broken-but-not-defeated

[broken-but-not-defeated]

Open letter to my Mother in Law, part six of six, the closing

L-

I want to reiterate the fact that I don’t want to bring these things up in an effort to gain sympathy or pity. I don’t blame anyone for anything that has happened in the past. I hold on to no anger or resentment. I wanted to bring these things up because it just shows that you have no idea what others are going through. I have been fighting in this war against myself for much longer than I’ve known you. You had absolutely no hand in making me this way, and I would never claim that you did. However, certain scenarios that we have been through haven’t helped in making anything better.

There have been many times where I have come to you in times of need. But all I have received are explanations and empty reasonings. There have been many times where you have been upset with me, but would refuse to give me a platform to speak. Had we sat down and talked things out calmly, so many bad situations could have been avoided. Certain things that might seem like no big deal to you, can end up being colossal deals to me. You just don’t know what is going on in someone else’s mind. I hope that I have shed some light on that.

So, where do we go from here? Well, that is entirely up to you. I am willing to accept anybody into my life who actually wants to be there and makes an effort to stay. I have never not liked you. But I definitely have not liked how I have been treated. Some things have to change. So, going forward, I have a few rules and guidelines.

1. Nobody, not you, not anybody, can tell me how to feel. My emotions are mine, and if I am making a big deal out of something, that’s because it is a big deal to me. You may not understand it, you may not even agree with it, but your opinions will not change how I feel.

2. I will not be screamed or cursed at. This, right here, is how I handle conflict. If we can’t talk it out like adults, if we can’t respect each other enough to have a genuine conversation, I will walk away. It doesn’t matter if you are mid sentence, if voices are raised and curse words start coming out, I will leave. The room, the house, it doesn’t matter, I will walk away. Then, if you are ready to have a calm talk, we will try again.

3. If alcohol is a part of the equation, I won’t be. It has been used as a way to explain, and therefore defend, bad behavior, and I want nothing to do with it. If you would like to go out or do anything with me, we will both be sober, or I won’t go. If we are with a bunch of people and drinking happens, I will go off by myself or with the other sober people. I will not put my feelings on the line because someone wants to drink. You do you, and have fun with it, but don’t include me.

4. Things won’t be exactly how they were before. I have spent many nights with you crying on my shoulder because you didn’t feel loved or respected here. I have pried scissors from your hands as you were trying to stab yourself. I have defended you and held you, and when it was my turn, when I needed the support that I gave you, I didn’t get it. I can’t and won’t give my all to someone just to be turned away when the tables have turned. Venting to me is fine, but I will give to you the same that you give to me. No more, no less.

5. I won’t be bought. Many times, you have gifted me things, seemingly in an effort to repair past damage. Purses, makeup, soaps, lotions, etc. These things are just that, things. Material items. They are not a solution. They are not an apology. They do nothing to help, and never will. I know that around here, people scream, shout, and make a huge fuss, and money is what they’re after. They calm down when you hand them money, and whatever they said goes away. I am not them. Money and material things are meaningless to me. I will not accept them as a replacement or bandaid.

6. If things don’t change, and if I continue to get hurt, I will walk away completely. I don’t expect things to be perfect, but I expect effort. If everything I have said gets ignored, I won’t be willing to put myself out there like this again.

I want things to get better. I really do. It is exhausting fighting this fight. I want to let go. I hope you do too. Thank you for listening.

[broken-but-not-defeated]

Open letter to my Mother in Law, part five of six, my eating disorder

L-

Eating disorders are mental illnesses that everyone is aware of, but really, not many people really understand. Before I talk about me, I’d like to give some information about eating disorders, for the sole purpose of spreading awareness and being understood.

There are many types of eating disorders. Some are restrictive, some rely on purging, some only involve binging. Some come from an obsession to health foods. Some are a mixture of all of the above. All eating disorders are different. No two people, even diagnosed with the same eating disorder, will be the same or do the same things. I want to stress as much as I can that eating disorders are illnesses of the mind, not the body. The habits, rituals, obsessions, and weight losses or gains, are all symptoms of a much bigger problem. Anyone can develop an eating disorder. People from every race, gender, sexuality, religious background, or circle of life can have an eating disorder. Underweight, normal, overweight, or obese, it doesn’t matter. This is extremely important.

My eating disorder started in high school. I was about 15. I think by now you understand that other people always felt like they needed to comment on my body. That, combined with the fact that I lived my entire life with the goal of pleasing those around me, the crippling depression anxiety, and the uncertainty of what I really looked like, resulted in me wanting to lose weight. It started slowly, trying crash diets and counting calories. But because my self image was so screwed up, I couldn’t see a change in the mirror, and the numbers never went down fast enough. I started skipping meals, and tried my hardest to stop eating altogether. But my friends saw what I was doing, and threatened me until I stopped. But skipping meals was replaced with binging on as many things as possible. I was quite active, so the weight evened out and I didn’t lose or gain, but my mind was still sick. That sickness lied dormant for a few years.

In 2017, I relapsed. Life here is stressful. I am away from my friends and family, I don’t know anyone here outside of the people who live in our house, and many of the people I now live with fed into my mental illnesses, making them worse and bringing back the ones I thought had gone away. Again, I started slow. But before I knew it, I was worse than I had ever been. As I am an adult, nobody can force me to eat, so I don’t.

