Grief, loss, and all words to describe terrible things

The past three months have probably been the most emotionally trying months that I’ve experienced in some time. I lived by this code for a long time that it was best to never let that guard down and think, “Okay the coast is clear, nothing that bad could possibly happen now. The worst has to be over.” Yeah… not so much.

I’ll summarize the bullet points and then get to the big bad…

-  A new co-worker came on to the mid-shift from working overnights and has been… unprofessional since she started. I honestly couldn’t answer why she has behaved the way she has but all speculation aside, it’s been unpleasant to work with her and it’s resulting in a “conversation” with the managers. For once, I’m not on the receiving end of this conversation.

- My cat got sick and required surgery to remove a blockage. She is okay now though and I’m grateful to my friend for being generous enough to help out.

- I reconnected with a friend who was supposedly extremely excited to be reunited but after a metric ton of excuses that didn’t make sense, I had to distance myself from it. She has baby daddy drama and some other shit that she wouldn’t get into. I told her I would be there for her but she didn’t respond so… bye.

- The friend who helped me with my cat has been acting distant toward me after we had a spat. It started with me going to a movie that she believed I had made a plan to see with her. That was not the case. We talked it out and I thought things were cool. After this conversation I see she posted online that she was going to a convention with a friend of hers after we had planned to go together. She swears up and down that her decision to go had nothing to do with the movie thing and that’s all well and good but when I said I was bothered/bummed about the change in plan I was accused of acting like a jealous boyfriend and apparently her friends think I’m nuts. Now she’s tagging people in posts that she would’ve tagged me in and it’s all just fucked up. It is what it is and I’m just not playing anymore. I’ve taken my ball and gone home as the saying goes.

Now for the big bad… My cousin Joe and I were talking the other day via FB Messenger as we usually do and my mother calls me in her usual “ohhh my goddd, all this shit is so fucked up” way and proceeds to tell me that my cousin hasn’t been doing well. He had been passing out a lot and just didn’t feel well overall. He went away with his parents on this trip to Martha’s Vineyard which is usual for them since they live on the Cape. He had been staying with my grandparents and I guess when they went down to his room they found a bunch of bad shit. Booze bottles to name one. They were fed up with him drinking and said he couldn’t stay with them any longer. Aside: They’re both raging alcoholics who have no business judging anyone so… yeah.

Anyway, my mother flips out and says we need to tag team him to get him to go to rehab before some shit goes down. She’s telling me about how he carries a gun around and she’s insistent that he will do something if we don’t help him. I tell her I’ve been trying for years to get him help and he just wouldn’t do it for reasons that were his own. Just the same though I talked with him most of the day on Sunday and kept trying to get him to commit to going to the hospital since his symptoms sounded pretty serious. He kept saying no and changed the subject to ask how I was. He sounded okay but… that’s the internet. You can’t HEAR the person. Our conversation ends and I go about the rest of my night. The next day my mother calls to tell me that Joe had his gun taken away and he was staying with his parents. I tell her this is good and I give her a number to call for crisis services on Cape Cod to consult with ways to get him help. I don’t know if she made the call or not. Joe and I talked for almost the entire day again. It was another round robin of me asking him to go to the hospital and using a ton of motivational interviewing to try and get to the bottom of why he wouldn’t go. His reasons will never made sense to me but I’m not him. We finish our conversation just before 6pm and I go on with my night. I get things ready for work and I go to bed. At 2:30AM I’m awoken by my phone. It’s my mother.

“D---……” Long long pause. I knew what she was going to say. No call after midnight is a good call.

“Joey’s gone…”
“What do you mean he’s gone mom? Where is he?”
“He’s gone…”
“No.”
“He passed away…” She starts crying and I just keep saying no over and over again like it’s going to change something. When I can finally speak I ask her what happened. She didn’t know at the time. Only that he had been in a tub and said “Don’t call 911.” I tell her I have to go and I lose it. Wailing. Choking. The whole thing. My husband is hanging on to me and I think he was trying to literally hold me together because I was shattering with every sob that came out.

When I was able to get myself together, I text my mother to ask her more. She didn’t have enough info. But she said she would call me. Shaun takes me for a drive and I pop several benzos in order to stop the shaking and sobbing. It works and I finally sleep for a little while.

