This is my new favorite picture from the walk. (It may show up a few more times) my green sticky note is for my personal struggle. This is tattooed on the back of my neck and still stands true. I will fight for my life everyday until it’s my time. My daughters sticky note is right above it and it means so much that she cares so deeply about this. Out of all the up close pictures this one is unique and full of sentimental value.
I am not particularly fond of Halloween I find it triggering and annoying. People don’t realize pretending to be a psych patient isn’t funny especially when you’ve been there. It isn’t the young kids that bother me it is the older ones who really fuck things up. My daughter wanted to be a zombie doctor which I don’t care for. I can’t watch Walking Dead or any other zombie apocalypse movies because it causes severe anxiety and stirs up some bad thoughts. This is guaranteed to cause issues with psychosis and some long sleepless nights that involve jumbled talking and pacing. Halloween triggers some bad things for people like me so being courteous to people like us is wonderful.
Let’s start with this none of these “Horror Films” actually scare me but they do mess with my brain. I don’t do blood, guts and gore just because my stomach can’t handle it, but as far as movies like The Conjuring, The Nun movies like that I love watching them not because it scares me but it starts to make me about paranoid. I think a lot of them have good story lines and I enjoy them but they do mess with my head especially with my dreams. There isn’t anything in any of these movies that are scarier then what is already in my head and if filmmakers want some seriously fucked up shit I am willingly to share it with them for the right price. People seem to enjoy these types of fucked up things.
Here is what happens; I watch/listen to the movies and don’t think much of it meanwhile the man finds this as ammunition to use later. He takes the images and distorts them into something that no person who has never experienced these, could ever write about. I struggle everyday with dreams and I know I am making it worse on myself tonight. My dreams are already fucked up. The man started talking to me yesterday and I wonder if he is egging this on right now. He isn’t a good person the man. So let’s see what happens tomorrow.
Here is the link some of you asked for to donate to my walk! It is on Sunday in Atlanta Georgia!! It is for a good cause!
https://afsp.donordrive.com/participant/1591896
I decided to end my life in 1994. It was my first year of high school and I just couldn’t do it anymore. It wasn’t a snap decision. It wasn’t prompted by a rejection from a boy, or a bad grade, or anything in particular. There may have been a trigger, I honestly don’t remember, but the decision to end my life had been a long time coming, despite my (then) short time on earth.
At 14, I had been living with depression and anxiety for a decade. At an age when most people start trying to figure out who they are and where they belong, my quest for an identity was shrouded in confusion and self-loathing. It’s true, no teenager probably feels “normal.” Feeling angsty and out of place is a right of passage on the road to adulthood. But for me, I didn’t even know what “normal” was supposed to feel like, and I was keenly aware that I never would.
So, in a moment of particularly intense feelings of hopelessness, I decided to take my own life.
But I didn’t do it. I thought about how it would crush my parents, and I couldn’t bring myself to follow through on it in that moment. I decided to put it off for a day.
I’d like to tell you that this moment was a rock bottom or an epiphany, and that after deciding not to kill myself that day, everything changed for the better. I wish it had been a momentary point of weakness that prompted me to see life anew and that I never thought of doing something so drastic ever again.
But the truth is, every day since has been a conscious decision to put it off one more day. I have been suicidal for 23 years, but I have not attempted suicide. There is this idea surrounding being suicidal that a person is always in imminent danger of harming themselves, and while that is the case for some people, being suicidal takes on many forms.
This is what suicidal looks like for me. Only a handful of times have I been genuinely concerned that I might take the actions necessary to end my life. It’s almost never about wanting to die. Instead, it’s the comfort in knowing that I could if I needed to. If it gets to be too much, if I can’t hang on for one second longer, I don’t have to, and the knowledge that I could choose to die gives me the strength to continue living.
To Whom It May Concern:
I’m suicidal. And no, it’s not what you think. I am safe. I am not harming myself. I do not have a plan, and I do not plan on doing anything. But I’m suicidal. And I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t.
People think of things like suicide in such black or white terms. But much like everything else we are so quick to place into categories, being suicidal falls into a gray area for me. Sometimes, I wonder if it does for anybody else. See I can be in a really great mood, right? I could be having the best day of my life. Still, suicidal thoughts will linger. I don’t have to be in a bad mood to be suicidal. I will still have those thoughts if I’m surrounded by the people I love, or if I’m doing something I’m passionate about.
I wake up most mornings thinking I’d be better off dead. But I’m quickly distracted by my husband and son, who are sound asleep next to me. I still feel it, but I try not to give power to it. Throughout the day I am faced with challenges that directly affect my subconscious. Either the suicidal thoughts get louder, or they remain just a feeling.
I should explain better; sometimes being suicidal is different than suicidal thoughts. It’s an actual feeling. The feeling that you have an itch you can’t scratch, that a dark cloud is shrouding you. It’s anxiety and depression, it’s mixed state. You’re drowning, there’s no air, and coming down from that feeling takes so long you think it’s impossible. You have blinders on and you don’t know what’s going to happen next. You just have to push through. And while this feeling is happening, you go through your day, as normal as you can, without feeding the feeling.
Some days are harder than others, and today happens to be one of those days. I know I’m not feeling good, and I’ve taken that into account. But I woke up thinking my family is better off without me. Then I started thinking about finances and my heart sunk a little more. I started thinking about my parents and my depression got worse. And I started thinking about everything my husband does so I can test a career in writing, and God, he can do better than me. It’s not fair to him. If I can’t impress the people surrounding me now, can I face how my son will inevitably feel about me? And I just start crying, because it’s all too much, and I’m just a joke. I feel like I’m drowning, over and over and over again. It would be so much easier to end things, and my family could finally get away from how terrible I am.
