Throwing Stones

We all know that saying “those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” well soome stones were thrown and I’m not even going to bother helping to clean up this mess. It’s rare that I get so angry I yell, I usually just cry and sob hysterically (which is just such a great defense mechanism *said sarcastically*) and it’s even rarer for me to yell “I should just kill myself” and even rarer than that is for me to get so angry that I have a violent outburst (I never end up breaking anything…if anything I am the one who gets injured). Now for the rarest beast of them all, all three of those things happening within the same day. Let us now venture on to the events of Thursday, April 24.

The day started off with me having a follow up with my gynecologist to discuss my lupron injections. Besides me being hot all the time, I haven’t had much endometriosis pain and the best part NO PERIODS!!! There is one potential problem, when I saw my oncologist the previous week, my liver enzymes were elevated and my oncologist was not super concerned but wants repeat labs in 6 weeks. [they asked if I had taken any tylenol or had alcohol recently and I said not within the past month or two, forgetting that I had alcohol at the beginning of April. My mom later corrected me and was kind of upset that I didn’t remember that but I was stressed with finals and packing my stuff that it slipped my memory and still should affect my labs that long after.] I let my Gyn know about those results she also wasn’t super concerned and agreed with the repeat labs in 6 weeks because if they are more elevated it is most likely that my liver is struggling with the injection. She asked if I had taken any tylenol or had any alcohol recently and I hadn’t within the last 2-3 weeks of my labs. We discussed some other things but overall everything is going pretty well for treating my endometriosis. My mom and I went home and then she took my dad to work. When she got back that was when things went downhill. I was in the kitchen trying to decide if I wanted to eat or not and my mom says “just so you know there’s something your dad asked me to do.” And then she pauses and so of course I ask “what?” and I have to ask it multiple times. To which she finally responds “your dad told me to pour out all of the open alcohol (there were only two bottles that really didn’t have much in them) because your liver enzymes were elevated and I didn’t tell him.” To which I yelled “What the hell! So he thinks I’m an alcoholic!” she tried to say something to which I just said “what the actual fuck” and punched a wall screamed and went upstairs, slammed my bedroom door, and cried for about three minutes. I then went back downstairs and told her “neither of you get to know what my next lab results are, I am not going to tell you.” To which she got angry and then I asked “did you even try to defend me” and she said “no, I didn’t get the chance because your dad thinks your I’m cheating and your in kahoots with me.” I then yelled “well then why the hell are you still married to him?” She says “because he’s my husband” and I yell “that is just bullshit.” [WARNING this is where really nasty bitchy me comes out and I am not proud of it but this has literally been bottled up for years.] I then scream “what hell kind of example are you setting for me? If I marry someone abusive or that treats me like shit IT’S YOUR FUCKING FAULT! because that’s the example you are setting.” She stormed off to the kitchen and I yell “I should just kill myself! and I hate my life!” and I stormed back up to my room and slammed the door.

Now you may be wondering if the story stops there. No, no it does not.

While I am angry and sitting on my bed sobbing in rage, my mom screams from the kitchen, and of course me being me, I already knew that she had either done something stupid or was about to. So I angrily go down to the kitchen where I see my mom with a death grip on a chef knife and a butter knife. I immediately grabbed the knife’s, which she fought me on, I got the knives out of her hands and threw them into the dishwasher and told her to go do something else. She refused and told me to leave her alone which of course I didn’t let her. She finished making the tuna salad with me standing in the kitchen watching her. I apologized for how I said what I said to her but I meant what I said to her. I also said “If you’re going to kill yourself, kill me first because I don’t want to be stuck with him.” I then stood in the kitchen until she left to go to work.

I have not spoken to my dad since Easter nor do I really intend to for the foreseeable future. I sick of all of his bullshit, insecurity, the world revolving around him. I haven’t spoken to my mom since thursday and I really don’t want to talk to her either.

The stones have been thrown and this time I am not going to help pick up the pieces. I am so over this bullshit family dynamic and I am so stupid for letting myself get hurt over an over in the process. Going to University is what is supposed to stress me out and be a challenge but instead I get stuck with not only University stress, I get my shitty homelife to go on top of it all. There is really no way for me to escape my parents until I am 100% not reliant on them for anything, which is going to take a while to happen, as my dad likes to sabotage my successes and my mom is so naive pay attention and take action.

I’m tired of fighting and I’m tired of being hurt by the people who are supposed to be my parents. It’s terrible that I dream of the day that I can cut myself off from them. They both think that I am going to be the child that takes care of them when they get old, but I’m not. They have two other children that can do that I’m out. The times when I needed them most they ignored me or blamed me. When I asked them to listen to me, they pushed me to the side. When I told them the truth, they were quick to believe the lies of other people. My story doesn’t matter to them. I am only sick to them when it is convenient. They only care about putting on a good face and lying to everyone about things going well. I am sick of that facade and I have ZERO shits to give anymore. It’s not worth my energy to pretend all is well.