When I wake up, I’m thinking maybe it was all a bad dream and I check my phone. It wasn’t. I see the call log and I see the texts I sent. I re-read my cousin’s messages to me trying to make sense. I’m a mental health recovery counselor trained to look for signs of potential suicide risk. There were none from what I read. But just the same, my mother calls me later to tell me the whole story as it went down. Blow by blow by blow of the horrific detail of his death and the events thereafter. Due to the triggering nature of that, I will not share it. But just know that every time I close my eyes I see it and my heart hurts. So. Much.

I’ve spent the day in a stupor of opiates and benzos combined with the shock of losing a person who was for all intents and purposes my little brother. I was 5 years old when he was born and from the day he was born, he was always around my brother and me. We were the three muskateers. We looked out for each other. Did vacation stuff. We were bonded. The pain that comes when the drug haze lifts is excruciating beyond anything I can even describe. I couldn’t even try if I wanted to. It just… hurts.

I’ve received so much support from people I’ve never met, people I have met, and people whom I never would’ve expected it from. The words, “Anything you need” have been repeated over and over. It’s a sentiment that means so much even if there’s nothing anyone can do. I try to see that in this dark fucking place but there’s another part of the pain here too and that’s the fact that my friend, the movie one, is so distant right now. Of everyone I know, I would have thought she would’ve been the first person to drop everything and come to help keep me together but that was not the case. Instead, she posted pictures online and tagged people that she said called me nuts. I think it’s juvenile of me to care about something so trivial when my cousin just died but the whole point to being a best friend is to be here for these very situations and she failed me. Again.

My cousin’s death hurts worse than anything she could do or not do. But it doesn’t make this shit any easier. The solace I find in this though is that the support has come from the least likely of sources and I will never question that again.

When people say tragedy is when you learn who your real friends are… they aren’t kidding. I’m not saying to manufacture a tragedy to test loyalties because that would be fucked up. But if you ever have the slightest doubt about someone… believe it. I didn’t. I rationalized it all until I was blue in the face… The way she bailed on me because she thought I didn’t have enough time for her, the way she never looked for me in the years we were separated, the way she could so easy throw barbs at me when I questioned her motives, and the way she now has stepped back from me in my time of need.

I’ve received the message loud and clear and now I know. I wish I didn’t but I do.

So yeah… fuck this week, fuck death, and fuck whatever the hell happened between me and this friend. I’m sure she will read this and tell me what a piece of shit I am after she helped pay for my cat’s medical bills. I watched her do the same to a friend of hers after the friend questioned her previous decision to co-sign on a loan for my friend. Her wrath was telling…. Throwing all she did in the girl’s face all because she violated some rule she was playing by when no one else knows what those rules are. I place a great deal of importance on how friends treat their other friends in a fight because it’s a barometer for how I will be treated when I make the grievous error of crossing them. Lesson learned.

To the friend: if you read this, which you probably won’t, don’t bother throwing your good deeds in my face. I’ve already tallied it all up and when I am in the position to do so, I’ll pay you back and you can forget I exist again.

When Shit Gets Real: The Beginning

I’ve thought long and hard about doing a series on what it’s like to live with mental illness, especially when there’s more going on than a single diagnosis. In fact, there’s really no single diagnosis that can truly define what I have and what I am. The best that psychiatrists, psychologists, clinicians, social workers, and counselors have come up with is best summed up in a list of possibilities shared over the years. Let’s see if I can remember them all, these will not be in any specific order and do not include all of the guesses:

Bipolar Type I – Not otherwise specified (NOS)

Bipolar Type II – NOS

Bipolar Type II with psychotic features

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (now being referred to as Complex PTSD due to years of sustained trauma)

Dissociative Identity Disorder

Asperger’s Syndrome

Schizoaffective Disorder

Borderline Personality Disorder

Bulimia

Binge Eating Disorder

Drug and alcohol addiction

Shall I keep going or do you get the point? Yeah, I’m fucked up when you look at me on paper. I’m “fucked up” when you only know me through my Facebook posts. I’m “fucked up” when you catch me on a bad day and I’m not able to self regulate and I’m essentially going into crisis. Inside, my head is a mess. I take a lot of medication to live with this. Are all or some of the above true? Not all of them can be concurrent diagnoses but several of them are relevant. I agree with the Bipolar with psychotic features, the C-PTSD, the dissociative disorder (without the identity issue), the bulimia, the binge eating, and the addiction. That’s still quite a lot for someone to live with. To live with it being able to function is, to me, a miracle when some of the clients I work with have experienced less and are in a worse state than I. I guess it goes to count for the resiliency theory right?

