Blah blah blah

Does anybody really read these things?

I feel like I’ve come to the end of my life. I’m 43. I have four kids. Every reason to stay alive.

How did I get here? They tell me it’s because of bipolar disorder. I’m sure I do have it, but that doesn’t change the way I feel today or why I don’t want to go on living.

I had a normal childhood. Maybe I didn’t get the nurturing I could have. Hell, my parents were just kids themselves. When I was 14 I wanted to die (I’m not sure exactly why), so I decided I had nothing to lose – that I would do drugs or anything I wanted to do. I had no hope for a happy life so I made the choice to go out with a bang. Went through voluntary drug rehab at 22.

Somehow I made it through adolescence. And pharmacy school. I married a minister. I guess I was happy during those years. Over the next ten years we had four great kids.

He became increasingly abusive, until I took the kids and left him four years ago. I had a hundred bucks to my name, no home (our home was his church parsonage), no job, even my pharmacist’s license had lapsed. Somehow I overcame all of that. We lived in a ghetto for three years, but I pulled myself up enough to buy a new house last summer.

Unfortunately it was also last summer that everything fell apart. We had been in a nasty custody battle. I had no one to lean on.I was traveling to work and working fourteen hour shifts – no breaks. I had finally come out about being lesbian, and that was a great thing but not without stress. I had fallen in love with someone I could never be with. My heart was broken. It all just became too much. I took my motorcycle out onto a local state park’s hiking trail, hiked back about a mile, got off the trail and out of site, took a massive overdose and laid down to die. To this day that was the most peaceful feeling I’ve ever felt. I knew no one would find me until it was too late.

Somehow, thirty hours later, I woke up. My biggest problem, besides being all fucked up from the pills, was that I had no more pills to take. I knew I had more at home so I somehow got home to get them. I was riding back up to the park when the police stopped me. I guess my friends and family had put out an a.p.b.
I was arrested for DUI (even more reason to die since I knew that would cost me my job and custody of the kids) but was never charged. I was released to the care of a friend until they could get me into the psych hospital.

There I was started on meds for bipolar disorder. That was nine months ago.

I gave up primary custody of the kids to their abusive father, because he had them enrolled in good schools and I didn’t want to further disrupt their lives by dislocating them again. I’m having to fight now for visitation. My kids have always been my world. To be told now that I will see them every other weekend is just intolerable. No one, throughout all of this, has ever questioned my ability as a mom. When I overdosed it was when they were with their dad for the month.

If I’m not going to be a major factor in my kids’ lives, why am I here? I’ve been on disability since the suicide attempt so my income is drastically reduced. I’m not going to be able to keep up my house payments. I owe the IRS a lot of money. I’m about to have to start paying child support but I have literally nothing.

I cost more alive than dead. Every month I am out of work I will owe the IRS another $500 in next year’s taxes. And I’m told by my doctors that I can’t go back to pharmacy. I don’t know how else to support myself, and if I find something it would have to pay more than what I’m getting in disability in order to be feasable.

People say that things will get better but what do they know? It has been four years in hell and it just keeps getting worse. They’ve taken everything I have, including my kids. My youngest is only six. She already doesn’t remember when we were married. Now she’ll only know me as an occasional figure in her life.

All life is is pain. Every day. Every minute. You lose it all and they take more. There is absolutely no purpose in my living anymore. I am quite simply using up oxygen that would be better used by somebody else. If I ever had any hope for a better, or even a different, future, I’ve lost it. I have no place here anymore. Why should I stay? I want to make the psychological pain turn into something physical. I’ve never cut, but I see now why people do. Anything to take away this pain.

I want to cease to be.