Before I begin, let me just say, my content is NOT FOR CHILDREN! It is filled with adult content, strong language, and possibly very triggering material. If you are a child, you want to read this too a child, you are triggered by strong language, adult content, or topics such as rape, self harm, abuse, etc. stop here before you hurt yourself. I will not put another trigger warning on my content. It’s explicit told in my “About the Pixie” section that I intend to talk about topics that are triggering. Monitor yourselves, because I will not filter myself for you.
My story is hella long. There’s no way to go through life without creating a multidimensional, incredibly detailed story that spans a 20 book series, at least, even if we don’t include every little mundane thing we do throughout the day.
And it’s the things you can’t see that would fill the majority of the book. To write down our inner most thoughts and feelings, our memories, inner dialogue, the way our stomachs twist when we’re anxious, or how good a hot bath feels on sore muscles, to share with even just a piece of paper our deepest fears, greatest hopes and darkest desires is possible one of the most intimate acts we can ever be apart of. To lay ourselves completely bare is an incredibly courageous act, even if no one sees it.
With that said, I ask that if you read my story, you try to understand the fear I feel writing this down before you pass judgement on me. I’m doing this for all the other people out there who struggle with their mental health like I do and maybe they need someone to talk to. It would be a major plus if this story inspired anyone to become a mental health advocate or to speak in defense of those who suffer from mental health.
“What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, and more unashamed conversation.”
– Glenn Close
For as long as I can remember, I always felt like something was off about me. I’m not sure how normal this is for people, but I do know it had a really bad effect on me. I wanted so badly to make friends but struggled because I didn’t know how to act towards other people. I got angry too quickly, cried too much, didn’t laugh at the right jokes, and was called “weird” a lot. I found that I connected more with books than I did people, which caused me to excel in school, and be labeled a “nerd” by my classmates.
Quick backstory on my family, my dad was born in Pennsylvania, moved a lot, and eventually settled in Wyoming, where he, his older brother, and his younger sister all went to high school together. When she was 17, my aunt killed herself. It shattered my dad’s family. My grandma was severely depressed and at some point started wearing my aunts clothes, driving her car, and generally scaring the shit out of her family. this, of course, caused problems in her marriage, and my grandparents got divorced shortly after, and my grandpa and dad moved.
My mom was born in Casper, Wyoming and moved all over the country with her siblings and mom before she was two. She doesn’t talk about it a lot, but from what I know, her biological dad and mom were married for a few years, just long enough to have three kids, but got divorced just after my mom was born. They settled back in Wyoming when she was in elementary school, which is about the time my mom’s mom met her second husband, a train conductor with three kids of his own. They got married, he adopted my mom and her siblings and they moved to the same town (years before my dad and grandpa, mind you).
My mom’s sister, Kathy, dropped out of school, and while she was working, she met a man who’d moved to that town just a few years before, after a messy divorce, and she and the man got married.
You read that right. My mom’s older sister met my dad’s dad first and the two got married. It was through them that my parents met, fell in love, and got married. My aunt and grandpa’s marriage lasted only a few years, long enough for them to have two kids, who are my cousins/aunt and uncle. Yes, it’s confusing. When people ask, it’s really hard to explain the situation to them, especially because my grandpa shows up to family functions for my mom’s side of the family specifically because of the fact that his adult aged son, his young daughter, young son, and similarly aged granddaughters are all their. I’m three weeks older than my uncle because of this arrangement.
My mom graduated high school, got married, and had a baby all within a year and a half. I’m that baby, the oldest of three girls, and was a problem from the start. I had pretty severe gastroesophageal reflux disease, which is essentially projectile vomiting everywhere when sufferers are young children. I wasn’t gaining weight very fast, if at all, and when my baby teeth started coming in, my vomiting destroyed them. I was a toddler with dentures at one point.
My parents got divorced for the first time just after my youngest sister was born. I learned several years later that my dad paid for the apartment my moved into. She had various boyfriends that would stay over while she was going to school to be a nurse.