Anyway, one gets to thinking when they meet someone who is a, to use the stigmatized term of “mental case,” how in the hell someone gets so fouled up. It’s a good question. It’s a valid question. But it’s also one that not many can ever answer because they lack the insight. Because of my job and because of the fact that I am a social science major with the goal of working as a neuropsych professional, I do have the insight. I’ve felt for a long time that it would be valuable to share these with others to help them understand not only me but those around them who may not be easily understood.

Before I get on with this I will say a few things: First of all, I am not really a professional. Yes, I work in the mental health system but I am NOT a clinician, I am only a mental health recovery counselor which translates to "Hey, I've been there too, let me help you through your shit by using the knowledge of my own shit to guide you." Nothing I share here is meant to be taken as clinical advice and, in truth, some of what I share can be triggering. I am not holding anything back. If you know me, work with me, listen to my music, or are just a passerby; there are going to be things shared here that are deeply personal and may be things you’ve never heard from me before. I’m doing this to help myself and to, hopefully, help others with the understanding that I’m empathizing , disclosing, but not treating or offering treatment.

There will be examples and some details. I will change the names of some individuals to be respectful and I will not discuss clients that I work with.... at all. HIPPA is a big deal in this day and age and to violate that could mean my job, fines, and a whole lot of shit I don't want. I want that out there in case anyone gets the funny idea of trying to go to my supervisors with this and say, “Oh hey by the way, she’s talking about so and so on her blog.” So the disclaimer effectively covers my ass and, besides, I know/knew enough fucked up people to fill this thing for years without going near my job.

Finally, my med regimen, which I will talk about, is MY regimen and what works for me may not work for you. Please do not go to your P-Doc and say, “So I read on this blog that (drug name) worked for this person and their symptoms were better/worse because of it, I think I should try this/stop this.” Please always follow the instructions of your clinical team and if you have questions, talk to them. They have degrees. I don’t… yet.

That all being said… here we go.

The thing that got this going was thinking about my father, whom I will name because he doesn't deserve protection, Greg W. Howard (google him some time). My mother and Greg met while serving in the Marines together while out in San Diego. Sparing the details, I happened at some point along in their relationship. They had moved to North Carolina  before I was born and they got hitched. Some time later, viola, I come howling into the world while my father was stoned on the weed he'd been smoking with his friend when my mom went into labor. Things were supposedly good though and I supposedly had a good first year. In hindsight, according to my mom, they weren’t. I was left in the care of a questionable woman who, for kicks, like to call social services on my parents for starters. More to the point though, my father was/is a very sick man with the possibility of a diagnosis of schizophrenia. At the very least, he is a very delusional individual with issues that run the gamut of pathologically lying (he claims he went to the Citadel when in reality he was kicked out and discharged from the Marines for abusing my mother), cheating on multiple wives (one of which he is still married to even though he was having an affair with a woman named Cara when I found him), violence (he threw his own mother down a set of stairs and sexually assaulted his own brother), and so much more. 

My very first memory is of him beating up my mother and shoving her across a room while she was pregnant with my brother. I was no more than three at the time and there was no way I should have known about it but my mother confirmed it years later when I told her I kept seeing it in my head. My next memory was my father holding me up to a window to show me my new brother. Another of us in a car, driving redneck style with me in his lap. After that it’s a haze. I vaguely remember a game of blocks and a ride to a local store in Massachusetts after it happened but I can’t really tell if it’s true or not.

What was it that happened and why is it so important to my development as a person? It was my mother, my two week old brother, and me being put onto a plane headed back to Boston with my father’s promise that he would either send for us or come back. Neither of these happened. It wasn’t until I was 16 years old that I ever talked with my father again and it didn’t go well.

