I've shared in my A/A's but never here. I was in a state of "blissful" ignorance for way longer than I cared to admit, I knew I was hurt and had been damaged by things that happened to me in the past, and I knew that I'd been dealing with depression and anxiety my whole life, not surprising my home situation was not ideal, there was either fighting between my mom and stepdad or I was more or less left with my older brothers who liked to wander around like boys like to do in the country, and they rarely wanted to take their younger sister with them, so I got lost in books I had help learning to read of course, but I excelled at it because of my own need to escape my life. I always feel a little weird talking about that as bad, even if I realize emotional and psychological abuse leave just as many scars and witnessing violence of any kind can inflict both, because I know that there are people out there who have suffered so much worse than yelling and screaming matches that would leave a small child wanting to hide or go back to sleep so she wouldn't be scared, or being molested by another child. I try not to feel weak for letting those leave me scarred no matter how young I was.
This was the start of a huge ball of fear and terror that I didn't dare share with anyone, so I learned to hide it, hide behind a mask and try to be happy and make friends and be a kid even if all I wanted to do was to escape into books or writing. I held that mask in place so long I forgot it was even there, and if that elementary and before aged trauma had been the entirety of it, I might have been okay. But trauma came after trauma up until just a few years ago when I finally left the father of my child because I couldn't stand being called a 'dumb bitch' every time he was angry or yelling at him for smacking our daughter upside the back of the head when he was angry with her, and the slamming cabinets in my general direction, and hating myself a little bit for not getting out sooner. There are other darker things that I don't wanna really talk about here because I don't want to trigger anyone any more than I may potentially have already.
The long and short of it is that I pushed everything down, downplayed how I was feeling lied to myself to keep going. The first red flag should have been when I stopped being able to write, I didn't listen. When I started getting so anxious that I would vomit in the morning if there was anything put into my stomach or I had anything at all to do that day. Even then I didn't listen, though the doctors were trying to tell me that I needed help they weren't qualified for. That turned into three hospitalizations in one rolling year for mental health crisis. The first one was likely caused by the fact that both the gastrologist and my primary put me on medications that both affected serotonin and I don't do well with those drugs. I'm still not sure what happened with the second one, things in my head just got really bad. That second one was when a psychiatrist finally started treating me for PTSD as well as depression and anxiety. After that, I was doing pretty great until I lost my job to my illness and my insurance with it. I couldn't afford around $200 for the medications I was on. So I went off them and had to stop counseling too, that was likely the cause of number three. It took those three hospitalizations for me to realize and acknowledge that I was living something of a lie and that I had this huge ball of terror and sadness just smoldering inside of me because I never really reached out because I was always wearing that mask when I tried. That helped a lot, as well as acknowledging that during an encounter that happened a little over ten years ago I completely lost myself, and wasn't able to get me back really through the continuing trauma.
There's a point I'm getting at here really, and it's this; no one can help you if they don't know you're struggling. Reaching out is hard, but it is the bravest thing you can do, and I am very proud of everyone who shares here.