I Don’t Get a Say and I’m Ignored

So I’m working on a paper and I decided one of the stories to include is about why I ended up leaving the first high school I went to, and I realized how little of a say I have in my life and how often my thoughts and feelings fall on deaf ears, even now that I am 21, because my parents don’t let me have a voice or opinion on things that affect me.

So in high school I went to a school that had really smart kids and I made friends but I ended up getting really depressed and anxious during sophomore year and I told my parents during the summer that I didn’t want to go back for junior year. I was told by my mom “you’re going and you don’t have a choice.” At that point I contested that decision and cried and stormed out. Later on my parents talk to me again and say that if I really didn’t want to go back I didn’t have to. But here’s the thing, I knew that if I left I would be guilted about it for the rest of my life. So I said that I would go back. Long story short, not long into Junior year I was going to kill myself, my friend called the police, the police were dicks, I threw a chair, got pinned to the ground by the ass of an officer, had to be carried out to the EMS (I did the toddler dead weight thing), was taken to an ER we requested not to go to, social worker was a bitch, slapped a cup of water out of a nurses hand because I was panicking and the cup was really close to my face, was restrained and ended up being sedated (didn’t go down without a fight though), refused to eat for the 3 days I was in ER, was transferred to a psych hospital. After that happened the assistant principal and my guidance counselors said I was a disruption to students and my therapist said that was not in my best interest to continue at that school. ONLY THEN did my parents allow me to leave. But it still gets brought up and my mom will say “I wish you could’ve stayed at that school.” They don’t care how that makes me feel. I had to switch to a “new” high school (I was already a student in that district and I knew people at that high school) and leave all of my other friends. I sat alone at lunch for the rest of my junior year and really didn’t want to be there and missed my friends. But through all of this I didn’t get a say in anything. Basically all of the decisions when it came to school were not made by me and when I wanted to take a different class or take a day off school because I was sick, I was told that I wasn’t allowed to.

My dad is the type of person to jump to conclusions and making his judgements before getting all of the information. In elementary school, I was passing notes with one of my friends and the teacher sees and we get in trouble. My parents are called and my dad is furious and is accusing me of calling someone a fag, because he refuses to listen to me when I tell him that I didn’t call anyone that and I was asking what the word meant. He just keeps yelling at me and eventually he spanks me with his belt. Later on he is corrected about who said what and he doesn’t even bother apologizing to me. Another time is during my senior year of high school. I was at this technical school for half of the day doing a program that literally a joke of a class. Well, that morning I was sitting in my car waiting for it to be closer to the start time. A student hits my car (while I am in it) and I immediately call my dad and he tells me what to do and I follow his instructions and he was calm about it. The police come (there was zero damage to my car but it was more to scare her and make her be more conscious while driving) they write a report and leave, then we go back to class. I am still anxious so I decided to use the coping mechanism that is most effective for me, listening to music. There’s a rule in this program that we are not allowed to listen to music with headphones but I was hoping that I would be able to listen to a song or two and be able to calm down. Nope, it didn’t help. Then the meat head of a teacher (who literally did not teach anything and sat on his ass all day) comes in and tells me and the guy sitting next to me to take out our headphones. We do then he walks away and I put mine back in and go back to doing my work, trying not to have a panic attack. Well he sees me with my headphones in and demands I give them to him and I explain that I am trying to prevent a panic attack and he just demands I give him my headphones. And then he just keeps getting closer and towering over me and I ask him nicely to take a step back because him being that close to me was making me more anxious and would give me a panic attack. HE DOESN’T LISTEN! so I keep repeating