She told me to get the rant out. Say all things that you keep telling yourself over and over quietly. Half of them, you won’t even mean or believe. Then talk to her. My mom. That’s all I ever want to do is sit down and talk to her. Have a conversation. In the past five years I’ve cut, made myself throw up, started smoking pot, drinking excessively and ending up in the hospital. I don’t know what I am doing or even why. I am impulsive like my father.
No one knows. My sister calls me psycho, I forgive her. But maybe I am. The scariest thing about me is, I don’t know if I can control myself. My mom told me that she doesn’t think she could like the person I’ve become. I didn’t know I was a person until she said. I am just this cloud of thoughts and ideas floating in air. I stay late watch the sun come up and sleep. I would kill myself in broad day light.
It is just all too dense. I don’t know where to begin. I don’t know how to tell her, my mother. And as the words crawl to the tip of my tongue, they just seem so useless. Molested and sad about a dad who left a long time ago. Too weak and stupid to look forward. This life, my education, my goals, my saving the world, is a fantasy. And so. Death. There’s no pain like mediocracy. Like failure. i don’t want my brother to see that. I saw my sister do that. I saw my cousins do that. And it hurts.
I would rather: stop putting my mother in debt for scum like me. I can’t hold my tongue, and I have nothing especially brilliant to say. My sense of independence is garbage, raped by this economic system. No. I don’t want to be that shame. If I grow to be my father..No. I can’t take that chance. I can’t keep ruining my mother and brother’s life with my failed attempt at “being someone”. I know. There are so many years in my life. Who knows what’s going to happen.
But you feel it. The world. The little inkling in the back your mind. Your family. They are all telling you that your’e a psycho, you’re a monster. And that you can’t help it, it’s nature. Your trivial wounds from childhood have festered into unpredictable rage, loneliness, and the only way out is death. No one knows. I don’t say anything because, I don’t want people to think it’s because I’m crazy. It’s about logic and practicality. It’s not about me. I can’t regret life if I’m dead.
4 comments
Your letter really hit a nerve. It sound so much like what my daughter felt becfore she took her life 6 1/2 months ago. She was a very special person, gifted and intelligent; and expected more of herself than she was able to give. Her death has left a hellish gap in the lives of the rest of her surving family, I am a very strong woman, but have never known such unbearable pain, in my entire life (at 56) . She was only 24 years old and had her whole life ahead of her. The WAS a place for her on this earth. A REASON for her existence. She had not found it yet– she was here such a short time. Those hours in which she decided to take her own life, and suceeded , are a space in time which will haunt and fill me with both grief and terror, for the rest of my life. Losing someone you love to suicide is a horror that you cannot imagine unti you have gone throught it yourself. Yes, mental illness and depression is hard on the rest of the family, but a suicide is beyond “hard”. There is no going back for us. It is an awful sadness and unbearable loss we will carry with us for the rest of our lives.
You have much to give (and get) yet in this life even though it may not be what you had envisioned for yourself. I beg you to consider the effect your loss will have on your family and loved ones. You almost cannot imagine the pain it will bring to them for the rest of their lives-
Please hang in there-
I agree with ranting. Ranting is good.
Is there somewhere you can go and rant? The woods, driving in your car, walking through some deserted area where nobody can hear you.
The problem with living with people who won’t let you talk about what you’re really feeling is that it starts to back up inside you, starts to bottle up and build pressure, and it can really make you crazy. It can make you angry; scared; even a little psycho.
It’s like if the toilet could never flush and all the sh*t kept backing up into the house. Sorry for the graphic image, but that’s what happens when people can’t get their emotions out: They get all poisoned up inside with the backed-up emotions.
So it’s not your fault, not that that’s any help. It’s the people around you who won’t let you talk.
Do you have a therapist? An uncle or grandparent you can talk to? A friend, or maybe even an acquaintance who might be willing to listen? People can surprise you, sometimes if you tell somebody you’re having a rough time and you really, really need to talk and you were wondering if they might have a little time where you could tell them some of what’s going on, sometimes you find help where you least expect it.
