Wreckage

     I've been keeping a lot of things inside me lately, things that I've always let eat at me and eventually destroy me, and after today I'm done with that. I've spent my whole life walking an edge trying to keep everyone happy, do it right, smile despite the pain, I hurt myself in a sick way to protect everyone I love, and in the process not having a voice pretty much lost me a place with my family, friends, and in life. I'm not that person anymore, I have opinions, I have feelings, and I have a son that has my full heart and protection, and part of protecting him is making sure he never feels the way I have felt. I am not blameless, I spewed my fair share of poison, I helped aid in the destruction of the body that God so preciously gave me, and I'm not asking for people to change who they are because I've changed who I am. I am not that weak, broken soul, too scared to stand up and be heard anymore...I don't have the time to do it anymore, seconds are precious in all lives and I just happen to know that mine are ticking quickly and with uncertainty there is no time to wait to fix what has been broken.
     Whether you are raised in a Christian house or not one of the first things that are instilled in us is that family is what you value first, what you depend on, they love you when you are good and bad, in the light and the dark, there is no secret too big, and the list goes on from there. Unfortunately, things are that black and white and we sometimes cause hurts in each other that the space just gets bigger and bigger and Christmas becomes more and more awkward, and before long you realize you feel alone and hurt, unsure of who you can run to when you fall down. Families become broken, sides are taken, people spew poison to cover their own pain, forget that core value of what comes first, and it seems to happen somewhere in even the best families...I've come to the conclusion that it is my time to try to heal my wounds, give those I love the answers they never had, prayerfully find a common ground somewhere, and most of all to show my son that he never has to feel the way I have or do what I've done because my sins will not be his burden to carry.
     I've twenty seven years old and only in the last few years have learned how much of a gift life is and how much I really want to be the old lady getting all the gifts from her grandchildren at Christmas (I mean those homemade pinecones covered and glitter and stuff like that I truly love). Before the light came on in my head I was lost in my own destruction/annihilation. I started trying to be a different person for everyone I cared about pushing the real me as far down as possible, I smiled when I wanted to scream, I quit eating, I started cutting, started trying to be perfect to fix things that were never my job to fix, and tried to carry the burden of struggling parents doing what they could. I've discovered being a parent that at the end of the day you do what you hope is best and some times it blows up in your face and you don't need to have it thrown in your face years later, letting go has been hardest and yet the most freeing. I tried to take my own life and thanks to God, a good friend, EMTs, and ICU docs I woke up the next day. I couldn't see that blessing then, but now it is a debt I can never repay fully to the people that saved me. We are all going to die and spending our time refusing to forgive those who hurt us, reach out to those who we've hurt, and down right just pushing through all the wreckage to find someway to mend what is broken leaves us left questioning when we lose loved ones with whom we've had unresolved issues. I will never have peace with my mother's death she died with us both lost in our own darkness never mending what was broken. I can't do that anymore...no more time.
     Fact is, by the time my mind could wrap around not starving, purging, cutting, swallowing every pill I could grab, and dying my body was already in pretty bad shape. I didn't stop the darkness when they told me the disease I have was so severe they were removing over 95 percent of my stomach and putting in another surgical feeding tube to possibly help save part of my stomach, I didn't care, wouldn't hang my tube feeds, just kept on cutting, and pushing my many, many meds meant to stop the PTSD and night terrors. I was about as dark as it gets, I was screwed up all the time, would just sit there and bleed when I needed stitches, and made no attempt to change. Two days after meeting the man who is now my husband he was calling an ambulance after finding me pretty much passed out in bedroom with a major death cocktail shoved directly into my guts and they wouldn't let him ride with me because he wasn't really anyone who knew me yet, so he rode a bike with broken brakes to the ER to sit with me. That was day one of a very long battle to regain control of my mind that included a definite re-evaluation by a psych doc who wasn't keeping their patients snowed out of their minds, I gave up control of what meds I was kept on, I slowly became more willing to increase my intake (sometimes requiring restraint to stop behaviors), I very slowly began to stop myself when I was slipping into the, for lack of a better description "cutter's trance", I learned to use a voice that I didn't know existed, and eventually it got easier to get through a minute, then five minutes, then an hour, and pretty soon I made it to bed without using any behaviors. The screaming got quieter and the light could finally made me see that I had a life to live. It has been over four years and I still have dark moments and even dark days, but I've learned how to reach out and how to stop myself, that doesn't mean there aren't lapses because there have been and I get through them without falling back and holding on to a husband and son who love me. Like I said, all of this happened and I decided it was time to have a life and my body decided it wasn't sure how much more life it had in it.