the same thing over and over and he finally gets angry and says put them on the end of the table and they better be there when I get back. I put them there and guess who ended up having a panic attack. Oh but it gets worse. He then brings some dude back with him and I tell him to get away from me and leave. Both eventually do and then they go and get who I later learned was the guidance counselor for the school. She told me that I needed to get up and leave with her. I decided since no one wanted to listen to what I was saying I was not going to talk anymore to them. So, I kept signing “why” to everything she said. it was about 10 minutes from dismissal and so I got up and started getting ready to leave and then they surrounded me and told me I wasn’t allowed to leave and that if I did my teacher was going to call the police because I was a threat to myself (I had calmed down at that point, still on edge though). I told her that I had a therapy appointment in half an hour and I would be going there. Still no. I called my mom and told her to tell them to get away from me and to let me go but she was more concerned with trying to figure out what was happening. I ended up throwing my phone in frustration since no one was listening to me and I was trapped at the school. Everyone else got to leave. I ended up back in the classroom area where I tried calling my therapist but it went straight to voicemail and I was not in a state to leave a coherent voicemail and at the time I didn’t have her cell phone number so I texted my previous therapist whose cell number I did have and asked her to call me. She was in a meeting so it took about a half hour for her to call me. When she did she asked what was going on, so I explained, and then she asked if I called my current therapist and I said I did but I got her voicemail and I didn’t have her cell number and I panicked, so she affirmed me and said I did the right thing and asked permission if it was ok if after our conversation if she could tell my current therapist (of course I said yes), and then she asked what I had been doing to try and calm myself (at that point I had been pacing around the classroom listening to music). She then asked if she could speak to one of my teachers and I let her. I have no idea what she said but I was still detained in a room now without my phone because after they finished the conversation they just decided to keep my phone. 10 minutes passed and I aggressively opened the door and hit the meat heat teachers arm and just demanded my phone back. He winced and I wanted to call him a baby but I refrained  and they gave me my phone back and I went back to pacing. Then my dad got there. He then was angry with me because apparently it’s all my fault that things ended up the way they did. It was my fault I had a panic attack and that they might kick me out of school. My dad wanted to hear nothing of what I said so I told him “You make me want to kill myself.” He then told me I had to go to therapy to which I said no and we sat in the parking lot for about 15 minutes before my mom texted to be picked up from work. Then when we picked her up the blame me game continued and I stopped talking. Then we went back to my therapists office where my mom told me if I am not going to talk to them I need to talk to someone and I proceeded with no I don’t and I’m not going. My mom didn’t like that and said she was going in to talk to my therapist to which I replied “have fun she can’t tell you anything because I’m 18.” My mom also did not like that (because I was 100% right) but she went in anyway and my therapist told her the same thing I did. *Later my therapist told me that she went and talked to her supervisor and was instructed that she could listen to my mom but was not able to do much of anything else. I don’t think I talked to my parents for a few days, I had my driving privileges taken away, and at the technical school I was basically given an in school suspension for like two weeks which honestly was great and I befriended the guidance counselor and she was totally chill with me listening to music and doing my work. I didn’t talk to her the first couple of times I was there but it was way better than being in the classroom. After I was allowed to go back to class she told me that I could go down any time that I wanted and so I pretty much went everyday because I could listen to music while doing my assignments. I didn’t talk to meat head teacher for about a month and it pissed him off. (I understand that not talking is childish but when the adults in your life constantly ignore you it’s hard to find a reason of why I should bother talking).

