It's 8:28pm and I feel like I've cried enough tears to fill a bathtub.
You know when you cry so much you feel like throwing up? That's where I'm at today.
I'll write a longer blog about today sooner - it just seems too big right now and too raw to take on but I wanted to let you know how I feel.
I feel really, really low.
Really brought down. Really rejected, unwanted and really unhappy. Deeply unhappy. The type of hurt that squeezes your soul and makes you want to just lay down and die.
I feel like that.
In all my thoughts of self destruction and in my worry and hurt and anger and pain...and suicidal considerations today...two words stand out - as if God is whispering them and hoping I put a puzzle together:
Compassion
...and the word "wait".
I've only ever heard God speak directly to me once in my entire life. I was in Liverpool and I was staring down at a handful of really, really strong pain meds. I was going to take them all, lay down and die. I was in shorts and a t-shirt in the middle of winter. Jonathan had just thrown me out for telling him I slept with Matt...and I felt as if my whole world was crumbling around me.
So as I was leaving, I was in a daze. I didn't think to put warm clothes on, I just grabbed a bottle of pain meds and shut the door quietly behind me.
I was resolute. I was actually going to do it this time. I was going to kill myself.
That's when God spoke to me.
His voice is like thunder and it shot from my head right down to my feet. I felt His voice in my being.
"Wait"
I always thought God would talk to me for ages in a time of crisis. I thought He'd offer me advice or tell me what the next steps were.
I never thought He'd say one word and never speak to me directly again.
I remember it as if it had just happened. I remember how I ached from the cold and how my hand shivered as I looked at the pills in my palm.
WAIT.
So I tipped them out of my hand...and I waited.
And God brought me through the best year of my entire life so far.
Today, I had a faint whisper of the words "Compassion" and "Wait" once again.
I have so much I want to tell you. I have so much I want to say to you. So much of me wants so badly for you to understand me.
Because to me, that's where compassion comes into it. Compassion to me - is where you identify with someone because you've been through what they've been through and you remember how hard it was. So you have compassion upon them and you do your best to make their journey easier. You recognise their burden, so you do the best you can to help them carry it - because you've been there before you know the best ways to handle it.
That's why I want to explain myself to you because I'm hoping you'll have compassion on me.
When I feel suicidal - it's like falling down an unexpected hole.
I'll be absolutely fine one moment - like I was today; sat across the wooden bar bench from my parents and my cousin and his wife. We were all talking, laughing and joking...having a wonderful time...
...when Mom's phone pinged.
She read the message, shook her head and breathed out sadly.
The table went silent. We all seemed to sense something big had gone down.
Mom started to read the text aloud "Hi Mom, thank you for coming to mine and Kate's wedding, it was so good to share our special day with you. You've posted pictures of our wedding on your Facebook and certain people have already liked them. Can I ask that you please take these down off your wall because Janet is commenting on the photos and I don't want her to be able to see my wedding pictures. I want her to have nothing to do with me and she doesn't deserve to see my happy day. Can you do it now? Thanks"
And I was sliding down a hole.
Dad cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows at Anuwar, pointing at their empty glasses.
Anuwar nodded and quietly said "yes please, Uncle Gerry"
I didn't know where to look so I fiddled with the straps on my handbag.
And this is where I want to explain myself to you.
I guess to a normal person - they'd respond in maybe these ways:
Haha what a dick head.
Pfft. Not my monkeys. Not my circus.
My brother is a bit of a shit. I'm not gonna sweat it.
Maybe they'd be pissed off "how dare he?" maybe they'd find it humorous. Maybe they would be a little upset but they'd shrug it off and continue on with the afternoon and try to find a way to move past it.
Not me.
This is what happened with me.
I started to shake. Every part of my body felt as if it was going through a terrible, terrible earthquake that no one could see. My throat closed up and I had trouble swallowing. My tongue thickened and I thought I'd choke on it. My palms sweated and my head ached so badly I felt as if someone had appeared out of nowhere and hit me with a baseball bat. My lips were instantly dry and when I tried to lick them, I panicked because my tongue wouldn't move.
