life

Fired (Up)

~ KJ ~ 9 Comments

I came home Monday afternoon expecting to enjoy the rest of the day — the anniversary of my freedom.

I checked the mail and saw a letter from my employer. I opened it. There was a piece of paper with my name and information on it, with directions for filing for unemployment, with a permanent separation date of June 6th.

I never quit my job. I wanted to go back as soon as I could. I never wanted to be out in the first place. When I passed out at work that day, the manager told me I would not be able to come back until I had medical clearance in writing. I told her it was going to take me awhile to get it, and she said that was okay — that my health was first priority. And I have been trying ever since to get a note, but because of my history of heart issues and fainting, no one wanted to take on the liability and told me I needed to see my cardiologist.

So I planned to wait until my next appointment, which was then cancelled because my cardiologist decided to leave the practice on short notice. I rescheduled with my original cardiologist, but the earliest appointment I could get was July 11th. Fine. I figured everything was okay because my manager told me to take all the time I needed.

When I got that letter, I didn’t understand what happened. No one contacted me before this. No letter, no phone call, no e-mail, nothing. As far as I knew, everything was still okay. I had no idea I was going to be let go. I never lost a job before — not like this.

It was hard enough for me to leave the job I had for nearly two years, the job I got just weeks after running away. But that was a choice I made in order to have a better, safer life — and a place to live. I was in control.

But this was not in my control. This was not a choice to leave. This was being fired. Through the mail. On the day I was supposed to be celebrating my freedom.

I tried to suppress my emotions, I tried to push it in the back of my mind, to try to think about it another day. But that didn’t work out so well, because I ended up in tears. I was angry, frustrated, and upset. What did I do wrong? I didn’t abandon my job. I was good at it. I performed well even in the few weeks that I was there. And I did everything I could to try to get back, and I was still trying. But it wasn’t enough.

I felt like a failure. I can’t keep a job. I can’t even keep myself upright. How am I supposed to get another job? How am I going to pay my bills? No one wants to hire someone who was fired, and surely no one wants to hire someone who passes out frequently. Not disabled enough for disability, but not able enough to work. It’s occupational entrapment.

I managed to stop crying for a little while, but any chance of enjoying the rest of the day was gone. I made it through dinner, but then I felt the same emotions coming back. I went outside. I wanted to badly to run away, to take my cigarettes and smoke my feelings into numbness.

And it took everything in me not to do that, because I knew it wasn’t going to solve anything. I knew it was going to affect other people, and affect me. So I sat with my emotions and a bottle of beer. I let myself cry. I let myself be angry.

Then I looked up at the sky. I watched the fireflies fly. I watched the neighbor’s dog waddle through his yard. I looked around me. Peaceful. Quiet. Freedom. For 29 years, the only way I could watch the sky was through my bedroom window. But that wasn’t my life anymore. This was my life. Full of feelings and losses, but also full of fresh air, fireflies, and the freedom to see life from the outside, instead of inside my window.

I was still upset, still angry, but it no longer overwhelmed me. I came back inside. I sat on the couch and watched TV. I ended up falling asleep there, with one dog sleeping behind my head and another sleeping right at my side. And I couldn’t imagine life any other way. Safety, a family, friends, a home, dogs, and freedom.

I’ll figure out the rest, somehow, some way.

Two Years of Freedom, Part 3: Growing

~ KJ ~ 8 Comments

There are many aspects of growth. It’s really complex when you think about it. Just because something grows, doesn’t mean it’s thriving. There’s growth in surviving, too. But it’s a different kind of growth. It’s not full. It’s not healthy. It’s growth that never reaches its full potential.

I’ve thought a lot about growth. When I think about the first 29 years of my life, I know I grew. Physically, emotionally. But that growth was stunted by the environment I was in. I was in survival mode. I grew in ways I had to in order to stay alive. But that didn’t make me healthy. That didn’t make it all right.

And then I think about where I am now. Two years of freedom; two years of tremendous growth. I wrote a commendable thesis, graduated college, established my support organization, started grad school, became a notable writer, co-wrote a book, and even started work on a second. It’s no longer about surviving. Now it’s about thriving.

But even that tremendous growth could not have occurred without the darkness I experienced before it. The losses I experienced, the grief and the pain, they were part of my growth, too. They were sitting underneath the roots of my existence this whole time. It just took the right environment for the real growth to take place. It took light to overcome the darkness.

