I contacted my family again. All I can think now is of ways to die easily and make the pain go away.
Oh well, I never learn. Hopefully my last brutal mistake. Need to get away from them – for ever, and ever, and ever…
I partially did it, since they live in a different country. But I call them once in a while.
They definitely do not like the person I am. What have I done to deserve this?
Don’t know how, but I am.
I have been wondering if I should replace my current therapist. I have been seeing him for about a year and a half, looking for support and hopefully the cure for my chronic pain. Studies reveal that chronic pain and depression seem to walk hand in hand, however I was NOT feeling depressed before seeing him.
Here’s what seems to be interesting: my husband, my sister and my best friend – all at once – talked me into replacing him with a “better” one. I think they are the ones that told me that because I am probably retracting and distancing myself from social activities and peers. So these 3 caring souls, they all seemed to notice that I was getting “worse” at the same time.
True – I never talked so bluntly about suicide until lately, never cried as often and much as I these past times, never been so awfully inquisitive until not too long ago, and never brought so much concern as I have been bringing. Also, again, truth be told: I’ve been dwelling in my past for too long and cannot seem to get over it. I even secluded myself for months and wrote a memoir about some of my worse and most painful experiences.
I gave it a shot. If my chronic pain was related to my abusive family and to being bullied during my early childhood, if getting immersed in this stinking water would solve my problems, then fine… I’d do it. If it would take me using medical marijuana, OK, I’ll review my own values on drugs and try liking it. This is what utter despair can do to a person. So I shut my eyes, covered my nose and mouth and submerged into the worse of me.
And currently I blog to no one. 🙂 I am not cataloguing this blog on blogging lists, no effort whatsoever to publicize it and have people reading it. I am just getting things off my chest.
However if you found my little treehouse, my “place”, don’t feel as if I am “shooshing” you away. Get confy. I’ll bring you tea and cookies. But I cannot do much more than that at the moment. Ask no more of me right now. Please just bear with me until I get back on my feet, although it seems as if I am still standing.
Lost.
In these past weeks 2 strangers talked AT me instead of to me. The both criticized something of mine. Could smell the stench of depression?
What seemed to start as a naïve comment, something of true concern, took terrible a wrong turn.
I was asked by one of them to remember one of my happiest moments. I mentioned it: when I was on a plane, going somewhere (I don’t want to say on this blog), being only XX years old. The adventure, the “this”, the “that”…
He answered, impolitely, “so divorce your husband and go away”.
“I did not say I wanted a divorce”, I answered. “You asked me when I was happy.”
But the cat was already out of the bag. I teared up.
I don’t think I look lame as most depressed people do, I wear my make up (not like Dolly Parton!!!), do my hair, well, I don’t pass in front of construction sites and measure how well (or sexy) I look, but I do have my personal “looking-ok-o-metter”. I was a model when I was a teenager and have the privilege of not having the scale tipping to the other side.
But there must be something that makes it obvious.
Either that or my husband had a conversation with this person and mentioned I was “kinda depressed”, which is also a possibility.
So, I am lost.
I cannot just fall, dust off, stand up and keep on walking. I have the European mentality that likes to ruminate about things. And I am Jewish too.
So, I am lost.
I need a floating ring. I need a boat. I need directions.
I am lost. Have you seen me around?
I am cleaning up my desk and it’s one of the best things I am doing for myself today besides my routine MD visit (quick ECG, urine, “how’ve you been”, etc.), followed by my seeing my shrink. I don’t think he takes me for serious – he once DID mention that I was neurotic (what a fabulous thing to say to a
patient)… but now I want to talk about something serious. About abuse. Family abuse, spousal abuse, even a client freaking abused me. Does it say “punching bag” on my forehead?
I woke up this night hearing my husband saying “see, you like anal sex” and a bunch of fingers literally up my ass.”Stop it”. Then he stopped. Yeah, yeah, yeah, our sex life hasn’t been that great, but it’s exactly because of these “little” things. I am filled with resentment. And the love I feel or felt for him is fading fast.
So today my sister got screwed in her work, got removed from her department and was sent to a different one. She is terribly resentful too and we had a chance of having a “quick” conversation. I’m loquacious and easily deviate from the subject, so there’s nothing really “quick” about my conversations, nor straight to the point, but that’s not where I want to reach.
She finally said that she understands me. That she hasn’t been the best sister in this world, that she did mistreat me plenty of times, and started bringing things from the past to exemplify. “I don’t know what it was,… competition, just plain being ‘bad’, but the fact of the matter is that you are right, ********. You have all the right to complain about my poor judgement and how I’ve treated you in the past”.
That’s all I needed to know. That I’m not crazy. That, as a sister, I deserved a bit more of love, attention and consideration. That’s all. I do appreciate the fact that she does see the fact that my mother shows more affection to her. In other words, I’ve been picked and chosen to be the black sheep of the family.