When I say that I don’t eat, I don’t mean that I literally never eat. I would be dead. But I eat as little as I can to survive. I am not living, I am only surviving. There are ways to calculate how many calories your body burns per day, just by being alive. It takes into consideration your age, gender, weight, and height. I have calculated this number, and I don’t even eat half of it per day. I eat the same bland, tasteless foods every day, and there are many foods I have grown fearful of and will not allow myself to be anywhere near. I live off of diet sodas, energy drinks, teas, water, and black coffee. I have abused laxatives in an effort to get rid of the food that I do eat. I break down into tears almost every time I step on the scale. I wear sweatshirts in the dead of summer, because I hate any part of my body being shown. I almost pass out when I stand up. There is a high that comes from being hungry. When I am hungry, I am empty. When I am empty, I am succeeding. But no amount of ‘success’ will ever be enough to satisfy me. I get migraines every single day. I shake and shiver 24/7. I am always cold. My limbs go numb and my fingers and toes turn paper white because my heart is losing strength and my circulation is beyond messed up. My skin is always dry, I have acne when I never had it before, and my hair is falling out. My bones are becoming visible through my skin, though I cannot see them.

But losing weight and skipping meals isn’t all of what my disorder is. I binge, too. Hard. I completely lose all self control and eat everything in sight. I eat a week’s worth of food within one hour. And then the panic sets in. My stomach no longer knows what it’s like to be full. So when it is, it feels like a foreign object has been implanted into my abdomen, and a very large, very painful one at that. I cry almost every time. I panic. My heart rate skyrockets. I get dizzy. I feel physically ill. Hours and hours of panic and anxiety ensue. I feel like a failure. I feel bloated and disgusting. I lost control.

Like I said before, losing weight is only a symptom. The bigger part of the issue lies within the control. I cannot control the job I have, the people I’m around, the way people treat me, the way people think of me, nothing. The only thing in the world I have control over is how much I eat. When things get bad, the only thing I know to do is punish myself by restricting my food intake. Only then do I feel like I’ve reclaimed a part of my life. It is the biggest and the worst trick my mind can play on me.

Nobody bats an eyelash when I do these things, either. I am not underweight. I do not resemble a skeleton. So therefore, nobody even notices. I am slowly killing myself while everyone around me watches, but nobody sees. The dishes that pile up in the kitchen? Surely some of them must be mine, right? Nope. Because all I’ve had this week is a little bit of cereal out of a bag, energy drinks from a can, and rice cakes straight from the package. Everyone’s so consumed with their own lives to realize that it’s been months since they’ve actually seen me eat anything at all. And I don’t blame them. Nobody is responsible for me. But I silently laugh to myself when they try to blame the dishes on me, because little do they know.

Eating disorders are among the most deadly mental illnesses. They say you either recover, or die. But my brain makes me think there isn’t any possible way that I am sick enough to die, that I am in no real danger, that maybe I’m not sick at all and I’m just making it all up. So I continue. Eating disorders are also among the main causes of fertility issues. There is a chance I may not be able to get pregnant in the future due to the damage I have already done. When I say that my mental illnesses are ruining my life, I don’t say that dramatically.

I bring this up, not because you have anything to do with it, but for the sake of being open an honest about my struggles. We all have our own demons. Some are visible, and some aren’t. Sometimes I wish it was just a drug that I was addicted to. I could detox, and get clean. But when my personal demon isn’t a chemical, when it’s actually my own self, it is a lot harder.

You once sent me a song, focused around being beautifully broken. Nothing about this is beautiful. I am broken, and that’s it.

[broken-but-not-defeated]

Open letter to my Mother in Law, part four of six, my body dysmorphia

L-

Body dysmorphia is something that is extremely difficult to describe to someone who does not have it. It sounds fake, impossible even. But it is very real, and I have it. I want to start this off by giving an example that may make it easier to understand.

My brother is color blind. There are many colors, most colors even, that he simply cannot see. If I were to hold up a purple crayon, hiding the label so he couldn’t read what color it was, he would tell me that it is blue. And to him, it is. The fact that I see purple will never change the fact that he doesn’t. Same with green. He doesn’t see green, he sees brown. He can recognize that it is in fact green, but he will only ever see brown.

Body dysmorphia is a lot like color blindness. When I look in the mirror, I see an over-exaggerated caricature of what I really am. I see parts of my body as much bigger, or much smaller, than they actually are. I see fat where there is nothing but bone. I see features of myself as grotesque and disgusting. Where others have clearly seen beauty, I see nothing but ugly.

It doesn’t matter how many times people say that I am skinny, or pretty, or beautiful. It cannot and will not change the way I see myself. The brain process everything that the eyes see. My brain does not know how to process my own reflection.

This started a long time ago. It may have developed and then gradually gotten worse over time, but it is also quite possible that I have never seen myself the way I truly am. I look at pictures of myself as a child and don’t recognize myself in them. I am often left to wonder what I really look like, and if others see what I see.

They say that you could tell a girl she is beautiful 100 times, and she will never believe it. But if you tell her she is ugly once, she will believe it for the rest of her life. For me, this is unfortunately very true.

As I have mentioned previously, the topic of my appearance has always been on the forefront of other people’s minds. People have always felt the need to put in their two cents on how they think I look, whether I ask them to or not. This has greatly effected how I see myself.

Going back to the color blindness example, my brother sees blue, while we see purple. 100 people could tell him that the crayon in my hands is blue. But if one person says it is purple, he will second guess what his own eyes and brain tell him is real. And when he looks at the label, and it confirms that it is in fact purple, he will never believe those who said it was blue ever again. The reality is that it is purple. It has been, and always will be purple.

