Conversations from hell

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I honestly don't know how to respond to that, other than to say that I am listening.

[Left]

I honestly don't know how to respond to that, other than to say that I am listening.

it'll have to wait until tomorrow.
...ATM I'm feeling a bit drained, as I haven't lifted this particular baggage in a bit.
...This part?  I can say I went through it and it's closed.

The only part I'm really disgusted about is? 
How stereotypical pedophile this guy was...single older man, doesn't have a real job, no girlfriends, works as a photographer...babysits children.
I was friends with his next-door neighbor's girls.  The neighbor was a single mom and was really happy to have someone watch her kids for free.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I honestly don't know how to respond to that, other than to say that I am listening.

it'll have to wait until tomorrow.
...ATM I'm feeling a bit drained, as I haven't lifted this particular baggage in a bit.
...This part?  I can say I went through it and it's closed.

The only part I'm really disgusted about is? 
How stereotypical pedophile this guy was...single older man, doesn't have a real job, no girlfriends, works as a photographer...babysits children.
I was friends with his next-door neighbor's girls.  The neighbor was a single mom and was really happy to have someone watch her kids for free.

I would say how you have no idea how hard I am cringing right now, but... you not only do, but more so.

[P3nT4gR4m]

When it comes to repressed memories, it doesn't seem that far fetched to me. I have false memories. Once you've seen one of those from the inside, you know there's pretty much nothing that the human brain aint capable of making itself think or believe.

When I was writing this series the memories weren't repressed. Like Nigel said, they were just shit I hadn't really thought about in years. In the process of sticking it on the internet for a bunch of anonymous weirdos to read, tho, I found out why. I was afraid of them. You can't remember stuff like that without going back into that headspace. I was scared if I did that I'd get stuck there again. Turns out I didn't, tho. Turns out I really am stronger and better at controlling it, nowadays. Better at avoiding the vortex of bizarre that can suck you down so far you forget which way is up.

Those memories, tho, they happened to a different person. I don't mean that in a dissociative way, either. It's not a cop-out. The guy who went through that shit was me alright but it was a different incarnation of me. Just a kid. He didn't know what I know. He didn't have the strength and ability to fend off the demons. That came after. That came as a result of what the kid went through. He was weak and defenseless. I used to hate him for that but not now. How else could he have reacted? He wasn't me yet. But his sacrifice and his pain and his weakness, made me who I am.

He died for my sins. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Because I'm not emotionally stuck there anymore, remembering the things that happened to me feels different now. It's weird, but now I just feel compassion and sadness for the kid I used to be, even though I used to hate myself. I wish that I could protect that kid. It's like I just have this whole different perspective; it's still painful, but I'm not stuck in it; remembering doesn't transport me to the emotional place I was when it happened. It used to, of course, but that's what the therapy was for, to get me un-stuck and allow me to mature emotionally.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Actually, there's only two possible explanations. Nothing else makes sense, even considering my age.

I intentionally fell down those stairs, because I was neglected. Because dad was drunk and watching sports an wasn't paying attention to me.
Dad was drunk and pushed me for some unknown reason that I still can't understand.

Please tell me that option 1 makes sense and there is no option 3.

I fell down stairs when I was about three, Twid.

We were visiting my grandma in another city and she lived in a two storey house. That's a big novelty in Texas.

The adults were yakking downstairs and I went upstairs and looked out the window. Then I went to play on the stairs. I messed around awhile until I was tired. Then I tried to lie down on one because I loved it, but it was too small and I ended up rolling down the whole flight. I still have a little knot behind my ear from that.

But my point is, kids fuck around on stairs and they fall. I don't KNOW that your dad didn't push you, I DO doubt that you did it on purpose.

Little kids can get banged up in a vaccuum if you look away. Just sayin'.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

I honestly don't know how to respond to that, other than to say that I am listening.

This.

Fuck. 

All of it.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

As for why your sister remembers it that way, I don't know.

Memory will fill in holes with things that never happened sometimes.

Or not.

And having a parent like that can make you go off on tangents. I had a friend with an asshole dad, not violent or perverted, but he would do things like knock roaches off the ceiling over her with a broom knowing she was terrified of them. One day she said she thought he had raped or fingered her as an infant, because she didn't bleed the first time she had sex. I had to explain to her that most people DON'T really bleed, I didn't, and those romance novels with the bloody-carnage sheets are total bullshit.

I don't know how many years she went around thinking that, and it's a totally different situation, but having a fucked up parent can make suspicion the default, I think.

[Left]

I'm supposed to be talking about my latest visit to planet batshit...unfortunately, that involves first depression, then PTSD.
If you want to talk about PTSD, you have to show where you got it, right?