Now for the main event of things I don’t get a say in and no one gives a shit of what my feelings are toward the matter. The person who sexually abused me will be coming to live with us after he is released from prison because my dad only cares about what he wants. The best part (said sarcastically) is that we could lose our apartment lease because this person is not allowed on the grounds of our apartment complex. But my dad doesn’t seem to care about that too much since it’s all about what he wants and wants to believe. Now you may be asking the question, “why don’t you stay somewhere else, like with a friend or family member?” To which my answer is, it’s not that simple. It’s hard for me to adjust to new places, I can stay with my aunt I just don’t have anywhere to sleep, and I don’t have a car so how am I supposed to work and go to my medical appointments. Most importantly I constantly feel like a burden to people around me and I don’t want to feel like that. My mom also doesn’t get a say in this either. I also want to voice the question of “Why am I the one who has to uproot my life to accommodate for someone else?”

What I’ve learned is that my thoughts and feelings don’t matter and should not be voiced, especially in the context of my immediate family.

Chronic Pain vs. Narcotics vs. My Parents

I understand that the US is in the middle of an opioid epidemic but why do we keep shaming people that need to use them to manage their pain. I do not use any narcotic medications on a regular basis only as needed and I reserve it for really bad pain days where I am in so much pain I can’t move. For the past 6 months I have been having severe pain in my right leg and more recently pain in my entire spine. I have instability in my cervical spine (neck) and my lumbar spine (low back). The vertebrae in my neck and back show degeneration and possible osteoarthritis. I also have some mildly bulging discs in my lumbar spine and a mild posterior displacement of my L5 vertebrae over my Sacrum. I have very limited motion in my thoracic spine due to very tight spinal muscles and this causes pain in my shoulder blades, ribs, and back. I also have a connective tissue disease that causes joint dislocations and a host of other problems. I am constantly in pain. I am really lucky to have friends that don’t make me feel bad for needing to take a narcotic medication and often will encourage me to do so when they see I am in a lot of pain. But the problem comes with my parents. When I had surgery in 2016 my mom didn’t get my Tylenol #3 prescription filled because she felt I didn’t need to take it. Luckily I was fine and was not in a lot of pain (as I had lost feeling in and around the surgical site due to most likely a nerve being removed or damaged during surgery). My port surgery was brutal and my mom had my Tylenol #3 prescription filled but kept pushing me to get off it as soon as possible. The last surgery I had was in 2018 and I woke up in so much pain from that surgery I was hyperventilating and couldn’t speak or open my eyes and I was sobbing. They prescribed me Hydrocodone which my parents filled but my mom told me multiple times that I needed to get off it as soon as possible. I understand and am completely aware that many people get addicted to pain medications after a surgery, but it’s not helpful when you need to take narcotic pain medications to have people who are taking care of you openly express their discontent with you taking the medication. I used to have really bad period cramps to the point I was missing school, puking, and crying on the floor I was in so much pain (we found out I had ovarian cysts and in 2018 found out I have endometriosis which why I was in so much pain). I had 3 ER trips due to period pain and each time was prescribed Tramadol to take home.  I used to take a lot of tylenol and motrin. For tylenol to even touch the pain I had to take 2,000-2,500mg and for motrin, I had to take 1,000 mg and I would have to cycle between those every 2 to 3 hours. That much medication is not healthy for your liver or kidneys. Naproxen worked for a little while but for me to even be able to go about my daily life on my period (because my parents were against birth control when I was under 18) Tramadol worked best. My dad will make comments about my medication use and state that he “doesn’t have to take all these medications even when he’s injured.” If I mention being in pain to either of my parents I always get the response “what do you want me to do about it?” It’s never: “have you taken anything for it?” “Do you want ice or heat?” “How bad is your pain?” or even “Do you want a hug?”

I saw my neurologist and he basically gave me the options of seeing a spinal surgeon, a pain management physician for steroid injections, or continuing with PT. I told my mom this and as soon as she heard pain management she immediately says “No, you don’t need any narcotics.” I literally said nothing about narcotics and that it would be for steroid injections around the irritated nerve in my back, but what she assumed was narcotics. I know not to even ask my dad about narcotics because he is just going to tell me all about how I just need to eat better and exercise and that he doesn’t need any medications.

It takes a lot for me to say that I am in a lot of pain. I was in excruciating pain, almost in tears, and instead of helping my body by taking a Tylenol #3, I instead waited 2 hours to see if the pain would get better on its own, I stretched, ate breakfast, attempted some homework, and then asked my friend what I should do when the pain got worse. Of course he told me to take the Tylenol #3, but I should not feel that insecure and guilty about treating my pain. Because of all of the restrictions the US has put into place around narcotic medications I have a very limited supply and access. I have had my doctors and nurses tell me it’s ok to ask if I need pain meds, especially during a flare, but I don’t because if my parents find out, I am shamed for using them.

This stigma and shame surrounding using narcotic medications for pain management is shameful and I honestly believe it does more harm than good. For people who have diagnosed chronic or acute conditions that cause severe pain, they should be able to take the medication that helps them best to continue on with their daily life. I should not feel guilty or have to hide from my parents when I need to take a narcotic medication. You can’t compare your pain to other people’s pain. It’s not healthy to be in high amounts of pain for days at a time. I shouldn’t have to refuse pain medications to satisfy my parents. Chronic Illness sucks as is and it sucks even more when you have parents and/or other people in your life that make you feel like shit for something that is out of your control. My dad likes to tell my mom and I that I am only in pain because I stay in bed so much (because he assumes that if I am in my room I am in my bed. more times than not I am laying or sitting on my floor). He never thinks, maybe she’s in bed because she doesn’t feel well or she is in a lot of pain. According to him my pain and illnesses arise because I am in bed and don’t exercise enough.

The worst part of all of this, is that I cannot voice any of this to my parents because it will be met with resentment and fall on deaf ears. Instead of listening they attack, and in this situation I am the one who suffers and they don’t care enough to realize that.

I Am A Burden

No matter how many times my friends and family tell me that I am not a burden to them, I can’t help but to call bullshit. You see I recognize that I have a lot of health problems and moderate to severe depression and anxiety, and I also recognize their change in body language, they look uncomfortable, or they attempt to change the topic. I almost lost all of my friends in high school because of being so depressed and my parents blamed me for my problems.