People have complimented me on my body plenty of times. But all it takes is one person making one comment to change what I see and who I believe. If someone calls me fat, and I look in the mirror and see fat, that is what I will see and believe from that point on. I have no control over this. It is just the way my brain is.

For example, there was once a guy I knew in high school. He was a typical lady killer, a player, a womanizer. He would rate girls on a hot or not scale, and as I was deeply insecure at the time, I wanted to know what he thought about me. He said I wasn’t hot, or even beautiful. When I asked him why, he said that it is because my head is too small in proportion to the rest of my body. That is all it took. I have never seen my head as a normal size ever again. Either my head is too small, or my body is too big. My brain and self image is that easily swayed by what others see in me.

One thing that has always said to me is that I look pregnant. I have no control over where my body stores fat. Unfortunately for me, most of my body fat is stored in my stomach, giving off the appearance of pregnancy. My stomach is the part of my body I am most insecure about for this very reason. It no longer matters how many times people tell me that I am skinny, or have a great body, or that my stomach is flat. I don’t and can not see it. All of this only goes to enforce what I have been saying this entire time, that my mental state is completely reliant on what others say about me.

The reason I bring this up at all, is because it plays a lot into my anxiety and depression, and other issues which I will discuss next. It is incredibly difficult for me to be around others, wondering what they think of me, and obsessing over whether or not I look the part. Comments have been made and things have been done that cut deep, and though I have never made them obvious, they hurt excruciatingly.

On many occasions, you have made comments about the fact that I look pregnant. I get it, you’re my mother in law, I am married to your son, and pregnancy could be in our future. But I have never been pregnant, and don’t plan on being pregnant for a long time, maybe not ever. Those comments have been unnecessary and hurtful. There have even been times where you have felt my stomach to make sure I wasn’t lying to you about not being pregnant. That was the absolute worst. I could feel layers of fat jiggle and move under your fingers. In that moment, I prayed for pregnancy to magically appear, simply to hide my shame. What that did was confirm that you, and many others like you, see me as the disgusting blob of fat that I see myself as. I have a fear of being touched. Clothes can create an illusion of thinness, but once I am touched, it is like I am naked, my biggest insecurities out there for the world to see.

I will ask this of you right here and now. Please, if you care at all, do not bring up my weight or my body, ever again. Your intentions do not dull the metaphorical knife that cuts so deep. My body is not yours, nor anybody else’s, to comment on. Platitudes like ‘you’re so skinny’ and ‘you’re not fat’ are meaningless to me. If, and when, I do get pregnant one day, I will be the one to tell you. Until then, don’t ask.

The last thing I want to talk about, the result of all of these things combined: my eating disorder.

[broken-but-not-defeated]

Open letter to my Mother in Law, part three of six, my anxiety

L-

Anxiety has played a huge part for me in the past few years. I have a list of different things that trigger different types of anxiety. But the one that I want to focus on today is my social anxiety.

As you can tell, my interactions with other people have always left a lot to be desired. I have always had this idea that everyone else around me hated me, and that it is not their fault, but mine. If I were a better person, if I did things in a different way or presented myself differently, things would be different and people would have nothing bad to say.

Through years of this being my experience with others, I have become obsessed with it. I have applauded others for being so bold to voice their opinions of me, however harsh and unwarranted they may be. In my eyes, they have done me a favor.

But I’m doing this, I have grown to be afraid of those who have nothing bad to say. I make myself crazy wondering what people think of me when they don’t say it themselves. I have taught myself to think that there is always something to be said, and therefore if people don’t say it, I know they must be thinking it. I second guess everything about myself, from my outfit, to my body, to my personality as a whole. I become very self conscious when in reality, I have no reason to. I fight this war within myself every day.

It has become a never ending cycle. I try to make friends and have positive interactions with others, but I have believed for so long that the way people show affection is by trying to change me. When they don’t, I creat tons of imaginary scenarios to try to figure out what it is that they believe is wrong with me, even when it is nothing at all. I make friendships and I reach out to people because I feel so alone, but eventually back out of any kind of friendship and completely isolate myself due to my own insecurities.

But what about when they do have something to say about me? When someone says something negative about me, two things happen.

1. It confirms what I already believe to be true about myself. My brain has me believing that I am the villain in everyone else’s story, that I am the evil monster to be defeated. When someone confirms that, it feeds my illness and grows it bigger and badder. It makes me aware that other people see me in the negative way that I see myself, which in turn, makes me feel even worse.

2. It makes me afraid to be around them as I am. If there are things wrong with me, they must be fixed. And until they are, I feel ashamed of who I am, and I seclude myself that much more.

So all in all, I am afraid of people. Whether they like me or not, whether they accept me as I am or want to change me, I fear them. But again, I don’t see others as the problem. I am the problem. I am the disease which needs to be cured. It is not their fault, but mine.

Over the past few years, I have finally discovered that this way of thinking isn’t right. I am not the problem. If people like me, they really do like me. And if people don’t, that is a problem within themselves. I have hated myself for so long, I don’t know how to love myself at all. But I am trying. I am beginning to demand that people treat me with at least a base level of respect. I am human no differently than they are. I have my flaws, but so does everyone else. It is healthy to grow and adapt as a person, but I shouldn’t be jumping into action to define myself and change myself to fit others’ standards.