My dad also found a new significant other, a woman with a son and a daughter. The daughter was a self centered brat who would throw tantrums if we stopped paying attention to her, and the son was twisted. He liked killing things, like birds and snakes, he regularly peed on things just to say he did, and was my first sexual interaction. At five or six years old, he taught me a “game” where we pulled our pants down and took turns touching each other. It kept getting worse and worse, where he’d drag me out into the field to play, or when our babysitter was busy, he’d pull me into a bathroom, so that he could make me touch him, and he could touch me. Then, my naïve little self, who didn’t understand what was actually happening, told my mom about my new exciting game.
To say she was horrified is an understatement. She called my dad, immediately, and made me tell my dad about my game. The next time I went to my dad’s house, this kid was on severe lock down, not allowed to by alone with me or my sisters, while my dad and his girlfriend fought constantly. Eventually, I know they broke up, but I don’t know what happened to the girlfriend and her kids, if he got into any bigger trouble than what he did at my house, or if he got off essentially scot free.
After that, I was sent to counseling and my parents got back together, getting remarried. It was all a lot to handle at such a young age so close together. In counseling, they tried to make me understand how bad the situation was, that what he did was sexual assault and it was not okay at all. Oddly, I think that was more traumatizing than the event itself. I thought I’d played a game that I wasn’t supposed to play, and they were forcefully explaining that it was called rape, and it was a terrible thing. Trauma and self-image issue at six-years-old was horrible, to say the least.
School was hard, not because of the self-image issues, yet, but because I didn’t connect well with my classmates. I didn’t know how to act, how to laugh at the right jokes, how to stay calm when angry, or even how to avoid crying when I was really upset. Books were my escape. Unfortunately, that made it even harder to make friends.
Home got harder and harder to deal with. My youngest sister didn’t have to do chores, while my middle sister and I did, dad worked all the time, and I got in trouble when chores didn’t get done, even if they weren’t up to me to get done.
Then, I did something really bad. I was in first grade, playing a game against a really mean kid who like to bully me about being a nerd. He won the game, and was awful about it, pointing in my face and dancing around, singing about how he was better than me. I snapped. While he was walking away, I got out of my desk, followed up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder, and when he turned around, I choked him. I don’t know what possessed me, and actually terrifies me now to think that that was my reaction to that situation. I only held on for a few seconds before dropping my hands. The kid ran to tell the teacher, naturally, and I spent the rest of the morning in the principal’s office explaining how he made me so upset I didn’t know how to stop myself.
Que in school counseling sessions where the counselor tried to discuss with me anger management ideas for in school and at home. If I was acting out at school, then I must be acting out at home too, right? It had nothing to do with the pressure being put on me at seven-years-old with doing chores, taking care of my sisters and trying to be a good kid through the divorce and second marriage, RIGHT!?
Her ideas were to scream into a pillow, go somewhere else to avoid a fight, tell a teacher or my mom, or write down what I was feeling. But, how do you make sure these work? With consistency and following through. You know what I had 0 of at home? Consistency, and follow through. Why? Well, I’d get angry if my sisters didn’t help with chores, or if my mom yelled at me for something that wasn’t my fault, so I’d go to my room to scream into my pillow, or write in my journal. My sister would follow me and harass me, or my mom would get mad at me for “running away” from her, and several times, she would snoop around our rooms for our diaries, my sisters kept them too, so that she could read them and yell at us for what we wrote in them. So I was never really able to try the methods.
When I was eight, my youngest sister pissed my off by throwing my brand new toys on the floor, so I tried to throw her out of my room, literally, and she slipped and fell, and the way she fell caused her foot to break. I got my ass beat pretty severely.
When I was nine, I was laying on my youngest sisters reading when my middle sister jumped on me, trying to play. I rolled over to get her off of me, and she fell on the floor. The way she fell, and how she tried to catch herself broke her thumb. I got into serious trouble for that one, too.