Depression is easier to talk about.
..I started showing signs of clinical depression in 5th grade...and despite getting some therapy, I did not get undepressed.
...I wouldn't, I was in an extremely dysfunctional family and I got hit by dad when he felt I deserved hitting...often enough.
Mom was verbally abusive.
By that time I'd figured out hiding in my room was the best way to not get hit and/or verbally abused.
I was fat by that time, and I was constantly picked on.  I had no friends.
...But somewhere along the line, I got the idea that I was filthy and needed to die.
...That I contaminated everyone around me, that i was evil.

I berated myself for failure to kill myself, called myself a coward.
I already blamed myself for every bad thing that people did, every taunt...I was ashamed because I deserved it.
I was going to Christian schools in 6th and 7th grade...I was actually quite a devout little Christian for a while.
People told me to pray to Jesus, and I'd get better, this after I tried to strangle myself in the bathroom with a towel.  Very lame suicidal gesture, but I was 11... and I just didn't want to show my dad the grades because I was going to get slapped around and told how worthless I was.
...Jesus didn't help. 
Eventually at 16 I got treatment, then hospitalized for 6 weeks.

My depression became severe in my early 20's again, and then I decided that I was tired of being unemployed, lonely, and severely depressed...I stopped trying to quit my meds, just accepted that I was on the pills permanently.
I found a really cheap place, got out on my own, fell in love with an asshole (guy), crazy (girl), nag (guy).  After him I bounced home for a bit, then got a place...and met my wife.
I really, REALLY loved my wife.

I moved in with her in 2002...and I became physically ill.  Her rented townhouse had pretty severe moisture problems-mildew tended to grow on the walls.
Sinusitis was dx'ed in 2007. 
Until then I was dealing with allergies and asthma that inexplicably went berserk...then we moved back in with my mom to pay "lung rent".   I was paying half my income for meds (so I could breathe, so I could go to work, so I could pay for meds... much like those anti-cocaine commercials in the 80's...)
...and somewhere in there I became depressed.  Suicidally ideating.
Felt so lost and frustrated. Tired.  Was functioning on no-doz. Was running low grade fevers.

(By the way, I should here note:  My mom got on antidepressants after kicking my dad to the curb, finally.  She eventually tried coming off of the antidepressants and figured out that they keep her from being a neurotic asshole, so she's on them, like myself, for the rest of her life.  She's a much kinder person now)

Swapped meds.  Swapped meds again.  Did not work.  Tried Effexor, and went fucking insane-what bipolar folks call manic dysphoria was induced, this on the trial dose.
Was running out of SSRI's to try and thinking I might have to go on antipsychotics.
Meanwhile, asthma doc had told me things would get way better if I dropped a lot of weight, so I did.  125 in 18 months.
Decided to take 5-htp with my antidepressants, and found that I was no longer thinking about suicide for several hours a day.
Am still doing this.
It's somewhat dangerous to do-it can cause serotonin poisoning...but since I was wanting to jump off a bridge before I did it, not doing it was dangerous too.

I'm still somewhat depressed, but I can function, mostly, and I don't think about offing myself more than once a week or so.
I have mostly stopped cutting too, I don't need the comfort of it anymore.
.
Some weight crept back on; I need to work on that.

...That covers the organic depression, methinks.

...I hope y'all will pardon me for reposting an old blog entry about what major depression feels like here:

Okay.  Since my depression's gotten to the point where I plunge into this level really fast, I thought I'd detail the scenery for those who haven't been.  Think of this as a guided tour of the interior hell depressives' misfiring brains create inside.
Do fasten your safety belts, please, and remain seated throughout the tour.

Suicidality is definitely a negative altered state of consciousness.   Your thoughts usually slow down, get very direct and simple.  You can't think very well at all, in fact.
Some people have numbness. They just feel like a walking zombie.  I usually have some of that, but I also have self-hatred and an emotional pain that's very intense.
The overwhelming feeling? Tiredness...so, so tired.  The kind of tired that makes you want to sleep.  Forever.

In terms of pain...if you've ever had someone close to you die? It has about the same quantitative level of emotional pain...but the feeling is different.
When someone dies there's a horrible wrenching feeling, but also...a profound gratefulness for having known them as well? There's incredible pain, but it's a clean pain, somehow?

Your heart just gushes open helplessly in agony, loss, and love.

Suicidality is different.  It's as if a thousand daggers are turned against yourself.  There's either a leaden deadness, or a loathing of oneself that passes all bounds. It hurts. It hurts.

The charge is often leveled "Suicide is selfish!" From the perspective of the suicidal person, not usually. They either feel like other people don't care about them, or that their suicide will be a good thing...the love of others around them...no longer seems real.

