Depression, Anxiety, & PTSD: An Anonymous Story of Strength

Sitting here exhausted after another long day, but today felt rewarding because I was able to accomplish everything I needed. Sounds simple, but with a mental illness you can never be so sure as to how you’re going to feel at the end of the day. On bad days, I go to bed feeling exhausted and defeated because I couldn’t stick to my grand to-do list, and that is accompanied by feelings of guilt, shame and self-hatred. You see, life with a mental illness is a series of cloudy days with the occasional day or partially day of clarity. At least for me it is. Right now I am coming up out of a summer long bottomless pit of severe depression, one that left me romanticizing suicide and the thought of my son being better off without me in his life. I’m happy to say that I am in a much better place now, but Lana wasn’t kidding when she sang about summertime sadness…

Let me first begin my journey of mental illness by telling you a little bit about myself. I was born with some medical issues which left me stranded at the starting line right out the gate. At the age of eight years old I was clinically obese and started developing more and more problems. Around nine years old is where I started to feel the social pains of being an overweight child in a thin 90’s world. These are the earliest memories I have of being bullied for my weight which started to take a toll on my self-image. I remember looking in the mirror hating the way I looked and the way clothes fit and began to become self-conscious. This is where I’m going to pinpoint the beginning of my anxiety, and later depression.

As the years went by I gained more and more weight and got bullied worse and worse. When I was in the eighth grade I had to have surgery that left my leg in a brace for a while, which only added fuel for the bullies to pick on me. I even had a boy in my gym class trip me while I was doing the limited activities that I could manage. That year, and my oncoming freshman year were the straw that broke the camel’s back. I started becoming depressed and missing school. I didn’t care about my schoolwork and started to get bad grades. I was already having trouble in school because of my later diagnosed ADHD, but this was just the icing on the cake. I started to ditch my friends and later got involved with a new group of friends that seemed to have similar problems as myself and my new self-image. This is where I met my best friend, who I idolized and later fell in love with. We became inseparable. The only problem with our relationship is that we couldn’t tell anyone. She didn’t want her parents to disown her. This took a massive toll on my feelings but I internalized them. And felt even more ashamed of my own existence. She toyed with my heart for a year or so before we got serious, but I finally won her over. She was my everything and we shared everything together. By the time I was sixteen I had missed quite a bit of school that required me to get a doctor’s note to cover. Most times I needed to fake an ailment because depression wasn’t a good enough reason.

During one of the visits my doctor prescribed a laxative and that’s when my journey down the road to bulimia began. At first I kept my bad habit to myself. But one tab, led to two, led to three and it was hard to hide the constant sickness. I finally told my girlfriend about my habit, but instead of her showing concern and desire for me to stop, she encouraged my aided weight loss. By my senior year of high school, I had lost sixty or so pounds and was feeling pretty damn good about myself when I looked in the mirror. I was a size 5. A SIZE 5. But my boxes upon boxes of laxatives had taken a severe toll on me. I had missed so much school and on the days I could attend I couldn’t stay awake past lunch due to lack of energy from purging and from staying up half the night to cater to my girlfriend. Needless to say I didn’t graduate high school. My teachers didn’t care that I was sick and missing class and kicked me out or demoted me. The only time they did care to send me to the school counselor I had her so tightly wrapped around my finger she thought I was sent there by mistake. I guess looking back I can’t be mad at anyone but myself for not graduating because I didn’t want help. The summer after my senior year was hell. I was so caught up in my appearance and with how attractive I was that nothing else mattered.

My girlfriend and I had a very rocky breakup that resulted in a few physical spats, but ultimately it was over. After that I got involved with someone else and slowly quit my laxative habit. But his family liked to eat and I began to put weight back on. I was quickly spiraling: nothing in my life was right unless I was thin. Unless I was in control. I cheated on my boyfriend that summer and left them both. In the fall I started a new school. Anxiety ensued. I missed a lot more days and didn’t want to do the work. I had put back on twenty pounds and had to cut all of my hair off due to a bleaching accident, so I was back to square one with my self-hatred.

