Who The Hell Am I?

Chapter 2 - My saviour

No one really knows this but I have been dealing with depression for as long as I can remember. Some days I wish I would just have the courage to end it all and be at piece. My high addiction started when I was young - I would do anything to be admitted at a hopsital so I could escape from the house that imprisioned me. When things were rough and I needed a break I would have a mild pain and sometimes make it seem much worse so I could be admired. When you show up to the hospital in pain bad enough to need to be admired they start giving you pain meds and you get your first taste of blissful happiness. It’s like the weight of the world is lifted off of you and you can finally breath and think about anything else. Prescription pills to Benadryl to gravel and evening taking them all together. This becomes my escape from reality and boy is it good. Now don’t get me wrong here there was always an issue when I got admitted but sometimes I would make it seem worse. I would rather spend my days in a hospital bed then in the house of horrors I was living in. As time went on I started to dabble in smoking pot in high school a few times but then I stopped - for awhile anyways. What didn’t stop was the pills or the hospitals.

At nineteen I was free. I freed myself and my sisters as well as my mother. I was in love (for the most part). He was everything I wanted or thought I wanted anyways. He fought for me. He chose me. I was young and naive. I went from a prison to a life of a step mom raising a five year old in 2.2 seconds. I didn’t get to experience life like most people did. What was supposed to be my time of growing and experiencing all that life had to offer. Making stupid decisions and sleeping with wrong guy or going on a trip with my girlfriends. Those things were not possible for me and maybe that’s why now I’m living my life the way I want. I thought he was falling in love with me but really he was just shaping me into the person he wanted me to be. I was young and he was older so I changed for him. He was also my saviour in my time of darkness and I wanted to do anything he wanted me to do.

My life from then on was always at his control. It was good for awhile but there was always the lack of trust between us both. Neither of us believed that the other was trust worthy. I used to imagine a lot of ways my life could change with him. I would imagine that he would cheat on me and I would leave. I would imagine that he would finally propose and he would become the man I wanted him to be. My escape from reality and from the truth that we were never going to be what I wanted and needed.

It’s freeing in a sort of way - to just get lost in the lives I make up for myself knowing most of them would never happen. If it wasn’t for our daughter coming in to this world I have no idea where my life would have led me. It’s said that one decision, one choice, one impulse can change your life forever and boy is that true. I became stuck in the world of being a mother at 19 of a child that I didn’t birth but I loved him anyway. Then along came my beautiful strong determined first daughter and that became the glue that held us together. Eventually life continued on and i took my escape through my pills when needed and I continued to play the role of the perfect wife and mother. Every decision I made was for them and along the way I lost who I really was and I became a person that I never wanted to be. Ten years I spent devoted to a life that neither of us every really wanted. I was a convienience to him. I was always there and did everything he wanted until one day I stopped. There was never a wedding, never a marriage. It was just me fading away more and more each day. Nothing was ever good enough. I didn’t clean enough. I didn’t get up early enough. I didn’t cook three meals a day. No matter what I did he never looked at me as an equal he treated me more as a possession. Some days it was all I could do to continue on my down world spiral of a life but I knew things needed to change or I wouldn’t make it.

I had a belief that I would never be the one to tear apart my family and start a new life. I believed our children needed to grow up in a home with both of their parents. I believed that I should endure the emptiness for them. I believed all these things until I couldn’t live it anymore. Yes those are the right decisions most of the time but not when the turmoil of a relationship together would be more harmful than for us to be apart. If I didn’t leave when I decided to leave my children would have memories of us fighting because that is what we were turning into. To anyone looking in on our life they thought we had the perfect life but I have come to realize that more often then not those who seem to have the perfect life rarely do. Yes we had the big house, yes we had good friends, yes we did some travelling and yes we had 3 beautiful children. All those are true but what others didn’t see or chose not to see were also true. I raised my daughters on my own even though he was there it was always just me. My life revolves around our children and him while his life revolved around what he wanted. Countless nights I stayed home with our children while he went out. That was all one sided. Taking care of his children so I could escape for a while was never in our cards. So I did what I did best and I bottled everything in and I never said a word. For ten years I never said a word about how I felt when he would not show up for an anniversary because he’s working on a rink for his son. Not a word about that fact that he rarely showed up for his daughters but was always present for his son. Not a word about him going out drinking but you know what they say - one can only bottle things up so long before there is an explosion and boy what an explosion it was.