Thankful To Be Alive

It's the big turkey day, and while I've never done this in the past this year I want to tell everyone what I'm thankful for. Usually I never play along with this game because I feel it's such common practice that people spew something out. They don't really mean what they say, instead it's more of an expected response.

However, I have no doubt there are those that mean what they say around the dinner table. People whom are actually thankful on this holiday, even if they are going to go knock down a grandma later for a cheap TV. (I know, bad joke.)

Without farther delay here is what I'm thankful for. . .

I'm thankful to be alive.

No, not in the sense that I love life. Honestly, sometimes I really hate life. In fact most of the time I hate life, my memories don't make it easy at all. What I mean is I'm actually thankful to be breathing air right now instead of being worm food.

There were times in my past—dark times. . . Moments when I believed things couldn't possibly fall any farther down, and then they did. It was those periods I thought about ending my suffering. Yes, I have planned my own death. I have been suicidal.

No, no-one knew. My husband knows now because I told him, and I believe it shocked and horrified him. I'm sure if any of my family or friends from that time are following this blog, they will also be shocked. See, I wasn't what everyone thinks a suicidal person should be. I didn't acted depressed, in fact I didn't believe in depression at the time.

My mother would dismiss depression and other mental illness as teenagers wanting attention. As losers who were not strong enough to deal with life, and I refused to be that. Little did I know I was depressed, and even if you have it in your mind that depression is not a real thing. It can still take you over. I was so far in it's grasp no one, not even me, saw it. Behind my bright smile, my jokes, and the playful banter among friends I was suffering. My soul was crumbling piece by piece. Any subtle movement—any light tremor of negative emotion sent another bit tumbling down into dust.

No one knew that on my drives to and from college in Harrisburg I often wanted to drive off the bridge, and disappear into the Susquehanna river. It's waters always looked inviting, tranquil and peaceful. Those chilly winter waters, and glimmering early spring waves promised such peace. The end to all the pain I felt but never understood. I wanted that peace. It was never about death for me, I didn't want to die. In fact dying scares me. It was about being so overwhelmed—so plagued by emotions. . . anguish, rage, shame, guilt. . . that you simply want it to stop.

You feel mental—a basket-case—completely crazy and you want it to end. You want a break. A moment where nothing feels like it's consuming you. You want out. That's what I wanted.

I never did drive my car into the river, as tempting as it was. Especially when they were doing construction on the bridge and portions were missing. Driving pass I could look down and see the welcoming waters, but I never gave in. I did nearly let myself drift off a different bridge but I jerked back at the last second. In order to overcome my suicidal thoughts I talked myself into continuing life by making my emotional suffering justified. Noble, even. I told myself that I was suffering so those around me—those I loved—wouldn't have to. I took their abuse with pride at that point in my life, but it didn't last.

Again the suicidal thoughts came when my brother and sister betrayed me (I don't feel like talking about it now, but just know they said nasty things about me to their policeman father that nearly ended my life).

When that happened it took away my reason for living through the suffering. The people I was protecting had stabbed me in the back. There was nothing left for me, so I planned my death yet again. I researched pills I could take. Poisons I had access to so I could end my life. I didn't want to live, my family had turned against me. The people I loved. . . the people I sacrificed for. . . suffered for. . . defended, shielded. . . They wanted to destroy me. They took away my messed up rational for living, so I wanted to end the suffering. After all, what was the point to it now?

My husband pulled me back from the edge. He didn't know it at the time, but if it wasn't for him I wouldn't be here. I saw the hurt in his eyes at the prospect of losing me, and I wouldn't be able to handle hurting him like that. I went on for him, and I won't lie. There have been times in therapy where the emotional pain becomes too much. My husband has found me in the bathroom late at night with my arm scratched to hell (yes, I used to harm myself. It's been a year since I last did anything). Or walked into the bedroom and found me with a knife ready to plunge it into my throat.

Each time I find a little bit more courage to continue on. . . A little more will to keep fighting. Doesn't mean I'll never face this demon again, I'm sure I will but I'm better prepared for it.

So this Thanksgiving, while the holidays sadden me, I'm thankful to be living.

I'm thankful for my scars to show I was stronger than my pain.

#Thankful #ToBeAlive

~Jax~

Cold Holiday

Told ya I would only use this blog when I needed it, and right now I need it. I thought yesterday was simply due to stress, I started feeling frantic. . . overwhelmed, but really it was the holiday depression settling in for a nice long haul.

I don't do well around the holidays, last year was the worst. It was the first year after I told my mom to take a long walk off a short pier. Not that the holidays were any better when she was around, but family. . . ya know?