All the things you’re doing – cutting, throwing up, pot, drinking – are ways of trying to deal with pain that has gotten to be too much for you to handle. The cutting and throwing up are both ways of trying to get it *out*, as well as releasing some endorphins that (temporarily) make you feel better. (I haven’t done the cutting, but I’ve been bulimic, still do it sometimes, and pull hair out or pull hangnails out or other ways to let the pain out. I don’t do weed – no judgment, just don’t like the stuff – but have taken to drinking a little Jack Daniels over the last few years to help me sleep when my mind won’t shut off. Just letting you know that *everybody* has to find a way to deal with pain. Everybody. No exceptions.)
This is going to sound lame, but I really think it’s true: The only ‘someone’ you have to be is YOURSELF. The reason you feel so bad about yourself is because
a) you have a mom who says she can’t like the person you’ve become
b) you have a sister who calls you psycho
c) you have a brother you’re afraid of letting down
No wonder you feel like shit. These people only love you very *conditionally*. This is the opposite of unconditional love, which is the kind of love we’re supposed to get from our families.
They’re supposed to accept us just as we are. That’s what families are for. Families that fail to do this bring you down.
It starts with being molested, and your father leaving. Abuse and abandonment, two major hits. Those alone would bring most people down.
Do you know how people heal from such things? By having somebody in their lives care about how much that hurt them. Somebody who says, here, let me give you a hug. Cry if you need to. Yell if you need to. Rant and rave about whatever you’re feeling.
Abuse and abandonment are traumatic. They scar a person’s soul.
When you’re not allowed to talk about the things that hurt you so much, you get angry and resentful.
But they won’t let you be angry, either.
So then you’ve got anger and resentment layered on top of pain, fear and sadness.
The only way out is to start peeling back the layers.
Get pissed, pissed that the people in your life won’t help you, don’t listen.
After you’ve been pissed long enough, hopefully the anger will motivate you to find somebody who *will* listen – a shrink, a friend, a neighbor, anybody at all that you can think of. A pastor at a church, if you go to church. Use that anger to help you think, think of who can help you. Ask and ask, then rest when you’re tired of asking Then ask some more.
It’s ok to need help. Everybody needs help, all the time. People who pretend they don’t need help are full of shit and lying. Usually they’re people who get all kinds of help and don’t even know it! Like being the favorite kid, or being good-looking, or whatever. People take that stuff for granted and don’t realize not everybody has it so good.
You’re not scum. This economic system *does* make it damn near impossible to get ahead unless you have a whole hell of a lot of good luck.
You’re also not ruining anybody’s life, any more than they’re ruining yours. What’s ruining your life is this pressure to ‘be somebody’. Where does that come from? Who’s selling you that bullshit? Tell them to shut up, whoever it is. Look what fame did to Michael Jackson: It ate him alive. It killed him, one way or another.
No, what’s more important is to have a place to belong, a family that treats you right, people who care about you. People who help you when you’re struggling.
If your mom won’t talk, won’t listen, then find somebody who will.
Your wounds are NOT trivial. Whoever’s telling you this is being an asshole – they just don’t want to be bothered with listening to your feelings because it makes *them* uncomfortable. Well, fuck them. Go somewhere else, call an abuse hotline, a trauma hotline. Call a shelter for battered men (there are such things), and ask if they have a counselor you can talk to. There are people out there who’ve been through what you’ve been through and can help you.
You may feel and think your wounds from childhood are trivial; however, your actions, cutting, pot smoking, other self-medicating ways say: Your wounds from childhood are not trivial. Not to mention the unpredictable rage and loneliness.
I’ve had unpredictable rage. A lot of it actually. I know it comes from wanting to protect myself from something (usually real or imagined abandonment and/or not being taken seriously). When I was a kid, I’d run. Now that I’m older, I fight. To protect myself from annihilation.
You’ve bought your family role; hook, line, sinker. The victim. The scapegoat. Your mother doesn’t like the person you’ve become? Well. Everyone internalizes their parents. BOTH parents. And where was she while you were being wounded? Didn’t she notice the change? Didn’t you become withdrawn? Why didn’t she protect you? And what does your sister get out of you being the psycho? A closer relationship with your mother? And, if what you are suggesting by saying you are a ‘monster’ and its ‘nature’ is what I think you’re suggesting vis a vis your father, get help now.