By The Grace of God

Sometimes no one gets it. No one understands how hard I have worked in the last twelve years of my life. Or how hard it is for me still to function. And if you've never suffered from depression or had a background in Psychology, you don't understand what goes through my head or how I think. So invalidating my feelings, even if you don't mean to or think you're helping, does nothing to help me and makes me even more reluctant to talk to you about what's going on in my head and about the things I've gone through in my past that I've never opened up about to anyone.

I've rarely ever truly opened up about the abuse I went through in my childhood and teen years, even to counselors and friends. Though I've shared pieces and snippets, there is a huge part of it I've kept to myself for a long time that I don't think I'll ever be able to share with anyone no matter how close I am to them. Physical, emotional, mental, and verbal abuse all became a huge snowball that rolled me over again and again as I was growing up. Being slapped, thrown against a wall, and held in a choke-hold against the wall by your father while he cocks his fist back and says "You're so damn lucky I have so much self control or you'd be through this wall right now" isn't how you want to remember your childhood, but that is a lot of what I remember about my younger years. Wishing you were dead instead of dealing with it...that's something I remember feeling too, all the time. Even as I got older and my abusive parent was no longer in the picture, I would have nightmares about it that plagued me into adulthood and sometimes still reoccur when I'm feeling particularly stressed.

And I have never opened up about my suicide attempt when I was 16. No one, save one person, knows about that and I have never talked about it openly with anyone. But I reached a point so low when I was that age that I couldn't imagine going on anymore and did try to take my life. That, coupled with my increasing problem of self-harm was what pushed me to finally get help because I realized I couldn't keep going the way I was and live. And by the grace of God, I somehow survived and made it through to adulthood, though nothing is perfect and I still struggle with all of it.

Despite all of this, I still want to reach out sometimes...but each time, I find some reason not to. I don't want to burden people with my problems because I'm the one with two degrees in Psychology and should be able to deal with this shit by now, but the truth of the matter is that I can't. I've pushed the stone so far up the hill without help that I fear it's going to run my ass over if I try to hold it up by myself anymore. But the people I would turn to don't understand it or if they do, I don't want them to feel like I'm asking them to take this from me on themselves because I'm not. I just want to be able to feel normal for once in my life. But what will it take for me to finally feel it?