In my head - anxiety rose up about 1000 notches.
instead of thinking "ok. that was unpleasant"...my heart and mind started shutting down.
Jay's text to Mom hurt me so deeply, he may as well have shot me in the face at close range. It hurt that much.
I couldn't cope. I couldn't move on.
While all this was happening within me, Jayne and Mom were making polite conversation.
Dad came back with 2 drinks and seemed to want to look everywhere but at me.
Everyone started talking at once but inside, I was dying a thousand painful deaths.
Inside I was screaming and crying and losing it.
"Why hadn't my parents said something about this?!?"
Jay...wtf?!? I'm so disappointed in you. You've taken it too far. It's okay to be hurt but it's not okay to be an asshole about this.
Whenever something hurtful happens to me - my default mode is SHEER HATRED for myself.
I don't know why I do it, but I do.
So when Jay's text arrived, thoughts were already forming in my mind of how to hurt MYSELF the most.
Within a few minutes, I'd cemented the very sticky idea in my mind that I needed to die.
It's like that with depression and anxiety. You go from zero to 1 MILLION in about 1 millisecond.
I went from:
"Oh wow. That's really rude. That's hurtful and spiteful and pretty sh*t if I'm honest"
straight to:
"Mom and Dad have always favoured Jay and that's because he's better than me. I'm a piece of crap. Of COURSE they like him better than me"
to:
"And Alun deserves a better wife than me - I'm a stupid, crazy, emotional girl who can't get along with her one and only sibling - what must he think of me?"
to:
"OMG my friends!!! They ALL get along with their siblings. They all love each other so much and are so close. If they hear about Jay hating me as he does, they'll assume there is something wrong with me and they'll all abandon me"
to:
"I'll be alone all my life. I'll die alone"
to:
"Why wait to be alone and miserable - just kill yourself now"
These thoughts processed themselves and cemented themselves in all of about 3 minutes.
I went from a casual stroll in the sunlight - to hitting the bottom of a dark tunnel in about 2 seconds.
Then the tunnel of emotion, hatred and depression I was in - started to fill with black tar.
oh sh*t. I'm going to die.
On autopilot, I made an excuse about having a gym appointment and having to leave.
I didn't have a gym appointment. I lied.
I didn't know what else to do. I had to get out of there.
As my body moved on autopilot, it made sure my mouth smiled at everyone. It made sure I said all the right words. My legs moved me gracefully and carefully out of the pub and into the street.
My body was moving very well without my mind engaging or steering it.
Because my mind was weighing up how fast the cars were going and whether one could kill me or if I'd have to wait to get home and kill myself.
The cars weren't fast enough.
Tears streamed down my face and I bumped into a few bemused passers-by.
"Sorry" I mumbled.
My mind was in such a dark and dangerous place. I was fighting within myself with the question "LIVE OR DIE?" going around and around in my mind.
Because that's how it is with severe depression. A slight 'bump' in the road of life can cause you to take your life or live it.
I have a feeling Robin Williams killed himself over a mis-worded text. Maybe a friend or someone he loved. Maybe it was his wife saying "hey - you left the back door open, you goose. Shut it next time when you go out. Lol."
but in a fragile state like the one I've been in - that text comes across as "YOU PIECE OF SHIT. GO AND KILL YOURSELF. I HATE YOU"
On auto-pilot and panicking...scared, terrified and desperate, I called my friend Christabel.
I was hysterical.
I told her about Jay's text and wailed though each word as if every word had bruised me somehow - had burnt me.
Understandably, Christabel was stern with me "Get over it, Janet. Suck it up and stop crying over it - you do this all the time and you know what? I'm sick of it. Stop crying! Stop it. Enough"
I know she meant it in a loving way. I know she meant to encourage me and to make me strong...
...but what I heard was "YOU ALWAYS GO ON AND ON ABOUT THIS AND I'M SICK TO DEATH OF IT AND SICK TO DEATH OF YOU. YOU ARE USELESS. YOU ARE SPINELESS. YOU MAKE ME SICK. GO AND FIND A HOLE AND BURY YOURSELF YOU SICK PEICE OF SHIT"
So again, I lied about a gym appointment and said I had to go. Charitable was worried about me and said some really kind words of love and encouragement but I'd done so much damage to myself that it didn't matter. I sat on the curb in the middle of a road in the heart of city and cried and cried and cried.
