I don't even know how to begin writing this post, and I know that no words that I say will ever convey the way I truly feel. I feel as though I'm carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders and I'm carrying on for those around me, not for myself. There are days where I just want to lay in bed and pretend that my existence is nothing more than a dream in someone else's mind and soon they will wake up and I will be gone.
The earliest memory I have when this began was losing my grandmother when I was seven years old. She was 50 years old when she passed away, and I miss her every single day. I'll never forget the days she took me shopping at Walmart, and then we would get happy meals. She would take me for rides in her Mustang and would buy my favourite cereal and make my favourite sandwiches. I grew up in an extremely small town, and didn't have many friends. One day I remember coming home and getting off the bus (couldn't have been more than 7-8 years old) and my mom was crying her eyes out on the front porch of our steps. I walked up to her, and asked what was wrong and she said that my grandmother had passed away.
A few months later, and things had settled down a little bit. I was young and had days where I would cry at school from missing my grandmother, and my mom would come pick me up and take me to work with her. Eventually, my parents had to sell our farm because my dad got laid off from his job and we had to move to a city that was somewhat scummy. There were winters where the drafts would go through the house, and nights where we would all sleep in one room to stay warm. Money was extremely tight after the funeral and my two uncles (mom's brothers) were staying with us because their father was an alcoholic.
Soon after, we moved to a larger city and had a place where we could settle into. It was a small home, but it was ours. I thought this was where life was going to start getting better, but I was wrong. I was in grade 2 at this point, and I was getting bullied mercilessly because of my last name. People would call me pecker head, penis wood, all of these incredibly hurtful names. I went home and told my mom one day, and the principal called to explain that "kids will be kids."
Fast forward a few years later and I'm in 6th grade. We have moved homes again, jobs are stable, and my parents are doing relatively well. We have a house in the country and things seem to be going in the right direction. One day I come home, and my mom has a bunch of boxes by the front door and I ask what's going on, and my dad tells me that they are getting a divorce. After this divorce, my dad spiraled into a depression and one of the conversations I remember having with him on the phone was me begging him not to take his life while he called himself a piece of shit and said the police would find him hanging in his garage.
My grades started to slip at school, and I dropped from an A student to a C/D student. My teachers were concerned and called home to explain, but nothing changed. I think that this is where I felt like I started to carry a weight. I was mourning the first loss of my life in my grandmother and now I had to deal with the fact that my parents were never going to get back together.
My dad ended up moving to a city nearly two hours away and was with an abusive woman who we will call B. She had two sons who were older than me by roughly 5-7 years. I was about 14 or 15 at this point. B would invite us to her house, and dad would force us to come because he wanted us to meet his new girlfriend. B would completely ignore us and most of the time, her two older sons would be watching us while B and my dad went into her bedroom.
Meanwhile, mom was living alone in a townhouse. She had inherited my grandmother's Mustang. One night my two uncles took the car to the garage to get the battery replaced. They came back home and the car exploded in the driveway. We learned that it was a faulty battery. Mom lost her job because her boss didn't care that she did not have transportation to get to work. I remember hearing my mom cry through the walls of my room and I would end up sleeping on the floor next to her bed some nights. I can't count the times that I watched her eat nothing as my brother, sister and I ate dinner. It was killing me inside knowing that I couldn't do anything to change the scenario I was in. My dad was still wanting us to go back and forth between houses and I remember hiding in the cupboards at my mom's house and crying because I did not want to go.
Fast forward another few years and I'm in highschool. I finally start to feel better about myself. Mom has a stable job again and she is looking to make a down payment on a house. Dad is no longer with B and he is seeming like he is more happy on his own. We sat down and he had a LONG talk with us saying that he never meant to hurt us the way that he did, or put us through what he had to go through, but without us around he would have taken his life. I'm crying my eyes out at the thought of either of my parents passing...
Eventually dad gets together with a woman named "E" who is a doctor. He moves into a big house with her and her two children, but they are fighting constantly over who should be doing the dishes, who should be cleaning and cooking, and "E" spoiled her two younger children and favoured them heavily. I remember one Christmas they got a PS3 and my brother, sister, and I got a card (from my dad and E) that said "merry christmas, it's the thought that counts."
Mom had finally made a career for herself at this point, and she was working with the mentally disabled. I came home one day and she was lying in bed and crying and she looked like she got the shit kicked out of her. I had to take her to the emergency room, where they assessed her and realized she had broken her hand and had a partially collapsed lung. One of the mentally disabled patients she was taking care of snapped and dragged her by the hair into his room and started beating her. By the time she was able to defend herself, he had already landed a few blows. This guy must have had to been 6'2 and 200lbs+ easily. My mom is 5'1.
February 2010, I come down with a case of appendicitis. It ruptures. I am dying and the surgeon tells me I have a 30% chance of living. I'm in the hospital with sepsis, I had my stomach stitched in 3 different spots and I had a drain tube. One of the nights, I dreamt about my grandmother and woke up crying because I thought she was still alive. The nurses didn't know how to calm me down, and I was delusional from the fever and from seeing my grandmother sitting at the end of my bed. This hospital scenario lasted for around 3 weeks, and I was throwing up blood, sweating out all of my fluids, and not eating or drinking. I lost nearly 30lbs. Made a full recovery and everything seems like it's going to be okay...