I was sent back to counseling to deal with my anger issue. It was essentially all the same “methods” as before, which didn’t help. I continued to get my ass beat for any outbursts of any kind. It was frustrating, because a lot of times, I didn’t realize I did anything wrong. For the next few years, I tried to be good, mind my own business, and slip up by doing something silly which resulted in me getting spanked.
At some point, I decided I wasn’t going to get spanked anymore. So, the next time my mom pulled out a spoon, I ran to the bathroom, and held the door shut while she pushed and screamed. She’d calm down, eventually, and I’d manage to avoid a spanking, but I’d be in double trouble when my dad got home. I remember one time I ran to the bathroom, my mom was extra mad and bulldozed through the door so hard, she knocked me into the bathtub, and I hit my head on the edge. I hurt so bad, but she just scoffed at me for messing up her bathroom and told me to clean up.
In middle school, I did great in classes, had a few friends, was in a couple of clubs, but home life was getting crazier. Mom, who previously was a stay at home mom, suddenly decided she wanted to work again. So she went back to school, cosmetology school. Ninety percent of the time, my sisters and I were left home alone. As the oldest, mom told me I was in charge, and it was up to me to make sure chores got done and the girls didn’t get into trouble. This of course, only applied to when my dad was working for his week straight at the gas plant, and there was no one home to watch us.
It was hard, because the girls wouldn’t do their chores, which got me into trouble. Then, one day, my youngest sister caught the microwave on fire. She was cooking lunch, potato wedges, or something like that, and thought it would be a good idea to microwave them for nine minutes. The smoke alarms went off, we all ran to the kitchen, opened the stove to check if that was burning something, but it wasn’t, turned to the microwave, opened it, and saw the flames. Lots of screaming and a strangely rational thought process on my end, resulted in the microwave and kitchen coated in powder from the fire extinguisher. It was a bizarre experience for me, where I didn’t even realize I’d grabbed the fire extinguisher until everything was white.
We called Mom, she was happy the house wasn’t ashes, and we go tot work trying to clean. When mom got home, I got in trouble. “How could you let her cook by herself?” “Why isn’t this all clean, yet?” “I don’t know if I can trust you anymore!” It was frustrating and belittling. I’d kept the house from burning to the ground, and all she could do was criticize me.
In sixth grade, my parents got divorced, again. Mom stayed at the house while dad was at work, and stayed with her sister when he was off. She then went through another few boyfriends, while my dad had one girlfriend who was really nice, and had three boys, who were little heathen shits. They were okay if you ignored the fact that their mom ignored them because she’d always wanted daughters. My sisters and I got upset with the situation we were placed in, because we went from being the center of one woman’s world to the slaves of another’s. I love my mom, but it felt more like we existed just to keep her house clean.
Mom’s last boyfriend was six years younger than her, I think, a hopeless romantic, who wanted kids of his own, and wanted all of us to move in with him. I didn’t like him from the very beginning. He was whinier than I was, and treated us like dirt when he got mad at us. Everything was his way or the high way. When my mom finally agreed to move in with him, I was furious. I told her I wasn’t moving in with her and I hated him. She wrecked my room and told me if I didn’t like it, I could walk my ungrateful ass to my grandmother’s house, on the other end of town.
I was broken and utterly exhausted, and I remembered a classmate saying cutting was her release, so I tried it. I was in utter panic when I saw the blood drip down my arm, but the panic was also freeing, oddly enough. I had shifted my focus from my exhaustion to this energetic panic, and I didn’t stop. Every time I got into a fight with my mom, or struggled in life, or was angry with my sisters, I cut.
Between seventh grade and eighth grade, mom broke up with her boyfriend and moved in with her parents, and somewhere in there dad broke up with his girlfriend. I thought things were going to get better, since we’d left the guy’s house, but mom seemed to get more upset. She picked at me and my sisters constantly, telling us we needed to lose weight, our clothes were too small, we ate like pigs, our rooms were disgusting. Nothing ever pleased her. My mental health got worse the longer we were there, even though my grandparents for very loving and supportive of us.