I walked home and I cried the whole way.
I got home and I cried.
I went out; walking along busy Beaufort street - and I cried.
I wanted to walk and walk and never ever come back.
My phone rang and I looked down at the screen that flashed "DAD" on it.
F*CK.
Here we go.
Well, I'm going to die anyway - let's see what the old man has to say.
And it was one of the toughest things I've ever experienced in my life.
At first, Dad was concerned to hear me crying.
Then he got annoyed.
I was hysterical about that and then Dad got really p*ssed off.
I thought "well I'm DEFINITELY going to kill myself now" so everything I've held in for 30 years of my life - I spewed out.
It was honestly like throwing up.
I kept going.
Dad was screaming.
I was screaming.
People passing by on the road gave me a wide berth.
"You've always favoured Jay over me - you love him more than you love me - you always have"
Wow. I've never said that before. I've always wanted to, though.
Well I'm going to be dead tomorrow so I may as well go out with a BANG. Haha. Go big or go home, right?
The FREEDOM it brought - to tell my Dad how f*cked up my life has been as "the other child" was ABSOLUTELY AMAZING.
Dad lost his mind.
I lost mine.
It was so freeing, I actually wanted to laugh.
Dad shouted and ranted and raved. He flung some pretty 'out there' things about.
"Wait"
I heard it in my soul - where the ocean of my heart brushes against the warm, white shore of my soul.
"Wait"
Any second now, Dad's going to hang up. The line will go dead because this is what always happens - he make me feel bad for making him feel bad and we hurt each other until the carnage is complete and one of us has to limp away because we've caused so much destruction in each other's lives.
I wanted to hang up before Dad could wreak that havoc in my life again.
If Dad hung up on me, then my death wouldn't be complete. Not the way I planned. I wanted the last word.
I wanted that last "F*CK YOU" and then to die so NO ONE could ever say it back to me.
Everything within me - had to win. Just this battle. My first victory and my last fight. I'm too battle worn and weary to do this anymore with you, Dad. I can't do this with you anymore.
So I had to hang up first.
But again, that voice "Wait"
FATHER GOD, I CAN'T WAIT. IF I WAIT, I WON'T GET THE LAST WORD AND I'LL GO TO MY GRAVE BEING BEATEN. AGAIN.
Again...that gentle whisper on the sands of my soul "Wait"
So I sat. At a blue bus stop with the city skyline looming over it.
And I waited.
AND IT HURT SO MUCH TO HEAR MY DAD LIKE THAT.
I can't tell you how much it hurt.
And Dad didn't hang up.
He roared.
He went NUTS.
And I waited.
Then...silence.
"Are you done?" I asked, shaking so much I thought I'd pass out from it.
"No"
And Dad went on. Probably only for 10 more minutes...but to me, it felt like a lifetime of hurt.
"Now I'm done"
Right.
Deep breaths, JD. Deep breaths.
I heard Dad taking deep breaths, too.
"Your Mom and I love you and your brother. We love you both" Dad said.
Not equally. You never have loved me in a way that felt safe or strong or real, Dad.
I didn't say a word.
"Sorry I've said what I've said...I didn't mean to hurt you" Dad said.
Well this was a first.
"I'm sorry too" I said.
I felt as if I'd taken a physical beating from that phone call. I was physically, mentally and emotionally DONE. My whole body ached. My heart ached.
"Your Mom wants to say a word" Dad said.
And I spent ANOTHER hour on that horrible bus-stop bench, crying. Just crying. Letting the hurts of the past and hurts of the present wash over me. These hurts threatened to kill me outright by sheer force of pain.
"I love you" My Mom ended.
"I love you too" I said.
"Your brother is not better than you and I don't love him any more than I love you" Mom said.
I know that's a lie.
"Okay" I relented.
We hung up.
I walked home.