I occupied my time at school by stealing people’s boyfriends, skipping class and charming anyone I could; whatever it took to inflate my ego and become high off of my actions. I barely passed and got my diploma. After school ended I didn’t know what to do with my life. I moved to a place where I quickly picked up a drinking habit and a party lifestyle. I lost my virginity by being blackout drunk and asking a “friend” to walk me home. To this day I am numb to the thought because I don’t know how to process it. The following year I moved to another city where I got my first apartment. I didn’t have any friends so my anxiety and depression spiked and I often isolated myself alone in my apartment. I attempted to go to college but I just couldn’t bring myself to care about the work, so I flunked out. I filled my time with work, my new found habit of working out and having guys over. Some got tired of me stringing them along, but I just didn’t care to hide my games anymore. Others I told to leave and never come back. Around Christmas that year I had gotten back in touch with a friend I had known for a while that I used to flirt with. He had a girlfriend but that was just a challenge for me. He eventually left her for me and convinced me to leave my apartment and move in with him. What a terrible mistake I would later find this to be.

He had a drug problem and always felt the need to be high. When he wasn’t high he was drinking and when he was sober he was abusive and controlling. Well, he was abusive and controlling regardless. After being together for a few months I found myself pregnant and he offered to go with me to get an abortion, but I was scared and didn’t feel like that was the right decision. I decided to carry my baby. Being pregnant didn’t change his behaviors at all and the next nine months were very up and down for us. At about six months pregnant he proposed to me. I said yes. It never quite felt special or real, but I think we both did it because we thought it was “the right thing” after becoming parents. Needless to say, we never got married and I reluctantly put his name on the birth certificate while he slept through 20 hours of my labor and refused to stay with me in the hospital. The months after my son was born were very hard. I didn’t have help around the house or any privacy because he always had his drug addict friends over. He even began to grow pot in the closet and in the basement, and when I was still on maternity leave he walked out of his job leaving us behind on bills. Our landlord threatened to kick us out if I didn’t bring him money after every shift I worked. Meanwhile, I couldn’t trust my son’s dad to babysit because he kept getting angry at the baby for crying and I feared the worst. The time after that is a blur of fighting, mental and physical abuse and the entire destruction of the house we lived in. I remember getting a window smashed in for putting my feet up while feeding the baby and glass rained down on us as I shielded my son from the shards. I remember the fight that led him to destroy everything in the house and then disappear into the night while I locked all the doors and slid down to the floor shaking and scared debating whether or not to call the police. But at that point I had known about the drugs for too long and was scared that the police would consider me an accomplice or an unfit mother and take my son away, so I didn’t call. When we moved out of that house he left me to pay all of the repair damages which was around $1000.

We moved into another house where the abuse got even more physical than at our previous address. He also got even more paranoid and verbally abused me, including statements about my appearance, to make sure I felt as worthless as I could. His brother moved in with us against my wishes and made for another body I was going to be expected to clean up after. Between the two of them there was weed growing in the closet (again) and more guns and knives than I care to admit. We lived out in a very small town in the middle of the country, which made it even more difficult for me to get help if I needed it. I remember my son’s dad hitting me and pushing me down to the floor of our kitchen and I cried out for help hoping his brother would come out of his room to talk some sense into him, but instead he just turned a blind eye. The worst it ever got was one night when his brother was away, my son’s dad got mad at me and he threw me to the ground and put his hands around my throat and got a hammer and put it against my head and told me that he was going to “f*ing kill” me. I held my breath and let the adrenaline kick in. When he let me up (he could have very easily killed me) I went into my room and sat in front of my son’s crib determined to keep him safe if his father decided to come in and attack me again, or worse. I contemplated snatching him up and jumping out the window, but it was snowy out and we were miles from help and I didn’t have a phone because his dad smashed it earlier that day. Luckily for us, the violence subsided for the night and I slept with one eye open. Some two or three months later was the last straw. He got upset with me for having a girl’s night with some of my work crew while my mom watched our son. He said he was going to drive by my mom’s house and pick up our son to take him home. I immediately left and headed back to my mom’s, defeated. I refused to let him take our son and he sped off towards our house furious. I followed him leaving our son in safekeeping at my mom’s so I could defuse tension. When I got back to my house we argued for a bit before he started to tear apart our bedroom, breaking whatever he could. He threw a laundry hamper at my face and almost broke my nose and punched me in the back so hard that it left a fist shaped bruise. I decided then and there that I was done. My son was safe and I didn’t have to try and get him out. So I left him. The next day I tried to report what had happened to the police station in my hometown, but they told me “there was nothing [they] could do “because it was a matter that needed to be reported to the sheriff.” So I left, defeated.

