Depression

...sucks.

That's really all I have to say, but I'll likely ramble anyways about whatever escapes from my fingers onto this post by use of the keyboard.

In no particular order:

I miss my dad. He's been dead now for just over four years, but I've not gotten to hang out with him in 10. Sure we talked on the phone a few times & wrote a few letters back and forth, but it wasn't the same. See, my dad spent the last 6 years of his life sitting behind bars. He was given a 30 year sentence for a crime I don't believe he committed. Of course the argument stands that if he didn't commit it then he wouldn't have been given a 30 year sentence, not in this day & age...yea, our judicial system is so upright where innocent folks aren't locked away & the guilty are that - guilty. I mean, just look at the whole Casey Anthony or O.J. Simpson things, right?

I rest my case.

I've tried really hard over the last 10 years to wrap my brain around it to the point that it's so wrapped I think it's just warped instead. I really don't want to believe either side. If I take my dad's side of things and defend him, well, I've lost a great deal of close relationships because I did take his side. If I take his accuser's side then I am compelled to be completely disgusted with my father, but also betray what my heart & mind tells me. The most fucked up part of all that is I may not be quite so conflicted about it had some folks not been so adamant that my dad was completely innocent...until my grandparents both died. It was almost immediately upon their deaths that all these folks, who'd supported my dad, bailed on him, trash talked him, and to this day paint him as the worst kind of scum to walk the planet. Of course his accuser went from just a spoiled little brat trying to get what she wanted to the patron saint of all that's right but wrong in the world, a poor innocent victim. Fuck her.

I miss the children that I birthed that were born with barely a fighting chance at life. Dear Alonna was a victim of doctors not putting all the pieces together & me being so utterly depressed I barely made it through the last half of my senior year of high school. Her father, my first husband, was killed in a car wreck days after we'd gotten married. During our short marriage, because I was a FIRM "virgin until marriage" person, I conceived her. Between severe depression, ulcers, stress, school, work, family life, God only knows what all ailed me at that time, doctors had me on a nice little cocktail of medications to treat each and every ailment. No heed was paid to the notion I could have been pregnant. Hell, I didn't even think anything of it. I still had bleeding from time to time, I didn't pay that close attention to timing and all that because I wasn't having sex...had only had sex twice, and it was in wedlock. Teenage pregnancy doesn't happen except out of wedlock, right? OH, YES, I was a naive one back then. She was born in December...in fact she, Mikaila & my Grandpa all share the same birthday, December 13th. My pregnancy wasn't confirmed until after I'd fallen down a flight of stairs just a few weeks before. The fall down the stairs wasn't detrimental to her, even though I'd like to blame something so innocent on the loss of her life. No. She was born with very underdeveloped organs or holes in the organs that did develop due to all the different medications I had been on during the majority of my pregnancy. I was given the option to have a late-term abortion, but I wouldn't hear of it! What kind of fucking moron suggests such a thing to an 18 year old gal who's not only lost her husband & best friend since preschool, but is now finding out she's PREGNANT and VERY near her due date, just mere weeks after her parents told her to "Get your dog, your computer, don't forget your hamster & the rest of your shit & get lost?!" Simply because she wasn't paying enough of the bills anymore because she was trying to move out into her own place... Then of course I had her, without the first drop of pain medication, because I was scared out of my fucking gourd after learning about all the medications I had been on for the previous 9+ months. I still, to this day, have issues with taking medications & hesitate going down stairs... I PLEADED with the doctors & nursing staff to pull a miracle out of their asses. I don't blame them. They tried. For 14 hours they worked to sustain her. Reflecting on it 11 years later now, pieces of me wish I would have saved them each that grief. It's not the loss of Alonna that haunts me so much as the looks on the doctors' and nurses' faces as they not only tried to console me but also make my miracle come true. Thing that haunts me further is the stigma that "we don't talk about that".

Then there was Bridgett. I got pregnant with her almost immediately after Mikeal was born. Ok, not completely immediately, but I'd gotten my first depo shot after he was born, then my ex husband was thrown in jail for attempting to rape a 5 year old...I was given a lame story about how this little girl had walked in on him while he was peeing in a laundry room and it was just some messed up misunderstanding & all he was guilty of, from the early stories I was told, was indecent exposure. I did what any scared, almost 21 year old girl who's been horribly abused by her husband & no one there to support her, except him, with a 4 month old...I believed him & by my upbringing I stood by him. During the early hoopla of all that I missed my appointment to get my next depo shot, was pregnant when I finally did get a chance to make-up that appointment. I hid that pregnancy for as long as I could during the court proceedings. On our anniversary, in June, I was 23 wks along I shared the news with my ex. He responded by beating the shit out of me & throwing a 27" TV at me...back before they were just 10lb pieces of plastic. Then he left to go smoke some meth with his cousins down the road. ((My naive ass didn't know a thing about any of that until well after the fact.)) I carried my 10 month old son & drug my bleeding ass to a neighbor's house, where the lights were on...it was only about 2am...and they called an ambulance for me. All I really remember was about 24 hours later I was being released from the hospital & that my baby girl had died. I did file a police report. All that got me was a rap for being a troublemaker & liar by the police department. Afterall, the Lieutenant's adopted son would NEVER do such a thing! I made the whole thing up!