So I am putting things in order – on my desk and in my head. That’s why I felt the urge of writing (and eating too, but that’s a different story).
I had more to say, but I’ll start up by putting things in order on my desk. That’s more urgent then emptying my heart on a blog that no one reads.
Oh, yes,… my husband also gave me a quick recipe if I really wanted to die without having to wrap a rope around my neck. And I ask myself if that was his dark sense of humor or part of … I don’t know.
I am tired of abuse. I think that, just like Klein’s sexual orientation grid, that does not define our sexuality by being either heterosexual or the opposite, abuse also should have its own grid. A grid related to how much you can take and from whom to take shit (with a smile on your lips and tears hidden in your eyes).
But not in this 80’s song. Annie Lennox sings about 2 types of people. Is life really like this?
Cat’s out of the bag. Here’s how the putty-putty-putty escaped:
I called my mom (how pathetic, now that I see it in writing) from the road, as I was driving back home. Being a great professional herself in her own field of expertise, she had helped me immensely on a day before a meeting with 1 client (ok, TMI from this point on…)
Fantastic.Meeting went hunky-dory. On the way back to pick up my car, I was riding in my client’s in the car. She gave me really great advice as it comes to “charging my services”. She was right. She was rough too. She gave me some tough love. Right on the money. And as a consultant myself, I sat, listened and took a few notes. Decided I would let it sink and see what makes more and less sense.
But I was broken hearted because she saw me naked. Figure of speech, folks… that’s how I felt, though. Naked. In the pouring rain. In the cold. (Elvis, help me sing “In the Guetto” now)
One of my client’s advise collided with one of the things my mom told me before. Let me be specific: my mom is absolutely against rounding up anyone’s years of experience (mine, of course) and she called me all names that mean “liar”. At some point in our conversation she may have eventually called me a liar.
Having a Jewish mother calling you a liar is pretty much like, for you Catholics, having he pope remove his hand off of your head and hearing him say “nah,… no wafer and no blessings for you this year, next in line please” But worse. She knows my soul. She knows I am insecure. She knows I feel like crap. She know I feel as if I were the most inept that ever stepped (PS: thank you Morrissey for the inspirational quote.)
So, I decided to 1) be brutally honest with my client (read here, in MY disadvantage), just as (metaphorically) telling all secrets about my poops and 2)be less assertive in terms of “charging”. Why, oh, why… My mom may have been a great pro, but she was no businessman.
So that’s when my client, “the business woman”, began “teaching me a few lessons”.
1) you never say this. 2) you never say that. 3) you never, ever, for holly molly’s sake, never say … and the list went on.
So I left broken-hearted. I am the one that supposedly goes there for consulting and I end up leaving like a dog with its tail between its legs. I’ll get to the cat, please bear with me a bit more.
So, after my meeting, I called my mom from an open mall, on my way back home. I told her about all the advise I heard from my client. And when I explained that I have not come up with that, it was actually my client rounding up my years of experience, here’s when I hear the following:
“I have not seen it ‘under that light’. OK, so you can round-up from now on. Happy?”
“But, mom, literally yesterday you called me a liar.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Can you please say I am NOT a liar?”
“You’re uncivilized. You’re yelling at me!”
“She gave me tough love, now I want to share it with you – can I?”
“You’re screaming”
“I’m not”
“You are”
“I’m not, for Christ sake!” ( I’m Jewish!!!)
She turned the TV on at its max volume
“can we hang up now?”, she asked.
“No, we can’t. I thought we were having a conversation”
“YOU were speaking, I was not”
“I was in the middle of a freaking sentence, mom”
“Can we hang up now?”
Double plus good.
Both my client and my mom gave me shit.
“Do you love ME, mom?”
(TV NOISES)
“Do you love ME, mother?”
(TV NOISES)
“Are you still there?”
(TV NOISES)
I hang up the phone. Picked up a to go meal at Panda express (that’s how much self-loathing I was feeling at the moment!). I drove like a mad woman in every highway I could. 90, 100. So lucky cops were not around. Cried my eyes out. So “lucky” I could see the curves coming up. Took all the Bromazepam I had in my purse and would have taken more. I was literally suicidal on my way back home.
So I decided to tell my mom and my sister how horrible I felt and that I contemplate dying sometimes.
Triple plus good.
The cat’s out.
Meow.
Life, life, life… This thing filled with imperfections and at times terrible, but watch someone fighting a terminal illness: All they want is to survive.
Just give them another day and hear what they would do. Kiss their kids, grandkids, tell them stories, taste a cake, savor a fruit, go out for a stroll, enjoy the most simple things in life – no need for private jets, Louboutin shoes and Hollywood bucketlists. That does not mean that I forgot to “envy” Oprah and her lavish lifestyle, but that’s a different story. Let’s go back to life, death, terminal illness and this thing called “depression”.