Everything settles down again, and I fall in love with my first girlfriend. Dad and E have patched things up, and it's roughly 2011 by this point. One day we get a call and say that we had to talk to the police. One of my uncles (mom's brother mentioned earlier) had gone out to Alberta to work in the oil fields to hopefully help save some money and give back to my mom for helping raise him. We get the news that his house had caught on fire and he died. This broke me so badly. He was like an older brother to me. I remembered sitting in my room and crying my eyes out. My girlfriend didn't understand why he was so important to me and we got into fights about it. She ended up being verbally and physically abusive and would slap me across the face, tell me to kill myself, and other hurtful statements. We stopped talking for a while, and I began talking to a new girl who I finally worked up the courage to talk to. She was a year older than me and absolutely beautiful. She had the most pristine blue eyes, and golden locks. I talked to her, told her that I had a huge crush on her, and told her I would love to take her to dinner sometime. She agreed and my heart was fluttering. This was on a Friday. I got to school on Monday and we had an important announcement from our homeroom teacher.
"Over the weekend, a senior student, <girl I asked out> passed away unexpectedly at home. There will be guidance and grief counselors at the school if anyone needs an outlet."
I ran out of the classroom and went to the men's washroom where I sat in the stall and cried for the whole period. My friends eventually had to come find me and convince me to come out.
A few years later and I'm done highschool. I'm back together with the abusive girl because I felt so broken and the good days outweighed the bad for me with her. We still had our arguments, we still had the days where she would hit me. We dated for two years, and she ended up cheating on me.
I stayed single for a while, and met another girl two years ago. She seemed lovely. Down to earth, she liked a lot of the same music as me, she was amazing. I told her that I had baggage I was carrying and I wasn't sure if I was ready to love again. She told me that she would work through everything with me. The first year we were together were amazing. We went to concerts together, took a vacation down to the Caribbean, went to the zoo... and for once in my life I felt like I had something worth holding onto. 2015 rolls around and I'm in college at this point. We begin to drift because I am in a medical program and she is working full time at a factory. We start getting into more fights, and soon we are always at each other's throats. We take a break for a while.
In the time we are broken up, my mom has an episode where she is getting a fever, severe pain in her abdomen, nausea, etc. I end up taking her to the hospital, and she is diagnosed with diverticulitis. At this point my brother is also in highschool and has gotten in with the wrong crowd. He is using drugs heavily and is drinking. He begins falling into a state where he is saying he is going to slit his throat daily. My mom has to take him to a psychologist, who diagnoses him with depression and bipolar disorder. He refuses meds. The next months are HELL. The police are showing up at my house at 3-4am roughly twice every three weeks because my brother was seen walking to the nearest park with a noose. My mom is crying all the time, and my dad finds out that my brother is sick. Stress, anger, crying, emotions. I've been through death once, and I'm not ready to lose my brother.
Again, things get a little better. It's almost the end of 2015. We get a call saying that my cousin's helicopter was missing from the radar. He was on a spraying contract with a company in Northern Ontario. The RCMP, military jets from Winnipeg, and local police search the area and after a few days find his body. He died on impact.
I'm back together with the second girlfriend and still in college at this point and it's early 2016. My brother is on medication and doing better, my mom's condition is more or less under control. Unexpectedly, my grandpa (mom's dad) has a heart attack and dies. He had been in the hospital for a little while before this, and I visited him once. The night before he died, he called my mom saying he wasn't feeling very well and my mom said that she would cook dinner and bring it over for him the next day. My mom asked me if I'd like to talk on the phone to him and I said no, because I was going out with friends. The next day, we go to bring my grandpa his dinner and he is face down on the floor of his apartment. Dead and gray. Mom breaks down, calls 911, I'm trying to console her and say that he's gone and there's nothing we can do except tell 911 to contact a doctor, someone who can announce the death. Mom is quiet for the next few weeks.
Second girlfriend is supportive and tells me that everything is going to be okay. Two weeks after my grandfather dies, my mom's uncle goes to the hospital and is diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. They put him into a medically induced coma and he passes a few days later. Family is broken again...
I begin feeling so helpless and question my existence. Why is everything that I love slowly being taken away from me? Why is my mother sick? Why is my brother suffering with mental illness? Why did we lose our farm? Why did my grandmother have to die? Why did my first girlfriend abuse me? Why is all of this happening? My girlfriend begins questioning whether or not I'm stable and asks me if I'll "ever be truly happy" because it was "starting to take a toll" on her.
Over the summer, my father's dad is diagnosed with cancer. He died three days before Christmas 2016. I am currently sitting in my room contemplating everything that has ever happened and wondering why I feel like I can't let any of this go. I have been crying through this whole post. Thinking about everything that has happened and no matter what I do, I can't go back and change anything. My second girlfriend broke up with me last Saturday, we were dating for two years. She's already seeing somebody else and has me blocked from Facebook, Instagram, etc. She also blocked my number and made me pick up my things from her garage. She left everything in garbage bags. She knew everything that had happened up to this point in my life and decided that I was too much of a burden to help. She told me that she doesn't see us getting back together ever, and she to be completely honest, she doesn't want to either.
I can't help but wonder what life would be like if my mind wasn't antagonizing my existence. I don't ever feel like I want to end my life, because I have seen firsthand what the damage can do. I just feel broken, alone, and like I have nobody around me who understands anything. Sure, I have my friends who tell me that "bad things happen to good people" and that time will heal my wounds. From experience, time loves to fucking kick you when you're down and then laugh when you think you've got a chance at happiness.
This has been the last 21 years of my life.
I am having nightmares most nights, and wake up crying some nights because I feel like I can't talk to my family about any of this. I don't have anybody to talk to about anything and it hurts me. I don't want to open up because the last person I opened up to told me that I was too broken to fix.
I just want someone who understands.
Submitted February 01, 2017 at 03:14AM by DyingFirstClass http://ift.tt/2kfFqeZ
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