The next year, over the summer, I went to live with my aunt in Idaho. She’d just had a baby, her husband worked a lot, and she just wanted a little extra help since it was a difficult pregnancy. At fourteen I flew up to Idaho, by myself, and stayed with her for a few months. It was great. I was calm, never got into a fight, stayed up as late as I wanted to, and generally had a great time running all over the place with her and helping her take care of my cousin.
At the end of the summer, my parents drove to pick me up, together. While I was gone, they’d gotten back together. The stress was intense as they went back to fighting like they used almost instantly, but they wouldn’t break up again. I spent as much time at school as possible, joined a couple clubs, made new friends, and thought I could make it through it.
But, I made a mistake at the end of my freshman year. I got into a relationship with a guy in my grade who I thought I really liked, but over the summer, he got pushy. He wanted to hang out all of the time, and got mad when I couldn’t. When I could, he pressured me into doing things I was uncomfortable with. I would tell him no, he would back off for a little bit, then he’d step it up a notch. “You didn’t take your shirt off so now you have to take your shirt and your bra off.” Eventually, we’d “compromise” and I’d take my shirt off to appease him.
Some may be asking, “But, Pixie, why didn’t you just leave him? Why did you put up with that?” to which I respond; that’s not a simple question to answer. For starters, when we started dating, during the very last week of school, he was very attentative and affectionate, which wasn’t something I was used to. He hung out at my house, got along decently well with my family at first, he wanted me to go to church with him and his family loved me, invited me over for games and dinner and such. I truly felt happy and loved in the beginning.
It wasn’t until about two months in that things changed. When he invited me over for movies and we’d cuddle, his hands would wander to my boobs and ass. The first couple of times, I laughed it off and just moved his hand. The next couple of times, I’d move his hand more forcefully. this made him pout. I don’t mean getting a puppy dog face but letting it go, no this bastard would stop interacting with me all together. I’d ask what was wrong, he’d pout but say “nothing,” until I’d practically beg him to tell me what I did wrong. I was so starved for attention and affection, and he’d already conditioned me into believing we were soulmates, that we were meant to be together forever, that it took him so little energy to bend me to his will.
In case anyone was ever wondering how Romeo and Juliet could be so stupid as to kill themselves for a three day relationship, I was Juliet. No, my relationship wasn’t three days, but I though I was in love with a boy who convinced me he was in love with me, but really just wanted to fuck.
He also found out about my self harming. He would use it against me. He’d condone it in an off handed manner. My mother and I would get into fights, and he’d say something about how she was toxic and he was surprised I hadn’t killed myself yet, and he was so glad all I did was cut myself. Then, he’d tell me he was the only one who really loved me, the only one who cared, even my mom didn’t know I self harmed, so I obviously trusted him more than my own family.
It was so hard to break myself off from him. I really didn’t know how. So as his sexual advances progressed an my self esteem fell thanks to my mom’s constant criticism and and his off handed comments, it didn’t take too much longer for him to stick his hands down my pants and I stopped resisting him.
Three months later, three months of constantly fighting with my mom, losing interest in school, always needing to know where he was, and him needing to know where I was, three months of sneaking away because he wanted to “love” me, while I just laid there numb and exhausted, three months of paranoid thoughts of my parents finding out I wasn’t a virgin and kicking me out of the house, three months of pure anxiety, depression, self-loathing and extremely dangerous behavior, and suddenly everything exploded around me.
The relief I feel now over the situation ending is not one I felt at the time. Now, I understand the situation I was in a mentally and emotionally abusive relationship, and he raped me. Even though I eventually said yes, and he called it sex, and my om flipped out because “how could you be so stupid, you were supposed to wait until after high school?” it was rape. I said “no.” I said it multiple times over and over again. I was too naïve to recognize the red flags, to wrapped up to leave, but I said no, and he pressured me into it until I didn’t know how else to say it.