Where my problem now lies is in other people continuing to expect me to do what I have always done. I have always been a doormat to be walked on, and that is how people have known me. But when I started taking steps to change that, people had nowhere to wipe their dirty shoes.

Bad behavior can always be explained away. Maybe someone had a bad day, or they had a headache, or they ingested a chemical which altered their mental state. So when someone says something bad about me, or hurts me, eh, no big deal, right? They aren’t themselves. I shouldn’t take it so personally. I hope that you can now see why this isn’t true. The reasoning doesn’t matter, the damage has been done.

Say someone had a peanut allergy. Maybe you didn’t know about it, or had simply forgotten. Maybe you just weren’t thinking. But if you give them something with peanuts in it, they will react. You could have the best intentions in the world, but it doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t change the fact that they are allergic. You could scream until you are blue in the face about why you did it, but the damage has been done. You can’t tell them to just not be allergic. You can’t decide for them that they are fine.

I have come to you many times to vent about when others, or even yourself, have hurt me. I came to you seeking validation, not necessarily a solution. But each and every time, there has always been a reason why I shouldn’t feel the way that I do. Nothing was ever said in my defense, not really. The insults kept coming, and the monster inside me grew a little bit each time. So I shut down completely.

You think that I don’t like you, because I don’t spend time with you, and I make a genuine effort to not be in the same room with you. But it’s just because I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know if you had a bad day, if traffic got you frustrated, if you have ingested anything or how much. I don’t know what I can say around you, and what to keep to myself. I don’t know how to protect myself. Not against you, but against the monster within me that you may or may not feed into. So I hide. I lock myself away in my room, where I know that I won’t get hurt. It is my only known defense.

I want you to know that you’re not the only one I do this to. My husband is the only person in this state I feel completely comfortable around. Everyone else, I am a certain degree of afraid of. Some I can be around for short amounts of time, some not at all. It is not about you as a person. It is not about me liking your or not. It is my anxiety. And until I know that I am safe, not physically but mentally, I can’t and won’t do anything to change that.

The next thing I want to talk about: my body dysmorphia.

[broken-but-not-defeated]

Open letter to my Mother in Law, part two of six, my depression

L-

Depression is one of those illnesses that seems to get tossed around at any moment of sadness or stress. I never want to be one of those people that claims to have a bunch of mental illnesses, when really I am just feeling normal emotions. I know you have a history of depression, so I would like to remind you that my depression may not be the exact same as yours, but that doesn’t make it any less valid or real.

For as long as I can remember, I have cared far too much about what others think of me. I try to stop it from happening, but I don’t know how. People say things like “don’t let them effect you” and “know your worth” but those are far easier said than done. The way my brain works, I have not found a way to shut that part of it down. This has been a huge contribution to my depression.

I was bullied from elementary school all the way through high school. And it’s weird, because if you had asked me when I was younger if I had ever been bullied, I would have said no. It was done so subtly, by most of the people I had ever met, and I grew so used to it that I thought it was normal. I thought boys were supposed to insult me, punch me, stomp on my toes, pinch me, and pull my hair, because that was supposedly the way boys showed affection. I thought that girls were supposed to befriend you one day only to speak so poorly of you the next because girls are just caddy. I thought that the way you grew as a person was by taking the criticism of your peers and changing yourself to match what they wanted you to be. And in doing that, I created so many different versions of myself that I completely lost touch with who I actually was. In the most formative years of my life, I was a puppet.

Every aspect of my character was changed and molded by everyone around me. I was told that the clothes I wore were wrong, the colors that I liked were wrong, my hair was wrong, my weight was wrong, my wearing glasses was wrong, my not wearing makeup was wrong, the music I liked and the books I read were wrong, the way I talked was wrong, my entire personality was wrong. I was told that if I wanted anyone to like me, I had to change these things about myself. And when I did change, I was laughed at and excluded by everyone for being ‘fake’ and giving in to peer pressure. I was called fat, ugly, stupid, dumb, pathetic, worthless, and a waste of a life.

These things were told to me by the people I considered friends. It started when I was about 8, and it didn’t stop. I grew up believing that this was friendship.

When I started dating, I attracted only the guys who would lie to me, manipulate me, and cheat on me. I didn’t know any different, and these guys knew that they could treat me any way that they wanted and I would always come back for more. I thought that this was love.

I would change every little bit of myself to match what others wanted me to be. I would wake up hours before school to shower, do my hair and makeup, and obsess over the perfect outfit. For a while, I’m sure I seemed vain. I believed that if I dressed a certain way, if I followed the directions of others, that I would finally be accepted. But it never worked. I have hated the color pink for the majority of my life because I was publicly shamed and ridiculed for being an innocent, goody two shoes, girly girl. So I started wearing all black. But then I would be attacked for being a ‘poser’ and trying to fit in. I was never big on wearing makeup, but I started because I was told that it was the only thing that would hide how ugly I am. But I was picked apart daily for not applying it the right way. I would hide my body behind layers of clothes to hide the fat that people always loved to point out, but the more layers I would add, the fatter I apparently looked. I gave up on all the things I was passionate about in favor of things that were trendy and popular, and was yelled at for even trying. I gave up on myself just like everyone else did.