I used the analogy of a clear plastic hamster ball.  It's as if I'm in a person-sized version of one, and everyone else is outside the hamster ball, having fun, loving and being loved.  But I'm not able to participate, not able to penetrate the invisible, hard shell separating me from other people.  I feel dreadfully lonely, but totally unable to do anything about that...as if there is something uniquely and horribly wrong with me.
I feel like a monstrosity.
My own wrinkle-but I think it's typical-is to despise myself and think I need to be killed for the good of everyone around me. But that may or may not hold true for all the suicidally depressed.
Other people have used the analogy that it's like having an anvil drop on your head. Metaphorically, yeah.  Severe depression is...severely crippling. Thanks, Captain Obvious.

So I find it both soothing and frightening to think about ways to kill myself when in this state. Frightening, because, instinctively, I think most people fear death somewhat. Genetic programming.  Soothing, because the pain you are in is not only all you can stand and more...it feels like it goes on forever.
I also self-injure.  Some severely depressed people do that, without the intent of killing themselves.  In my case, the pain actually makes me feel soothed...I've been doing it for so long it's literally directly comforting to engage in something other people would find inexplicable and revolting.

But when suicidal...you are paddling your douche canoe on a sea of suck that you can't see coming to an end.
In fact, researchers have studied severely depressed people and found out their time sense is off.  When you're down, every minute drags by as if dragging steel chains...every....torturous...minute.

What I've learned is that for me...this passes...provided I keep doing things to shift it. I have to try and eat good food, get the correct amount of sleep, neither binge nor starve, work out, take my meds, try to be kind to my loathesome self.
If it doesn't pass I go to the doctor and get something done with my psych cocktail. Or go hop on the therapy-go-round. Or whatever.
The point is a mixture of tolerating the pain and doing something constructive about it has kept me alive...and on the majority of my days grateful to be so.

But if I were to compare this pain to a physical pain I'd have to say it hurts at about the level a fracture does.

So...if you've never been severely depressed...that's the tour.

I hope you've kept all limbs in the car, we do so hate when we have to sew fingers back on.

[Left]

Those memories, tho, they happened to a different person. I don't mean that in a dissociative way, either. It's not a cop-out. The guy who went through that shit was me alright but it was a different incarnation of me. Just a kid. He didn't know what I know. He didn't have the strength and ability to fend off the demons. That came after. That came as a result of what the kid went through. He was weak and defenseless. I used to hate him for that but not now. How else could he have reacted? He wasn't me yet. But his sacrifice and his pain and his weakness, made me who I am.

He died for my sins. 

I get this.

Though for a long time I felt like I was "mourning my own death," which happened in some interior way when I was 6...but I haven't gotten there yet in the narrative.
I'm starting with the easier portion.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

As for why your sister remembers it that way, I don't know.

Memory will fill in holes with things that never happened sometimes.

Or not.

And having a parent like that can make you go off on tangents. I had a friend with an asshole dad, not violent or perverted, but he would do things like knock roaches off the ceiling over her with a broom knowing she was terrified of them. One day she said she thought he had raped or fingered her as an infant, because she didn't bleed the first time she had sex. I had to explain to her that most people DON'T really bleed, I didn't, and those romance novels with the bloody-carnage sheets are total bullshit.

I don't know how many years she went around thinking that, and it's a totally different situation, but having a fucked up parent can make suspicion the default, I think.

Without a time machine, I will never know. From my perspective my father only hit me on one occasion, and that was when I was in high school and having some sort of breakdown before I was supposed to leave for it. Funny enough, he was advancing up the stairs, and I was backing up, all the while shouting for him to hit me again, crying and laughing uncontrollably all at the same time. To this day, I can't remember what sparked the whole thing off. Only that it ended with him dropping me off at the bus stop, me telling him I felt good, and him telling me that I was sick if I felt good.

On the one hand, he was generally good to me and my sisters. On the other hand, I always feared him if he was angry, even if he didn't do anything. I still get afraid on the rare occasion when a male authority figure reprimands me (hasn't happened in about 3 years). These days though, any time I talk to dad, he seems genuinely overjoyed to hear from me. I can hate his quirks, but not him. He was however, abusive to mom, at least until he sobered up. And I guess maybe that's why I feared him. That such rage could exist in someone who was, at least when he was in control of himself, an otherwise gentle (though easily irritated) man. He may have named me after a militant, but my sense of pacifism and is also from his ideals.

I guess what I am saying is that he was certainly capable of such a horrid act at the time and in his state, and because of that there will always be doubt. The doubt didn't even exist until Midsister recounted the event.