As I just said, there is this disease called “depression”, which is IMHO the exact opposite of all the diseases you have in this world. Instead of fighting to stay alive, all you want is to die. Let me rephrase it. Actually, all you want is to make the pain go away. And if dying is part of it, then it’s a deal or no deal game.
I’m closing the box on Howie and screaming “no deal”, without knowing what the banker will give me on the next rounds. In other words, I’m not taking a bus ride without knowing where it is taking me, and killing myself is pretty much like having a 1 way ticket to a place I don’t know. I simply really don’t know what’s out there. I cannot predict if my dad and grandparents (which I terribly miss) would salute me. I even have a shrink that have “gone to the other side”, but I’m not sure if she would take me as her patient again. Neither do I know if she is still is in this mad business…
What I do know for a fact that you would not have 72 virgins waiting for you on the other side if you kill yourself. Don’t ask me how I know it, I just do. In addition to that, who the hack would come up with this random number: 72? Why? If keeping 1 woman happy is already a tough task, try 72! Unless you don’t care about any woman’s happiness, in that case, you’re a horrible person and should get help ASAP. I mean it.
Ok, worst case scenario: if they start laughing, all together, all the 72 virgins, viral outburst, you know, one looks at the other and can’t control their laughter… could you tell the difference and state for a fact if they are laughing AT you or WITH you? Or, better, can someone only tell me if these 72 virgins at least look good? No need for Cameron Diaz, but imagine all he hassle for 72 Ugly Bettys? Anyone back from heaven saying ” 72 blonde bombshells, man put on your jeans, hop over… I mean, first, gotta strap this belt around your waist, then bibidi, bobidi, “boom”: 72 girls to fuck like a bunny, ruin their reputation and … hmmm… don’t know the laws and child support in heaven – you’re screwed”.
I just think this 72 virgins deal is just horrible from every angle you look at. Get 1 good-looking hooker on the side, would say Charlie Sheen. On the other hand, that IS a great suicide prevention campaign – who would have thought that THAT is all a guy gets after an entire life? 72 screaming virgins??? Hell no!!!
As for life,.. yes, so, I saw my shrink yesterday and I think he thinks I am a nut case. An opinionated one. Kinda cashew. Bent, salty, may go well with chocolate, and specially these days, bitter chocolate.
So what do I do? I blog about leaving my depression behind. You know, you can always come back here to read my complaints on a daily basis. In the meantime, I will take care of my affairs and will probably come back tomorrow or the day after to blow off some more steam.
As for the cashew nut here, I will be fine.
I always have this feeling after I speak with a good friend, you know, like, maybe I have exaggerated, maybe I have deprived myself from good moments just for the sake of saying that I am depressed, that I am this or I am that. I don’t know.. What makes sense now is that I know at this very moment that I feel better. It was as if my friend hugged me and said that everything will be all right. I am confused yet I don’t feel lost.
Everything is going to be all right.
So I got conned. It all started about 2, 3 weeks ago. This supposedly journalist’s husband approached me and asked if I knew of someone that could hire his wife. After a quick Q&A, I immediately started talking to her and this “writer” promised me that she could most definitely write about any client my PR agency signs. And most importantly, she would get these articles published on major local newspapers in our area. “Fantastic”, I thought to myself. This is the only way I can promise results to my clients. “Results” is not just a buzz word for a serious PR pro. It is our “holly grail”.
If there is one thing that PR clients crave seeing is articles about themselves, their products and services in the local media. Up to this point, I have never seen someone who calls him/herself a journalist and promises things like positive articles on large outlets for money, however, my excuse for this particular blunder is that lately I have been working mostly with “pure” Marketing and no PR campaigns whatsoever.
Here was the catch, at least for me. Knowing of the massive lay offs in the major local newspapers I decided to give it a try. I thought to myself that maybe the lay of the land is different now. I know it may sound unbelievable, and I only believe my own excuse because I am the one to blame for making a really, really, really stupid decision and having such poor judgment. In my head I was trying to turn a problem into a solution.Of course I wanted to be ahead in the game (who doesn’t), to have a journalist in my PR agency’s team, someone that promised that would write about my clients, and my part in it was to give her a salary. How naïve…
A few days ago, we had a phone conversation. That was when I found out she does not write to this newspaper. Nor to that other one. Long story short, I got conned. Not only that, BUT, listen to this: whom do I hate the most? Do I need to answer? Come on… That’s the problem: the other person may be the worst SOB in this planet and I still find an excuse to blame myself for this!
This time I said to myself that this is what happens when one looks for the easy route. You find the con artist. Good thing it took me only a few weeks. I had worse cases happening to me – I will share them later with you. So, the question is: “when will I ever learn?”
Click here to learn about “the easy route”. 🙂
The Place (the blog) 