In two years I hadn’t made a single report about the drugs or abuse, so it left me in a vulnerable position. Over the next few weeks moving my things out of the house proved difficult when he was home. He would scream at me and throw things at me on my way out the door. I couldn’t take half of my things that were too big to store at my mom’s so I was out of luck. But I cut my losses for safety. My mom and my son’s dad’s mom continued to watch my son while I worked because his mom wanted to be involved even though we split. This was also a good way for my son to still see his dad since it would be supervised. But one day I was blind sighted. My son’s dad’s mom let his dad take him home while I was stuck at work not knowing where they would be or if my son had enough bottles. I rushed over to my old house to pick up my son but his dad wouldn’t let me leave. He called his mom and she rushed over. She pushed in the door and pushed me against the wall, pinning me there by my throat and wrestled the car seat out of my hands. The only reason I let go was because I didn’t want my son to get shaken. She pinned me there for a few more minutes and then let me go while screaming at me and refusing to let me leave. All this because I “wouldn’t let her son be a dad”. If only she knew. After holding me hostage for ten minutes or so I drove with my son directly to the sheriff’s to make a report. There was a hand shape bruise on my left arm and a scratch on my face and neck. I was very shaken but I decided wholeheartedly to press charges for assault. I also filed for a protective order against her, which was granted temporarily, but at the hearing I dropped it because the full order would take effect for seven years and it weighed too heavily on me to keep her from even seeing her grandson until he was in the second grade. So I gave her one more chance. She pled not guilty to the assault charges and we took it to jury trial. The prosecutor didn’t feel like there was enough evidence in my favor so they lowered the charges to disorderly and she pled no contest and paid a $100 fine. Three months in the court system and I was so let down. To this day I am so upset that I suffered PTSD for a slap on the wrist. And I’m not sure if that anger will ever go away.

My lawyer advised me not to go to court for custody until his dad took me because that would be in my favor. To this day he still hasn’t taken me, but it has been like pulling teeth to co parent. After everything, the next year was a mess for me. I started dating and sleeping with different men. Anything to feel desired. Anything to just feel. I began to drink again. This is where it gets very dark. Please dear reader, try not to judge or condemn me for this next part. I found myself pregnant around Christmas. And I knew I just couldn’t do it. I could barely get up every day and play with the child I already had. My son’s dad was constantly threatening and stalking me daily and I just couldn’t fathom how he would react. And I couldn’t go through this all again. I made the decision to quietly get an abortion a few weeks in. This was the hardest decision I have ever made and it was an awful experience. I don’t even know how to comment on the subject and I will forever live with the guilt of my selfish actions. A few months later I decided to start counseling to try and help my PTSD, depression and anxiety. My anxiety had gotten so bad that I couldn’t even drive or go out in public in the daylight. Therapy helped for a little bit I was unable to afford it long term.

I decided after that I was going to make a conscious effort to get better. For myself, my personal relationships and especially for my son. It’s been a very long road but I have made great strides to overcome my extreme anxiety and depression. I have been able to recover almost fully from my PTSD. And I have accepted the dark parts of my past that I cannot change. I still have a lot that I need to work on, but I have just started therapy again and hope that I can get a proper diagnosis for the things that still go on in my head. I have many of the symptoms of bipolar and borderline personality disorder and I hope we can figure out which mental illness I fall into or rule out the mental illnesses that I do not. I have not been medicated thus far, but I would be open to it if my therapist recommends I see a psychiatrist.

These days are brighter days than the days I’ve had in the past. I co-own a home with the man I’ve been seeing for almost three years. We’ve had our ups and downs with our mental illnesses getting the best of us, but we understand each other better because we both suffer from horribly negative self-image. I am back in college and doing quite well and I am motivated to get my degree. I own my car and have most of my debts paid off. Things are getting better and moving forward and I will power through any bump in the road that comes up. Best of all, is that I have my loving son and I am able to provide for him and send him to school and give him everything he wants, within reason. He is my world and my reason for pushing through the storm. I was able to survive with him by my side. He still sees his dad and his “other” grandma, which proves difficult for recovery some days, but all in all it has gotten better with time. I feel that he is in safe hands when he is with his pawpaw (the only reason I didn’t keep him from that side of the family) and I can relax a little more when he goes to see them. Every day I tell myself that there was a reason for all of this to happen. Whether it was to help other people or to become a better person myself I’m not sure, but it has definitely shown me that I am stronger than I think.