I can already see some people commenting “You were asking for it. You should have left as soon as he started pushing boundaries. I don’t see how that would be considered rape, you agreed to it,” or, one of my favorites, and I kid you not, someone actually said this to me once, “Don’t be so dramatic. Real rape is violent, where you’d be covered in scratches and bruises and shit. You don’t have to question if it was rape because you can see it all over you’re body. You’re just looking for attention.”
First of all, and I want to emphasize this to everyone who thinks like the last commenter, let me just say, with all sincerity in my little angry body, I hope you are tortured in all hell by all of the unholy legions for every second of eternity. If Satan want to get a hold of me to discuss some of my many ideas, I’m available. Seriously, I have a very dark and twisted mind and could come up with some severely fucked up shit. I’ll never act on them, somehow I’m too stable for that.
Anyways, so how did this traumatic relationship end? My mom has no sense of boundaries, and decided to read through my phone while I was in the shower. I eventually want to unwrap that bomb, but it would take me on another rant that I’m not ready for. Mom read through some texts between me and my ex discussing our previous weekend endeavors. I was trying to reason with him about not seeing each other the next weekend. I thought a weekend break would be relaxing for a change.
When I got out of the shower, my mom was in my room and she was raging pissed off. She screamed at me for being so stupid by having sex, being closed off by not telling her I was self harming and generally just yelling, and I was still in a towel. She then investigated my entire body for cuts. At the time, I thought I was really clever. Everyone I knew who had cut their wrists before all had to hide behind long sleeves, and I didn’t want to do that. So, instead, I cut my hip along the waist band where my underwear sat. It hurt every day because there was something always rubbing against the cuts. Because they hurt so bad as they were, I didn’t cut very deep, rational me was worried about infections. So, I didn’t carry any big scars on my body. My mom’s reaction when I told her where and she looked was a very snide, “You can’t even tell.” Well, I’m sorry I’m not even good enough at self harming for you!
I went to therapy for about two months, where my therapist suggested I have mild OCD stemming from childhood trauma, trust issues because my mom gave me no privacy, and an inability to set healthy boundaries, because my family didn’t respect boundaries. Mom made me stop going because she didn’t agree with the therapist. She hid it behind wanting to reschedule for another week because of medical reasons, but refused to reschedule when I asked.
High school never really got any easier. I bounced between friend groups, got stabbed in the back a few too many times and hated being home more and more because I never stop cutting. I was officially a long sleeved fanatic. I spent my time in clubs, which got me to nationals once in FFA, studying, which got me a 3.9 GPA and a 31 ACT score, and hiding out in my room, which labeled me as an antisocial nerd.
At the end of my junior year of high school, I found myself in a relationship with a sweet, soft-spoken boy in my class. It started with me complaining to a guy in class, who was also in FFA, that my team didn’t have enough people to qualify for state. the guy immediately called his mom and asked if it was okay if he stayed after school, then proceeded to join my team. We became fast friends, and a few weeks later, he asked me to prom, as friends. We kept hanging out until we just decided we were dating.
I graduated high school, got a full-ride scholarship to the University of Wyoming, where I planned to study pre-veterinary medicine. My boyfriend followed and I really looked forward to the future. Classes were hard, which I wasn’t fully prepared for and kinda struggled with, but I got through it.
Second semester, I got pretty sick. I had to have surgery, which took several months to heal from and made it so hard to go to classes. I almost failed out, but managed to scrape myself together to barely pass. My sophomore year, I felt myself falling into a depression again. I couldn’t find the energy to go to classes, all I could think was what was the point of trying if I knew I was going to fail. Somehow, I finished my second year, but I was still so tired and financially struggling really badly, so I decided to take a year off to get myself stable again. Shortly after, my boyfriend and I decided to move in together with a friend of ours, and we were happy for a while.
