Self Destruction

Some people self destruct when they get stressed. If we are being honest, most people do. There are different ways to go about it; some drink day in and day out to feel something other than overwhelming stress or negative thoughts. Some people turn to drugs to distract them from their life.

My self destruction isn’t as bad as all that, but it does end up making my life harder. I know this, but I can’t seem to avoid it. The only thing that ever stresses me out is money. I’m always financially behind, constantly playing catch up and never getting ahead. I’ve been laid off for a month now, I get unemployment but it’s not nearly enough. I started driving for Lyft and Uber, that gets me enough money but I have to do it a lot to get anything from it. I have so many bills, as well as a ton of debt, and sometimes it just becomes too much for my brain to handle. My form of self destruction is spending money I don’t have. Whether it’s going to restaurants instead of cooking at home, buying stuff I dont really “need” but I feel like I need it, or just other luxuries that I could forsake but choose not to. I know its stupid, and childish, but I also feel like I would go insane otherwise. It’s the only thing I would consider a vice, and I hate it.

I’m gonna work on fixing that problem, though I would need more hands than my two to count how many times I’ve said that before. Ironically enough, when I actually have enough money to do extra stuff I am more thrifty and don’t spend near as much. It’s like my brain wants to be defiant opposing my bank account. Maybe someday I’ll grow up.

Self Image

I’ve been having major struggles with my image the last couple days. I dont know what it is, just out of nowhere suddenly I feel fat, plain, and disgusting. Now I’m 5’4 and 130 lbs. The logical part of me knows I’m not fat. But when my mind turns against me, I can literally feel every single bit of body fat I have weighing me down and it feels as if I’m 300 lbs instead. My soft mildly squishy tummy turns into a giant fat sack of bloated grossness in my head. My thighs have some muscle from soccer, some fat too but not much. In my head they turn into cellulite covered, stretch marked unsightly thunder thighs. My face is kinda square shaped, my cheekbones are in a good position to be considered attractive I guess, but in my head its pudgy, red and splotchy.

When a girl doesnt believe you if you call her beautiful, usually its because she doesnt see what you see. What I just described is how I see myself presently, but according to other people there is nothing further from the truth than my own self image. The mirror is a cold hearted bitch, and it feeds on any and every slight insecurity, building on it until it physically manifests in front of our minds eye. I hate it when I get like this. It affects my attitude, my dancing, and my relationships. I catch myself thinking about eating and thinking “nah, I dont need anymore calories today” even though the only thing I may have eaten all day is a cookie. Or a sandwich. I may feel hungry, but in my head its “if I dont eat at all maybe my body will consume this disgusting fat covering me.”

Be careful what you say about people. Whether you say it to them or to someone else about them, you never know what kind of inner thoughts people are struggling with. You never know until you walk in someone else’s shoes. Words have the power to cut deep, because once something is said it can never be taken back. Even if you apologize, harsh words will always be knocking around someone’s skull in the back of their subconscious, affecting the person they are. Be kind or say nothing at all.

You Never Think It Will Happen To You

You know those things people warn you about, and you hear their words but your first thought is “nah, that would never happen to me. The odds are against it.” Well, it happened. Someone tried to drug me last night. It was at my favorite country bar, where I regularly, stupidly, leave a drink unattended so I can dance. Learned my lesson from that.

Usually I have a group of friends with me and more often than not, at least one or two of us isnt dancing so my drinks are safe. Last night, pretty much none of them were there. It was the single scariest thing that has ever happened to me…and it didnt hit me until hours later how very real the danger was, and how vulnerable I was. I dont know if the dosage was too small, or if its because I had been dancing around all night so my metabolism was running high or what, but the effects wore off after about 5 minutes.

During that 5 minutes, if one of my friends hadn’t been right next to me making sure I was alright, and getting me water, I have no clue what could have happened. Had I been sitting by myself during that time, someone could have picked me up and carried me out and I would have just looked like I was really drunk even though I had only had that one drink.

I had injured myself right before, during the Footloose line dance my knee gave out. Hurt like a son of a bitch, so I was sitting it out with some ice on my knee. I drank some of my long island, the last little tiny bit there was in it, and within 2 minutes from taking that drink it started with my hearing being weird. Suddenly I had a really high pitched ringing sound in both my ears, the loud music of the bar and my friends talking around me was super dull. I could see my vision slowly going black at the edges, and my first thought was it could have something to do with my injury (even though this knee thing has happened to me before and I never experienced that.) Then, my head got very heavy and I could feel myself about to fall off the stool I was on. My friend asked if I needed the hospital, and I said “I dont know maybe…” and asked him to carry me to the section of the bar where there were booths so I could elevate my leg and get off that stool. While he was carrying me I could feel myself go limp, my movements and words were slow and sluggish…I drank some water and he stayed with me until the effects started to wear off. It still didnt hit me until a few minutes later what the likely explanation was.

I’m so grateful to my friend for being there, because lord knows what could have happened to me if I were alone.

Even if you think it would never happen to you, NEVER leave your drinks unattended with people you dont trust or dont know very well. This was an important lesson for me and I am so glad it wasnt as bad as it could have been, but maybe if you read this you can avoid even the “almost” experience that I had.

Reminisce of A Semi Horrible Childhood

(This is going to be very long. I have a lot to get out.)