     I've been blessed to have a beautiful little boy that they told us was impossible and despite being sick I have lived, laughed, cried, and loved him with all my heart and will until it stops beating. The problem is I never mended when the people who were around when the darkness found it's way inside me, I've never said my piece, and despite thinking it, I've never let it go. These relationships are about as broken as they can get and as we get more and more bad news my emotions go from sad to pissed that they aren't around and that blame and hurt starts getting in and all those why's that I never had answered start pushing their way into my mind, and I can feel it all coming back like I'm going to shatter suddenly. I refuse to die with all of this inside of me, leaving so many questions unanswered, and leaving my brokenness with my child. He will never be made to felt the way I have because he is far from worthless and will never feel like he is. I have to know why he has a family that doesn't want to know him, why the only parents I have left seemingly have no interest in addressing the fact that they are going to lose a daughter far before they thought, I want to know why I was raped and nobody ever acknowledged it, why I lived in a shelter and went to court with a stranger to support me and not my family, I want to know why when they knew their teenager was sitting in her room cutting herself and starving herself to death they didn't open the door, and most of all I want to know why my voice went away as a little girl, why I felt like I was worthless, and nothing I ever did for them was right? That is just a little bit of my darkness, my dirty laundry they say you shouldn't speak about in public, well I say speak about it before you die with it. I want this slate clean, I want a family there when I die whether it be in a week or three years, and personally I've not found any better way to do it than to just frigging say it.
     I am done with all of this, this game playing and blaming, I'm done with awkward dinners or holidays, and huge elephants in the room. I will admit my own mistakes and I have no interest in passing judgment I just want healing. I don't mind that you can see my where my pieces have been glued back together after damn near turning to dust because at this point there is no time. I am who I am and I've done things I can't take back and I'm not proud of and I dare you to find someone who hasn't. I'm sick, it doesn't define me but I won't let my loved ones continue to ignore it like if we don't talk about it that it goes away. I sometimes need a person to listen on the phone when I'm having a bad day and feeling like crap and I want to complain about what the doctors are doing, I'm not asking for it to be all the time, but sometimes it is going to happen. I'm not perfect, and neither are the people I love and I know that we will still disagree and sometimes down right fight, but I don't want it to end without the mending, no more whys even if I don't like the answers I get I need them.
     Fact is, we are all dying the fact that I have a team of doctors that remind me of my mortality every week it can be anyone's last day, last second on this Earth even when they are perfectly healthy. We put off everything hoping to have the strength to do it later, that it is somehow easier, or with the thought that maybe we will never have to do it and it gets put on a shelf. All that hate, rage, guilt, sadness, and pain just gets stored up and it either comes out in a way that is more damaging or you learn that you have to let it go. I was damn near consumed before I was twenty three years old in darkness, can't imagine what it feels like to go fifty or sixty years just stewing until one Christmas you have to many drinks and it comes out with broken furniture and blood and people pulling you away from someone who you love and leading you both in other directions whether it be father and son, mother/daughter, brothers, sisters, whoever. Despite what you think nothing is impossible until you are dead, you aren't broken beyond repair until you are buried in the ground, and if you reach out and say your piece and the other person is too lost in their own head to realize that it is time to pick up the wreckage you have to be able to let it go and breathe through the fact that you did something you couldn't do. I won't lie, I have damn panic attacks in confrontations, it is best for me to have someone there who is able to almost mediate and keep me from getting too upset because then that trance comes back and all I can think is "must get out, must run away from everyone, can't breathe, can't think, have to bleed"...that is me and I know that about myself which is a good thing. I wrote this very long blog mainly for myself and my current situation, but I've come to realize that sometimes my ramblings can make a small difference in someone else's life and I pray that is the case with this one. Letting go and learning to use my voice and my feelings is new for me and scary as hell, but it is a thousand times better than what I was before. I am sick, but I'm sure as hell not dead yet and I didn't die the thousand times I've probably should have over the years, so I figure I might just be strong enough to face all of this stuff and learn what it is like to be able to breathe and take a walk without falling over wreckage. When we have a tragedy like a tornado and this is disaster and wreckage everywhere we all work together to pick it up and put things back together, maybe not the same, but we mend them...I believe wreckages in life can be picked up and mended even if they turn out a little strange.