I always get so awkward over this stuff. I mean, I hear people talking about it all the time; about how they‘re completely and utterly fucked up and how things are just so damn awful. Generally I’m the one to seek them out, cheer them all up, and set them back on track. But I bet it would be quite a shock to them if they ever knew that the constantly bubbly Jessica, is really a lost and self-hating girl.
I’m pretty sure it all started about 12 years ago when my father died. The body had been put on display, and me being an unknowing child at the age of 7 had touched the corpse. I had been under the impression that he was merely asleep, but damn was that ever an eye opener. The body hadn’t been properly prepared, and so in touching the body, the skin had sunken through. This evidently lead to me being traumatized. After 3 years of therapy, I was finally ‘cured’ of my nightmares and reclusive behaviour.
3 more years passed and I graduated from elementary school. When I entered my first year of high school I had decided to try online dating. The relationship was cool at first, but as time went by I wanted something more than just a couple of pretty words on a screen. I broke things off, and that’s when everything went wrong. He threatened to kill himself over it. I brushed it aside because I knew he was doing it to get my attention and trap me back in the relationship. Before I knew what was going on, I started receiving all these e-mails from various accounts talking about how he was in the hospital. One was even from his mother; written in anger over my ignorance of the situation. The guilt weighed on me, and I ended up taking off into the night. I tried to kill myself… but I was too afraid to see it through.
I continued on with my daily life with the weight of everyone’s words on my shoulders. My grades plummeted, my friends walked away from me, I lost my appetite and stopped sleeping. I just wanted to die… and that’s when I got an e-mail from the guy saying he made everything up; that all the e-mails were from him. I never forgave him and we went our separate ways. Although I was now in the knowledge that it was all a fake out, I never forgot the weight nor the way that everyone had abandoned me in my time of need. I learned to never rely on friends again. After that I gradually began to lose control of my emotions…
About a year passed and my silent grief grew bit by bit. I broke my word to my grandparents to move in with them, and it resulted in their moving out west. My grandfather loved the idea, my grandmother hated it. She developed chronic depression and blamed all their troubles on me. Every time she saw me she would say things like, ‘if only you had moved back home,’ ‘if you had just come back then we wouldn’t have had to leave.’ once again the weight of words weighed down upon me. I strongly blamed myself for her deteriorating mentality. Eventually her health returned and she apologized for what she‘d said, but I never forgot…
Half a year passed and my grandfather was diagnosed with prostrate cancer. He was like a father to me, and the thought of losing him just crushed me. The feeling of helplessness surrounded me once more, and I began to fall into despair again. Another half a year went by and my grandfather passed away. I still remember my mother breaking the news to me. It was the same time she informed me that she’d lost her job and that we had fallen into quite a lot of debt. I was given the choice to go to the wake at the cost of more debt ,or not to prevent us from accumulating any more debt. We mutually agreed that we’d both stay behind. I picked up a third job and without my knowing, my mom snuck out on a plane without me. I later was informed that on his death bed, my grandfather had called for me and had looked for me each day… but I never showed up. That broke my heart a little more.
At the time I had been dating who I thought was the love of my life. He was my best friend and my love. We had been together for just over a year and were more than just a little serious about each other. I had asked him for his support and explained that I wouldn’t be able to support him from that time onward until I got back on my feet; between my 3 jobs, school and my despair. I didn’t really have much energy left. But he was incapable of doing so. Instead he was more interested in having sex and receiving my shoulder than lending me his. I began to lose my patience and he gradually became mentally -and emotionally- unstable. He began saying things like, ‘you don’t love me,’ ‘you’re only using me,’ ‘you could careless.’ It wasn’t that I didn’t care, I just didn’t have the ability to lie to myself anymore; I didn’t have the ability to put everything that I needed on the sidelines only focusing on him any longer. Things like, ‘I’m happy as long as he’s happy’ were no longer acceptable when I could barely stand my own ground. I knew I was being selfish, but I had allowed him to be selfish throughout the entire relationship, and this was all I wanted. I just wanted to be the weak one for once, the person to cry until my heart was content, until there were no more tears. Instead I was forced to focus on him, and work, and school, and the bills… everyone was still relying on me and I wasn’t able to shed a single tear… no one even cared that my heart was slowly twisting away into nothing. Once more my friends abandoned me. Once more I found myself in the darkness alone.
He was miserable, I was miserable…
So I thought to break things off. But he got worse. He started cutting himself and saying how it was caused by me, how if only I hadn’t left things wouldn’t have to be this way. I watched as the marks grew more frequent and deeper. I had been angry at him, but in that moment, all I wanted to do was be strong enough for the both of us and save him. I wanted to save him so badly… even though I had been hurt so badly by him, I still loved him as much as ever. So I found someone who looked easy enough to manipulate and asked him out. I thought if I was with someone else he’d get better, that he’d give up. So this way we could still be friends and I could keep him near at least. But he got even worse, and even more unstable. So I did the only thing I could think of.