My mother has severe mental issues from her horribly traumatizing childhood. She’s told me most of what happened to her, and just from that no one could blame her for having issues. She has been bipolar her whole life, but never got treatment for it until she was old enough to know she needed it. Her family never treated it. On top of that, her schizophrenia was diagnosed when she was 22, but I believe it was triggered before then by something that happened to her. When she was diagnosed she was with a man who cared enough about her to make her get the diagnosis in the first place, and subsequently start the meds. However, that led to another dive into drug addiction. She had been an addict in her teens, came out of it for a while when she had me at 15 and my brother and sister by the time she was 19, then when she got on the meds for her mental issues it started up again. At this time I was about 10 or 11 when it started. We went from being able to live comfortably to noticeably having financial issues, me being the oldest at 10 and my two younger siblings noticed the decline but we didnt really pay attention to why. We were focused on school and kid stuff. Subtly, other things were shifting too. My mom quit her very good corporate job, and started to stay home more. You’d think this meant more time for us, right?

She spent most of it in her room. Door locked. We got in trouble if we knocked and didnt have a good reason. Then my stepdad would get home, say hi, go straight to the bedroom, and we wouldn’t see either of them until briefly in the morning. At 10, I was cooking dinner for my siblings, making sure we all did chores and homework, as well as getting them up in the morning for school. I didnt really think it was weird at the time, it was just how life was, ya know? Looking back on it now though I see how strange it really was. It wasnt like this every single day, some days they would be downstairs talking to us and stuff. But most days were us pretty much on our own. They had swinger friends over to the house multiple times and they’d swap partners when they thought we were asleep. My mom would get all dressed up randomly and go out, come back looking not quite as nice and suddenly one of our bills was paid. I dont think my siblings caught it, but I did. She tried to leave after we were asleep but a couple times I would catch her leaving and my stepdad telling her bye. I dont know of he put her up to it or of it was her idea but he definitely knew and was on board at the very least.

This went on for a couple years, when my mom decided she wasnt happy anymore. Her sugar daddy (yes, I said it and my siblings and I knew that’s what it was at the time as well. Crazy right?) Put my siblings and I up in a hotel with her for a weekend to have a “family meeting.” She made us take a vote about whether she should get divorced or not. At this point I was maybe 15, my brother and sister were around 13 and 12. We just wanted our mom to be happy, we weren’t old enough to realize the financial crisis we would be putting ourselves in; no, correction, that SHE would be putting us in, if she divorced.

As you can probably guess, the vote was unanimous that she get divorced. After that, obviously they sold our house because she couldn’t afford to keep up the expenses and my stepdad moved back to his hometown because he had nothing anymore otherwise. From there my mom moved my 2 siblings, her, and myself into a 2 bedroom apartment. It was pretty cramped. My sister and I shared a room and my brother was post up on the couch. The three of us used to talk about it all the time, but the place was pretty expensive as it was down the street from my high school. We didnt know how she was affording it. Then, I dont remember how we found out, but one of us found out she was a stripper in a biker club. She started bringing home this scary looking biker guy named Diablo. How cliche is that? We could tell by her behavior she was back on drugs and it was worse stuff than the pills she was on with her ex husband. A couple months go by, and she has to tell us to start watching our backs and teaching us techniques to make sure no one is following us and what to do if they are. Apparently she had been “bought” by the biker gang and now she wanted out. I dont know how she got out of it, but the next thing I can remember is her getting arrested for a DUI. Cops came to the house, they should have taken my siblings and I somewhere because we were all under age. But after talking to me they determined, and I quote, “This 17 year old is more responsible than the grown woman we just arrested. The kids are fine.” At this point, my mom was hardly home anyway, and when she was home she was shut in her room. Maybe three times a week we would see her. The rest of that time, I was working after school and when I got home made sure my brother and sister did their homework and had eaten something.

She got a new boyfriend a little while later, and we moved to a trailer park. This one was a pill popper as well as a heroin addict. Guess how that went? You got it. Right before my senior year, my mom got arrested again. About a month after that she went back to the PD and turned herself in. My brother went to live with my aunt, my sister lived with one of her friends, and me? I moved out on my own. Illegally emancipated myself. I worked 2 jobs and still managed to graduate my senior year.

That’s the shortest version I can condense this story into, I left out some of the minor verbal and physical abuse that happened while my mom was under the influence. In some ways, she was an amazing mother. She has always been my best friend, to this day still is. I know it wasnt all her fault, it was the drugs she couldn’t get away from. She has been doing so much better since she finished her 2 year prison sentence. She’s without a doubt clean, no more drugs, barely even drinking. Her husband now is amazing, hes a great man and he makes her the best she can be. He makes her take her meds for her psychological problems. She’s been good for a while. But what prompted me to even start thinking about all this was because recently she’s been sliding backwards in a downward spiral. With her condition, it’s not uncommon for her to have “off” days where suddenly she will have an episode. Suddenly she can talk to animals, and she sees Angels, and believes that “god” is trying to use her as a messenger. But these episodes usually only last anywhere from hours to a couple days and she is back to normal. Recently, she’s been delusional for going on 2 weeks now. Every time I talk to her she tells me how she has been preaching to cows, taking to the crickets and relaying the stories they tell her, telling me prophecies told to her by angels….I love my mother so much, but sometimes it’s just too much to handle. It makes me shut down and just get kind of sad because there’s no way I can help her.