Growing up in California there was always family around, everything was a big event. I miss that, and even when we moved to Pennsylvanian my stepdad's family was the same way. Everyone came together contained within a single house, and it was beautiful chaos. Kids ran around and played, the guys sat on the couch and watched football, and the women gossiped in the kitchen. The house was full of life, warm and inviting. Also, when other people were around I felt free. Dani (my mom) never yelled at me or said nasty things to me when other people were around. I knew to behave, but it was nice not being the center of negative attention. For a few hours, with my cousins, I was free—I was a kid. A normal kid.

I miss the chaos—I miss the endless roars of men cheering for their teams, and the laughter. The silly fights over favorite toys, and clanging of wine glasses from the kitchen. The pointless topics of conversation, speculation for the coming year, and plans for the next big family event. I miss it all, even if it was only a few moments in time where Dani and CJ wore a mask as a happy family. These were moments when I felt as if I was getting everything I ever wanted.

At the tender age of about 5-6 what do you think a kid wishes for more than anything?

A new bike, the latest toy on the market, cake?

(Okay, to be fair I think we all wish for cake no matter our age... I mean, it's cake!)

There was one very detailed thing I wanted. . . A simple child lost in an abusive world they didn't understand. I wanted a family, a real family. A mom, dad, maybe a brother, and some kind of family pet. In my dreams the mother was loving and did everything they could for their children. The mother was a person you could talk to about anything, a confidant to share girly secrets, and help through those hard times in life. The father, a tough but loving man. Someone who protected and cherished their family. A man that offered guidance and taught courage.

Yes, at 5 years old that's what I thought about. Those were the things I wanted and secretly asked Santa for every year. I even prayed, nightly, for god to grant me those things but it never happened. Instead I was delivered into a nightmare where my mother consistently competed with me for some reason, and when she didn't feel she was winning. . . Well, then I was given a disadvantage. Usually in the form of verbal abuse. I lost count how many times I was called lazy, worthless, and told the stories about how she sacrificed for me so I should be grateful for the scraps I got. All the while her loving husband, friends' children, and later boyfriends, sexually abused me.

I lived through nightmares holding onto a dream, and waiting for the next family dinner—my break from awful reality.

That's what I miss every holiday season, not my mother, brother, or piece of shit sister. I miss the warmth of people all around me. The security they brought, and the relief I felt on those special days. Now, for me, the holidays all feel cold. Lost to winter's embrace, because now the torment of my once living nightmares are locked away inside my mind. There is no way to escape them, and the holidays seem to intensify their hold on me. Dani's conditioning of how she thought I should act effects me still. I feel like an ungrateful daughter—an awful daughter for cutting her out of my life, but then what was I suppose to do? Continue to let her abuse me? Allow her to break me down, and prove time and again that I was nothing unless she had no one else to turn to?

I know I did the right thing cutting Dani out of my life. I'm mentally healthier for it, but like someone brainwashed by a cult her control still lingers. It makes me hurt and long for an actual mother. . . a real family. When I think about that it drives the pain deeper because I realize how fucked up my childhood was.

I just want warmth in the cold, a home to fall back on—I want connections to people—to my blood I never had before, and Dani denies me that. Her cruelty knows no bounds.

#Holidays #Family #LoveThem

~Jax~

Outsider

Funny thing about memories, they come whenever they damn well please. I've had ice cream trigger an awful event from my past, try explaining to a bunch of parents and kids why you're breaking down in the middle of an ice cream shop. One time my husband and I were looking for a tack strip at a hardware store, and when I found them I had a panic-attack. Random.

Like today, while I'm doing better than yesterday it's still a struggle. Fresh off a depressive mood each step-forward is a shaky one, and memories wait for me at every turn. Growing up I was always the outsider, not by choice and I didn't isolate myself. (I did later in life around the teens, but I had my reasons).

Before then it was a gradual thing. See, after Dani, my mom, had my younger brother and sister, and married their father, my stepdad. Things started to change. For starters, I was the only one with a different last name. You wouldn't think that would make a difference, and at first it didn't. We lived in California around other family that shared my last name. I had my aunts and cousins. No big deal.

But when we moved to Pennsylvania and we were surrounded by strangers that were meant to be family(stepdad's family)—strangers that shared my family's last name but not mine—I started to feel like an orphan. An extra wheel that was tagging along. I despised my last name and how it made me stick out among the people I called family. I was treated different, not by my extended family(my stepdad's family are wonderful, cheers to my Aunt J & Uncle C). No, it was my mother, her husband and their two kids that treated me. . . different.

Everything I did pissed off CJ, my stepfather, and that would cause him to yell at Dani. Who then would turn on me. Try being a 4^th grader in a new school, a new town, and every little thing you do is wrong. Not just wrong, but apocalyptic wrong. Destruction of life wrong. Live like that for a few years and you start to get jumpy. I second guessed everything I did, and resorted to locking myself away in my room. They couldn't blame me for something if they didn't see me.