I'm proud of the fact that I went to the meeting with his lawyer not long after that...I heard the confession tape for myself & learned the whole truth behind the charges. He'd picked a 5 year old girl up from an apartment complex, took her into a laundry room there, & considered having sex with her before some of the effects of the meth & alcohol he was on wore off just enough for him to let her go. I then spent the next few weeks charming my ex. I'd swear up and down how I'd be there for him & I'd never screw him over, yada yada yada yada yada. He was given a 4 MONTH sentence with only 4 years probation. On September 22nd he was booked on the charges...I left from the courthouse, with his ATM & credit cards in hand, & wiped those suckers clean, including the overdraft privileges. I sold what clothes of his that were left over from my brothers picking through them, I didn't make the first one of his vehicle payments, then I broke every fucking rule that bastard had laid upon me of what I wasn't allowed to do while he was incarcerated. I'd then write him letters telling him about how I started smoking, was going out to the bars, sleeping with whatever I felt like, doing whatever I liked. That $900 wedding ring set he'd bought me & still had a nice balance on - sold them for $175...then had a GRAND time at the bar....at least I think it was grand. I woke up in the bed of the truck, somewhere. ((Mikeal was safe at a babysitter's, who knew/understood/something to that effect my mental state of mind at that time.))

A few months later, on Mother's Day, I called Child Services on myself. I was in a desperate state of mind and was under the impression that they'd at least help me. I was suffering from alcohol addiction, was basically homeless, and well...it was bad. Know what child services did for me? Nada. Told me that because I had the presence of mind to call them that it meant that I was a good mother and could figure it out & didn't see Mikeal as being in any real danger. I BEGGED and PLEADED with them to PLEASE place him in a safe home & to help me get into a treatment program. They didn't. The next day I left Mikeal in the care of my 'less than fit roommate'...while he was passed out drunk (not Mikeal, the roommate) and got a job a few blocks away, working graveyard shift at Waffle House. Thankfully I had some awesome coworkers that let Mikeal & I move into their one bedroom apartment...then instead of going out to the bars I joined a chatroom.

I met a TON of very wonderful folks in that chatroom, and minus a few details, I moved from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Austin, TX, to move into a house with a complete stranger. Folks down there would drive an hour one direction to help me get out and look for a job, others would watch Mikeal for me, one guy gave me a car...I met Brian during all of that...yada yada...I sobered up, mostly, and my mother grew up a bit. I went back and lived with her for a while so I could get my divorce taken care of 100%, then moved back to Texas, eventually reconnected with Brian again, he proposed at my dad's funeral dinner, we went back home, in Texas, pregnant, yada yada...we've been married almost 4 years now with a Mikaila added to our family.

My ex is still a complete asshole.

My current marriage, like any other, has it low points, but overall it's awesome. I love where I live now, I love my friends, & tolerate most of my family, but I'm completely in admiration of my children and husband! But yet I still feel depressed. The logical side of me says I have no reason to be depressed. There's nothing I can do about the death of these loved ones, I know that having another child isn't going to replace any of the ones I've lost. I can't pinpoint a reason behind my depression. I'm mostly 'at peace' with the trauma my past inflicted upon me, but then every once in a while it just completely blindsides me and throws me for a complete loop and I don't even know what to think. The littlest thing can set it off and big things won't even phase me. I constantly feel like I'm swimming in a black hole that is devoid of everything, but yet I can see that I'm surrounded by all these folks that I know love & care about me and I just feel empty, withdrawn, and sad. But mostly angry.

The anger bothers me the most.

I'm absolutely justified to feel the anger. I can't think of many folks who wouldn't blame me for completely lashing out at some folks who have caused this anger. But at the same time I'm better than that. I feel guilty for having this anger. I want to just let go of the anger but I can't. I can for short periods. Most of the time I don't even notice it lingering. I don't want to be angry. I don't like feeling this way. This in turn makes me not like myself. And the cycle starts again. I've done decent, in my mind, with coping with it. I've gotten better. Stronger. But it's still there, haunting me. I know it's effected persons around me, I try to keep it hidden, to keep it a secret...because it's just not one of those things we talk about... I don't even know how to talk about it. I don't know how to fix it. Sure I can repress it and pretend it doesn't exist...for a while. But I'm not comfortable with that and that fuels my anger, just in more directions.

I don't know what to do at this point. I'm not even sure I even know what I WANT to do. I just know that my head isn't always healthy & it may never be fully healthy...but I also don't want to go through the rest of my life with this anger hoovering over me.

This grown-up shit is hard.


~*~Then of course I'm searching for info that I need, again, for my assignment, that was erased by Windows' need to fucking update without warning and restart without allowing me to save any work I'd worked SOO fucking hard on...and I run across this blog post. I needed it. I'm going to start working on setting the tone to my own happiness & fulfillment...by starting on #3, especially.~*~

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