I've typed this out.
I don't know what to do next.
You know when you cry so much you feel like throwing up? That's where I'm at today.
I'll write a longer blog about today sooner - it just seems too big right now and too raw to take on but I wanted to let you know how I feel.
I feel really, really low.
Really brought down. Really rejected, unwanted and really unhappy. Deeply unhappy. The type of hurt that squeezes your soul and makes you want to just lay down and die.
I feel like that.
In all my thoughts of self destruction and in my worry and hurt and anger and pain...and suicidal considerations today...two words stand out - as if God is whispering them and hoping I put a puzzle together:
Compassion
...and the word "wait".
I've only ever heard God speak directly to me once in my entire life. I was in Liverpool and I was staring down at a handful of really, really strong pain meds. I was going to take them all, lay down and die. I was in shorts and a t-shirt in the middle of winter. Jonathan had just thrown me out for telling him I slept with Matt...and I felt as if my whole world was crumbling around me.
So as I was leaving, I was in a daze. I didn't think to put warm clothes on, I just grabbed a bottle of pain meds and shut the door quietly behind me.
I was resolute. I was actually going to do it this time. I was going to kill myself.
That's when God spoke to me.
His voice is like thunder and it shot from my head right down to my feet. I felt His voice in my being.
"Wait"
I always thought God would talk to me for ages in a time of crisis. I thought He'd offer me advice or tell me what the next steps were.
I never thought He'd say one word and never speak to me directly again.
I remember it as if it had just happened. I remember how I ached from the cold and how my hand shivered as I looked at the pills in my palm.
WAIT.
So I tipped them out of my hand...and I waited.
And God brought me through the best year of my entire life so far.
Today, I had a faint whisper of the words "Compassion" and "Wait" once again.
I have so much I want to tell you. I have so much I want to say to you. So much of me wants so badly for you to understand me.
Because to me, that's where compassion comes into it. Compassion to me - is where you identify with someone because you've been through what they've been through and you remember how hard it was. So you have compassion upon them and you do your best to make their journey easier. You recognise their burden, so you do the best you can to help them carry it - because you've been there before you know the best ways to handle it.
That's why I want to explain myself to you because I'm hoping you'll have compassion on me.
When I feel suicidal - it's like falling down an unexpected hole.
I'll be absolutely fine one moment - like I was today; sat across the wooden bar bench from my parents and my cousin and his wife. We were all talking, laughing and joking...having a wonderful time...
...when Mom's phone pinged.
She read the message, shook her head and breathed out sadly.
The table went silent. We all seemed to sense something big had gone down.
Mom started to read the text aloud "Hi Mom, thank you for coming to mine and Kate's wedding, it was so good to share our special day with you. You've posted pictures of our wedding on your Facebook and certain people have already liked them. Can I ask that you please take these down off your wall because Janet is commenting on the photos and I don't want her to be able to see my wedding pictures. I want her to have nothing to do with me and she doesn't deserve to see my happy day. Can you do it now? Thanks"
And I was sliding down a hole.
Dad cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows at Anuwar, pointing at their empty glasses.
Anuwar nodded and quietly said "yes please, Uncle Gerry"
I didn't know where to look so I fiddled with the straps on my handbag.
And this is where I want to explain myself to you.
I guess to a normal person - they'd respond in maybe these ways:
Haha what a dick head.
Pfft. Not my monkeys. Not my circus.
My brother is a bit of a shit. I'm not gonna sweat it.
Maybe they'd be pissed off "how dare he?" maybe they'd find it humorous. Maybe they would be a little upset but they'd shrug it off and continue on with the afternoon and try to find a way to move past it.
Not me.
This is what happened with me.
I started to shake. Every part of my body felt as if it was going through a terrible, terrible earthquake that no one could see. My throat closed up and I had trouble swallowing. My tongue thickened and I thought I'd choke on it. My palms sweated and my head ached so badly I felt as if someone had appeared out of nowhere and hit me with a baseball bat. My lips were instantly dry and when I tried to lick them, I panicked because my tongue wouldn't move.
