What if I were actually somebody who liked me? What if I actually believed I was a lovable person? What if I actually approved of my own reasoning for the decisions I make? What if I considered myself to be responsible and educated enough to make decent, although imperfect, decisions? What if I saw myself for the loving person that is displayed in almost all of my behaviors? Inwardly, I logically know that I’m a good enough person, I just never allow myself to inwardly feel like I’m good enough. This is the training I received in life: how to hate myself completely. That’s about the only thing I’m very certain I’m good at. Out of nowhere, I can suddenly be consumed with an overwhelming feeling that someone somewhere doesn’t like me for whatever reason. It doesn’t matter if I know them, like them, or respect them, for some reason their opinion would always matter more to me than my own opinion of me. This is the only way I knew to evaluate myself… by gauging who I am off of the opinions of others. It is my duty to maintain the status quo of my worthlessness. That has been my life’s path, up until around the beginning of this year. I promised you, guys, that I would slay the fucking lion in my very first post, and here you are watching me do just that.
The insights I’ve been having over the last six months to a year have had me making an incredible amount of positive life changes. I am handling the massive amount of responsibilities I have by using various self-care techniques, I’ve been practicing more kindness with myself, and I’ve been comforting myself during the hard moments.
This has been the pinnacle of the process of mourning the loss of my living mother.
I have finally learned how to be my own mother.
Even though she never did, I am learning to comfort myself, I am learning to tell myself when to relax and how to relax. I am the one making sure I meet the responsibilities necessary for a happy life. She never bothered to get me in therapy, even after I attempted suicide multiple times. But as an adult, though, throughout much of my life, I’ve been broke as fuck, I have never given up the search for the right therapist.
I could have given up after the first few fucked me up even worse with all the drugs they were prescribing me. They have put me on nearly every SSRI, sometimes many at the same time. They have put me on antipsychotics and even stimulants. But they would only give me an anti-anxiety pill when I was in a psych ward because they were afraid I would become addicted. Most of these doctors had known me for less than an hour before they would write at least one prescription. Guys, they are corrupt as fuck. Using state money to buy drugs to fatten the wallets of Big Pharma, while what’s wrong with me could only truly be fixed by someone talking to me long enough to learn about all of the trauma I was dealing with. I never needed any medicine. I needed human contact with a responsible and trained professional familiar with the signs of childhood trauma. I literally fell down the rabbit hole that is the mental health system for decades, spinning my wheels and wasting precious years that I can never get back…
Because no one would take to the time to see the truth about my life… to understand what I was living through, and to validate to me that I could trust my own instincts that told me there was something wrong with the way I grew up. That it all left me with some unfortunate coping mechanisms which, although they were what saved me as a child and teenager, are not acceptable adult behavior.
Meanwhile, each trial run with, not only ineffective, but worsening psychotropic treatments, was causing me tremendous interpersonal problems. When I was put on multiple SSRIs by a psychiatric clinic while attending college at age 18, I became zombie-like just before my semester finals and ended up missing at least half of the tests.
I lost my full-ride academic scholarship because of that. I was hospitalized for suicide watch, and I lost my job soon after. I had to move back in with my narcissistic Mom, who I knew secretly felt better about herself when she saw me failing. She liked feeling like she was smarter than me because I’m the reason she couldn’t finish high school.
When we were alone once, in my bedroom when I was a teenager, she asked me, “You know what I would have done if I hadn’t had you? I would’ve been a high school coach.”
You and I both know she could have become a coach while raising a child. So, how is it that my birth, or my very existence, stopped her from following any of her own dreams?
Because dreams take hard work on your own part in creating them. It was much easier for her to be lazy, and just blame me for all of her problems.
Since starting my new job in the last month or so, I have widened my social connection quite a lot. I have made friends with some new people. I have been accepted into a new circle of friends. This is such a big positive for anyone… except when you (and your son and husband) have been all but abandoned by ⅔ of your family. We’ve barely heard a word in five years… dozens of relatives. Your belief in the security of relationships becomes completely diminished. When the people you have spent nearly every holiday, wedding, graduation, and funeral with, your entire life, just suddenly drop you like a rag doll they’d been carrying, you begin to doubt whether people who don’t share your DNA can love you any better. It becomes incredibly hard to open up and trust new people. It is just too much of a risk.
Slowly, I am…
I am learning to trust others…
And I am learning to trust myself.
I am trusting that someone out there can be helped by something that I write. Even if you haven’t read this yet, I know there are at least some of you suffering the horrible plights, and I know that you feel alone. I’m here to tell you, if you are suffering silently with incredible emotional pain, even to the point that you can barely function in your daily life and responsibilities…
You are NOT ALONE.
This post inspired by The Sound of Silence (Simon + Garfunkel cover) by Disturbed.
Image by Susan Cipriano from Pixabay