Let’s start with my parents. Apparently one of the main reasons they are staying together in their shitty marriage is because of me. I get there is/may be more to it but I should not be in the equation of why they should continue is a very emotionally abusive and just overall toxic relationship. And yes, I have told them that they should get a divorce and that I would be totally fine with it, but yet they still think that it’s going to affect me so greatly if they divorced. Another thing is all of my health and mental health. It’s a lot and it’s expensive and time consuming and I 100% understand all of that, but making me feel guilty for, needing insurance, needing money to pay copays of $30 to $100 to take care of my health (because I can’t get a better paying job and they don’t want me working while I’m in college), having to drive myself to my appointments (using their car), and the big one: them having to take off work or interrupting their free time to take me to an appointment or the Emergency Room. I don’t know if they think that I do all of those things just for shits and giggles. If they actually paid attention to me they would realize that I wait until the last bearable possible minute before deciding to go to the doctor or Emergency because I always get an irritated look from my mom because she knows that it’s going to cost money and take time out of her day if she has to be there and my dad pretty much just points the finger at me and is like “your doing this to yourself” and promptly ignoring the whole genetic disease and thinking he knows more than the doctors. I also have to pick and choose what doctors I see if my mom wants to be there for an appointment because if they are out of the hospital closest to us she basically cannot go because my dad thinks she is having an affair with someone (multiple people actually) at that hospital. The last time I needed to get IV fluids (we have to go to ER for it) instead of driving 5 minutes away from my dorm, we drove 30 minutes away to another hospital. And then the day after that my dad wants to say that my dehydration is caused by me not walking around after drinking fluids because if he just sits around after drinking fluids he gets dehydrated, even though it was actually because I had diarrhea and was so nauseous that I couldn’t eat or drink anything without almost vomiting. My dad also knows literally nothing about the body or how it works (he has not studied that at all and is nowhere near getting a degree in anything) and I’m the one who is pre-med and sees a shit ton of doctors. I hate playing the cancer card, but I am going to play it right now. Who the hell makes their child feel bad that they have cancer because it inconveniences them? If you guessed my parents, you’d be right. My oncologist wanted me to do 3 more months of chemotherapy to make sure the cancer was completely gone even though my scans were clean, but the reason I didn’t was because my mom had to take off work every other week because my dad wanted someone with me during my infusions (which took 5 to 8 hours) and I was the reason my mom almost lost her job. I didn’t even want to do chemo at all because of the type and lack of aggressiveness the cancer I had was, and when I wanted to quit after the first round I was told I wasn’t allowed to because of all of the sacrifices they were making for me to get treatment. I didn’t continue chemo because I was made to feel like I was such a burden for something that I didn’t get a say in. Right now I am a burden for my parents because I need a car so I can get a better paying job to help further my opportunities down my chosen career path and also so I can stop having to schedule my appointments at the most inconvenient times or having to miss my class because they need the car to get to work. My mom got really angry at me and said “fine I’ll go back to corporate America so I can pay for you to get a car” and angrily walked off. I told my dad that I can’t even schedule a job interview, let alone get a job, because I have to plan it around their work schedules and instead of encouraging me to try to anyway and we can figure something out, he just said “that’s right” and stopped talking to me. My dad has an ego to big to ask anyone for help and honestly should be in therapy to deal with his own problems but I digress. Another important thing about my dad is that when I was younger, instead of telling me that the whatever I did was disrespectful, rude, inconsiderate, etc., he always would say to me YOU are a disrespectful child, YOU are ungrateful, YOU are inconsiderate, or his favorite one YOU need an attitude adjustment. Do you see how this makes me feel like the ultimate burden? If not, here’s another childhood memory. My parents never listened to me as a child and so I would get angry but I couldn’t say anything to them for fear of being called a “disrespectful child who needs an attitude adjustment” I would write notes and stick them on my door. In this particular note, I said that I wanted to live with my best friend at the time and her parents to adopt me. Well my dad’s response was and I quote “What makes you think that they would want you?” Who the fuck says this to their child? Still not enough to see why I feel like a burden? Here’s another story. I used to get hurt A LOT and would complain about being in pain often. I had hurt my knee and my dad took me to the orthopedic surgeon. We were in the exam room and before the doctor came in my dad said to me, and I quote again, “You better hope they find something wrong.” Both of my parents believed that there was nothing wrong with me and I was faking all of my injuries to get attention so it was a massive inconvenience for them to take off work to take me to the doctor and they made sure that I knew it. I am a burden to my parents. My mom has told me multiple times that I am not a burden (my dad has never told me that) but her words mean nothing compared to their actions.

Now for my friends. Preface: I absolutely love my friends and each of us have our own mental health problems of varying severities and they are not responsible in any way shape or form for my physical or mental health. I am a burden to my friends. I have a really shitty homelife and most of them know this. All of them know that my body sucks and causes me great pain and that I have depression and anxiety. I am a burden to my friends when shit hits the fan in my life. The time in high school when I almost lost all of my friends, I was super depressed and stressed and I was going to kill myself. They freaked out (one of them called the police and that was a terrible experience), I spent a week in a psych unit, and when I started coming back to school none of them talked to me. One of them told me I should’ve just killed myself. I understood why they were mad, upset, sad, scared, frustrated, etc. with me and that things were going to be different. But the worst part was everyone was so scared to say anything because they thought if they said the wrong thing, I might try to kill myself. I knew this and it made me angry because I knew that I was a burden to them. To this day I try not to talk about the shit that is my personal life very much because I don’t want to burden them. I don’t ask them for help because I don’t want to be a burden. I struggle with making friends, not only because of anxiety, but because I’m terrified of being a burden.