[Left]

Sometime when I was 5, I realized that everyone was a threat.
Mom hit me, dad hit me, even grandma said mean things. The gun guy, he sure was a threat.  Joel I felt some vague fear about, I knew he was dangerous but not why.
Everyone was a threat.
...This made sense in my little child world.
But when I tried to not love my parents and not talk to my parents...I couldn't.  I needed the attention, even though being near them was liable to get me slapped or screamed at.

Somehow, Shawn became the one who thought that...I didn't think it.
I needed to be able to LOVE my parents without being terrified at the same time?

One part of me said Shawn was a real friend of mine back then, a tougher, older boy who impressed me, was a bit of a ringleader, a badass.
Stronger than me, faster than me, braver than me.

Another part of me says there never was an exterior Shawn, that Shawn came to be because I needed to disown that very real intellectualization of how it really was.

Maybe Shawn was an imaginary friend, once.
....
....
Incidentally, during 2011, I became very self-injurious...and for whatever reason, I wanted to duplicate the amount of force they slapped me with, if that makes any sense?
I wanted to do a sized-up version.
You see, I suspected they had no idea how hard they slapped me, because they always smacked me around when they were out of control.

I had to use both hands and a Houston yellow pages to hit myself that hard.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I have, thankfully, been largely spared the suicidal ideation. The few times it did come to me, I would always think of Twidsister (I was 15 when she was born) and how she would feel about that. Even if she had no memory of me due to age. (Incidentally it's me, soon to turn 32, Midsister, just turned 30, and Twidsister, soon to turn 17. I loathe human death, and it always affects me deeply. Part of my depressive thoughts include the idea that there is not enough time in a human lifespan, and I think about how I will one day die all too frequently (this, is probably the impetus for my need for religion). I try to understand why someone would feel the need to off themselves. I have felt it, but it's only been in moments of utter, hopeless despair.

Twidsister, however, does have suicidal ideation. Which is part of the reason why I try to understand it. As some of you know, I lived with mom fairly recently, and during that time, she and my stepfather were out one night, and I kept Twidsister company on this particular night. She said she was going to turn in early. I saw no problem with that. She came down again 10 minutes later with blood coming out of her nose. She was choking herself, and asked me to forgive her. I gave her a hug, called our stepfather, and then gave her the flat-out bald honest truth of the various flavors of mental illness on both sides of the family, including my own. I believe I also said something to the effect that she never has to ask my forgiveness as long as she tries to get better and not do something like that again.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I have, thankfully, been largely spared the suicidal ideation. The few times it did come to me, I would always think of Twidsister (I was 15 when she was born) and how she would feel about that. Even if she had no memory of me due to age. (Incidentally it's me, soon to turn 32, Midsister, just turned 30, and Twidsister, soon to turn 17. I loathe human death, and it always affects me deeply. Part of my depressive thoughts include the idea that there is not enough time in a human lifespan, and I think about how I will one day die all too frequently (this, is probably the impetus for my need for religion). I try to understand why someone would feel the need to off themselves. I have felt it, but it's only been in moments of utter, hopeless despair.

Twidsister, however, does have suicidal ideation. Which is part of the reason why I try to understand it. As some of you know, I lived with mom fairly recently, and during that time, she and my stepfather were out one night, and I kept Twidsister company on this particular night. She said she was going to turn in early. I saw no problem with that. She came down again 10 minutes later with blood coming out of her nose. She was choking herself, and asked me to forgive her. I gave her a hug, called our stepfather, and then gave her the flat-out bald honest truth of the various flavors of mental illness on both sides of the family, including my own. I believe I also said something to the effect that she never has to ask my forgiveness as long as she tries to get better and not do something like that again.

Twidsister asked a lot of questions that night. I didn't hold back on the answers.

Something about seeing someone you held when she was an infant hurting herself at the same age that you were when you held her as an infant. It's a weird.... It's weird. I couldn't do anything other than tell her the whole thing. Mom and Stepdad feel the need to protect her. I feel the need to inform her. I might not understand her particular thing, but she knows that I will tell her exactly where she got it. I will hug her, but I won't tell her everything's going to be ok. I don't know that. It's more important for her to know that we're all friggin' nuts and that I'm here for her.

[Left]

Something about seeing someone you held when she was an infant hurting herself at the same age that you were when you held her as an infant. It's a weird.... It's weird. I couldn't do anything other than tell her the whole thing. Mom and Stepdad feel the need to protect her. I feel the need to inform her. I might not understand her particular thing, but she knows that I will tell her exactly where she got it. I will hug her, but I won't tell her everything's going to be ok. I don't know that. It's more important for her to know that we're all friggin' nuts and that I'm here for her.

Informing IS protecting her.

...You're a good dude, yanno that?