When I first thought of burning those cards and letters, my initial plan was to bury the ashes in the yard. But as I thought about it more, I found it to be too dismissive. Even though I let go, those feelings and those experiences were still a part of who I became.

So I saved the ashes, and I spread them across the bottom of a planter. Then I added in some dirt. And then I placed the stones of what I’ve lost on top. They were the stones I have been holding on to for almost a year now: Family, mother, father, self, support, love, purpose, and hope. These were the losses I experienced in childhood, the losses I was still experiencing even after I ran away.


I no longer needed to carry those stones with me. In a way, I was letting go of them. But I was also acknowledging what has come from them. I lost my family, but I’ve been making a new one along the way. I lost my mother, but that loss has pushed me to help others. I lost my father, but that loss has driven me to take better care so I don’t end up like him. I lost my self, but I am working to find myself again. I lost support in more ways than one, but somehow that loss sent me to where I am today, surrounded by supportive people. I lost love in the sense that I never got to experience it before, but now I have — through those people who continue to support me. I lost my purpose because I believed for so long that I had no purpose. But I have found my purpose in using my experiences to help others. I lost hope a very long time ago, as a child who grew up believing that there was no way out of the pain but to die. But I now know what life can be; I know that I don’t have to die. All of these losses created me. They led to my growth.

And now they are supporting a new growth, because above the eight stones, I planted eight peace lilies.

I chose that plant specifically, because in many ways it was symbolic of my life and growth. Peace lilies can survive with very little water and very little light. But darkness slows its growth. It doesn’t grow as fully and beautifully in the darkness as it does in the light. It survives in the darkness, but thrives in the light. Just like me.

The peace lily is also a symbol of grief, of innocence and rebirth. And in many ways, my freedom has been a rebirth. What lies in the dirt below the seeds, my losses, the ashes of my pain, they are what came before me. They are what led me to my new life. Parts now unseen, hidden below, but nonetheless affecting.

I no longer carry those cards, those letters, those gravestones, or those stones with me. They are all part of the base in the growth of beautiful new flowers, just as they are all part of the growth of me.

My peace lilies are growing in the light now, just like me.

Two Years of Freedom, Part 2: Learning to Live

~ KJ ~ 4 Comments

“There’s a lot of things that she should have learned as a child and didn’t, but she’s learning them now.”

It’s so hard for people to understand, and I don’t necessarily blame them. They don’t understand why I have trouble communicating, why I am so scared to go out places, why I freak out when I have to use the phone. I’m an adult. I should be able to do these things. What they don’t understand is how much I missed learning and experiencing for the first 29 years of my life.

Even after I ran away, my experiences of life were skewed. I was in an environment that really wasn’t the best for me. I told myself it was okay because it was better than where I came from, but the truth is that being in that environment held me back. I was no longer a prisoner of my mother’s home, but for multiple reasons, I became a prisoner in my own room. The ways of life I was experiencing were not the ways I thought a normal life would be. But I didn’t know any better at the time. All I had to go by was the word of those close to me, and those were not the best people to learn life from.

I lost hope for a bit when my mother found me, shortly after my 500 days of freedom. I believed that was going to be it for me. Those next few months were the hardest. I questioned whether it was all worth it. No family, dwindling friendships, increasing debt — I was living on leftover scraps and cheap rice from the dollar store, functioning on little to no sleep because the place where I was living was no longer safe for me. But I had no other options. I was too ashamed to ask for help, too ashamed to ask for food, too ashamed to tell people just how bad my life had become. I learned to tolerate life, just like I learned to tolerate the life I had before I ran away.

What I didn’t learn, up until a few months ago, was how to live. All this time, the only thing I was learning was how to tolerate things I shouldn’t have had to tolerate. That was not life. That was not living.

But everything is different now. For the first time in my life, I am in a safe environment. I don’t have to lock and barricade any doors. I don’t have to worry about who is in my home. I no longer sleep with a knife under my pillow. I no longer go to bed with three layers of clothing on, because I no longer live with the fear that my mother is going to come and hurt me in my sleep. She doesn’t know where I am, and if there ever comes a time when she does find out (because I don’t believe for one second that she won’t try to find me again), there’s nothing she can do to hurt me. I am protected — by people, by three big dogs, and by my own (still growing) strength.

I have people who genuinely care about me. They are helping me learn what life really is, what normal is. And I still struggle with things. I don’t always eat like I should, or know what to say in social situations, or how to act when I’m out and about. But I am learning, with their help.

