Broken

This is the aftermath of my Dad completing suicide. The few months following July 1st 1997 are just a blur in some ways. Six weeks after his death, I was supposed to start my sophomore year of high school…how?! My freshman year I was on the cheerleading squad and I loved every minute of it. I think I naively tried to pick up the pieces of my shattered life as if nothing really happened. Tryouts for the new cheer squad were within a couple of weeks of my Dad’s funeral. I wanted to get back to enjoying school so I signed up for tryouts. I remember being in the clinics leading up to tryouts though. I was thinking “this sh*t is so small, I can’t believe this girl is freaking out about tryouts.” Everything had lost its meaning and nothing was what it was once before. I dropped out of the tryouts 2 days into the clinic. I. Just. Couldn’t. Little did I know that this was a precursor to years of no longer being able to finish things that I started. A symptom of the trauma no doubt.

My mom now had to support the family on her own. We could no longer afford the childhood home I grew up in. We had to sell and move out of the house I spent hours playing in from the time I was 8 years old. Thankfully, my parents owned a second rental home that we were able to move into shortly after selling our home. It was paid for, and I’m sure now as an adult, that was the deciding factor for my mom when choosing where to start over. Shortly after we moved in, my sophomore year of high school started. I barely remember those days. I do remember that princess Diana passed away and as a way to keep up with cultural events in my homeroom class, we watched the funeral proceedings during class. Talk about a trigger, seeing her sons walking alongside the casket, a feeling I was no stranger to just weeks prior. I remember sitting in the classroom, and crying and not really understanding why. As much as I was grieving, I was also completely numb to my existence in this World and everyone else’s around me. But, I was also trying to navigate high school, where kids are cruel and we worry so much about appearances. It was very difficult to go through that. I had my friends who knew what had happened, but they didn’t know how to help.

I made it almost until the end of the first semester, before I sunk into the deepest depression. I was so weighed down by a massive pile of grief that I could not begin to sift through, and I stopped going to school. I just stopped. Previously, I loved school, and couldn’t get enough of fun times with my friends. I originally had dreams of going to med school when I graduated from high school. After he died, I just reached a point where I couldn’t put one foot in front of the other, and I couldn’t even go to school.  It took a few days of not going before my Mom realized I was in trouble. She was working nights still at the hospital, and would come home in the mornings past the time that I was supposed to be at school to find me sleeping in my bed. I don’t know how else to explain what I was feeling, other than I was feeling nothing and everything all at the same time. One moment, I was weighed down by grief, and the other, I felt nothing and wanted contact with no one. The night of my Dad’s suicide was the start of my dislike for hugs or human contact. I think, in retrospect, I couldn’t handle the vulnerability of being close to a human, that would only leave me if I got attached. To say that the abandonment issues were in tow, would be an understatement.

A few days went by of not going to school. My mom saw that I was struggling and got me into counseling as fast as she could. I didn’t want to talk about what I was feeling, I didn’t know what I was feeling in the first place. Let alone, wanting to discuss my feelings. My mom, bless her heart, knew how much I loved school, and how out of character this was for me. She arranged a meeting with my principal and all of my teachers. I went to that meeting, my teachers were aware of what had happened in my life recently, and I was just so broken, I could barely communicate. I look back on that time and I can remember being so desperately sad….just sad and broken inside. We all met and my mom and teachers all tried to come up with a plan to help me pass the first semester. At one point, my English teacher made me promise that I would show up after school one day to work on missing assignments. I promised her I would be there, and I never showed. I couldn’t. I had no fight left in me to duke this one out. So much trauma and grief that I was carrying, it nearly consumed me.

I worked a lot during that time, now I realize I was trying to numb myself. I tried to stay in contact with my friends, Sarah and Jennifer, but even they became a distant part of my past. I no longer could connect on a personal level with any living being. Even my family dog, I’m embarrassed to admit, was neglected at that time. I even dropped out of the counseling my Mom had arranged. Didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to think about it. Just worked lots and lots of hours for the next 6 weeks or so. Then came Alex. Right from the start I knew he was bad news. He had a girlfriend at the time, and I knew it. But I didn’t care, I’m also ashamed to admit. I had no regard for anyone’s feelings, including my own. I just didn’t care about anything or anyone at that time. We started seeing each other behind Audry’s back. Eventually, Audry became privy to what was going on, and Alex and Audry were no longer a couple. Shortly after, my Mom moved out to be closer to a support system for her, so Alex moved in with me when he got kicked out of his house. I was 17 by then, living with a boyfriend on my own, and he had no regard for me whatsoever. That was okay at the time though, I had no regard for myself either. He was abusive, emotionally, sometimes physically too.