No matter what I did or tried to do, nothing would work. I didn’t even want friends, I just wanted to stop being a flashing neon target. So after a while, I just stopped trying altogether. I wouldn’t shower or brush my teeth. I wouldn’t change my clothes or comb my hair. I wasn’t what anyone wanted me to be, and I wasn’t myself. I was nothing, empty, and numb. My mom saw this as me being a bratty teenager who just didn’t care. She would force me to shower, she would comb my hair for me, and she would always say how sad it was that I wasn’t trying. I see her perspective. But what she didn’t see was the years of trying that got me nowhere.

Have you ever seen a scene in movies or tv shows, where a person is lying in bed after a hard day. As they try to fall asleep, holographic heads start appearing all around them, replaying things that have been said to them. The heads start spinning, and the more that appear, the more they talk over each other until it’s a screaming mess of gibberish. Those scenes are a very dramatized but accurate representation of what my mind likes to do to me every day.

There is a running list in my head of every bad thing that has ever been said to me. And each time something is added to that list, I can hear it in the person’s voice on a permanent loop. So many of them, constantly screaming at me. Like the one time a guy in 7th grade told me that I would be better off dead. For the longest time, I could hear him say it in my head over and over. But over time, I have forgotten what his voice sounds like. The words remain, but the voice fades. And when that happens, it is replaced with my own inner voice. So after years and years of being told all kinds of bad things about me, they have stayed with me. Never stopping, always there. But instead of some random guy repeating these things to me, it is now my own self. I have become my worst enemy, my biggest bully. Those people probably don’t even remember what they have said, but I cannot forget.

Now, anyone looking at this from the outside would clearly classify this as bullying. So, how was it that I would have said that I was never bullied? My brain has a way of making me think that I am crazy, that I am overreacting, and that nothing was really as bad as I made it seem. In my mind, the people around me were just reacting to me the way that anyone should. I made myself believe that I was the problem, that I was doing something wrong, and that therefore, I deserved it.

I had a full length mirror in my bedroom. I would take a dry erase marker and write on the mirror, from top to bottom, everything people said was wrong with me. In the end, it was so covered in writing that I couldn’t see myself anymore. I thought that I could fix each problem, one by one, and erase them, revealing my reflection as the person I was supposed to be. Maybe then, people would like me.

In 8th grade, I met a girl. She was new to our school, and quickly integrated into my group of friends at the time. We got to know each other really well, and I looked up to her. She was nice to me. One day, we were changing into our gym clothes, and I saw her body. From head to toe, she was covered in cuts and scars. I had heard of self harm before, but she just seemed so happy all the time, I never would have guessed. I asked her why she did it. She told me that whenever she was sad, she would do it to distract herself. It made her happy. And she was happy, or already appeared to be. Up until that point, I had never had any kind of coping mechanism. If it worked for her, maybe it would work for me too.

I went home that night after school, and self harmed for the first time. I was 13.

There is a lot of science behind why people self harm. It can be used as a distraction, a stress reliever, and even a physical representation of pain that cannot otherwise be seen. But it goes even deeper than that. When the human body experiences trauma, the brain sends out different chemicals and things to help the body heal. Some of those chemicals are also responsible for creating the emotion of happiness. So, by self harming, I fed my body more of those happy chemicals.

When someone thinks of addiction, they think of things like drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, and even caffeine. People rarely consider the fact that you can get addicted to the chemicals your body naturally produces. And that’s what happened to me. I was addicted.

I self harmed for three years. Most of the scars have faded by now, but some still remain. I started feeling suicidal. When I self harmed, I didn’t care if I lived or died. I did it because when I was thinking about the pain, nothing else in my head mattered. I did it because I didn’t feel like my emotions were real, but if there’s a scar, that meant that they were. I did it because it was all that I knew.

In high school, I dated a guy who made me want to be better, not for me, but for him. It was the same old stuff that had always been there, me changing for someone else, but it was disguised as love. I felt like I needed him, and that without him, life didn’t have worth. He made me promise that I would stop self harming, and I did. But it wasn’t because it was unhealthy of me to do, it was solely for him. I was 16.

One night, while I was filming a project for class with my friends, this guy and I got into a really bad fight. We were screaming at each other, saying anything and everything we could to hurt each other. The thing I was filming included a knife that I had to hold. In an effort to get the fighting to stop, I told him how tempted I was to self harm again. And it wasn’t a lie. I was extremely tempted and it was taking all of my strength not to. He called my parents and told them. This was the first they had ever heard of it, and they did not react well.

I was involuntarily put into therapy. My therapist was a perfect example of what not to do. She used me as a way to gain more clients, even calling my friends and my boyfriend during our sessions. Not to talk to them about me or with me, but to get them to come in and pay her more money. She did not care about me.

However, there were about two sessions where we actually talked about me and what I was going through. In those sessions, she taught me two things which have stuck with me, and which actually helped in my recovery.

1. My emotions and thoughts are valid and real, and nobody has the right to say otherwise. If I feel something, no matter what other people have to say about it, those emotions are mine and it is 100% okay to feel them.

2. In moments of crisis, when I feel like a relapse is inevitable, I need to know who my support system is, and how to get to them, as many of them as possible, as fast as possible.

I employed these things into my life immediately. My family and friends were trained, either by me or the therapist herself, how to help me. How to talk me down and get me to a place where I am thinking rationally. And it worked.

If I needed family support, I’d be surrounded by my parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins within the hour. If I needed friend support, I’d text my best friend and let him know where to meet me, and by the time I got there, he would be there along with all of our other friends. For the first time in a long time, maybe even the first time in my life, I felt real support. I was validated, understood, and helped. And when I met my husband, left the bad relationship I had been in, and got married, I was finally shown what real love is like. I saw what it was to be accepted. I started getting to know myself. I started healing.

