A Letter to my Aunt

Dear Aunt A___,

This morning I heard about your passing last night. After being so independent your whole life, struggling with an illness that made you dependent on others had to have been of the hardest things to accept. In my mind’s eye, I always see you as independent, strong, caring, giving, smart, generous, and kind. You were hell on wheels and a force to be reckoned with, but at the same time you were the sweetest, kindest, most caring person.

Dad respected and loved you. Whenever he  talked about you, there was always this light in his eyes, and I could tell that he was remembering times spent with you when he was growing up–happy times, good times. Those times when you, and/or Uncle L___ taught him how to fish, to hunt, when you were plowing the fields or when you showed him how or helped him. Those times, I know, will help him through this sad time.

I remember how generous of spirit you were. You treated me and J___ like we were blood family not Dad’s step-children. You talked to us like we were our own persons not just little children. You treated every single one of us with respect and kindness. For that I am most thankful, because you made us feel welcomed when we were finding our place in a new family. Like Dad, you always saw us as family and I felt that deep inside where it mattered.

For over 38 years you have been a part of my life, my family, and that’s almost all of my life. I remember being 8 years old and going to visit Dad’s family for the first time and feeling awkward, excited, shy, and hoping that everyone would like us but being scared. We’d suffered such a great loss when our father died at such a young age, and had been so blessed when Mom met your brother and he became our dad, and we gained such a wonderful family with members like you.

Thank you Aunt A for always being such a wonderful example and role model. Thank you for embracing us as family. Thank you for being so kind, generous, compassionate, and independent. You are missed and loved.

 

Lost and Found Part 2

(If you haven’t read part one: here you go. )

I didn’t want anything to do with dating, relationships, or even friends with benefits, casual sex, or whatever. I was happy spending time with my family and friends. I had lost my job, was single, looking for a job but enjoying the time off. I was also getting back to good, finding the missing or misplaced pieces of myself that I’d left behind in past relationships, in being wrongly diagnosed with bipolar, and finding out what I really had was depression, anxiety, and ADHD. All that time I’d spent trying to learn how to deal with having bipolar and then I had to learn how to deal with something else, plus I got off all medication and decided to use coping mechanisms.

I had unhealthy coping mechanisms I still needed to unlearn, healthy coping mechanisms I was learning, and yet as stressful as that might sound that was nothing compared to what I’d been through already. I’m a survivor I told myself.

 

I heard that song by Kellie Clarkson and I could relate.

Then I heard this song by Pink and WOW!  It was like she was singing to me.

I listened to positive music, surrounded myself with positive people. Changed my own attitude. My friend T___ (I called her Tessa in the last post)  got me out of my hibernation and I began to socialize. More than a year went by and during the almost 2 years between when I left the ex and I met Mr. Rockstar I went out with someone for a few months. We became good friends but the SPARK wasn’t there, but it did help me open the door towards having hope, towards knowing that I could date, that I was attractive to others, that I could hang out and have friends and date and not feel like I was in a war zone or walking on egg shells.

I found myself during that two years. I figured out quite a few things about myself. I learned to love and like myself. I also let go of the past and learned how to move forward.

And that’s when I met Mr. Rockstar. His smile. His positive energy. His laugh. His personality. Not to mention his beautiful, soulful blue eyes. His voice. Watching him play the guitar and sing…I fell for his blue eyes, his smile, and his laugh before I heard him sing or play guitar. I fell harder once I heard how much soul he put into singing and playing. I fell in like before I ever fell in love. We became best friends, then we became lovers.

Our time together was challenged when a good friend of his committed suicide. Then a month later one of my good friends, I called her Tessa in the previous post, same age as me, died of a brain aneurysm.  Times were rough, but we made it through.My friend T and his friend have been gone 3 years now. I mourn her loss every day. If it hadn’t been for her it would have taken me a lot longer to get back into the swing of living life instead of letting life live me. Life is too valuable, too short, to take even the smallest things for granted.

I’ve lost. My first loss was my father when I was seven. The next big loss was my paternal grandfather when I was seventeen, one week before I graduated from high school. Since then I’ve lost family members (aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents), friends, and casual acquaintances. I’ve lost loves. I’ve lost friends due to circumstances, drama, lies, deceit, etc. One of my friends slept with and ended up dating my ex. Losing people, especially people you love is never easy. It’s heartbreaking. It wrenches your soul and leaves you feeling empty and alone in a way that is hard to come back from sometimes.

It took me quite a while–too many years–to get back from all the loss I’d had in my life. The hardest part about loss, is that you never completely get over the loss. They say time heals all wounds, but it doesn’t heal it so much as it lessens the devastation so that it’s tolerable to live with. It doesn’t heal the wound completely. The scars remain.

But every now and then someone special comes into your life and is able to put a smile on your face from the inside out. Someone who doesn’t mind helping you carry that baggage of loss around. Someone who nurtures your soul to the point that those scars begin to heal. I’ll never get over the loss of my father, or the loss of my grandparents, or the loss of my friends or family. Those losses are a part of who, what, and how I am, but they no longer define me or control me. I no longer let the past dictate my future. I no longer feel inadequate, undeserving of love, or unlovable. I no longer feel like I can’t do anything right. But most of all, I feel like I’ve found the best part of me and she was right there under all that baggage, all those issues, and the leftover residue of one too many unhealthy relationships.

Mr. Rockstar and I just celebrated our 2 year wedding anniversary the beginning of September. In December we will have been together for 3 1/2 years. We’re more in love now than we were when we got married. Our relationship is strong and healthy. This is a picture of our first real date:

First Date

 

And this is a picture of us taken in July when he surprised me with dinner at Medieval Times in Myrtle Beach, SC for my birthday: (Yes we’re a few years older, but we’re so happy we’re glowing. 😀

My Birthday Celebration

 

Lost and Found Part 1

Writing 101: Write about a loss: something (or someone) that was part of your life, and isn’t any more.

