Conquering a Life’s Worth of Depression in a Semester

Conquering a Life's Worth of Depression in a Semester

09/22/17

Sobbing tears streamed down my face today again. I've been thinking about this for some time, writing all this down. I used to write as a child, it seems like that's all I had, pen and paper. That's all I could tangibly hold onto. In fact, that's all I did hold on to, were my writings. My journals provide proof that I did not falsify the information in my head, it is not over exaggerated, and I will not be made a mockery or be treated as such. I documented everything, well everything or anything that was worth documenting, to me. I have multiple journals of diary entries, poems, writings of heartache, writings of the repercussions that one faces when their parent is consumed by a mental illness, and the system is to entangled in itself that it truly fails to notice, fails to notice the agonizing screams of a six-year-old that begs her mother to stop having sex in the room next to her.

Every time I mention help my heart becomes heavy and the pain is hard to swallow. As my tear ducts begin to fill, I feel even more sadness beginning to blossom. And all I wanna do is cry, cry it out.

I sit here in Honolulu, Hawaii. I live within walking distance from where I attend University of Hawaii at Manoa (UH Manoa), I have my own apartment with my boyfriend, I have two jobs, I'm in the honors program, I'm a board member of two clubs, and I put on this façade everyday that I'm okay. When really, the insides of my heart are internally bleeding and a little man inside is holding the gauze to my heart while I meander through my daily routine. Sometimes the bleed is too excessive though, and the gauze begins to give way. I'll be in the middle of class and feel the urge to just fall into tears, swallowing the pain I manage to keep myself 'together' until class is finally over and I'm able to run to the bathroom where I can hide myself in the last stall, and just let it all out. But you wouldn't have guessed that though, I mean I'm a college student, I'm an honor student, I go to work, I go to social events.

Somedays, I feel great, and think maybe there's nothing wrong with me, maybe I was just emotional, or maybe I was just having a rough day. And then my honors thesis mentor mentions at the end of our meeting, "Were you still interested in a referral for cognitive behavioral therapy?" and my voice begins to tremble and shake as I begin this conversation. And after a few sentences I just begin to cry, and I really wish I could help it, with only feeling more embarrassed with every tear that’s shed. I'm not crying about a particular issue, or specific event that bothers me. I'm just simply crying because I'm so broken that my past is like a wound that's been barely scabbed over, so any slight movement causes the wound to open and well, bleed.

These feelings of guilt you've bestowed upon me are relentless. Feeling not good enough, every move I make doesn't begin to cover the absolute guilt and shame I feel. And for what? I didn't try and kill anyone, I didn't steal, I didn't gamble my life away, but you did, you did, and I'm the one that's wrecked. Have I passed the threshold that leads to insanity? Was it me waiting in the car while you begged people for money, was it being hungry or homeless, was it the rape, or was it you chasing me around with a butcher knife? How am I not a drug addict? How am I not institutionalized? How am I still able to get my ass up out of bed every morning, where is this imaginary resilience? How have I been able to just continue to live life and set it all aside until now? I have no fucking clue.

10/17/2017

Well I saw a therapist at the school again today. It's my second time this semester, my fourth time overall. It felt good understanding what these emotions I'm feeling are, it felt good to have clarity.

11/6/2017

We, mom and I, were walking down the road, it was a busy street. We had just gone to some Mexican store to buy a piñata and party supplies for my birthday. Always smothered. We rode the bus there and we weren't going to make it back in time for my own party. We hitchhiked to my own birthday party. That day I hated my mother. That day I knew I wasn't like other kids. I was the poor kid. I was the poor kid, that looked like 'everything' was okay on the outside, when on the inside I was dying.

My last therapy session, my therapist told me basically I was an orphan. My mom was always at work, did a shit job at raising me, and has filled me with a sea of guilt. Feeling guilty about everything, about being or not being who she wants me to be, always threatening me not to tell other people things, always threatening me to ask my dad for money. And my dad, well when I cried shamefully on the phone sobbing tears of pins and needles that pierced the heart, my heart, his heart, he couldn't even come get me. He asked if I wanted him to, but my mother was listening to our conversation, how could I? That was the night my mother threatened to kill me, chased me around raising her fist to me, to an already depressed thirteen-year-old girl, raising a fist, and raising a butcher knife. That night I literally thought I might not see the next day.

In the past, I thought about jumping off the fourth floor of Sakamaki Hall, so many times. How ironic would it be, a severely depressed student leaping to her death from the fourth floor of the psychology department. I would never do it, but I've thought about it.

Another week challenged to avoid contact with my mother. At first it was easy. This past week felt like I had obtained a new grievance, you know, the sadness that is accompanied with the loss of a child. Some days when I felt like calling her I was able to block it out, thought about something else. And other times, I just called her, just to make sure she was alright, not like that's my responsibility, but it was, and has been for the past twenty-four years of my life. I'm fighting a habit, an enabling habit that has severely inhibited my life, and possibly hers for far too long. I'm going to fight this fight, and I will win. And if I have to I will go through great measures to ensure I am safe.

If I asked my mother today about the time she tried to kill me she would say, "I never tried to kill you, who told you that, who's putting ideas into your head, have you been talking to your dad, did your dad tell you that?" That is exactly what she would say. Because she is perfect, nothing is wrong with her, she is so completely delusional and it has hurt my soul for far too long.