So, when I packed my bags and moved across the country and away from my family and friends, I lost a huge part of the support that I had finally found. The people were still there for me, but I could only contact one at a time, and it could never be in person. I felt myself slipping again. The thoughts started coming back. I knew that I had to figure something out real quick.

As unconventional as it may seem, Facebook ended up being the answer. One post, and I could have upwards of 40 people, friends and family, commenting and supporting me. It was different, but successful. The same people who were trained how to help me could still help me. The support never went away, it just found a new platform.

That is, until THE post. You know the one.

I had gotten into a huge fight with your brother one night, and then you the next morning. Awful things were said about me, and with each one, the list in my head got longer, and the inner screaming got louder. I was in one of those crisis moments. One person was not enough to calm me down. I felt like I had nobody. I felt like I was crazy, like my emotions about the situation were over dramatic and not real. When I say that I needed support, I mean it. I NEEDED support. So I made a post.

In this post, I did not name you, your brother, or anyone else. I simply stated my thoughts on a certain topic. I vented. Anyone who didn’t know you or your brother had no idea who or what it was even about. All they knew was that I wasn’t right in my own head, and that I needed them. The comments were overwhelmingly positive. They said all the things they had been trained to. They validated me and my feelings. They made me feel like I wasn’t alone. These are people who have been in shoes very similar to yours, who have been on both your end of the argument and mine. They weren’t just my “little friends.” They were my support system. They were all I had.

But then your comments started flooding in. You called me immature, told me to grow up, defended yourself against me, and told me that it was all just a big miscommunication. You were a perfect echo of the part of my brain I was trying to silence. You said everything that I had already thought myself. And reading your comments, it was like all the rest disappeared. The positivity, gone. The support, gone. Your comments confirmed for me what I had spent so much time being afraid of, the fact that I was making it all up. I felt insane. I felt confused. I started second guessing myself, wondering if I had gotten it all wrong. I started believing that I was wrong, that I was the problem in all of this, that it was my fault, and that I deserved it. And just like that, my support system, my safety net, my coping mechanism, gone. That was almost two years ago.

I don’t post to Facebook anymore. It wasn’t immediate, but I did eventually relapse into self harm, because I didn’t know what else to do. I had made it 7 years. In the past year, things have been worse than they have ever been, but I am working hard every day to get better. The self harm, the suicidal ideation, I am working through it all and am doing better on my own each day. I am shopping around for a therapist that is affordable and good at their job, and I am making my way toward a permanent recovery. Not for anyone else this time, but for me.

I want you to know that I don’t blame anyone for any of this. Not you, not your brother, not my past relationships, not my past bullies. Yes, people have been awful to me, but the fact that my brain is the way that it is isn’t anyone’s fault. For people who are mentally healthy, a lot of this would have been a nonissue. But it is because I am not mentally healthy that things got as bad as they did. It is because I waited so long to reach out for help that things progressed so far.

You may be wondering how these things have lead to depression if they aren’t the direct cause. My brain is sick. It does not process information correctly. It has taken all of this and translated it into a language that only I know, one that makes me hate myself. My knowledge of myself and the way I see myself is skewed. Not because of others, but because of the way my brain has grown and developed. My experiences do not define who I am, but they are a part of my story. These experiences have been filtered through a web of depression, and hand delivered to me in an envelope that should have never existed. Having thick skin and letting things roll off your back is a lot easier when you aren’t mentally ill.

My depression is a demon that has taken over half of my brain. It makes me believe the worst lies about myself. It fixates on every single flaw that I have. It makes me feel like I am worthless, pathetic, and a waste of a life. It makes things like cleaning my room or taking a shower seem like climbing a mountain. There are days where I don’t have the energy to get out of bed. There are days where if I wake up and that’s the only thing I do that day, I consider that a success. I am a work in progress. I am meeting parts of myself for the first time, and learning how to accept myself for who I am. I am learning how to allow myself to feel emotion instead of repressing it or denying its existence. It is beyond difficult, but I know I can do it. I am not my depression, but I do have depression.

The next thing I want to talk about: my anxiety.

[broken-but-not-defeated]

Open letter to my Mother in Law, part one of six, the intro

L-

I feel the need to write you a series of letters. Not necessarily for your benefit or mine, but to give some context to the past few years and the things that have happened between us. You and I had quite the falling out, and we haven’t spoken much since. You may believe that I am overreacting, and that I don’t like you. Maybe you even believe that I hate you. My feelings about you play little to no part in this, and I want to explain to you how that is and why.

I type this, knowing that it will be posted to a platform that you do not use, one that has no followers and will most likely not be seen by anyone but me. However, there may come a day where I show you these posts. I may even read them to you. I want to share these parts of my life with you, but no opportunity has been presented thus far. I will not chase you. If you want to get to know me, to really get to know me, you have to come to me first. That could happen a day, month, year, or 10 years from now. It is up to you. Whenever you are ready to hear this, I will be more than willing to show you. However, I will not let someone into these parts of my life who doesn’t wish to be there.

These letters are a way for me to collect my thoughts, a method of therapy. These letters are not the first that I have written you, but those have never been made public, have never been shared with you or anyone else, and never will. When I began writing to you, I came from a place of anger. I was hurt, and I wanted you to know the ways in which I have been hurt. My past letters have been filled with finger pointing and blame. I was in a dark headspace, and anger was the most prominent emotion on my mind. I no longer feel that anger. I no longer have any resentment toward you or anyone else. I now come from a place of longing to be understood.