And even in the few months that I’ve been here, I have improved so much. I used to avoid the grocery store because it gave me anxiety. Now I look forward to going every Sunday. I used to have meltdowns whenever I’d end up in loud places. Now I go out to eat in noisy restaurants and manage the anxiety with the help of people who support me. I used to hide food in my room because people would take it from me. Now I don’t have to do that at all, because I know that food will always be available to me.

I’m learning how to make choices, although I admit that I still need to work on that. I try to navigate through healthy and unhealthy relationships. I try to make decisions regarding my medical issues. I even try to pick out foods I like, which is something I never got to experience before. And it’s not always easy. I still have times when I get too overwhelmed, when I need to ask for help. And now there are people there to help me do that.

I go outside so much. Sometimes it’s to play with the dogs. Sometimes to just sit outside to read, or to watch the fireflies, or to look at the flowers. Some nights, I still sit outside and look up the stars; it reminds me that I am free. It’s something I could never do before. And it still amazes me.

I never knew what life really was up until a few months ago. I never imagined things would be this way. From the outside, you would think my life would be in turmoil. I’ve been out of work. I’ve been bombarded with some serious health issues.  I’ve bounced from place to place just trying to stay out of the shelter, losing a decent amount of my possessions along the way. I’ve lost a few thousand dollars I can never get back.

But I’ve learned that life isn’t about having money and things. It isn’t about how long you have to live. It’s about the people you have in your life. It’s about how you choose to spend the time you are alive. I may or may not have a long life ahead of me, and these people may not be my biological family, but that doesn’t matter to me.

I am learning to live the life that was meant for me, not the life my mother chose for me.

Two Years of Freedom, Part 1: Letting Go

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

I hold on to things. I become attached.

I think it has a lot to do with having nothing. When I ran away, I took whatever clothes and shoes could fit in my bag, my computer, and a few small things, and left everything else behind.

And I lived on very little for those first couple of months. The only furniture I had was the bed my roommate let me borrow. I wore the same pair of shoes. I cycled through the same sets of clothes. I cooked and ate out of the same plastic container. And every night by 9 o’clock, I laid in the darkness, because I didn’t even own a light.

Then slowly, I started to settle in. I started to buy things. One of the first things I bought for myself was a mug from the Disney Store. It was from the movie Inside Out, my favorite movie to this day. And I used that mug every day, because it was the only thing I owned to drink out of. But that was okay. It was mine.

And I held on to that mug. Even as I found myself bouncing from place to place, that mug came with me. It was as important as anything else. I could have easily just brought another mug along the way, but it wouldn’t have been the same. I formed an attachment. To me, that mug was a sign of my freedom. The first thing that was really mine.

Then a few weeks ago, I set my mug on the table as I had every morning. I was preparing my breakfast, and accidentally dropped the spoon. Even though it was only a two foot drop at most, the spoon hit the mug in such a way that it shattered the handle right off. I wanted to cry. I couldn’t repair it. A part of me wanted to. A part of me believed that throwing that mug away somehow meant throwing away so much more.

But I faced reality. It was just a mug. There were dozens more in the cabinet I could use whenever I needed. Why keep something that no longer served its purpose? I had to let go. I reminded myself it’s useless now and I threw it away. And I was okay.

In doing that, I thought about the other things I carry with me, the things that weigh me down, the things that no longer have a purpose.

I carry a folder with me wherever I go. It has my medical documents in there in case of emergency. It also has notes from therapy to help me if I ever needed reminders.

It also had the cards I’ve written to my family. The cards to my mother. The card to my father. The card to my brother. The letter my mother wrote to me. And the gravestone posters she mailed to my address.

I’ve been holding on to these things for so long. Those cards will never be sent. I wrote what was in my heart and let it out into the world, and that was that. My mother’s letter was just four pages of lies and denial. And the gravestones she sent me were not the stones that I deserved. But for some reason I attached a meaning to them. A meaning I didn’t need.

I needed to let them all go. So today, three days away from two years of freedom, I took the cards, the letter, and the gravestones and let them go.

I remembered the things my mother believed. Bad things have to burn. So they will. I burned every card, the letter, and the gravestones, piece by piece.

The card to my father went first. He’s gone now, he will surely never read my words. Then I burned the card to my brother. That one wasn’t as easy. I had to tell myself that I did what I could for him. I hope one day he knows what it’s like to be free, but I can no longer carry that burden on me.