My mother always believed in me, believed I could do ANYTHING, and I mean ANYTHING. Whereas my dad, pretty much had no faith in me and anytime I told him I wanted to do something he would say, "Why would you want to do that, there's no money in that, is that job going to be in demand?" or the best one yet "That is the stupidest idea I've ever heard." So yea, I'm fucked up, my brain doesn't know left from right, and up from down, what is right and what is wrong, or really what to think.

So there you have it, I'm an orphan. I wanted to find love, love from family, love from others, love from anyone. As a single child, without a sane mother, and a dad that doesn't really care, I just wanted a family, a real family, a family that cared. I always wanted a mom, a sane mom, a mom that didn't panhandle, a mom that didn't pawn shit, a mom that didn't gamble and leaver her daughter in the car for hours and hours on end, a mom that didn't whip her with a belt, a mom that didn't get remarried over five times, a mom that didn't move every chance she got, I can continue on because the anger and hurt is so strong, so strong.

I wanted a dad that called me, that didn't just write me a check, but one that actually wanted to spend time with me, I wanted a dad that wouldn't have asked if I wanted him to come pick me up while I was sobbing on the phone, but one that would've just hopped in his truck and came and got me, I wanted a dad that just truly cared about his daughter, that believed I was his daughter.

Ha wow, and here I am sitting in front of my computer, and the tears begin to shed, what a fucking life. And now look, I live in Hawaii, I'm getting a degree, and she's still here. I moved over 2500 miles away from her and she fucking followed me like a cancer you just can't kill. I know I sound like the awful daughter right, I should be thankful I have a mom, right? Well, honestly, I don't think there's anything more mentally draining, than caring for someone who just is not going to get better, ever. Trying and trying and trying, with zero progress.

I'm not sure if anyone understands me other than my dad, whom has been a comfort zone; and my boyfriend whom has truly witnessed some sides of my mother.

I'm not saying my story is worse than yours, or trying to make it seem that way. I'm just getting my emotions out one word at a time, and when I feel like writing, I write, and the passion, anger, and hurt are there.

It's absolutely killing me. It's killing me not telling my dad about me finding my brother. Never mentioning my brother. My dad has not once ever told me I have a half-brother. Trying to process the fact that I have found him after twenty-four years is another surprise, I'm still trying to wrap my head around this concept after a few months. The funny thing is, we must be pretty similar because we've only messaged each other, on Facebook, haven't called or video'd, nothing like that. Can't wait to meet him in person.

12/1/2017

The depression died. For now. I have this warmth glow emerging from my heart that is illuminating out of me like the sun. How? I feel like the Grinch after he gave back all the presents to the Who's.

One day I just broke, the levy couldn't hold the sea of words that were smashing against my head. I had a conversation with my dad I waited twenty-four years for. It started with me. I called, my voice was already trembling, I began with, "Are you at home? I'll just wait till you get home." I said this at least three times, insisting I do it later, when he could sit down. There I was on the fourth floor of Sakamaki again. I went to the far end of the railing, nobody could see me here right, nobody would dare find a girl smothered by her own darkness and guilt, ready to break free of the shackles and chains of her childhood self. I started with grandma's jewelry. As a 12-year-old my mentality was things come and go, and this is true, but what about family heirlooms? I don't know how long this box of jewelry had been in my family, but I knew my hunger, literal hunger, hunger for food, was more important than that. Stolen, so my mom could pawn it, leaving us with a few bucks for the time being. I couldn't stand her panhandling anymore, I couldn't stand being in the car watching my own flesh and blood beg, beg just so we could eat, just so I could live. I never admitted it to my father, how could I. He said he knew, he knew my mother put me up to it, but it was my idea, and her illness that lead to further my self-hatred.

He questioned, "Is there anything else?"

"Yea, remember when I told you I had been raped." I remember when I told him, I was expecting sympathy at the very least.

Instead, he reacted with a crude statement "Can you imagine how I felt when they took grandma's jewelry?" I was appalled, you're comparing some materialistic items that create dust in a box, to somebody who forced their body parts inside me. My body was limp, I couldn't move, I was too far gone, but not far enough. The obtrusive nightmares that haunt and presently impact me to this day are compared to some meek flowery pins you wear once at a special occasion. I explained my anger toward him about this, about this infelicitous approach toward the horrors that feed my triple threat of depression, anxiety, and PTSD. It was just a misunderstanding, I misinterpreted him, is what he recalls.

"So, is that it? What else do you got for me?" How about the fact that you failed to mention I have a brother?

"I don't know how to bring this up, I really don't." I asked him what his thoughts were about Nathan. He told me what I already knew from what my mom had told me, but I waited, and waited for him to tell me I have a brother. I decided with the fact that I'd be twenty-five in a few short months it was time we stop beating, hell, hacking around the bush and point out the elephant that was about to squash me. I did tell him I was in contact with him, and he wasn't upset, if anything he was happy I was in touch with another one of my blood relatives. And we haven't spoke of Nathan since.

I have overcome the fear of my mother smothering me. I have accepted that I am in control of my own life, and I am in charge of who is to be in it. I have a plan if my mother bangs on the window, and begs to live with me because she failed to pay the rent, again. I have acknowledged that my childhood self was an orphan. I gained the courage to open the door of words that had been knocking for twenty-four years. I found my brother. I have caressed the hair of my younger, depressed broken self, and put her to sleep, she is resting, but she is still both there and here. I conquered my depression in a semester.