The word “miscommunication” has been tossed around many times, but that word just simply isn’t correct. There have been no miscommunications. There has been a complete and total lack of communication. I am willing to admit that I have had a hand in this. I cannot expect you to understand me and the ways that I think and act if I do not share those things with you. In keeping these things to myself, I have not given you a fair chance. I have not allowed you to see the parts of me that are vulnerable, the parts that need to be seen if I expect you to understand who I am or how I function. You are not a mind reader, and I will no longer treat you as such.

There are 4 main topics that I wish to discuss. 4 inner demons that I face each day, 4 of the darkest corners of my mind, 4 mental illnesses that plague me and always have. My behavior up until now has been a reflection of these things. But before I even touch on these things, I must give a few disclaimers.

1. I have never been clinically diagnosed with any of these illnesses. I know that you shouldn’t self diagnose. I am not a licensed psychologist, and I do not have the credibility to diagnose anyone with a mental illness, especially myself. However, I have taken psychology and behavioral classes, both in high school and using online college courses. I have done extensive research on these mental illnesses, and have spoken with many people who have been diagnosed with them. I am making educated guesses based on years of research and knowledge of my own mind and body. With some things, when you know, you know. These illnesses which I am claiming to have are what I absolutely believe a therapist would diagnose me with.

2. I never want to use mental illness as a crutch or an excuse for bad behavior. Right is right, and wrong is wrong. If I have done anything to hurt you, I want to apologize before I even begin. My intentions are never to hurt anybody, and if I have, I am sorry.

3. I do not want pity or sympathy. Hundreds of thousands of people deal with mental illness. I am not special for going through what I have been through. Telling you these things and letting you in to these parts of my life are not and never will be used as a way to get you on to my side. It would be beyond manipulative of me to use my mental illnesses in that way, and that is not at all my intention. I don’t want you to coddle me or baby me once you know the full truth. In fact, if we never speak of these things again, I wouldn’t mind it a bit.

4. Though you are free to have your own opinions, the last thing I need is for you or anyone else to tell me why I shouldn’t feel the ways that I do. My experiences, my thoughts, and my emotions are mine and nobody else’s. You are free to ask questions or make comments, but please respect that these things are mine and mine alone.

5. The fact that I am sharing these things with you does not mean that things will all of a sudden go back to how they were before. These things do not change the relationship that we currently have or the things that have happened in the past. However, what we do in the future will greatly affect where things go from here. I as a person have to decide for myself what I am willing to put up with and what I am not. You have to do that for yourself as well. We as people teach others how to treat us. And if behavior doesn’t change, nothing will get better. This isn’t an invitation back into my life with open arms. This is simply a stepping stone in the right direction. Where we go from here will have to be figured out at a later date, when emotions aren’t running so high and we have had time to process what is discussed here today.

6. I do not wish to rehash old arguments. I may reference things that have happened in the past, as the point of this is to give context. But I do not want to bring back the fights that we have had. What is done is done, and I would like to move on. We can always talk about specific things if you would like to, but I will refuse conversations and step away from anything that begins to feel any form of aggressive or accusatory.

With all of that said and out of the way, I will begin with my first topic: my depression.

[broken-but-not-defeated]

A future as bright as the flame of a candle: My opinions on abortion.

I fear the path my country is going down. I fear that as a woman, I have no control over what happens to my body. I fear that I have no control over the conditions in which I am forced to live. I am not in control over the smile which has been plastered onto my face, because if I don’t wear this mask and fake approval and contentment, I am seen as a whiney, naggy millennial with too much time on her hands. If I speak out, I sign up for a war between me and those around me who disagree. If I stay silent, I become part of the problem. I fear for the men, women, and children who want control over what happens to them in life. I fear the men, women, and children who blindly hand that control over to suits in big offices who will never know them or their story.

Abortion is a huge topic in the news right now. Things are changing in this country, and not for the better. Ohio passed a law to ban abortion if a heartbeat can be detected, with no exception for rape and incest. Doctors in Alabama could face life in prison for performing abortions. In Georgia, women could face a death sentence for getting an abortion, and that may even include miscarriages. Even birth control methods like the pill and IUDs can now be seen as methods of abortion.

Recently, an 11 year old girl was raped, and that resulted in a pregnancy. She is being forced to carry out that pregnancy, even through both the physical and mental trauma that she has been and will continue to go through. If her body is unable to support the pregnancy, as she is a literal child, her potential miscarriage could be seen as an abortion and she could be charged with murder. This is how you ruin people’s lives, and not how you protect them.

Imagine for a moment you had a dog. You loved that dog with all of your heart. That dog was family to you. Now imagine that the dog was sick. Imagine a vet came to you and explained that your dog was past the point of treatment, and it was up to you to decide what to do, but the dog would suffer in agony for the rest of their life if you chose to keep them alive. The choice wouldn’t be easy, but more times than not, we would choose to end their suffering. We have to say goodbye to our fuzzy friends all the time for this very reason, because it would be inhumane to choose to let the poor animal suffer.

Now imagine your loved one was in a coma, and had been for a long time. It could be a parent, an aunt or uncle, a cousin, or even your own child. All that is keeping them alive are the machines they are strapped up to. Now imagine their doctor coming to you as the next of kin, and asking you if you would consent to pulling the plug. Their condition has only gotten worse and will continue to get worse as time goes on. It would be a tough call to make, but in a lot of cases, the correct choice would be clear. This happens all the time, and there are many times where pulling the plug is the right thing to do, to end the person’s suffering.