I hated my job though. I was a cashier at a fairly common grocery store, and my manager was a whole other level of bitch. When she wasn’t at work, we were calm, happy, and did our jobs well without worry. Even the unruly customers seemed easier to handle when she was gone. On days that she worked, though, it was like waiting for a bomb to explode. She had a short fuse, and would go off fairly quickly about the silliest of things. I had her yell at me once about a pack of gum out of place when I had a line of four people to check out. Yeah, she was good at her job, good at getting things done right, but she always seemed pissed off about something.
I dealt with a lot of shit before I finally decided to quit. Early on in my employment, Management and Super Management, as I like to call them, expressed their surprise and appreciation for my work ethic. Management, before I knew she was a bitch, was super nice and helpful and wanted to train me to work the customer service desk. The job wouldn’t necessarily come with a raise, but there was the possibility for one if I did well at it. I already preferred standing behind the counter to help people, and I was already in the process of learning more about the desk, so I thought it would be a great idea.
So, I spent a month working my ass off to show Management that I was capable of going above and beyond their expectations not only as a cashier but also as a representative of the company. If something needed cleaning, I cleaned it. If a customer needed talking to, I stepped up to deal with it. If another employee was struggling with something, I was the first to help. I felt more comfortable in that month at that job than I did through all of my school years. I excelled at it. And the time for the promotion was getting closer and closer as everyone waited for the co-manager to move. I liked her, but I really wanted that job.
Then, they hired outside of the team. Several of us had been working in the hopes of getting that job, some from other departments, but I really thought I had a shot. To hire two outside people for the job, not one, but two, slapped us all in the face and you could feel the moral leaching out of each of us.
The final straw, however, wouldn’t come for another five months. I gritted my teeth, and paid my dues, dealt with assholes and bullies, and tried my best to make it through those months, but the time was coming to find a new job anyways, I just wasn’t ready to commit to it yet.
Then, school started back up for everyone that wasn’t me. I already told Management I wasn’t going back to school, so I encouraged them to work me as many hours as they could, since I needed the money and I knew they were going to need the help. School starting caused some chaos in the company. Too many people turned in their new availability sheets at the same time, which caused some of them to get lost. When this happened, people were getting scheduled for hours they couldn’t work. Our schedules only came out a week at a time on Fridays, so we couldn’t fix a weekend or Monday scheduling conflict in time most weeks.
The first problem they came up with that they realized they couldn’t fix right away was with one of the cart attendants. They scheduled him on a Monday morning, even though he was a high school kid. They scrambled around, tried to find any other cart attendant to cover his shift, but they just couldn’t seem to find anyone. They even asked some of the morning cashiers to help out, but they couldn’t do it either.
On Sunday afternoon, I arrived at two-thirty to work the closing shift, which I did frequently. It was calmer, and I dealt with Manager less than most other days. I barely had my purse stowed away when Management and Super Management found me and asked me to cover a shift. I didn’t normally work Mondays, I liked them off to do my own shopping and house cleaning, defying the whole “Mondays are the worst” issue, but when they asked me to cover my coworkers shift, of course I said yes. They failed to mention that his shift started at five in the morning, and I got off at eleven.
When I found out, I was a little annoyed, but then I realized that was automatic overtime. At that company, any time you worked sooner than ten hours after you ended your last shift, it was overtime. Four hours minimum of that shift were supposed to be counted as overtime, not to mention the fact that agree to cover the shift put me over my forty hours, so I should have received another couple of hours of overtime.
I didn’t. I didn’t know it for another few weeks, but I didn’t get paid anything extra. The weather was freezing cold, the wind blew in sideways, I had poor quality shoes because I was only allowed to wear black, and they gave me the worst coat in history to shield me from the elements. I was bitter, I was cold, and I spent all day telling myself I was pushing it for the pay check.
When I didn’t get overtime, I applied to a new job immediately. Boyfriend said his employer was hiring, so I applied, scheduled an interview the very next day, and was offered the job the following Monday. I put in my two weeks notice, and that’s when the assholes finally offered me everything they’d been holding back. They offered slightly high wages, but their competitor offered more. They wanted to train at the service desk, but I didn’t want it any more. The competitor also offered benefits, sick days, paid time off, and a more set schedule. I told Management to fuck off.
