This post has been a long time coming. I’ve wanted to share my story for the longest time, but frankly I’m a coward and didn’t want to deal with the backlash of it all. But then I thought that maybe my story can relate to someone else and decided that it needs to be shared. So here goes nothing…
I was depressed as a teen, as I’m sure many people can relate. All of those crazy hormones just sometimes bring on the sadness and at a young age, it can be hard to understand, let alone control. But it was deeper than that, much deeper. Through a lot of my younger years, I didn’t feel loved and rightfully so I suppose because I didn’t have a stable family, like so many are lucky to have.
So what did I do? I sought love from other people – from guys, from friends, from whoever would care. But I was sad almost all the time. I wrote depressing poetry and even threatened to kill myself, until the time that my friend’s mom called in for help. The cops came to my door and took me to a hospital, a mental hospital. That opened my eyes because I was just 15 and honestly, that place scared the living Hell out of me. People around me were screaming, shouting and just plain out acting crazy – like scary crazy! I played it off and made the doctors believe that I was fine, that I was just sad and that I wouldn’t actually kill myself. I couldn’t let myself spend one more second, let alone a night or lifetime in that place. I was so good at faking it, they let me go home.
I found ways to make myself feel happy and even made my friends think I was, because I’d already lost so many people that just couldn’t deal with my sadness. Over the years, I learned to fake it really well and never again did anyone get to see that sad, depressed person that I really was.
But those insecurities were still there, still ripping away at my happiness little by little. I was around 18 when I finally realized that I and only I could make myself happy, that I had to find happiness within myself. And I did. For many years, I was a happier person. Of course not the picture perfect version of happiness, but who really has that anyway? I was just happy in my own skin, with my own life and things started to change. Instead of finding things that I hated about my life, I found the ways that I was blessed in life.
I made new friends and little by little those old friends dwindled away, leaving my life; some by my choice, others by theirs and even more by different paths that life took us on as we grew up. I lived, I learned, I had great times with wonderful people who helped to shape me into the person that I am today.
I was happy for the longest time, as happy as a person suffering from depression could be I suppose. But then my grandma died. Her death ripped me apart to the core of my being and I just couldn’t cope with the reality that the one person in my life that I knew I could always count on was gone. After a few months, I even quit my job because I couldn’t do anything but cry while I was alone in those storage rooms counting inventory.
I got better eventually, but I don’t know that I ever fully healed from that. And then a little over 4 years ago my dad started acting really “off” and I knew something was wrong. He went to the hospital, was treated in the ICU for pneumonia and ended up having a stroke that his brain and body would never fully recover from. As a family, we had to make the decision to pull the plug, so to speak because we knew from the many times he’d said it, that my dad would never want to live like that.
I thought I’d lose it then, but I had to be strong for my boys. They were just 9 and 11, so young to experience the loss of someone that close to them. But I also had to be strong for my siblings because we had all made the decision that they would live with my husband (boyfriend at the time), children and I. We were in for the biggest change in our lives and somehow crammed 7 people and 3 dogs into a tiny 2 bedroom flat for 3 entire months.
Then we moved into a bigger house that could accommodate the 7 of us, 40 minutes away from all of our family and friends. We remodeled for what seemed like forever. My husband and I slept on a mattress on the living room floor for 6 months while we waited to be able to work on our bedroom.
I spent the next 4 years putting everyone and everything before myself, sacrificing sleep, my health and my well being. There were moments when I was sad, moments when I cried, but I never lost it. I always kept it together because I knew that I had to be the strong one.
Until about a month ago… We went out to celebrate a family birthday, see our friend’s band and have a good time with our friends that we hadn’t seen all winter; some even longer. I’ll save you the details, but my husband and I got into a huge fight; possibly the biggest in our almost 17 years together. He said some really nasty things, as did I; but the things he said hit too close to home. He made me feel worthless and that I had failed our family – him and our kids. Even a month later, typing that makes me cry.
I feel like I’m almost to that point 20 years ago where I was the saddest girl in the world. I try to hide it from everyone, but sometimes the tears slip out, someone asks me what’s wrong and I have to fake it and make up some lame excuse. I’m breaking, I can feel it. There is so much that has happened in the last 4 years, that I never gave myself time to grieve or the ability to lose it. I felt like I had to hold it together because there was so much pressure on me from everyone to do everything right.
And I did. I am proud of what I have achieved over the last 4 years and how hard I have worked to get here. Even if no one else sees it, I do and that’s all that matters. But in doing all of that, I lost a piece of myself again and I just don’t know how to get her back.
I look forward to that day when I can find that inner peace within myself again, but until that, I feel like I have to fake it. People love you when you’re happy, but tend to walk away when you’re a hot mess, complain, cry and are an all around sad person. Sometimes I wonder if my husband could even love the sad me because no one else ever could.
For now, I just have to life my life day by day, focus on work and hope that one day soon, I’ll be in a happy place again.
