Not a happy/feel-good post

Hello everyone,

At this very moment, I’m sitting here in the dark (Yes seriously, but wait for me to get to my point) listening to sad songs. I know this sounds awful, right? Actually no, the past few days I’ve had the urge to cry at the most inconvenient times. I have no clue why. Well ok, I could rattle off a number of reasons, but nothing specific at the moment. It reminded me of a conversation I had with one of my therapists. (Yes, one of them I have two!) She was commenting on the fact that although I’ve broken down a few times in front of her I’m typically smiling and nervous laughing even when recounting traumas. I’ve basically trained myself to be ok 24/7. I’m so used to doing it all the time that I don’t know how to shut it off. Even with people I trust. There’s a few people who will ask how I am and I’ll give my bs answer to which they reply ok, but really how are you? I don’t know how to answer this question. I suppose I should toss this part in now. Here’s my disclaimer for this post, I’m ok (as ok as I usually am) there’s just been a lot on my mind and I kept meaning to write this all out and so now you guys get all of it at once! My goal here in general is to make someone, anyone to feel less alone, less crazy, help someone “get it.” Which is going to result is quite a bit of sharing so buckle up kiddos!

There a lot of things you learn when you get chronically ill. You learn doctors aren’t miracle workers, they make mistakes and there’s not a pill for everything. One aspect that I’ve seen repeated on my support group sites is the loneliness and all the people that leave. This aspect is all too familiar for me. For me, the first person wasn’t a person so much as an institution. My college. I believe I’ve already gone through this so I’ll try and go over a condensed version here. I began passing out in the middle of senior year in November. My school tried their hardest to convince me to leave and go home. The did successfully kick me out of the dorms. I suppose in the middle of the school “leaving” my roommate I had at the beginning of all this left. This roommate was simply amazing, supportive, gentle, and just about everything I needed after my mom passed. The crazy part? We barely knew each other! We had both been RAs the previous year, but not close at all. When she found out my mom passed she went to campus ministries and got a pamphlet on what to expect and how to help someone who was grieving. She truly went above and beyond. There were nights I was sobbing in my bed and she crawled into my bed and would sit there with me. There were many other days when she would drag out of our room on pointless target runs. I seriously lucked out! When I began to pass out she seemed to be understanding. Obviously it was pretty stressful for both of us. Well during one of my conversation with the dean of students and resident director they began telling me I couldn’t be in her room anymore because it was “too distracting for an RA.” I actually probably would have believed this had that not continued on and began directly quoting her. I never really talked to her about it. It just was. Next on the list was my school, they kicked me out of the dorms in early Feb. I believe. This hit hard, school was the one thing in my life that hadn’t changed since my mom passed. It was my constant in all the confusion. That changed pretty quickly. After one of my meetings with the dean of students I got a call from my dad just two minutes later. The dean had informed him that I was faking passing out for attention or I was on drugs. I was disgusted that she would assume this. She didn’t know me. She had no evidence of either of these serious allegations, but was apparently confident enough to tell my father her theories as fact. Luckily for me, I had gained a pretty awesome network of people so I spent the remainder of my senior year couch surfing. I managed to graduate and I had hoped I’d figure out the passing out situation.

Towards the end of my senior year I started dating this guy who I fell hard for. Long story short, we ended up moving in together in Madison. We lived together for about five months. Everything was going great as far as I could tell. One day we are sitting down watching tv. He turns the tv off looks at me and says “I can’t do this anymore.” Obviously I respond with “can’t do what?” He then goes on to tell me that he’s breaking up with me because my condition is too stressful for him. He tells me he can’t focus on school when he’s there because he’s worried about me. First off let my acknowledge that I’m glad he told me this when he did instead of waiting and also didn’t sugarcoat. Although that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. Here I was being broken up with over something I have absolutely zero control over. It’s not like I can say, Oh that’s bothering you that much I’ll knock it off then.”

The list unfortunately continues with something that was previously near and dear to my heart. I was kicked out of a volunteer position because it was working with kids. Obviously between liability and traumatizing the kids it wasn’t going to work. Here’s where I’m going to start repeating myself. It doesn’t matter how logical your reasoning is. I’m a person damnit! I have feelings no matter how out of touch with them I am!

I suppose those are all the BIG ones. There’ve been many people who’ve left since I got sick. I know typically I’m supposed to look at the bright side and think wow, even after all those people left I still have the people I have now. Nope, not how my anxious depressed brain works. I could even add doctors onto this list. I’ve had a handful of therapists refuse to treat me due to liability reasons. After my suicide attempt, once I got out of the ICU I wasn’t even allowed to go to the pysch unit because of liability. I got kicked out of a support group because of liability. Let’s just acknowledge the irony here. I can’t get the help I need because of the reason I need the help. It would be much funnier if it wasn’t so sad.

Ok, coming full circle. (yeah I had a point this whole time) I’ve realized one of the multitude of reasons I’ve trained myself to ok is because I’m used to overwhelming people to the point of leaving. (super deep/scary realization!) I could even relate some stories involving family around this issue of leaving. My goal isn’t to call anyone out. Ok, fine I’d still like to punch my college in the face… My goal here is for someone to see a different perspective. Maybe for someone on my side of things to know they’re not alone in feeling this way.

P.S. I haven’t managed to cry yet while writing this so I suppose it’ll be bottled up until a really unfortunate moment…