When you’ve spent the majority of your life feeling/knowing you are a burden to the people around you, you can’t help but to hate yourself and feel like the world would be a better place without you in it. I don’t remember ever feeling like people would miss me if I died, I always felt like they would feel relieved. I used to be able to picture me being in a successful career doing something I love, but now the only thing I picture is me being dead. What do I have to live for? The people who are supposed support me, care for me, teach me, and be parents to me,constantly make me feel like I am a burden and massive inconvenience to them, when they were the ones who decided to have kids. *Side note: my other siblings are not treated this way granted one is in prison and the other two live on their own* My parents come to me and ask me for money (they say they will pay me back) and get mad when I ask for it back. You might ask “why don’t you just say no when they ask you for money?” because they make me feel bad if I don’t. They throw it in my face that they pay for the car, gas, a place for me to live, food, medical insurance, and car insurance, and guilt me into it.

I honestly hate myself and am just a burden to everyone around me. My life is a mess and full of stress and shit has hit the fan and splattered around the room. And I’m just left pondering the question: “Is it worth it to keep living?”

Why Should I Live?

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I hope you enjoy this poem.

 

It is a question I’ve pondered many many times

Why should I not take my own life?

All I hear back are the words of others.

“Suicide is selfish. Think of all of the people you are going to hurt”

“What will this do to your family and friends”

“You’re going to tear everyone apart”

Oh and may favorite one

“I need you to stay alive”

What is it exactly you need me to stay alive for?

Last time I checked you can do everything to survive on your own.

Do you need me around so you can tell me how miserable things are for you

And then to completely ignore me because your problems are “worse”

Do you need me to give you advice that you completely ignore?

Do you need me to just be there without you acknowledging my presence?

You see to you and so many other people I am already invisible

My voice is not heard and I am constantly being pushed away by people

Who say that they love me

You see actions speak much louder than words

What do I have to do to get you to hear me and to listen to the words I say?

Your words say I love you but your actions don’t reflect that

When I say I want to die

The question raised to me is why would you want to do that?

You see I have been made to feel as though I am insignificant

That I am not important

I should not speak up for what I believe in

I am a disrespectful person

And that

I am the problem

Tell me if you felt this way would you want to live?

Why when I ask people to give me a reason to live,

I either get the Bible thrown in my face

or

That it’s just selfish to take my own life as I will hurt those who love me

I feel like if I killed myself, a lot of people would feel like it’s their fault

So they need me to stay alive so they won’t feel guilty

It’s never been about me, always other people

I guess I’m lucky that I have found friends and an amazing therapist

Obviously they don’t want me to kill myself

But they make me feel like I matter

And that I am important

And not a problem

They give me reasons to live that isn’t for their personal benefit.

I get to be myself and work through my struggles with them

without feeling like I am a burden

They call me out when I am being dramatic

They call me out on my Bullshit when I am the one making things worse for myself

They do this out of love and not from a place a malice because they care

But still,

Why should I live?

Well I should live because I have realized that I want to

I want to live because I have a story that needs to be shared

And a voice that needs to be heard

There are days where I don’t want to keep going

But I know if I stop

My story won’t be told how I want it and my voice won’t be heard

I want to better my life for me

And the only way to do that is live

My story isn’t over yet,

It’s just barely started

It’s Been a Rough Month

About a week and a half ago I had a really really bad breakdown. I laid on my floor and cried for a good 2 hours. The entire time that I was crying all I could think about was overdosing on the remainder of Ativan that I had left from my chemo treatments. I felt like I couldn’t talk about what set me off and still haven’t. My therapy session last week lasted 2 hours instead of the only one hour because I couldn’t form words to explain what happened. She asked questions that I could answer yes or no to. One question being if someone hurt me (like sexual assault) to which I answered truthfully, no. But what happened goes along with the sexual abuse and all of the other abuse I went through growing up. So I guess now is where I try to figure out how to explain what happened.