The second job was okay, but I hated the premise of it before I even started. I shopped for other people, essentially. It was tedious and boring, I wasn’t allowed to interact with customers in the store, and again, management sucked. My manager was a shallow ditz of a woman who spent more time catering to her favorite employees than she did to her actual job. When you weren’t her favorite, you had to do the grunt work of lifting and labeling and sorting while they got to sit around and watch. It was ridiculous. I also hated it because boyfriend and I had such varying schedules, I almost never saw him.
I know I’ve said it before, but I really felt I was at an all time low. I was so miserable, so tired, so stressed out, and I had no idea how to get out of it. I was still cutting like crazy, and decided to finally talk to my doctor about getting help. I already had an appointment to discuss my birth control, so I thought I would bring it up.
She made me take two paper tests before determining I had depression and anxiety and she finished by prescribing me with three different medications; two for sleep issue I had, and one as a double whammy for the depression and anxiety.
I only got worse. On the meds, I felt like a zombie. I couldn’t function, couldn’t think, made mistakes, couldn’t fix them, but when I was off the meds, I was dead to the world. I had so little energy, I couldn’t imagine even eating some days. This put a serious strain on mine and boyfriends relationship. He had to do more to support us, which I felt so guilty for, and then only dipped lower.
I went to see a therapist after a while on the medication, because obviously something was still wrong with me. I sat in her chair for one hour a week venting about my life and problems and feelings, waiting for her to help me or make suggestions that would turn my life around. The only time she made a suggestion was when she quietly suggested I may have Borderline Personality Disorder. Que the panicked research, hoping if it wasn’t the root of the problem, it would lead to it, and discussing it with my parents.
They freaked out. BPD was a really big deal for them. They fought it, refused to acknowledge the possibility that I had the symptoms, and yelled at me when I contradicted them. I couldn’t be one hundred percent certain I had it, but a lot of the symptoms seemed to fit, even if they ignored it. It may have not been the problem, but it was something to cling to while I tried to get on track.
Corona Virus became a pandemic over that time, and my job got so much harder. That, mixed with the increasing depression, and there were days I didn’t go to work. My relationship suffered more, and the few friends I had noticed.
We were a whole group, like a little family. We lived in separate towns, and one in a whole different state, but we still felt like family to me. The friend that lived in Colorado decided to stay a week with the friend that lived in Laramie so we could all hang out together before Laramie friend’s classes started up at the end of August. Boyfriend worked some days, so it was just the girls running a muck some times. All together, we went shopping, went to Casper to visit our other friend, went drinking, and I had an awful time.
Over that one week, I realized Boyfriend couldn’t give less of a fuck about me, but he was head over heels for Colorado. He doted on her, gave her attention, played games with her that I realized he hadn’t played with me in a long ass time. I saw him falling for one of my best friends right in front of my eyes.
I brushed it off, of course. He loved me, we were planning to get married someday and just needed to get through this rough patch that was all my fault. I even voiced my concerns to our friends, including Colorado, and they all said it was just in my head. He loved me, and none of them would ever do anything to break us up.
He broke up with me the Tuesday after Colorado went home. I can’t remember what we were fighting about, but at some point he just kept saying, “I’m done, I can’t do this anymore” and I didn’t understand what he meant so made him say. We were done. I cried for days, slept on other people couches for a while, and begged him to reconsider. He was my whole life, the entire reason I was still fighting to live, and I couldn’t imagine not having him by my side as I worked through my problems.
It was no use. I learned he started a relationship with Colorado shortly after the breakup. Then, in quick and quiet succession, each of our friend stopped talking to me all together. I still talked to Colorado, Laramie, and Casper daily. They were my support and lifelines as I tried to right myself after such a blow, but as soon as Colorado and Ex started dating, Casper blocked me. Laramie would pretend we were still okay when we came face to face, but she stopped responding to my messages.