Then came the cards to my mother. A lost cause, because even though she knows my words, she will never hear them for their truth.

Then I burned the letter she wrote to me. I didn’t even read it over. It didn’t matter. As I put each piece in the fire, it burned within seconds. Just like that, it was gone. Everything turned into indiscernible ashes.


I saved the gravestones for last. I debated whether or not I should keep them, but I realized they had no purpose for me. They never did. My mother could wish me dead all she wants. She can send me all the death threats she wants. She could even kill me. But she can never hurt me any more than she already has. The gravestones weren’t burning well, so I tore them up into tiny pieces and mixed them into the ashes.

I no longer carry these things with me. I no longer hope for the day my father becomes a father, because he is dead. I no longer carry the burden of saving my brother, because I know that he is not my responsibility. I no longer hold onto my mother’s words, because her words were never the truth. And I no longer hold onto the stones my mother thinks I deserve, because I no longer believe that I should die just for finding my freedom.

It’s been almost two years now. I had to let go.

Purposeless

~ KJ ~ 6 Comments

Stability outside, chaos inside. That is what my life is right now. And saying stability outside may even be a bit of a stretch. But I guess for those who don’t really know me (and even some who do), I appear stable.

I’m not at all stable. I barely know what day of the week it is anymore. I haven’t paid any of my bills this month. I don’t even know why. It’s not like I have a legitimate excuse. I’m not even working. I’m just existing.

I am useless, and not for lack of trying. I tried to get my regular doctor to write a note for me to return to work. Bad idea. It took an hour for me to even get her to consider writing me a prescription for an antiobiotic. An antibiotic. Not a narcotic. I’m just asking for some penicillin, because I clearly have an infection in my lungs that was not going away with steroids alone. And she even agreed. That’s the best part. She knew I needed medication, but told me in fancier words that I was too complicated to treat, between the COPD and my heart condition. I was lucky I got a Z-Pak; getting a note would have clearly just been too much.

So I told myself I’d wait. Just another week, and I can see my cardiologist and she’ll write me that note, she’ll clear me for work. And then I get a call four days before my appointment, with a voicemail that said my cardiologist has resigned and my appointment has been cancelled. The woman on the phone said it like it was no big deal. Even added in the have a nice day. This cardiologist performed my surgery. My cardiac monitor is subscribed to her name. She was a specialist. She was the first one to legitimize my concerns. What in the fuck am I supposed to do now?

I called the office back. I told them I was out of work. I told them I had been in the hospital several times since my surgery and needed to be seen. She told me I could see my old cardiologist, the one that always assumed my heart issues were really just the aftereffects of cocaine abuse and a possible seizure disorder, completely dismissive of anything cardiac despite everyone else telling me my heart is not beating right. Fine. I have no other choice. I’ll take him.

Great. Now let’s get an appointment. Well, he doesn’t have any openings until next month. Are you fucking kidding me? My surgery was in May and I haven’t even had a post-op appointment yet. I have stitches hanging out of my chest that I have tried my hardest not to pull out myself. I am out of work because, understandably, who the fuck wants to be liable for someone working who passes out consistently. But let’s just give it another month. Fine. Because I really have no other choice.

It’s frustrating. I want to scream and cry, but instead all I do is bury it down and put on a smile. I’m good at that. Hide the anger, hide the pain. I hide my tears, too, until I can’t hold them in anymore. Then I run. Out of the house. A few blocks away. And I sit on a bench and cry. And I smoke a cigarette until the pain goes away. I tell myself I’ll smoke just one more, and then it’ll all be fine. That’s what I’ve done my whole life. Just one more line, just one more drink, just one more pill. But it’s never fine. It’s not now, and it never was in the past. Yet I still keep trying. It’s how I ended up on a bench in the middle of a thunderstorm, soaking wet, with an empty pack of cigarettes, wondering why I couldn’t breathe.

I am a mess. Not wanting to die, but not caring if I exist. Because I feel purposeless.

People tell me my intelligence, my grad school work gives me purpose, but it doesn’t to me. I just finished a year of graduate school and maintained a 4.0 GPA, but it just doesn’t matter to me. I didn’t put forth any effort. I didn’t study. Hell, I took my last final drunk and started and finished my final project in the hour before it was due, and I still managed to pull 100s. That is not effort. That is not purpose. That just is.