He was kind of friends with this other guy, John. John was different from Alex and the two were swiftly growing apart as childhood friends because of that difference. John was a sweet, gentle natured person. We became friends when I started working at Burger King. I was 15 when I got my first job at Burger King. So, John and I became good friends, and he would talk to me sometimes about not allowing Alex to be with me, but I was what I believe now to be trauma bonded to Alex. Looking back, I didn’t love him, he definitely didn’t love me…not in a healthy way that meant something worth holding onto. Finally about a year into the relationship, I had enough and kicked Alex out of my home and out of my life for good. Things were so unhealthy between us and I had finally had the realization. By the grace of God, I knew this just wasn’t healthy for me. John and I still worked together, Alex quit working at Burger King and moved out of state to I don’t know where. John was really good for me. He taught me what love looked like, he taught me to love myself in the process. We dated for 3 almost 4 years before we called it quits, but I still look back on that time fondly. We had a great friendship before anything got serious between us, things fell together naturally, but our relationship ended on not so amicable terms. More on that another time. At the time, John was like coming up for a breath of fresh air when I had previously been drowning. That’s the best way I can describe that relationship. I mention this relationship because I believe it was pivotal at this point in my life. I had been devastatingly sad for so long, and I allowed John to swoop in and save me. In hindsight, not a good thing to allow someone to save me. But our relationship was just what I needed at that time. 

As I mentioned, things did not end on amicable terms. Mostly, it was my doing and for years, I hung onto a tremendous amount of guilt. I did not behave in a way that I am proud of and I did that to someone who gave so much to me in a time when I needed that most. I was in my early 20’s when we parted ways. I hung onto that guilt for years. Not because I wanted to be back with John, there were reasons we didn’t work out for sure, and I had met my husband shortly after that and never looked back. Like I said before, I just didn’t behave towards John in a way that made me proud to be me, and for that I carried immense guilt. About a year into the relationship with John, I really started to heal. Love has a way of doing that for people. While love was healing to me, I also was in and out of therapy. I would start to confront my Dad’s suicide, and then drop out of therapy. I just wasn’t ready. No healing really took place beyond just picking myself back up again. Which is no small feat, and I have to give myself immense credit for this. So I guess I’ll say I started to heal but mostly, it was putting myself back together again so I could function and be a life-participating human again.  I became somewhat healed enough to connect with humans on a basic level, and John loved me through that.

I had other friends and family who helped also. Sarah and Jennifer still made attempts to connect with me. I spent time with them from time to time. Amy was my best friend since 3rd grade and I spent a lot of time with her around that time in my life. She was raised in a God fearing household and something inside me knew I needed a touch from God. I was so angry with God at the time though. Amy helped me to not be so angry with God. I saw how she loved the Lord with all of her heart, and she taught me who Jesus really was. Through the years of my relationship with John, I slowly was able to put some pieces back together. I got my GED, and I went to EMT school. I finished at the top of my class, and got a job working for an Emergency Room in Parker, Arizona. Things were going great, until they weren’t. One day, I had a patient come into the ER who ended up succumbing to their injuries. It was the first time I had seen a deceased individual since finding my Dad. I was severely triggered by this moment, and I quit my job the next day. I couldn’t go back and I never looked back. I pretended like the job I loved (and was really good at) never existed. I started counseling again, but as mentioned before, I was in and out of therapy, and wasn’t consistent. As soon as we would start dealing with the traumas in my life, I would start working on my Dad’s death, and quit shortly after. It was like I could only deal with things surrounding his death in small spaces of time. In July of 2003, I met my husband. Shortly after meeting my husband, we dated and married, and got pregnant with a honeymoon baby. I had always wanted to be a stay at home mom to protect my child from the things my parents couldn’t protect me from. As I mentioned in my other post, I suffered from prenatal depression and then severe postpartum depression. As dark as those moments were, that was also the beginning of my true healing journey. It was then that I had finally decided to begin confronting my pain, and started getting the help I so deserved and desperately needed. It was then that I resolved to never leave my family in the way that my Dad left me. It was then that I decided to push forward, even when it hurts. Thank you for reading. I hope you’ll continue on this journey with me. Be well, my friends.