sad-n-stuff-blog

[sad-n-stuff-blog]

Here's a story I guess

Hi. My name is Renee. I have bipolar depression. I’m not here to inform you about what it is, why you should care, or what you should do to make my life better or easier or whatever. I don’t know why I feel the need to vent about it on a platform that I continuously find myself frustrated at for overloading with mental health information. I’m in an incredibly depressed state currently and I guess I have this overwhelming urge to write about it. But I’m not asking anyone to care or to support me or send their love or any of that bullshit. This is just reading material, I suppose.

I’ve been hospitalized 3 times for various reasons related to my depression. Twice when I was 16 during the onset of the disorder, and for ongoing anxiety, as well. I was most recently hospitalized back in December after I drove myself to the emergency room because I couldn’t get out of bed for days. I’ve dropped out of semesters of college, attended 3 different colleges due to unhappiness with my environment and fear I would never be able to make up my poor performance, and am currently still making up I completed courses from last semester because of the hospitalization. But don’t get me wrong, I’m a fucking straight A student. During my middle school and high school years, I got called goody-two-shoes and little-miss-perfect because I was such a good kid. I was compliant with my teachers and superiors and always did what was asked of me. I don’t know why once I got to college that became who I was and not who I am.

Bipolar depression runs in my family, although it’s a little hazy as to how prominent it is since my father was adopted. He was bipolar, though. I didn’t learn that until my own diagnosis 1 year ago. Up until that diagnosis, the thought was that I had severe anxiety and depression. I’ve been on tons of medications since I was 16, but finally last year my therapist suggested that my medication records point to a mood disorder as opposed to just depression. My psychiatrist began treating it as such, and with the information that the disorder ran in the family, they confirmed it.

My dad loves to write about his life on his Facebook, which I’ve blocked and unblocked so many times I can’t remember anymore if he is or isn’t at a given time. But I guess he wouldn’t mind if I gave a bit of an account of his personality on here, since after all, this is MY Facebook, right? He’s a full blown narcissist and, I’m not sure if this is a real psychiatric term, but he has sociopathic tendencies. Most of my childhood I never realized anything was wrong because I was the golden child, and was viewed as more of a friend than a daughter at times. He manipulated me into believing he was always right. So, I became a platform for him to spew his thoughts and opinions to my mother and her family. I argued for his sake, and I thought I was being righteous in doing so. I went to him for everything; how to think, feel, see things, whatever. I wasn’t taught to be my own person, but rather manipulated into a comrade for his strong opinions and self pity. He never allowed me to decide my own religion, but he gave a good illusion as if he did. But he would spend hours debunking faith, which he still does all over Facebook, and making sure that I chose atheism for fear that I was ignorant and less intelligent if I didn’t. He did that with a lot of things, like how I viewed my mother. Everything he told me about her was designed just so to make me conclude that she was a horrible, vicious person who wronged him. I had a horrible relationship with my mother and her family from a very early age because of this, and I’m still struggling to fix it in my own head. Nonetheless, I was very dependent on him, to the point where I’d get separation anxiety. I never understood why until years later when psychiatric professionals informed me of his manipulative nature.

Once I started getting older and turning into a somewhat independent teenager, I had no idea what to do with myself. I made horrible choices and pulled farther away from him because something didn’t feel right. He was definitely getting sicker. I won’t expose too much about my sister’s account, but their relationship was nothing like his and mine. Theirs was rocky and unstable. He continuously tried to assert authority over her in a very totalitarian manner. But he always assured me that she deserved those punishments and that I was better. It was horrible. I felt guilty to feel good about myself despite his constant urges that I was not a problem child. But I became a problem child. I began feeling strange and had no idea how to cope with it. I started to feel angry at him and see through his act. I began to fear him, every day. He became unpredictable as he fell into his own anger towards my mother and the family. I felt pressured to be by his side, so I pulled away instead and looked to people who I thought understood what I was going through, and all those people made bad decisions, and it felt good to disappear from reality for a while. My grades began to suffer, though I still achieved low 90’s if that says anything about me, and my father started to become wary of me in my sisters absence. Our long talks became shorter and shorter until eventually I was out every night getting high and struggling to find myself.

I became very depressed and stopped waking up for school. My dad couldn’t handle that he’d lost his control over me. We began to argue. It made everything worse. I got suspended from school. He spent the car ride home ripping everything away he’d ever built me up to be. I’d been demoted to just a dumb teenager. A month later, we got into an argument after I refused to wake up for school again, and I cursed him out. I don’t remember what I said, but he lifted his hand at me in preparation to strike. And I lost all faith in him in that moment. I didn’t just believe, but I knew that there was in fact a point that he would hurt me. He never hit me, but he threw me out of the house and told me never to talk to him again. He was done with me and all my bullshit. A month or two later, he sold the house and moved across the country.

We’ve tried rekindling the relationship over Facebook several times, but it always ends in more anger and hurt. He continues to try to manipulate me and play himself as the victim. He writes posts every once in a while referencing me or my mother or my sister, always making him out to be a perfect father and a victim of our horrendous behavior. He loves to vent on Facebook about how life has wronged him. He pretends to acknowledge his part in making bad decisions, but it’s all a facade to erase guilt.

His words still sting and hurt and most of time I don’t even realize they’re going through my head. His words are ingrained into my brain and they get really loud sometimes. That’s kind of where I am right now. I know to seek professional help and not just complain on Facebook, and like I said at the beginning this isn’t for anyone to reach out to me. I just wanted to write about it. ◦