The one thing that his breaking up with me did was force me to reevaluate my life. I got a new job at pet store that I absolutely loved, and decided to get my ankle looked at since it had been giving me problems for a long time. I got scheduled for surgery, my new employers were more than supportive in trying to help me afterward, and even though I was still so sad, I was looking up again.
I need to stop looking up. That’s when things sweep my legs out from under me. My employers had a fridge stocked with food and drinks for us that they said we were free to take from. I was headed to a Halloween party, and knew I wasn’t going to be drinking, so I thought I’d swipe a soda to sip on to make sure of it. I really didn’t think anything of it. I drank so many sodas while I was at work, what was one more off the clock.
The next week, I worked one whole day, which was a really good day, and was just about to clock out, when my boss called me into her office and chewed me out for stealing the soda before promptly firing me. I was devastated. I loved that job, I excelled at the job, but I lost it over a freaking soda.
I hit a breaking point. I was so tired of fighting for the life that I had when all it seemed to want to do was knock me down, I actually started planning my suicide. I’d already called my mom to tell her I’d lost my job, and she suggested I come home. I agreed, started packing all of my things, and realized that it would be the best time to do it. Everything would be packed up, my family wouldn’t have to worry about cleaning out my apartment, they’d just have to haul it home. I sat on my bed for what honestly felt like forever really contemplating if this was something I wanted to do. I knew how, just down all the pills I had, and I had a lot.
My sister, who had moved to Laramie the year after me to attend the university, made one of her surprise visits. She had a habit of barging into the apartment uninvited because the door was never locked and I didn’t answer to knocks unless I was expecting someone. She had some more boxes, and we packed some more things up, and we just talked like sisters do, and I had the thought, “I can’t do this to her, or my littlest sister. It would shatter them if I killed myself, and even dead, I would never forgive myself if I put them through that.”
My sister doesn’t know that I almost died that night. If she reads this, which I doubt she will, but if she does, I love you, sissy. I love you and our littlest sister so much, and it’s because of you two I’m still here.
So, I moved home to live with my parents and my youngest sister. Truth be told, it’s the most stressful decision I ever made, but to continue living, I have to. My mom, after years of telling me nothing was wrong, finally told me to get an evaluation done by the psychiatrist in town. A two-hour appointment of me spilling my guts to this woman while I took several paper tests for a multitude of disorders ended with her declaring that I was a) a delightful human being, b) a marvel for even being alive, and c) bipolar.
Compliments, while always appreciated, seem to make me really uncomfortable, so I rocked back and forth between confused and uncomfortable. I never even imagined I was bipolar. I’d only learned we had a family history for it a few months earlier when my mom suggested I go to a psychiatrist. I struggled with the diagnosis but took the meds prescribed anyways.
I also decided to go back to college. That has so far been the toughest challenge yet. My brain alternates between really wanting to do well, and not giving a single fuck. I try to study, try to succeed, but something seems to hold me back from doing that.
Through the college, I can get therapy for free, and though I’ve only been to see her a few times, but she’s already a major help. She gives me goals and holds me accountable for them, but doesn’t make a big deal out of it if I don’t succeed. She just goes through the issues of why I didn’t or couldn’t do it and we try to come up with better solutions.
I also have a job. It’s a good job at the college library where I can study while at work, and my bosses are super cool.
My wish for the future, and for this blog, is to have fun, learn more about myself, and maybe teach someone something they didn’t know before. If all my blog does is help one person to stop and reevaluate their lives before its too late, then I’ve done something incredible with my life. Hopefully, though, I can be an advocate for mental health, and push others to get the help they need.
Thank you so much for sticking around this long. Come back to see what happens next, because even I don’t know.
Bye!
“The bravest thing I ever did was continuing my life when I wanted to die.”
― Juliette Lewis
Diary of a Bipolar Pixie 