My intelligence does not give me purpose. If anything, it only causes me more pain. Knowledge hurts. Because I know how to fix the damage in others, yet I can’t seem to fix the brokenness within myself. If I didn’t know any better, it wouldn’t bother me as much. I’d just be broken.

How can I plan for a future when I don’t even know what’s happening now? There are things I’ve accepted. I won’t have a family. I won’t live as long as planned. I am sick, and I will be sick for the rest of my life. But how can I plan around that?

I dreamed of being a therapist because I wanted to help people in ways I wished people helped me, I wanted to make a difference. But that dream isn’t realistic now. I can’t be a therapist with DID. I know they exist, but they have to exist in hiding. Because the world will never accept them.

I don’t know how to make a difference outside of that. I can’t stop every child abuser. I can’t make people understand that mothers abuse their children, too. I can’t get people to open their eyes to truths they don’t want to see. So what is my purpose?

Beyond housework, I am nothing right now. I keep busy as much as I can. I wash the dishes. I do the laundry. I sweep the floors, vacuum the rug, take care of the dogs. But in the moments where there’s no more laundry, there’s nothing left to clean, and the dogs are asleep…those are the moments that scare me. Those are the moments I hear my mother’s voice, telling me I am nothing, that I am a burden.

Those are the moments I sit and realize that I am purposeless.

Don’t you know, I’m cured now.

~ KJ ~ 10 Comments

I feel frustrated.

I feel like no matter how much progress I make, it’s not enough.

I am here, but I guess I have to be over there.

I’m a 31 year-old woman with no husband, no children, no job, no financial stability, who’s currently living in the basement of her former manager’s home. I get that is pathetic in more ways than one.

I also struggle to make decisions. Sometimes I only eat because people tell me to eat. Sometimes I only use my nebulizer because people remind me to. Sometimes I have to call for help when I’m stuck in situations and I can’t make a decision, like the times I end up in the hospital. Sometimes I need someone to go to the doctor with me because I know I won’t be as open as I should. Sometimes I need help getting words out and using my voice because I’m still afraid to say anything more than I’m okay.

And I guess that’s not enough. I’ve been 23 months free now, don’t you think I should be cured? Is 23 months enough time to erase more than 29 years of damage?

It’s not. At least not for me. And I realize that can be as frustrating for other people as it is for me. Trust me, I wish I was an independent woman right now, in great health, with a successful career and a family. But I am not. I still need help. I still need direction. I am still learning how to be a normal person.

And I am still trying. Even as my health continues to decline, I am still trying to live whatever life I can. I am still trying to have experiences I never got to have. I am still trying to try.

But I’m not sure it’s enough for some people. They don’t understand why I’m not recovered yet. They can’t comprehend why I’m still not okay. They tell me I haven’t made enough progress. It’s like throwing a 2 year-old orphan out into the world and expecting her to figure out how to get through life on her own before preschool starts.

I had to start from scratch when I escaped 23 months ago. I had to learn a whole new way of life. And admittedly, I didn’t have the very best start with that, either. But I am working on it now. I am in a much better place physically. I have a support system, however small it may be. I am talking about my feelings and things that are bothering me instead of instantly shutting down.

But I still shut down. I’m still not cured. I’m still not at 31 year-old adult level. I’m still a burden on people who I should never have to be a burden to.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m not cured. I’m sorry I haven’t made enough therapeutic progress. I’m sorry I’m not healed. I’m sorry I still fuck shit up. I’m sorry I still need to ask for help.

I’m sorry I’m not where you think I should be. How can I be a role model when no one was ever a role model for me?

I am tired of never being good enough for anyone. I thought that was over now.

This is not my family.

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

I still remember what my mother wrote to me —

You made your decision to disown your family.

It wasn’t a decision to disown my family. It was a decision to save my life.

And I am reminded of that decision every day.

I left a life behind. A life I can never go back to. A life full of people I can’t see anymore.

One of my best friends graduated from college last week. I wanted to be there to support him, in the same way he was there to support me when I graduated college last year. But I couldn’t. I could only experience his moment through pictures he posted on social media. Because I can never go back to that place again. I can never take the risk of my mother seeing me, of finding me, of hurting me. I can never return to the only place I knew for 29 years of my life, my home, my friends, my family. And that hurts in a way I’m not sure I can ever explain in words.