In my head - anxiety rose up about 1000 notches.
instead of thinking "ok. that was unpleasant"...my heart and mind started shutting down.
Jay's text to Mom hurt me so deeply, he may as well have shot me in the face at close range. It hurt that much.
I couldn't cope. I couldn't move on.
While all this was happening within me, Jayne and Mom were making polite conversation.
Dad came back with 2 drinks and seemed to want to look everywhere but at me.
Everyone started talking at once but inside, I was dying a thousand painful deaths.
Inside I was screaming and crying and losing it.
"Why hadn't my parents said something about this?!?"
Jay...wtf?!? I'm so disappointed in you. You've taken it too far. It's okay to be hurt but it's not okay to be an asshole about this.
Whenever something hurtful happens to me - my default mode is SHEER HATRED for myself.
I don't know why I do it, but I do.
So when Jay's text arrived, thoughts were already forming in my mind of how to hurt MYSELF the most.
Within a few minutes, I'd cemented the very sticky idea in my mind that I needed to die.
It's like that with depression and anxiety. You go from zero to 1 MILLION in about 1 millisecond.
I went from:
"Oh wow. That's really rude. That's hurtful and spiteful and pretty sh*t if I'm honest"
straight to:
"Mom and Dad have always favoured Jay and that's because he's better than me. I'm a piece of crap. Of COURSE they like him better than me"
to:
"And Alun deserves a better wife than me - I'm a stupid, crazy, emotional girl who can't get along with her one and only sibling - what must he think of me?"
to:
"OMG my friends!!! They ALL get along with their siblings. They all love each other so much and are so close. If they hear about Jay hating me as he does, they'll assume there is something wrong with me and they'll all abandon me"
to:
"I'll be alone all my life. I'll die alone"
to:
"Why wait to be alone and miserable - just kill yourself now"
These thoughts processed themselves and cemented themselves in all of about 3 minutes.
I went from a casual stroll in the sunlight - to hitting the bottom of a dark tunnel in about 2 seconds.
Then the tunnel of emotion, hatred and depression I was in - started to fill with black tar.
oh sh*t. I'm going to die.
On autopilot, I made an excuse about having a gym appointment and having to leave.
I didn't have a gym appointment. I lied.
I didn't know what else to do. I had to get out of there.
As my body moved on autopilot, it made sure my mouth smiled at everyone. It made sure I said all the right words. My legs moved me gracefully and carefully out of the pub and into the street.
My body was moving very well without my mind engaging or steering it.
Because my mind was weighing up how fast the cars were going and whether one could kill me or if I'd have to wait to get home and kill myself.
The cars weren't fast enough.
Tears streamed down my face and I bumped into a few bemused passers-by.
"Sorry" I mumbled.
My mind was in such a dark and dangerous place. I was fighting within myself with the question "LIVE OR DIE?" going around and around in my mind.
Because that's how it is with severe depression. A slight 'bump' in the road of life can cause you to take your life or live it.
I have a feeling Robin Williams killed himself over a mis-worded text. Maybe a friend or someone he loved. Maybe it was his wife saying "hey - you left the back door open, you goose. Shut it next time when you go out. Lol."
but in a fragile state like the one I've been in - that text comes across as "YOU PIECE OF SHIT. GO AND KILL YOURSELF. I HATE YOU"
On auto-pilot and panicking...scared, terrified and desperate, I called my friend Christabel.
I was hysterical.
I told her about Jay's text and wailed though each word as if every word had bruised me somehow - had burnt me.
Understandably, Christabel was stern with me "Get over it, Janet. Suck it up and stop crying over it - you do this all the time and you know what? I'm sick of it. Stop crying! Stop it. Enough"
I know she meant it in a loving way. I know she meant to encourage me and to make me strong...
...but what I heard was "YOU ALWAYS GO ON AND ON ABOUT THIS AND I'M SICK TO DEATH OF IT AND SICK TO DEATH OF YOU. YOU ARE USELESS. YOU ARE SPINELESS. YOU MAKE ME SICK. GO AND FIND A HOLE AND BURY YOURSELF YOU SICK PEICE OF SHIT"
So again, I lied about a gym appointment and said I had to go. Charitable was worried about me and said some really kind words of love and encouragement but I'd done so much damage to myself that it didn't matter. I sat on the curb in the middle of a road in the heart of city and cried and cried and cried.