Now imagine you were pregnant. You loved this child with all of your heart and you couldn’t wait to meet them and hold them in your arms, watch them grow, and give them all the love in the world. But imagine you went to one of your regular doctors appointments, and got the news that your child would not make it much past birth. For whatever reason, your child, the one you hold in your belly right now, the one living off of your life force, would die hours, maybe even minutes after they leave your body. I once babysat a newborn baby that would turn blue because he had a defect that prevented him from breathing. He died after only 4 months of life, and he suffered every minute of it. Now imagine you had a choice to end their suffering before it began. Would you choose to hold your baby in your arms as they suffocate to death, gasping for air that they may never get? Or would you choose to pull your own version of the plug? Well, now you don’t have to choose.

In all three cases, there is a chance that things will improve. But there is a much greater chance that they won’t. Would you be willing to take that chance at their expense? What if it was you in those situations? What would you want a loved one to choose for you?

Imagine you had a history of illness, drug abuse, eating disorders, or whatever else that would make a pregnancy considered at-risk for you and the child. If that child dies within you because your body couldn’t handle it, well, you could be sentenced to life in prison, or even lose your own life due to the death penalty. Whether or not you wanted that pregnancy, whether or not grieved the loss of a child that you truly planned on bringing into this world, it doesn’t matter. Your life will be ruined or taken away completely.

Imagine you were in an abusive relationship, and you ended up pregnant. Imagine telling your partner, and then holding a knife to your throat, telling you that if you didn’t abort the baby, they would do it themselves and kill you as well. I had an old friend that went through this exact thing. She had no way to leave. No family, no money, nowhere to go, nothing. She went through with the abortion, even though she didn’t want to, because she knew he would have made good on his word. She knew that if she had gone to the police, it would have been his word against hers, and she couldn’t afford to bet her life on it.

Imagine you had been tossed around from foster home to foster home all your life, from institutions to families who just wanted to collect the check that you came with. Imagine the trauma that you could have endured at the hands of the foster care system, because not all foster/adoption cases are all sunshine and rainbows. Imagine you finally get out of there and on your own, and you end up pregnant. You have no money, nowhere for a baby to grow in a healthy environment, and no family to help support you. Imagine handing over your baby to the system that failed you, knowing the life that they may be forced to endure just like you did. Imagine hundreds of thousands of unwanted babies being thrown into that system right along with them. More children growing up wondering why their mom and dad didn’t love them enough to keep them. More children being abused by foster families who don’t care. More foster families using these children as money makers.

Imagine you were a young woman who just didn’t want a pregnancy. For whatever reason, you just don’t want it. Imagine being on the pill, and using condoms as well. Imagine that you still ended up pregnant, the methods of birth control used failing. That happened to another friend of mine. She chose to keep the baby, but what if she didn’t have the means to? What if she didn’t want to permanently alter her body? What if she had medical abnormalities that she wouldn’t want passed onto her child? What if she had very real, very valid reasons for using birth control and wanting to prevent a pregnancy in the first place?

Now imagine even using birth control being outlawed. If you don’t use it, you’re forced to conceive a child that you didn’t want. If you do use it, you are now seen as a murdered in the eyes of the law. Imagine getting the same sentence as a serial killer for taking one small pill.

Imagine wanting to get a surgical procedure that will make absolute sure that you won’t get pregnant. You know that you don’t want kids, you never have wanted kids, and you will never want kids. You’re doing what you can to prevent pregnancies in the safest, most responsible way that works for you, making it so that no life will ever be created that could potentially be taken away. Now imagine being turned away by doctor after doctor because a stranger thinks they know what you want more than you do. Regrets happen, sure. But maybe one of those regrets will turn into a child thrown into the system actually being adopted.

They claim that these laws aren’t for religious reasons, as we have a separation of church and state. But religion is the only thing I can think of that would logically explain this absurdity. So what about me? Even taking abortion off the table, there’s still so many things I am not allowed to do with my own body. I am in a straight, monogamous marriage. It is biblically allowed for me to engage in sexual acts with my husband. However, I am poor. I live with my husband and his drug addicted, alcoholic, verbally and physically abusive family. This is no place for a child, and it won’t be until we make it out of this place that I would even want to think about bringing one into this world. But I still engage in sexual intercourse with my husband. We use birth control. Take that away from us, and we will have no other option. Imprison me because I took a pill or used a condom in order to prevent something that isn’t right at this moment. Put me to death because I supposedly aborted a child that was never conceived due to taking birth control. You know, they’re right. This isn’t religious. Even the Bible wasn’t this restrictive. This is absolute governmental control, and it is disgusting.

At the end of the day, making abortions illegal will not stop them from happening. It will only stop them from happening safely. People will be dropping dead from infection as quickly as new, unwanted ones are being born. Hundreds of thousands of babies each year will be thrown into a system that doesn’t care about them. Innocent people will die at the hands of the law or spend their days rotting in a cell, right beside rapists, child molesters, and serial killers, for miscarrying a child they actually wanted. Doctors will be right there with them for doing safe, humane procedures in an attempt to save more lives than will soon be lost.

If we don’t have control over our own bodies, what do we have control over?

This is sick.

I fear the path my country is going down.