On the day of my meltdown I was driving my dad home from work and trying to have a conversation. He basically didn’t respond to anything that I was saying. Then he had the nerve to tell me that I was driving “way too fast.” I was going between 20 and 30 mph on a 40 mph. It was snowing but I could still see the road and cars around me perfectly fine. The cars that I had just passed had just started to move because the light they were at turned green. Also because of the view the passenger has of the speedometer in our car there speed the passenger sees is inaccurate because where the needle points is distorted, therefore, I may only be going 30 mph but to the passenger sees 35-40 mph. I started to correct him but there was honestly no point in me trying to do that. This was the catalyst for everything to go downhill. Why? Because growing up I always felt ignored. It was rare for my parents to seem slightly interested in anything I talked about. I honestly would have rather them pretend to be interested then blatantly obvious that they weren’t. My brother always seemed to be their “star” child. When he talked my dad attentively listened and believed what he said, and this is still 100% true to this day. I can see how he shows an interest in what he is saying. Whereas unless it is something important for me, like what my oncologist said at my appointment he just doesn’t pay attention. My dad also always made me feel like I was lying about my joint pain. I can’t remember a time that I wasn’t having some sort of joint pain. Even after I injured my knee my parents waited a month to take me to a doctor. It took my grandma and one of my teachers telling them that my knee should be checked out. The doctor determined I had a bruised patella tendon and wanted me to only bear partial to no weight to let the tendon heal and then do physical therapy. When I got home my brother took one of my crutches and told me that I didn’t need it and wouldn’t give it back. My parents didn’t do or say anything. There were several other doctors that I had seen during Elementary and Middle School  who couldn’t seem to figure out why I was in pain. So my dad would make me feel like I was lying. And now that my current doctor and I have come up with a potential diagnosis for my pain, my dad said “well I hope that’s not what it is.” It’s not that I want to have a connective tissue disorder but if I do then I have a name for the pain that has been plaguing me for years. There’s no cure but there are options to help manage the pain. But that doesn’t mean anything to anyone who doesn’t believe you.

Being so focused on that made me think about the sexual abuse and how that person has basically gotten a free pass. I can’t even talk to either of my parents about it because they didn’t believe it happened. They don’t realize that whenever they talk about this person it makes me want to be physically ill. My dad would and does bend over backwards and jump through hoops for that person and openly talks about them as if what happened to me as a child wasn’t significant. I honestly don’t think my dad believes that I was sexually abused multiple times by the same person. I think my mom believes me/wants to believe me but she doesn’t get that I don’t want to talk to her about it because I know that she is going to feel guilty and like this is her fault and I don’t want her to feel that way. With having one parent who might believe me and another who probably doesn’t believe that I was sexually abused, makes me question if it ever happened.

After thinking about how my dad didn’t believe the abuse, flashbacks/my mind putting me back at the time of the abuse began. Details of everything that happened back in my head. And they wouldn’t go away. Then of course because I am the overly self critical person I am, I convince myself that what happened to me was completely my fault. I should’ve done something to stop it. I should’ve left the room where we were in because I could’ve. I could’ve said no more than once. I should’ve done something.

Then I just felt so disgusted with myself from what happened to me. I just felt dirty and worthless and like I didn’t matter. So I spent about a half an hour trying to decide to take the bottle of Ativan I had. I guess the problem with me logically thinking through things is why I didn’t take it and opted to take 6 mg of Melatonin (so I could sleep) and a Naproxen (to help with the migraine I was going to have the next day from crying so much).

From that episode basically every hour of every day I have been beyond anxious and having panic attacks because I felt like I couldn’t talk about any of what has been going on in my head. I haven’t been able to sleep and the anxiety has made me lose my appetite and feel nauseous after eating. So I have been trapped in my head for the past week and a half and I’m hoping that writing about it will release me from the prison that is my head and hopefully I will stop thinking about taking all of my Ativan.

What it’s Like Being an Ex-Self Harmer

I am going on my third year of being free from self harm and it is absolutely amazing for the most part. There are moments where I do want to go and cut myself but I have found ways to deal with those urges and feeling.

It doesn’t bother me as much now to go out in public with shorts and a tank top on (in the summer of course) as it did when I was self harming or after I made the decision to stop. Working with kids is sometimes hard because some will ask what happened and my response is I got hurt. I mostly work with kids birth to age 5 so for the 3 to 5 year olds that ask saying I got hurt is something that they kind of understand and most times they don’t ask how I got hurt which is good. My cousin on the other hand every time she sees me she asks about it and I tell her (every time she asks) that it’s a conversation that we can have when she is much older.

When I go to see doctor’s that know I have a history of self-harm and depression, they make it a point to ask me if I have or felt suicidal which the answer is always, no. I understand why they ask but I always tell them that I see my therapist once a week and I have her cell number in case of an emergency. This shows that I have a plan in place and often puts them at ease. Going to doctor’s that I don’t know (like urgent care or Emergency) I tend to keep my arms and legs covered unless I absolutely can’t. If they ask about it I tell them that I have been clean for 2 years and I see a therapist every week. If they continue to talk or focus on that I tend to get really pissed off and will blatantly say “I didn’t come here for you to lecture me about what I used to do I came here for you to examine my current complaint.” Most times after that redirect they stop but if they don’t that’s when my mom will usually step in and if needed we request for a different doctor. If it is a doctor who is a specialist in whatever condition I need to be seen for, if they choose to go on and on about the fact that I used to self harm and have depression, we usually just cut the appointment short and leave and never go back.