I walked home and I cried the whole way.
I got home and I cried.
I went out; walking along busy Beaufort street - and I cried.
I wanted to walk and walk and never ever come back.
My phone rang and I looked down at the screen that flashed "DAD" on it.
F*CK.
Here we go.
Well, I'm going to die anyway - let's see what the old man has to say.
And it was one of the toughest things I've ever experienced in my life.
At first, Dad was concerned to hear me crying.
Then he got annoyed.
I was hysterical about that and then Dad got really p*ssed off.
I thought "well I'm DEFINITELY going to kill myself now" so everything I've held in for 30 years of my life - I spewed out.
It was honestly like throwing up.
I kept going.
Dad was screaming.
I was screaming.
People passing by on the road gave me a wide berth.
"You've always favoured Jay over me - you love him more than you love me - you always have"
Wow. I've never said that before. I've always wanted to, though.
Well I'm going to be dead tomorrow so I may as well go out with a BANG. Haha. Go big or go home, right?
The FREEDOM it brought - to tell my Dad how f*cked up my life has been as "the other child" was ABSOLUTELY AMAZING.
Dad lost his mind.
I lost mine.
It was so freeing, I actually wanted to laugh.
Dad shouted and ranted and raved. He flung some pretty 'out there' things about.
"Wait"
I heard it in my soul - where the ocean of my heart brushes against the warm, white shore of my soul.
"Wait"
Any second now, Dad's going to hang up. The line will go dead because this is what always happens - he make me feel bad for making him feel bad and we hurt each other until the carnage is complete and one of us has to limp away because we've caused so much destruction in each other's lives.
I wanted to hang up before Dad could wreak that havoc in my life again.
If Dad hung up on me, then my death wouldn't be complete. Not the way I planned. I wanted the last word.
I wanted that last "F*CK YOU" and then to die so NO ONE could ever say it back to me.
Everything within me - had to win. Just this battle. My first victory and my last fight. I'm too battle worn and weary to do this anymore with you, Dad. I can't do this with you anymore.
So I had to hang up first.
But again, that voice "Wait"
FATHER GOD, I CAN'T WAIT. IF I WAIT, I WON'T GET THE LAST WORD AND I'LL GO TO MY GRAVE BEING BEATEN. AGAIN.
Again...that gentle whisper on the sands of my soul "Wait"
So I sat. At a blue bus stop with the city skyline looming over it.
And I waited.
AND IT HURT SO MUCH TO HEAR MY DAD LIKE THAT.
I can't tell you how much it hurt.
And Dad didn't hang up.
He roared.
He went NUTS.
And I waited.
Then...silence.
"Are you done?" I asked, shaking so much I thought I'd pass out from it.
"No"
And Dad went on. Probably only for 10 more minutes...but to me, it felt like a lifetime of hurt.
"Now I'm done"
Right.
Deep breaths, JD. Deep breaths.
I heard Dad taking deep breaths, too.
"Your Mom and I love you and your brother. We love you both" Dad said.
Not equally. You never have loved me in a way that felt safe or strong or real, Dad.
I didn't say a word.
"Sorry I've said what I've said...I didn't mean to hurt you" Dad said.
Well this was a first.
"I'm sorry too" I said.
I felt as if I'd taken a physical beating from that phone call. I was physically, mentally and emotionally DONE. My whole body ached. My heart ached.
"Your Mom wants to say a word" Dad said.
And I spent ANOTHER hour on that horrible bus-stop bench, crying. Just crying. Letting the hurts of the past and hurts of the present wash over me. These hurts threatened to kill me outright by sheer force of pain.
"I love you" My Mom ended.
"I love you too" I said.
"Your brother is not better than you and I don't love him any more than I love you" Mom said.
I know that's a lie.
"Okay" I relented.
We hung up.
I walked home.
I've typed this out.
I don't know what to do next.
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