The years up until that communication with my father began were trying. By the time I was 13 I had already experienced abuse in a number of ways and it continued until was removed from my mother’s home for “good” by the age of 16 and a half. That all will come later. But what sticks out is the way my father handled the situation when I did barge my way into his life with a letter telling him I wanted to talk to him and wanted to understand what had happened. I sent this letter, against my mother’s warning of “Be careful what you go digging up,” and I waited… and waited… until one day the phone rang and it was the voice of a man asking for me by my legal name. It was perfectly pronounced the way it was meant to be and somehow I knew it was him.

I’ll be honest in saying that the first few weeks, months maybe, were euphoric but then it all went south. My mother was resentful of me bringing this man back into her life after the pain he had caused her, my brother was also displeased since he was not asked after, and I was isolated in my reunion. I had to keep the phone calls a secret and when the joy finally passed and I asked him why he left and why he never tried to come back, the answers were less than satisfactory. Much to the point that I’ve blocked most of the detail of it and only remember that he wanted to avoid it and pretend that everything was fine. When I refused, I was rejected again. This time while sitting on a payphone on a psych unit after I had tried to take my life and I was asking him for help since my own mother didn’t want me back. and I was looking at being placed into a group home until the age of 18. I later learned that my father didn’t want me messing up his life (his sex life to be exact, gross huh?) and the idea of bringing me into his world was unthinkable. So I spent days in my room in the hospital not wanting to even breathe because my father had abandoned me again, my mother had turned her back on me for trying to find him, and my very first boyfriend ever had broken up with me just months before. My friends at the time stopped coming to see me in the hospital, and I was alone. To address this grief I was heavily drugged on thorazine to the point of being nearly chemically lobotomized. But, hey, at least the pain went away and I could stop reacting to it by going into rages right?

Over the years I tried many times to talk to my father again only to experience the same results. I wanted answers and he dodged them. My way of coping was to lash out. If you googled him, you’ve seen that he is a very unpopular person. Up to the point where he attempted to sue Twitter after making threats against the president and his wife, my step-mother, calls him a “political refugee of Twitter." He is an ultra-conservative who would likely team up with Trump if he was given the chance. My lashing out was quite public and the result was a woman contacting me claiming to be the wife of my half brother and supposedly understanding my vitriol. I later found out she was a friend of my father’s looking to get information about me. Why? I didn’t stick around to find out once I realized she was not who she said she was and she had no intention of putting me in contact with my brother Will. When I figured out what she was up to I promptly wrote love letters to my step-mother, grandmother, and my other half-brother letting them all know exactly what my feelings were on the matter considering that my very existence has been kept a secret from my brothers. Nice huh? 

Just thinking about all of that makes my head spin but it’s a good place to start and now is a good place to stop. Many think that having their father die on them is the worst that can happen. I agree that losing a parent hurts, especially when they loved you and were a part of your life. That is a loss that I imagine to be devastating. For me though, I suffered numerous losses and heartbreaks from the same man over and over again to the point where devastation doesn't even begin to describe the pain. This was a man who was supposed to be my father, my protector. Instead, he was anything but that. Instead he was someone who set me up to fail from day one by doing the very thing a father should never do to his children…. And then he did it again… and again… and again. Each time cutting the hole deeper. Death is painful but knowing he remains alive with no desire to be what I so desperately needed throughout my life is, in a way, worse. It would be better if he had died but he didn’t and it’s something I had to accept but the result is a deep mistrust of people early on in my life. Kindness, to me, is always cause for suspicion because I wonder when it will be taken away or if it's a ruse to get something. I will never accept that a person is here to stay and I am always vigilant for that "inevitable" hurt and abandonment that I know is going to come. Sadly, I usually bring it on myself through my own suspicion and eventual trashing of the friendship to avoid what I believe will be the inevitable pain of their betrayal or abandonment. It's something I continue to work on and I think I'm getting better.

I will end here, truly now, but I thank you for reading this far (if you did) and I will continue soon. I thank you in advance for coming on the journey with me. It will be hard but in the end, you will see what it took to create the person I am today and, I, along with you, will be puzzling out how I am not even more fucked up than I already am.