Hi. I am new.
They sure don’t make it easy to get on here. I first registered an account, but found out that email provider had deleted my account. Without being able to check that email account, I couldn’t get a password. So I registered a second account and never got the email. Then I reset the password and THAT email finally came through. So, I could sign in and try and participate. But then, of course, the internet on my phone acted up!! For a person who spent the last three nights on the phone with more than one crises line each night – the struggle is real!!
So, I just found this site while looking up lethal dosages of medication and read for several hours overnight. That was in the midst of a two hour call to a crises line. Someone actually listened to me without trying to cut me off and ship me to a hospital. And, to top it off, they actually validated that I was justified in being so frustrated with my life situation. It’s been a LONG time since that last happened.
A little bit – or maybe a LOT – about me:
Next month, I will turn 40 years old. Apparently at the age of 3 years old, my mom left my dad after a psychotic break. In the last months of her life, she was to be officially diagnosed as being a paranoid schizophrenic. All I know is that wherever we went, my mom was the crazy lady. The first home I remember was in a housing projects on the north side of the city. I remember my black kitty that my mom named Nejai. My mom used to walk me down the block to the bus stop in the mornings and things were somewhat average. Towards the end of our time there, I remember being just shy of 7 years old and mom leaving me alone while she went on a date. My god-mom, who lived two doors down, couldn’t babysit. So mom sat me in front of the TV, brought the phone over by the couch and asked me to recite grandma’s number. I was scared. Not too long after that, maybe days later, I heard a crashing sound downstairs. Then mom came up and she was carrying a hammer. She told me to move over on my bed to the end farthest away from the window and put the hammer through both windows in my room. Then she went to her room. By the time my grandparents arrived, it was getting dark. Mom was yelling as she got into the car about how she should take that b*****s windows out, too. She was referring to my god-mom. I didn’t find out until several years later that she did take out my god-mom’s windows. That was the first of SEVERAL rage episodes I would get used to with my mom. No one in the family would ever stand up to her or try to get me out of her house.
While we stayed with my grandparents my grandfather rekindled a previous incestuous relationship with me. It went on for years. I remember the times in the living room, in his bed, in the spare back room, in the bathroom, and in the open garage. “If you be good to me, I’ll be good to you.” That is what he said. One day mom walked in on him with his hand shoved in my lady parts and, after locking eyes with me, she turned and went back into the kitchen to continue her talk with grandma. When we got home that night, she told me she’d beat me dead if I ever was in a room alone with him again.
By age 12, as mom progressively got worse, I became very acquainted with the house. I planned what I would grab in each room to try and hit her or stab her so I could get away and run. I just knew she’d lose it one day and haul off and kill me instead of fighting with the invisible people only she could see. I couldn’t go to the post office two blocks away without her accusing me of conspiring with someone to do something only she knew about. I went to bed every night of the last two years thinking it was going to be my last night on earth. I prayed to God that I would wake up somewhere else in someone else’s body. But my prayers fell on deaf ears. I ached to end it all.
I turned in lists of how to commit suicide to my teachers instead of class notes. Child Protection empathized, but since my mother did not leave evidence of physical beatings, they legally could do nothing. It took years to build a convincing case, but eventually, I was one of the first cases of Child Protection where the child was removed due to emotional/psychological abuse.
I wish I could say my life got better. But lack of support, no effective treatment options and abuse by those in the mental health field has resulted in numerous hospitalizations, several failed suicide attempts, and a person desperately wanting to end it all.
The worst part was that I had gotten stable and pursued higher education and moved on at one point. But then my mom, who had been missing 9.5 years appeared in a hospital and died. Intense flashbacks started and everything crumbled. Then grandpa, who molested me, but later denied it, died one year and 12 hours to the date after my mom died.
I ran back to therapy and meds into the office of a therapist who got so involved with me personally and emotionally that I didn’t know who I was without her. When she cut me off another therapist bullied me into reporting her. As retaliation, that therapist’s family – full of politicians and lawyers – falsified testimony to obtain restraining orders and press false criminal charges. In the fallout of that, I lost my job, my home, my pets (the only beings I cared about in the universe) and my sense of all that is right or wrong, just or unjust.
Now I exist only by sheer will of my body to keep breathing. I barely shower, hardly brush my teeth or hair. I sit alone in my run-down apartment days on end and zone out on TV plotting revenge and suicide attempts I will never fulfill. No one initiates contact and rarely responds when I do reach out. The only person who is going to care when I die is the building maintenance guys who have to empty out my apartment. And, according to articles I read, MAYBE whatever therapist was trying to help me at the time.
Sorry so long. Just real raw and reflective after I stayed up all night.
3 comments
Hey, i really empathize with your post. First off, i had the same problem as you, no email came through then the site said i had already registered, then i had to do the password reset thing myself. Bare in mind, that i was a little tipsy when all this was happening. You know that scene in the film ‘jaws’ when the mayor says to keep the beaches open and richard dreyfuss bursts into hysterical laughter? Thats what it felt likme for me trying to join this site lol.
Secondly, i had a rough childhood as well, perhaps not as bad as yourself, i don’t know. I kinda fear the same thing, dying on my own in my flat. But after a lifetime of loneliness, death is gonna be a kind release for me i think.
Thanks for sharing your story and know this, you aint the only one with these thoughts.
Thanks for reading! LOL in regards to Jaws.
I realize with this site just HOW COMMON my thoughts are. That, in and of itself, seems helpful right now – in this snapshot of time.
You’ve really been through a lot. There’s been so much sadness in your life and I can’t bring myself to pretend like I can imagine what that’s like.
Thanks for sharing this, despite the website. I just found this site today and when I created an account I never got a confirmation email. I had to reset a password I never assigned and when I finally did, the website locked my IP out. I have to use Tor browser just to get in, because I really felt the need to reach out to people like you who deserve to know someone out there cares.
I don’t feel I have the right to tell you to hang in there or any of that. But I hope this website provides some sort of solice for you.