I lied and broke my own heart…
I provoked a fight, one I knew would send him running from me. I said everything he’d need to confirm that I had no love for him. I shoved him a few times, I yelled and threw things at him in order to make him hate me more. I pushed him right out of my house and slammed the door loudly in his face… and all the while my heart broke. But if he were to lose nothing… then he’d feel no pain. If I were to become nothing, then he wouldn’t be trapped anymore. So I broke my heart and set him free. He replaced me almost immediately.
At first it was fine, just a small pain in my chest. But gradually it grew into something I could no longer control. Now the pain is immeasurable and suffocating. It feels like it’s slowly but surely strangling me. It sounds over dramatic, but it really isn’t. I can’t sleep without dreaming of him, can’t be awake without thinking about him, can’t do anything without provoking the twist in my chest. I loved him before, I loved him when I set him free, and even now… I still love him. But he’ll never know.
I feel so pathetic for wanting to die over something so trivial as love, not to say everyone’s love is trivial… I just think it feels so lame compared to those with reasons far more dire. It’s kind of like what Andrew used to always tell me. He’d always chastise me for wanting to run away each time my mother would grab me by my hair and drag me across the floor saying, ‘you’ll get to the shelter and all the kids will be talking about how their parents beat them nearly to death, and when they ask you what will you reply? “I ran away because my mommy tugged on my hair†They’ll chase you out of there.’ I’m not saying that the abuse wasn’t abuse, because it quite clearly was… but it’s the thought that what’s happening to me isn’t nearly as bad as what’s happening to someone else. That someone has a far better reason to be there -or in this case gone from here- than me. I don’t know… I don’t even know why I’m writing this here. Writing this fragment of my life won’t cure me, it won’t ‘save’ me, it won’t protect me from myself…
Sometimes I just wish someone could be my saviour for once… just once
3 comments
First of all let me say that your story tore me up. This is how it is sometimes, things reach a breaking point and it all seems to spiral out of control. Yes, that was abuse from your mother, and yes, you seem to have been made to be the ’cause’ of a LOT of situations, which is never a fair accusation to make of another human being. Its never because so-and-so did this that makes their situation wrong…people who do this are absolving themselves of any blame and responsibility in a given situation and so passing it off to you, which you clearly have tried to shoulder and carry, but cannot.
Do not allow this to make you feel any less of a worthy, worthwhile human being. It should not, it was an impossible task. You are not responsible for the lives of these people…EVERYONE IS RESPONSIBLE for themselves only, and should take the responsibility for their own actions, so them trying to make you the cause of their downfall and shortcomings is not just selfish, its borderline emotional abuse, which seems to be rife throughout your life.
You have to rise above this. You have to realise that you are NOT the cause of everyone else’s issues, as well as your own. They have led their own lives, they have made countless decisions which have brought them to the point where they all find themselves now. Your being unable to ‘save’ your boyfriend is the worst case of it all. Look at the ease with which he replaced you, the speed. Emotional parasites are like that, they seek an emotional reason to behave in a certain manner, and then blame a person of their choice for providing that reason.
Did you stand over him holding the knife? Did you wrap his fingers around the handle and say ‘here, here and here…cut, I caused this?’ No, you did not. In fact, the mere fact that he was willing to resort to cutting shows that there were other things going on in HIS life that would lead him to choose such a destructive outlet.
You are not responsible for the mess that everyone seems to want to blame you for. Your mother’s behaviour…I don’t even know what to say about that. Sneaky and underhanded…that’s not how a mother is supposed to behave. Your friends deserting you…that’s easy. They weren’t you friends then, so shed no tears for them. Easier said than done, I know, but true friends stick with you, I should know…I’ve had one or two in my time, and they kept me alive and sane when I was going through my suicidal period. I know what I’m talking about.
Whatever else happens in your life from this point on, know that you are only responsible for so much and no more. Do not allow others to make you shoulder the blame for their own failures and shortcomings…live your life, live for yourself and work for yourself, to make your life better and to fill it with happy, healthy people. Use those that you’ve known until now as a template for the kind of people NOT to get in too deep with.
Jessica, that is quite a story. Sometimes it feels that every turn you take, it always is a bad one. Time after time and time again. But even so, even if the wound is deep, old or fresh, it can be healed. All these things can make us sad or make us feel bad but it also can make us stronger. We are only human, and we can only do what we can. Sometimes we need to be considerate and sometiems we need to be selfish [for ourselves].
Life is like a box of valantine chocolates. Others are lucky while we get a nastey toothpaste flavored one. But eventually, when it comes time for the last candy to be devoured, it will be a better taste than the first. With that being said, life can take any bad turn it wants, but there is always good along the road. Sometimes we need a speed bump or ten, but we’ll eventually hit the beach one day. Right now, you’ve got a toothpaste candy, but if we hold out, we’ll get that nice piece of chocolate eventually.
There isnt much i can say, life is at its worst for a good majority of us. We will find ways to cope. The best cope is when we cope with one another. If you want, you can come and talk to me. I always check my email daily. Come and exchange a story to two with me, if you would like.
my emal is Silly.snowball@yahoo.com