Posted by whiterabbit on May 6, 2003, at 23:43:33
In reply to Re: The Living Dead, posted by nhg on May 6, 2003, at 9:35:12
My dear, I've been where you are and I know how you feel. Right now you're living on the dark side of the moon, but there is a way out. If I can make it back to the land of the living, anyone can. Because I was just about as bad as you can get.
I won't bore you with the details - I'll just give you the highlights of what I've been through in the last 3 years.
First hospitalization - the police showed up at my door at 4:00 am after I called the operator and asked for the number to a suicide hotline.
She started asking me a lot of questions and I stupidly admitted to having a loaded gun. The police handed me over to the paramedics, who took me to the hospital. I was involuntarily committed to the psychiatric ward.Second hospitalization - I collapsed with seizures after unintentionally overdosing on Valium and morphine. Woke up looking at the paramedics.
Third hospitalization - My stomach was pumped and I was comatose for a short time after intentionally overdosing on all my psychiatric medication. I woke up in ICU and was admitted to the psychiatric ward.
So that's pretty bad, right? Really bad. Actually I have no business being here. I've been trying to drink and drug myself to death for many years, because life meant nothing to me. Every day was a test of endurance. I was so weary, so tired of living, so depressed, and at one point I was taking so many drugs - prescribed, recreational and over-the-counter - that I did become psychotic. I started doing bizarre and dangerous things. I suffered from severe symptoms like short and long-term memory loss; I would "lose" whole days at a time, like a multiple-personality.
I was just so sick, so very ill.I severed relationships with family and friends. I wouldn't answer the door or pick up the phone.
I locked myself away in the bedroom and rarely came out. I was the very picture of the secret, mad wife in "Jane Eyre".But here I am today, back from the asylum, thanks to psychiatric medication. In another age, I would have been committed to bedlam, lost and forgotten in a filthy back ward until the day I died. So that's why I think that I'm qualified to tell you these things:
Your perception of reality can be changed. Psychiatric drugs don't "trick" you into feeling better - the fact is that depression is a sickness and an abnormality like cancer and, like a person who has been diagnosed with cancer, you have a choice: you can fight it with everything that modern medical science has to offer, or you can pick out your coffin. Period.
And just like cancer treatment, you have a long road ahead of you because there is no one medication or therapy that works for everyone, and it takes some time to determine if a specific treatment is working. It sucks, but there it is.
That's the truth. If you can hang in there, if you can wake up every day and find a single reason to not step in front of a speeding train, if you can just hold on - there is hope. Life can be better, and I'm the living example.I lost my job, I have no money and no savings. My
husband was not only traumatized, he was so tired and disgusted by my illness that he would spend the night sleeping on a couch in the livingroom at his friend's house rather than come home to me. Then he found a girlfriend - or some other sexual outlet, God knows what - and set himself up with a rolling motel room in the back of his van. I don't know the details and I don't want to know; I'm just as disgusted and sickened by his
lies, his selfishness and sneaking around and betrayal as he is by me. We're both intelligent people but our values and morals are worlds apart.Despite my circumstances, I'm no longer depressed.
I don't have much in the way of traditional goals-
no savings, no faithful husband, no fancy home, no storybook-family, no pension or benefits despite 23 years of steady employment and 7 years active-duty Army. I chased away family and friends when I was depressed, isolated myself to an unimaginable degree; I was as present and active as a lab specimen floating in a jar.But I did come back, and I'm trying to take advantage of what I have left to start my life over. First and foremost, this same brain that drove me to such self-destructive depths is an extremely intelligent and gifted brain capable of wonderous things; when it's working right, I'm very talented in some areas. I can write, and draw, and paint, and make people laugh. I can't balance my checkbook, but I can and have painted a fairly awesome reproduction of classical works
like "The Birth of Venus", something like a savant. Alas, I don't quite fit into today's society and I've pretty much been a disappointment to my husband from the start. He craves the ranch-style, white-bread life of WASPs
all across America, and I've done little to fit into the mold. I guess that's how he justifies his philandering and all the pain that he's caused me. He's always refused to wear a wedding ring. He would stay out all night without calling and come home when he felt like it; when I confronted him, he told me that he didn't need my
permission to do what he wanted. And it didn't matter how much I tried; I'd work full-time and overtime, and he would count how many hours he had worked more than me on a particular week. After I had finished work and cooked dinner, I would set up an ironing board in the livingroom
and press his shirts; he would inspect the shirt and point out how I hadn't "rounded" the corners appropriately with starch on the collars.He would bitch constantly about birthday and Christmas gifts, no matter how expensive or time-consuming, if it wasn't exactly what he wanted. Not only would he toss aside an expensive gift without a thank-you, he would resent me and grow bitter because I wasn't pleasing him. One year, he made a great fuss over buying the right Christmas present for a neighbor, a woman who was temporarily on her own because her husband was in prison for drug charges. My husband would rush over to her house to change the lightbulb on the porch, but he refused to come and help me when I was stranded on the highway with a flat tire, on my way to work. I walked down the highway and over to the next gas station for nearly 2 miles, and called for help from there. That same year, after he made such a big deal over buying the right Christmas present for our neighbor and getting it wrapped just right, he bought me nothing for Christmas. Not a single token gift.
Still, I did cling to the delusion that this selfish, selfish person was a good father to my son. My parents weren't very good parents and I was determined to raise my only child in a different manner; I wanted him to know how special he was, and I've achieved that. He's handsome and strong, intelligent and funny, witty
and spoiled by his adoring mother. He's a gem and a stepping-stone to the next generation.
poster:whiterabbit
thread:224324
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030506/msgs/224775.html