I have an 11 year old daughter. She has deep red auburn hair with my smile her daddy’s nose and the best of both of us. She is our heart and I can’t imagine life without her, but she is an only child for a reason.
It is rude to ask people who have one child when they are having more because it may not be in the cards for other people. You should never ask someone this question or any question relative to people having children it is tacky.
Anyway my husband and I have been together since we were 16 and he had a shitty home life and had to take care of his younger brothers so he didn’t even know if he wanted children. We decided after we got married and spent some time with our friend’s children that we weren’t necessary going to try, but if it happened then it did. All of friends said it took them around 6 months to get pregnant and since I knew nothing about getting pregnant or being pregnant I said we have time, but a month and half later we found I was pregnant. The way we found out was kind of awesome it was on my husband’s birthday. We were so excited and when we found out it was a girl my husband had tears in his eyes. I had a fairly easy pregnancy but at 8 weeks they told me I was more than likely going to have a miscarriage because my uterus wasn’t growing and back pain. I was about 2 weeks passed due when I had her naturally (I refused drugs which is a personal choice everyone is different) I couldn’t breastfeed and we went through a list of formulas for her.
She wasn’t an easy baby. She had colic and never slept while I was dealing with Post-Partum issues even when I denied it. There are parts of her life as a baby and toddler I can remember clearly, but when she was young I was diagnosed and our thought s about another child were gone.
It is amazing even when people knew about my illness they said it was selfish for me to use my illness as an excuse for not having another child. It isn’t selfish don’t ever tell anyone that it is a selfish decision it is for the safety of myself and the child. I talked to my doctor and all the meds I’m on aren’t safe to take while you are pregnant so I would have to wean myself off of those onto something not as strong to take while I was pregnant and then there were increase chances of miscarriages followed by the let’s hope the meds work. If I ever became manic or depressed and no one was around I could’ve easily killed myself or the baby. I also didn’t want to expose this child to the predisposition of having any of these illnesses because there are genetic factors with each one of them, but even with that would I ever change my mind about my daughter? I would love to say no, but I honestly don’t know. I see it in her the things she does like when I was younger and I worry she has it too. She’s seen child psychologist before about her anxiety, but I see her mood, here re/ actions to things and it was just like me and I pray that she isn’t cursed with it too. As a parent all you want to do is protect your child from everything but to know that I could’ve gave her something so serious hurts. I don’t want her to be like me, to go down the same roads I went down (I am hoping that if she is that my knowledge of everything will help.) She always says she wants to be like me but I don’t want her to be like me. I love her more than anything else in this world, but I never want to see her suffer through this shit.
The decision not to have more children was mostly mine and my husband supports and respects my decision, but don’t ever tell someone their reason for not having children is selfish because you don’t know the whole story. So I decided to not have any more children because of my mental health.
I’m sorry if I’ve been MIA for a few days. I’m trying to sleep better and not be such a bitch. My doctor gave me a new medicine to try, I am on day 4 and I’ve noticed a slight difference. The dreams are still not quite right not and it sucks when I can’t even nap without having them. I am working on updating my 31 day challenge. I am trying to hold to my commitment to finish it even though it is hard sometimes. I am trying to figure out what I am going to do when it is over, but I think I am going to do what I am grateful for next month. It is amazing how when I started I could think of 1000 topics but about a month in I’m like oh shit! I need to make sure I have good content for my subscribers. If you are on Instagram check me out. The last few days it was easier than writing the blog. I’m trying to line them up together.
Right now my issues with my moods is a topic I am covering which I hope is helping other people. It is something I was nervous about discussing in the beginning because I know what it sounds like. So I am back and plan on catching up on everything. I will be on all day. I have a plan to be a little productive today and I have caffeine to help. So I have some good posts coming. Stay tuned…….
This is an extremely exaggerated statement. I would give it all up for my daughter and husband to never have to worry about me and my illness again.
I fucked up the other day and ruined my daughters day. I was so angry and it wasn’t at her but I took it out on her. I may not have criticized her, but I hurt her only because she was trying to help. It still bothers me even though I know I can’t changed what happened the fact that it got to that point again kills me.
Now it is the next day and I pick her up from school and make sure she sits in the front seat with me and I listen to her tell me all about her day at school. I could tell she was unsure of what to say or what kind of mood I would be in and while that hurt too, I understood. She is chirping away beside me laughing at her own jokes and smiling. I look at her for a moment and realize that we raising a good person and for as fucked up as I am and as much as my husband does our daughter isn’t only beautiful on the outside she has an amazing soul and that to me is more important.
We pull up to Dollar General (it is the only store we have in our town.) and I write the PIN number to my debit card and tell her that I owed her a snack from yesterday (we always go on the day I get paid and get a snack) and again for today. I sit in the car waiting and the longer I sit I rethink the here is my debit card idea. She finally comes out and spent $3.24. She bought a Fruitshooter (it is just liquid sugar), a can of Pringles, and a kit kat. I looked at her and said, “You could’ve had anything you wanted. Do you want to go back and get something else?” She looked at me seriously and said, “No mama I just want you to smile.” That hurts worse then any other pain imaginable. It is amazing how resilient children are. They are so forgiving and understanding. I think as adults we lose that somewhere along the way. So even though I didn’t feel like it I smiled for her. I wanted her to be happy and think that mama was okay even though I wasn’t.
My meltdown and anger cost 3.24 and a smile. I know all of them won’t be that easy and over time this process will prove to be more difficult and the damage may last longer, but for right now I will cherish these moments and try my best to not put her through this again.
♥ Daisies and Bruises ♥ 