For all those months after my escape, I went through my hardest moments alone. I spent holidays alone. I stayed in the hospital alone. I struggled to explain to every person taking down my information that I had no emergency contact, no next of kin, no person to notify. No mother? No father? No siblings? No one? They could never seem to understand how I had no family. Didn’t they hear? I disowned my family.

And now here I am, smack dab in the middle of a family that is not my own. I’m going through shit with people by my side from a family that is not my own. I am spending time with people from a family that is not my own. I am living in a house that is not my home.

Now it’s different. I went to the cardiologist appointment with someone by my side, someone who cared enough to take the time to come with me, because she knew I wasn’t going to speak up for myself. But she doesn’t know I don’t speak up for a reason. She doesn’t understand I’ve been trained not to speak up for myself.

I went through my surgery with her by my side. As the cardiologist stitched up my incision, she said “I’m going to go out and tell your mother how everything went.” In that moment I realized that’s who should be here: my mother, my family. Instead here was this woman, of no relation to me, standing by me through a hard time. She isn’t my mother, but she cares and supports me more than my biological mother ever did, strong enough that even my doctor mistook her for my own family member.

I always dreamed of having a real family, but I never knew what it looked like. I didn’t really imagine other people, I just imagined my parents being different. I imagined living a life with a mother who didn’t rape and abuse, and a father who hugged instead of hit. I imagined going out places instead of being stuck inside of that prison. I imagined that they would change, but they never did.

Thirty-one years later, I found that family. A normal family where I don’t have to be afraid to go to bed at night and I can eat food without being punished for it and I can go outside and see the world whenever I want. I found a family with a man who asks if I’ve done my homework every Friday, because he knows I have a paper due that night. I found a family with a teenager that asks where I’m going each time there’s a stranger parked outside the house waiting to pick me up for a date. I found a family with a kid I can joke around with so much, we both end up rolling on the floor. I found a family with a woman who tells me goodnight and gives me a hug before she goes to sleep. I found a family that makes sure I’m eating enough, a family that always makes sure I have what I need.

It’s a normal family. It’s a family I never experienced. And it’s not my family. Because I’m not sure I fit into a normal family. I am not sure it’s fair for them to have to deal with me. It’s not fair for them to have to make sure I am eating like a normal person. It’s not fair for them to have to hold my head off the floor every time I pass out. It’s not fair for them to care for me, when I can barely find it within me to care about myself. I am a burden. And they did nothing to deserve that.

As much as I’m included in everything they do, I still feel like an outsider. I feel like someone who doesn’t belong. Because I don’t belong. This is not my family. I am alone. In the middle of a room full of people, as crazy as some of them may be, I am the only one that doesn’t belong.

It’s ironic. My own family treated me like the outsider my whole life. Yet the truth is I never belonged with them anyway, because I was nothing like them. And now, with a family who is treating me like I belong, I find myself pushing away.

I ended up crying in the corner of the living room yesterday. The family had a barbecue. Other family members were there. And for a few hours I felt okay. I talked, I listened, I even got dragged into a mini-trip with a woman who had just learned my name. And then right before dinner, something clicked in me. This is not my family. I do not belong here. It hit me like a ton of bricks.

They sat down together in the kitchen and I isolated myself in the corner of another room. I knew I was going to cry. I tried so hard to hold in the tears. I tried to look at my phone, act busy, but then she came over to ask if I was okay and I just knew I wouldn’t be able to hold the tears in anymore.

She asked if it was my heart. I knew she meant my arrhythmia, so I said no. But my heart was broken in a different way, a way that I can barely explain. A broken heart that continues to break each time I realize all that I never had.

She knew something was wrong and kept asking me what it was, and I kept trying to hold it all in. I’m fine. I finally broke down and told her, this isn’t my family, this is yours. I couldn’t hold in the tears anymore. She grabbed tissues and tried to comfort me, while blocking me from everyone else in the other room. She told me that I was family, that she adopted me, that I belong. She had told me it all before, but it still didn’t feel right.

I got what I always dreamed of as a little girl. Love, care, support, safety, and all of the things a real family should be. Yet even though I am the safest, happiest, and most balanced I have ever been, I am still reminded of what I don’t have: my family. They are gone forever. Some dead, some gone away, some too dangerous to recognize they exist, but regardless, still gone. I am one standing, both disowned by my family and disowned to them.

This is not my family. I don’t want to be a burden to them.

I don’t understand how I got here.