I  just wrote a post about someone I’d lost when I wrote about the Room with a View, but for this post I thought I’d try a different route.

I suffer from depression, anxiety, and ADHD. For almost 10 years I was wrongly diagnosed with bipolar. When I was first diagnosed I’d just had my heartbroken and I was depressed. It wasn’t the first time, nor was it the last time, I had my heartbroken, but I’d already been through the ringer and that breakup just brought all my insecurities, self-doubts, and “issues,” to the surface. I didn’t realize how bad my depression had gotten until my daughter (who was around 9 or so at the time) told me “I want my Mommy back.” It hit me back then that I had to do something. I’d lost myself somewhere, or perhaps I’d just misplaced bits and pieces of myself. I needed to get back to me, back to good.

I went to the doctor, told her what was going on, and ended up diagnosed with bipolar. That really threw me for a loop because mental illness runs in my family. My paternal grandmother had manic depression, several of my aunts and uncles self-medicate(d) with alcohol and drugs. On my maternal side I have quite a few relatives who suffer from depression and/or anxiety, as well as bipolar.  And several cousins on both sides have ADHD. My brother has ADHD and anxiety.

Being labeled with “bipolar” was the equivalent in my family of being labeled “just like everyone else,” but to others you might as well have said I was losing my shit, crazy, or that I had a screw loose. I really hate labels. Labels confine you, but they don’t define you. If you’re the slightest bit different, if you don’t fit the norm, then you’re automatically labeled. If you’re bisexual you’re labeled as promiscuous, of you’re homosexual you’re labeled as an abomination or a sinner or abnormal. If you prefer dark clothes, especially black, then you’re “Goth” or “Emo” or whatever new term is out there now. if you have depression or any other form of mental illness, you’re doomed to be labeled in one way or the other. Truth is, it doesn’t matter whether I have bipolar or depression, anxiety, and ADHD, I am not “normal.”

I lost a bit of myself that day I was wrongly diagnosed. I struggled for almost 10 years trying various cocktails of medication to fix the “problem.” I went to therapy. I ended up back in that relationship, and it was an unhealthy relationship. It was an on again off again relationship that I struggled to get out of and away from completely for years (almost 10 years). I lost so much of myself because of that relationship, in that relationship. I lost my self-respect, my self-esteem, self-confidence…

I left when I couldn’t take anymore, when I finally realized how bad things were, and because in defense of someone else I will alway do the right thing, do what needs to be done and stand up and defend others, but I won’t always defend myself or stand up for myself. I allowed myself to be treated badly, allowed the mental and emotional abuse. Allowed myself to be treated like shit, but when my daughter was thrown into it I rebelled. Momma Hulk came into the forefront of my brain and  I packed my bags in the middle of the night and left. I checked us (me and my daughter) into a cheap hotel. Within a week we’d found a place to live and we were sleeping on the floor in sleeping bags until I could get our furniture–but we were happier camping out in our new place than we had been in the ex’s house.

The first few months I kept myself ostracized and became a recluse–I needed time to heal. I went to work, spent time with my daughter, son, and family. I didn’t go out and socialize at all. I went back to the doctor and was diagnosed correctly, but by then I was so tired of being on medication, especially the wrong kind of medication that I stopped taking medication all together. For three months I healed. I became a recluse. I went to work. I went home. I spent time with my daughter, my family. Until a good friend of mine stopped by my job and talked to me  She told me I couldn’t continue to live as a hermit. I needed to get out and live life. She got me out of the house and among the living. (I’ll call her Tessa, not her real name.)

Tessa knew and was casual friends with my ex. Yet she was never one to choose sides, and unlike many, Tessa had seen the subtle hints and clues that many people missed, that let her know that I was hiding behind the quietness, the conservativeness, the closed off behavior. If I smiled at someone I was accused of flirting. If I dressed a little too nicely, especially if it was remotely “sexy,” then I was accused of cheating, or asked who I was trying to impress…None of that started right off. It’s a subtle thing. Just as losing bits and pieces of yourself doesn’t happen overnight.

When you’re mentally or emotionally abused you often don’t think of it as abuse because it’s not physical. And if you’ve got a low self-esteem then you might not even realize there is anything wrong with being yelled and screamed at, cussed out, accused of things you haven’t even thought of doing much less done, or of being controlled no matter how subtle it is. I had no idea of how bad things really were until I got into a healthy relationship. I had no idea that I had some of the issues I had until I got into a healthy relationship.

I enjoyed being single, hanging out with friends. I was happier than I’d been in a long while. Both of my children were grown, I was in my early 40’s and single and rebuilding my life and my “self.” I’d lost so much of myself along the way that I needed to get back to the basics. People often say that you have to be the person you seek, or you have to be happy alone before you can be happy with someone else, or you have to love yourself before you can expect anyone else to love you. All of those are true. At least I’ve found that they are true.

As of right now I am medication free. I have coping mechanisms that I use to help with the anxiety and depression, and I’ve dealt with ADHD since I was young. Most of the time the coping mechanisms work, the fact that I am no longer in a stressful, unhealthy relationship has helped tremendously, as well as the fact that a doctor paid attention to not just what I said but my body language, life events, and other factors that contributed to the symptoms I was having and diagnosed me correctly.

Not that there’s anything wrong with bipolar, i have several family members who have bipolar, but if you don’t have it and have something else or something else’s wrong with you and you’re given the wrong medication(s) it can make what is really wrong with you worse.

I met Mr. Rockstar almost 2 years after I left the ex. If you’re interested in Part 2 of the series called Lost and Found then stay tuned…