I've suffered from severe depression since as long as I can remember really. It was a natural part of growing, thinking I wasn't good enough, that I would never be. "A 'B' is never the best you can do" was my dad's phrase of choice and I had a feeling I could never be as good as my siblings, so I didn't fight it.
It wasn't until my parents got divorced when I was seventeen that I began to question things. I felt like my life ended, like I didn't have a family anymore. It turns out that their divorce was probably the best thing that's ever happened to me. I stopped viewing my dad as this perfect image of success and affluence and admitted to myself the person he really was, an abusive, narcissistic drunk and adulterer who may not even be capable of love.
There are things I wish he'd never told me. My mother used to say I was 'god's gift' because I was conceived with out fertility medication, and when I told my dad that he quickly told me that I was the product of strawberry daiquiris and labor day.
There are things in my life that I'm just never going to be able to forget, or 'get over', a bit of sexual abuse, a lot of bullying, and years of backwards and self-deprecating thinking, but it is because of all of those things that I reached enough bottom to try and get help.
The hardest thing now is finding the right person to talk to. I live in a relatively small town and my father was and is a prominent member of the medical community, which makes it increasingly hard to find someone I can trust who doesn't know who I am or where I come from.
To add to my already low spirits, I started having nightmares a few weeks ago. Every night I wake up in a panic, crying and shivering in fear. Each night ends in a different horror, like a movie I can't turn off. I haven't suffered from nightmares since I was in middle school. Then, I slept in a helmet and running shoes with a knife tucking in my bunk bed, and eventually the dreams went away. I don't know how to stop them now.
I'm not sure what I'm hoping to hear, maybe that I'm not alone.
Mostly I'm just sad and scared and sad a few more times. Sound familiar?
It wasn't until my parents got divorced when I was seventeen that I began to question things. I felt like my life ended, like I didn't have a family anymore. It turns out that their divorce was probably the best thing that's ever happened to me. I stopped viewing my dad as this perfect image of success and affluence and admitted to myself the person he really was, an abusive, narcissistic drunk and adulterer who may not even be capable of love.
There are things I wish he'd never told me. My mother used to say I was 'god's gift' because I was conceived with out fertility medication, and when I told my dad that he quickly told me that I was the product of strawberry daiquiris and labor day.
There are things in my life that I'm just never going to be able to forget, or 'get over', a bit of sexual abuse, a lot of bullying, and years of backwards and self-deprecating thinking, but it is because of all of those things that I reached enough bottom to try and get help.
The hardest thing now is finding the right person to talk to. I live in a relatively small town and my father was and is a prominent member of the medical community, which makes it increasingly hard to find someone I can trust who doesn't know who I am or where I come from.
To add to my already low spirits, I started having nightmares a few weeks ago. Every night I wake up in a panic, crying and shivering in fear. Each night ends in a different horror, like a movie I can't turn off. I haven't suffered from nightmares since I was in middle school. Then, I slept in a helmet and running shoes with a knife tucking in my bunk bed, and eventually the dreams went away. I don't know how to stop them now.
I'm not sure what I'm hoping to hear, maybe that I'm not alone.
Mostly I'm just sad and scared and sad a few more times. Sound familiar?