I try not to let my past history bother me too much because if I do then I am just going to be a bitter person who hates everyone. So many people stare and give judgmental looks and if I didn’t just brush it off and live my life I wouldn’t want to leave my house. There are times when I will start conversations with strangers about the fact that I used to self harm and tell them we all go through things that leave scars, mine just happen to be on my body visible for people to see.

New Year! New Stuff!

For this month (and possibly February too) I will be doing a series called “What it’s Like…” There are many aspects to living with mental and physical illnesses that is stigmatized and/or that people just struggle to understand. This series has a double purpose to it. 1.) For people who struggle with the same type of illness to feel that they aren’t alone 2.) As an educational resource that can be sent to family, friends, co-workers, etc. to help them understand the daily struggles of what they are going through. I will be covering Depression/High Functioning Depression, Anxiety/High Functioning Anxiety, EDNOS, CSA Survivor, Chronic Pain, Suicidal Thoughts, Mental Illness and High School, Therapy/TF-CBT. If there are more topics that you want to be covered feel free to comment them down below and I will try my best to cover it myself or find someone who can.

Port-a-Cath Troubles

So about three months ago my mom pointed out that my port was swollen and red. My port had been hurting a fair amount more than it had been after the first month and a half I had it and I didn’t think much of it. I decided that I would wait and talk to my oncologist about it when I saw him the next month. He quickly looked at it and said that it looked fine and since there were no open sores or anything coming out, like puss, it was probably just the skin getting thinner and being more sensitive. He didn’t want to have my port removed until February 2017 after I see him next. I said okay and went on my way.

Then earlier this month, the skin started peeling around my port so my mom suggested that I see my surgeon who placed my port. He looked at it and felt it and said everything seemed fine and wanted me to get a portogram was done, a test looking to see if there were any leaks in the catheter connected to my port, so I said okay and went to get the test done. The nurse accessed my port and this gross gunky looking fluid came out into the syringe when she was testing blood return from my port. She was very shocked and said that it wasn’t normal for that to happen but she couldn’t send it to pathology for cultures because it was diluted in the saline. She asked a few of the standard questions when it comes to infection, “Have you had any fevers?” and “Have you had any night sweats or chills?” both answers from me were no. I don’t get fevers. I have had like 2 fevers in my entire 18 years (almost 19) years of life and they were when I was a baby. I haven’t had night sweats since completing chemo and chills only happen when I am cold. So she began to doubt infection because of my responses, even after I told her that I don’t get fevers when I am sick/have an infection. The doctor who performed the portogram came in and she let him know what happened with the blood return (blood did come out after the gunky stuff) and let him know that she did not think it was an infection. He did the procedure and told me that he didn’t see any abnormalities in the functioning of my port and said that he would send his report to my surgeon. I still felt like something was off with my port.

Since then I have been checking my port almost daily looking for any changes in swelling, pain, or if there are any sores. Tonight I looked at my port and saw that the edges bordering my port are dark and there is an open sore that has small amounts of what looks like puss coming out. I am really starting to think that my port is infected. But I am stuck on what to do. None of the doctors and the nurse didn’t think that my port was infected. I am not sure if I can push my doctors into looking into it further without sounding like a hypochondriac. For many things relating to my health I let them slide without giving them a second thought unless it is causing me unbearable pain or if I just feel off about it. With the holiday in full swing many of my doctors are on vacation until January 2nd and 3rd so my only option would be is to see a doctor who does not know my case at all, which freaks me out because I am a complicated mess of medical stuff. Many people don’t believe me when I tell them I don’t get fevers and that with injuries I often do not get the amount (if any) of the swelling expected with an injury. But it’s true. Most people when they get the norovirus (stomach flu) they get a fever and body aches, I only get the persistent vomiting and associated abdominal soreness that comes with persistent vomiting. Many of the major symptoms of an infection I don’t get, which is really scary for me because doctors very easily underrate the symptoms I was experiencing. It took a doctor about 12 years to realize that I had asthma because she just kept saying it was bronchitis because she said that it was the beginnings of the infection, when really I just had non-life threatening prolonged asthma attacks.

My plan for right now is to let my mom know what is going on with my port and wait until the new year when I can see either my primary care doctor or my surgeon. If the sore seems to get bigger, more painful, or have more fluid coming out of it, I will most likely seek urgent medical attention.

UPDATE: Part of the skin over my port has torn and has exposed some of the implanted device. I have talked with my surgeon and he wants me to keep it covered and wait until Tuesday (when they are back in the office) and they will remove my port when I come in. I am not sure if there is an infection also, some fluid that looks a little yellow has been oozing out.