw me away.

Since you walked out of my life, I’ve seen this one saying appear again and again:

“Normal people don’t go around trying to destroy other people.”

There is so much truth in that statement.  Normal people don’t.  When someone intentionally tries to hurt someone else for no other reason than that they can, they are being abusive, whether or not they lay their hands on anyone else.  Lashing out and trying to destroy a person, whether mentally, emotionally or physically, is abuse.

It is also abusive to blame the victim for the damage you inflict.  Nobody asks to be hurt or have their heart broken.  Nobody asks to be manipulated or mistreated.  When you abuse someone else, you and you alone are to blame for your actions.

I write to the “last” person to abuse me because I have drawn my line in the sand. No more.  No more abuse, no more lies, no more pain.

For years, I tolerated abuse because I didn’t believe I deserved any better.  I accepted abuse because I thought any love, even a warped and unhealthy love, was better than nothing at all.

Things have changed. I have changed.  I know now that my depression has been lying to me all these years.  I have always believed that nobody deserves to be abused but somehow never added myself to the collective.  I have since learned that I have just as much right to be treated well as everyone else.

I will no longer let anyone talk down to me or demean me.  I will never again tolerate someone lying to me or cheating on me.  I will no longer let anyone manipulate me with threats to withhold their affection if I do not comply with their demands.  Most importantly, I will not take the blame for anyone else’s cruelty nor will I apologize ever again when I have done nothing wrong.

I have finally found someone who treats me well.  He doesn’t mistreat or manipulate me.  He is considerate with my feelings and gentle with my heart.  Now that I have experienced what it is like to be loved and accepted unconditionally, to be treated with kindness and respect, I will never again settle for anything less.

I may struggle with my self-worth from time to time because of my depression.  However, I will never again mistake attention for affection or accept abuse in lieu of love.

Republished on The Mighty on 2/28/18.