now that i have decided to do this blog i guess i need to mention why it is i did so. i mention that i am a 24 year old woman with a 4 year old son and a husband who is in therapy. now to elaborate some on these things.here goes...
I come from a not so normal upper lower class family (not poor but no where near comfortable) my mother and father met in high school and gave birth to their first child my brother when they were 17 years old, following him came me then my sister and my little brother who didn't make it. Neither of my parents graduated from high school, and they were both heavy drug users as i was a child. my parents separated when i was about 3 years old and my mother then remarried my now stepfather and eventually had a 5th child with him. my dad went on to have 2 more children before settling down with his wife now and having one last one. my step father broke his neck in a tragic accident when i was very young and was rendered disabled so he could not work, this in turn meant my mother had to off and on work 3 jobs to help support her family of six. my parents are in no way perfect, and did the best i think they could with the tools they were given. which we now know sadly was not nearly good enough to raise fully functioning and capable members of society. my parents eventually cleaned up their act and stoped using drugs when i was about 7, it took my dad well after that to clean himself up. i think he used till I was about 11 or 12. my mother and step father years later developed a second addiction. they became alcoholics when i was in 8th grade, and continue to drink heavily to this day. it was extremely hard being one of the eldest in a family whose parents are alcoholics and who also has an older brother who has some health and mental issues. i was forced into a very nurturing and care taker role at a very young age. I graduated high school at 17 and then worked for 6 months at a fast food restaurant before realizing that the small town i come from wasn't the place where my dreams would lead me. I packed up the things i could fit into 2 suitcases and headed to my biological fathers house. i moved out of the parents who had raised me house when i was 18 to live with my biological father who i in all reality knew very little about. i got their Jan 3rd of 2006, i was 18 and free of all the responsibilities i had grown up with.. i felt truly free for the first time and it was magnificent. i got to go to clubs and drink and make mistakes and just be young. i met the man that would become my husband June 13th of 2006 at a narcotics anonymous camping trip that my uncle dragged me too. he just so happened to be my uncles best friends son. we met and weren't very interested in each other as funny as it is.and just as fate would have it we ran into each other about 3 weeks later at a 4th of July party at, where else my uncles house of course.. he had a pool!! we decided we were going to hang out after the party and ended up hanging out and talking until 6am the next day. there was this strange connection that drew us to each other from the start, it seems looking back now. we went our separate ways that morning without so much as a touch or even an exchange of numbers, the following day i went about 3 hours away to visit my best friend and her daughter where she lived and i just couldn't seem to get this guy out of my head and of course as girls do had to catch my friend up on everything that had happened. i stayed with her for 12 days and that entire time i could not get this man out of my head. i came home the 16th of July and that night ended up going to a party with my cousin at her best friends house and low and behold who shows up but my 4th of July guy!! it was as if fate had realigned the stars for us and we have been together ever since that fateful night at that party 5 years ago. we then welcomed our son a little less than a year after we first met in June of 2007. he was a beautiful 8lb 0oz 21 1/2 in child and he was all ours. i went through 26 1/2 hours of very intense excruciating labor as well as a very traumatic birth. i almost lost my beautiful son during deliver as well as myself. well luckily we are both obviously fine but that is where my story of anxiety begins. the doctors have told me that because of that one significant traumatic event it triggered something in my brain that went haywire. i am clinically diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. (yes the one you hear so commonly from soldiers fighting in war.) as well as severe anxiety and sleep deprivation. my PTSD they said was cemented by a significant event in my life when i was 2 years old. i was beaten with a chair leg by a relative while my mother was out shopping for groceries. and because no one ever thought to get me help for that event i have forever been living in that so called "fight or flight" state of mind, and all of the other traumatic events(and there are more than a few) have only added to the severity of the syndrome. but it just so happens that the birth and almost losing the one person i care for More than life itself was the one that made it snap almost. like a dominoes that was the one that knocked them all over...it is now to the point where is affecting me in the daily functioning of life. i can no longer do things as i used to, things that i used to take for granted. for instance, just walking down the road in front of someone else that may be walking down that same road. in that situation my mind would race to extreme thoughts as well as my heart would be pounding out of my chest by this time my breather would start to get harder and harder to take also i would be sweating profusely. it is an extreme disorder that people sometimes don't even realize they have. i was honestly in the frame of mind that i would have to live in either total fear or complete numbness for the rest of my life for that had become the normalcy of my life, until one day something inside me said NO you do not have to live like this, NO you ARE worth fixing. Yes you can do the work Yes you can be the best person you want to be. Here i am now beginning this journey i set in motion to do just that.. become the better best me i can be.. not only for me but for my son...here goes ME FIXING MYSELF....
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