When the two of them divorced, and Dani became a single mom I thought for sure things would change. . . They did. Somehow I became even more of an outsider. Believe it or not things got a lot worse.

As I look back I see all these small events, big blow ups, and all the stuff in between. The bigger picture is laid out before me, and what I see breaks my heart. This is what I was reflecting on in the shower this afternoon. I played through the times I was left out of the family—when I was cast aside, and I realized that there is more of those moments then I care to ever admit, but there is one that stands out today.

A single moment that has me feeling sorry for the little girl I was. It brings tears to my eyes even now, and I can feel the slow crack of heartbreak forming inside my chest.

After Dani kicked CJ out she kept my brother and sister close to her. They slept every night in her bed, falling asleep as they watched TV. This continued well into their late teens. Hell, my brother is now about 26 and I wouldn't be surprised if he still sleeps in her bed. (no, he does not have a mental handicap. He's your standard twenty something guy. Messed up, right?)

Most nights I tried to join them, but Dani would always send me packing, using the statement, “there's no room for you.” So I would slink back to my room holding back tears. Crawl under the cold empty covers and snuggle with whatever I could. There I would fall asleep, alone in the dark. Listening to them laugh and talk about the characters on TV.

At one point I started waiting till they fell asleep. Then, with pillow and blanket in hand, I would make myself a little bed beside my mom's on the floor. I would snuggle close against the base of the waterbed just under the edge so I could be as close as possible. The oldest child reduced to sleeping on the floor to get some recognition they belonged. How sad is that? My heart quivers and bleeds for any child that needs to live through that—a child that is forced to feel those type of emotions.

Sleeping on the floor didn't last long, Dani would wake up every morning and yell at me. So I stopped sneaking into her room to be apart of a family that didn't want me. Instead I isolated myself. I learned to become my own best friend and family. I lived alone in a full house, and cried myself to sleep often.

Today, as I sit here writing this, I ask the same maddening question I always do. Why?

Why was I forced to live like that?

I'll never get an answer, I know that but I still can't help but asking. . . Why?

#HugYourChild

~Jax~  

Struggle

I hate myself. My looks, my body, my attitude... everything. I feel like a worthless piece of shit, talent-less. Pathetic. Unfortunately, this is an all to familiar thing for me. While these painful days of feeling like complete shit are less now, I used to feel this way all the time. Daily, even. You know how people talk about low self-esteem or self-worth, mine aren't low. They are non-existent. I've been broken down to nothing, and even though I have a supportive husband that tries his hardest to counter-act these negative self-thoughts. On days like these I still stall. No work gets done, I'm tired beyond belief, and all I want to do is hide from everyone and everything.

It's awful, and I don't wish it on anyone. It's difficult when your mind is your own worst enemy, but this isn't something that I was born with. I didn't pop out of my mom having these thoughts, and they didn't get this powerful all on their own. See, my childhood—my life, has been. . . Well, there are no words for it, and a writers gift of exaggeration couldn't create a backstory anymore horrifying than mine.

A lot of people have an awful past and they don't struggle like I do. In fact, I'm sure no two people struggle with a situation exactly the same. Everything is individualized, even our pain. But what makes mine different. . . What makes it so much more nightmarish is the person who wore me down. The woman who took an innocent child and reduced them to this. A shell of a human-being wallowing in self-pity and hatred for themselves. A personal everyone else loves and adores, and complements but only gets an awkward sensation that they are a fraud. A joke to the mass public, and that no matter what they do they will always be less than another human being.

My mother this to me. The woman who gave me life took it away and left me living in hell.

God, the number of times I've started a blog to help me vent these things is countless. I've even tried to write a book about my past, but organizing a life of mental, emotional, and physical abuse is difficult. Scratch that. It's near impossible.

So here I am, starting yet another blog to help me down a healing path—creating an outlet for all my hurt, and honestly this is the farthest I've ever gotten. Usually I chicken out before my first post, but not this time. While I might have days where I feel like a single cell organism crawling around in scum, there is a growing part of me that wants to do away with these days. To free myself of such awful thoughts, and that's what this blog is for. Yes, it's to vent and I will probably only post when I need it—when my thoughts and memories overtake me, and that's okay.

This is my chance to put a story out into the world that is raw, dented, and broken just like me. It'll come organically as my nightmares and thoughts do. Some topics maybe hard to read, but you don't have to read them. In fact, I won't care if a single person ever sees this because this isn't for anyone else but me.

This blog is my voice and my stand against the abuse I suffered. It's my sounding board, and I'm not doing it for recognition or sympathy. I'm doing it because I matter—I matter to myself enough to speak out about the things that happened to me, and my voice won't be silenced anymore. Not by my mother, not social expectations, or by my own fear. This is me, being me, and dealing with all the messed up shit that happened in my thirty-some years of life.

#IMatter

~Jax~