An empty house and a full head of emotions

~ KJ ~ Leave a comment

Perhaps it was the perfect storm; the day before Mother’s Day, less than a week before my surgery, just two days after receiving a job offer for a management position. There was just a lot going on in my head. Until I woke up Saturday night in a puddle of my own vomit, so drunk that nothing could go on in my head anymore.

That was a low point for me. To be completely honest, maybe one of my lowest points. Even in my prior days of being a blackout drunk, I never found myself passed out on the floor laying in my own vomit. And to make it worse, it was the woman who took me in who found me. Everyone saw me, her husband, her younger son, in one of my worst states. But I didn’t feel the shame until the next day, because that night, I was too drunk to feel anything other than the urge to pee.

I thought I was handling myself quite well, considering. I had a few crying moments throughout the week, a few brief fits of rage whenever a Mother’s Day commercial came on TV. But it was all controlled, it left as fast as it came. We had a game plan for Mother’s Day. I wasn’t going to spend it alone. I was going to go and spend time with their family, a welcome distraction to me. It was going to be okay.

But I guess it wasn’t, and I knew it that night when everyone left the house to celebrate the oldest son’s prom. I was grieving.

It wasn’t grief about Mother’s Day or failing health or anything that one would assume would be the thing to grieve over. It was a grief I had been feeling for weeks now, only growing the more time I spent here, in my new home, with a new family. A grief I was not prepared for. A grief I never expected.

As the days go by here, I see everything I never had as a child. A safe home free of violence, two parents that love and care and support and talk to their children, children who have freedom to eat when they’re hungry, to leave the house when they want to leave, to do the things I never had the opportunity to do until now. But I am 31 years old. I wanted these things when I was a child.

And that day, as I watched the family come together to celebrate, I could feel the emotions come up again, I could feel the loss of my childhood smacking me right in the face. I wanted that. I wanted my family to be happy for me. I wanted my family to dress up and take pictures and celebrate every event with me. I wanted to feel special, as every child should feel, as every child deserves to feel.

That was my tipping point. The grief flooded me, along with all of the anger and anxiety I had already been feeling about everything else, my emotions took control. I hid in my room, trying (and failing) not to cry and ruin their night. Because I knew it wasn’t about me. I didn’t matter, in this moment or in others.

And then everyone left. An empty house, and a grieving, angry, emotion-ridden me. I didn’t want to feel anything. I cried and I cried and then I felt nothing at all. Like a switch had just turned off in my mind, with each gulp of vodka I drank, it washed away the emotions until I felt nothing at all.

But I wasn’t thinking straight. Instead of stopping, I kept drinking and drinking, even after the feelings were gone. I drank most of a 32-ounce bottle of straight vodka, not even thinking about how it was going to affect me, not even caring that my heart had barely been working right even when I was sober.

For a brief moment, when I first fell to the floor and realized the severity of how drunk I was, I contemplated taking my bottle of pills and ending it right there. I knew if the alcohol didn’t kill me (and that amount very much could have, even without my heart condition), the combination would have been certain death. But I couldn’t do it because even though I didn’t care about myself in that moment, all I could think about was this family finding me dead. I couldn’t do that to them; I had already done enough.

So I ended up laying on the floor for hours, in misery, painfully vomiting nothing but phlegm and bile because I hadn’t even eaten food that day. I knew they weren’t able to lift me. All they could do was make sure I was still breathing and not choking on my own vomit. Hours later, I was steady enough to make my way to the bathroom and pee

Hours later, I was steady enough to make my way to the bathroom and pee. I looked at myself in the mirror. Hair a mess, broken blood vessels on my face, a rash from laying in puke for who knows how long. I did this to myself. And this is now how the family saw me. The shame started to settle in

The shame started to settle in. I woke up in the middle of the night to clean my mess, but I knew there were some things I wouldn’t be able to clean up, for myself or for others, things that could not be forgotten.

I lost a lot that night. And there are some things I wonder if I will ever be able to get back.

Changes, Part 3

~ KJ ~ Leave a comment

The last of my major changes is in my career.

Last Friday was my last day at work. I am currently, aside from my writing gig, unemployed.

I realize that may seem like a bad decision to some, considering my financial situation is quite dire.

But I had to make a decision between working at a job I love and living somewhere safe. I ended up choosing the later.

It was not an easy decision in the least. I got that job just weeks after running away. My coworkers were the first people I really interacted with, the first (and in many ways, only, for a while) people I got to know. They became more than just fellow employees and coworkers. They became my family, and that is something they reminded me of quite often.

I believe I was meant to be there. I believe I got that job for a reason, among all of the other jobs out there, the other offers I had, I somehow ended up with a group of the most accepting, hilarious, and caring people I could have encountered. That job was my escape from the chaos I was living in. That job was my social life. It was more than a job to me. But I knew I had to leave it.

It wasn’t just one thing. I realized months ago that I was becoming less and less able to do my work. I was physically and mentally exhausted. I got the work I needed to get done, done, but it was taking a toll on me. I had no energy, And as my health started deteriorating, it only got worse. I ended up using a wheelchair at times because I was too weak or too dizzy to walk around. There were many times I had to hide in the bathroom or in the corner of the backroom because I was in too much pain to keep walking.

I knew eventually I was going to have to make a change. It just came a little quicker than I thought.

When everything happened with my living situation, I had to make that choice between my job and a home. With everything else that had already been happening with work, and the consistent chaos that seemed to follow every living situation I got into, I made the decision to leave my job and take the safe living option.

As I said, it was not an easy decision. I cried in the days leading up to my final day, and I cried even more as I hugged my coworkers before I left that last day of work.

I jumped to the conclusion that by leaving my job, I was also leaving the people in it. But I then realized that I was leaving the job, not the people there. These people will still be in my life. I can still talk to them. I can still visit. That part of my life is not gone, it’s just different.

I considered getting another job. I actually interviewed and got accepted for a full-time position. But then I realized I would only be putting myself in an unhealthy situation. I was (at that time, and still) ending up in the hospital every few days, still passing out at random. It didn’t feel right to start a job and put them at risk, so I backed out.

For now, I am taking a break. I am focusing on school and on my writing. I’m resting for the first time since I was a teenager. And most importantly, I am focusing on me and my health, following up with doctors, and trying to get to the bottom of what is wrong with my heart.

In the end, I guess it was a good decision. The hardest ones usually are.

 

I’m Angry at a God I don’t believe in

~ KJ ~ 13 Comments

People like to say that God won’t give you more than you can handle.

But that’s just not true. People are given more than they can handle every day, burden after burden. Sometimes, there doesn’t seem to be an end.

I need to know when it ends, because I’m not really sure how much more I can take.

I’m 31 years old. I should be thinking about my career, about getting a place of my own, about starting a family. I should be excited about life, planning ahead for the great future I will have.

Except I’m not thinking about any of that. Instead I’m thinking about how long I can make it before getting sick again and ending up in the hospital. I’m thinking about CAT scans and surgeries and oxygen tanks. I’m not excited for life; I live in fear of death.

What did I do wrong? How did I end up here? I don’t understand.

I stand here, day in and day out, hanging on by a thread.

And she doesn’t have to struggle at all. She spends her days free of guilt and shame. She fears no one. She worries about nothing. She gets to live in peace. She gets to live without sickness.

And that angers me, too. Why hasn’t God punished her? Why hasn’t anyone punished her? She commits sin after sin, crime after crime, and still she can sit at home and eat her cake. It’s not just. It’s not fair.

She has spent 61 years of her life in freedom, while taking away that freedom from her own children. And we are the ones who pay for her sins. Not her. Us.

This wasn’t supposed to be this way. I spent 29 years of life trapped. When I ran away, I was supposed to be able to experience life for the first time. The struggle was supposed to be over. I was supposed to be free.

Instead I’m faced with reality. The reality that my mother will never be punished, that I will never have justice. The reality that I will always be sick. The reality that I will have spent the majority of my life trapped in that hell.

I know I’ve made mistakes. But I did not deserve this. I’ve had to handle enough in my life, more than any person should ever have to handle. I just want it to stop, but I can’t. Because I am powerless. I’ve always been powerless.

I spend every night crying. I’ve been holding in the anger for so long, and now it’s starting to creep out. I want to scream. I want to hit. I want to destroy something. But all I can do is cry. And I am tired of crying.

I am angry at God. I am angry at my mother. I am angry at the world.

But I can’t be angry at my mother. I didn’t make her stop.

I can’t be angry at the world. They are not responsible for my pain.

I can’t be angry at God. I don’t even think I believe in Him.

So I keep the anger inside, tucked away, hidden from view.

And that anger is killing me, too.