Coming Clean.

The contents of this post aren't pretty. I'm not going to sugar coat anything in this post. This post is going to be raw and emotional and real and if you can't handle it, I suggest you get out now. The contents of this post have only been relayed to one other person in my life. He subsequently dumped me. That was four months ago. I expect to lose people because of this. But I think that's why I'm writing this. The stigma behind mental illness needs to disappear, and that can only happen when people struggling with mental illness are truthful about their illness. Be it depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia or whatever else, be honest. Don't sacrifice parts of yourself, don't hide yourself away because you want people to like you. Be real.

I want to start this off by saying that I love my life. I have a beautiful apartment that I am able to afford all by myself, thanks to my wonderful job that I love so much. I've never held a job that I could truly say I loved until this one. I've never woken up excited to go to work, or thought about work on my days off. Until now. I love what I do and I love the school I work for, and the children and parents I work with. To top it all off, I have a crazy, beautiful, wonderful son that I have the privilege of raising. I love my life. 

But it wasn't always like that. I would like to point out that (most of) the events I'm coming clean about happened over a year ago. But that doesn't make them any less a part of who I am. So I'll start at the beginning.

When I was fourteen, I fell in love for the very first time. He was almost sixteen, and he was everything my parents hated. We thought for sure that we would get married and grow old together. Right before our two year anniversary, he cheated on me. We split up. His act produced a daughter, a beautiful little girl with eyes exactly like his. We got back together. We moved in together. We put plans for a wedding on the fast track. Then, I couldn't do it any more. His depression had so overtaken him that he could hardly get out of bed. He never went to work, he didn't like to play with his daughter when we had her, he didn't want to do anything. There was a time when all his friends came over to see him but he was so depressed that he wouldn't even leave our room. So I hung out with his friends all night. I was supporting us, and I couldn't do it any more. A week later, along came a smooth-talking ex and somehow I found myself married to him by the next weekend. But that's a story for another time.

A year and a half later, he committed suicide. It wasn't my fault. We had hardly spoken in that year and a half, but he had seemed to be on the right track. He was expecting his second child, a son.

I got a text from a friend. It was late. She said she'd been seeing Facebook posts with RIP (insert name). Seeing as there were multiple people with his exact name, I didn't think anything of it. I told her to let me know if she knew anything for sure. An hour later, I got a text. I remember the exact composition of the text. It was 10 at night, and the text said "he shot himself, dude."

Then the messages started pouring in. "How are you holding up?" "Are you okay?" "Do you need anything?"

People I hadn't spoken to since high school. I was pissed. Why do they suddenly want to talk to me? And why SHOULDN'T I be okay? We weren't together. We weren't even speaking. I realized, after the fact, that I was in shock. I realized that, because it hit me the next morning. I woke up and immediately started sobbing uncontrollably. I went to work anyway. I think I stayed twenty minutes. I couldn't stop crying. I couldn't function. The week passed in a blur. I don't remember anything. Until the funeral. 

It was made very clear that while no one was going to make a scene, I wasn't welcome. I didn't care. I walked up to his casket. I wanted to slap him and scream at him to wake up. I wanted to crawl in his casket with him and refuse to move. I did none of these things. I hugged his parents, much to their displeasure. I sat down. I cried more. I went to his grave site. I stood in the back of the crowd and left before his casket was lowered into the ground. 

When I was alone, I went back. I went back to where he was buried and I screamed at him. How dare he be so selfish? How dare he leave his daughter and not yet born son? His sister? His brother? His parents and grandfather? And finally, me. How dare he leave when I couldn't follow him?

I always swore that should he ever leave this Earth, so would I. Not because of some weird eternal love thing or anything, but because he symbolized everything that was good in this world. No matter his own inner demons, he would drop whatever he was doing to help someone else out, no matter the cost. He would cheer you up, all while inside he was haunted by the desire to leave this world. Ask anyone who knew him. They will tell you how wonderful he was, and not just because he's dead. Don't get me wrong, he could also be a huge jerk. After all, he cheated on me with my (former) best friend and had two children with her. But that's really the only thing I could ever be mad at him for. I wanted to leave when he left, because him leaving would signal to me that there was no more good in the world.

But I was nine weeks pregnant when he committed suicide. I couldn't take my child's life just to take my own. And once he was born, I couldn't leave him without a mother. Instead, I screamed at my ex at his grave whenever I got the chance. I still do, only now it's because I'm a parent and I don't understand how he could leave his children.

After bubba was born, I had horrible post-partum depression. I recognized that I needed help when bubba was about three months old and I couldn't cope anymore. I had contemplated placing him for adoption and promptly committing suicide. So I went to my doctor and got a handy prescription for sertraline (zoloft) and it did wonders for my depression. It also cost me my boyfriend. I got to the point where I didn't need it for depression any more, so I stopped taking it. And I got my boyfriend back. My anxiety got to the point that I knew I needed help, help in the form of medication. I approached my boyfriend about it because I didn't want to break up again, and he informed me that if I took the pills, I could kiss our relationship goodbye. So I stayed off them. And had at least an anxiety attack a week. And then depression came back and, while I would never ever act on them, so did the suicidal thoughts. 

I would just like to express, again, that I WILL NOT commit suicide. Absolutely, 100%, WILL NOT. When you have depression, your brain tricks you into thinking you're worthless. Couple that with anxiety making you feel like every tiny thing is the end of the world and you've got yourself a destructive brain. When the tiniest insignificant thing happens and feels like the end of the world, your brain whispers "you wouldn't have to deal with this if you were dead." That's part of the reason I will never own a firearm. It's too easy, and most suicides are impulsive. 90% of people who survive suicide attempts never attempt it again. 

Now we're at the end of the story. My ex got a headstone over the summer. I wanted to show it to my boyfriend, so we went to the cemetery. It was the weekend of the 24th of July, and there were fireworks going off everywhere. A little over a month before, we had bought an engagement ring. I thought this was the real deal, so I wanted him to know every last bit about me. So standing in the cemetery road, I confessed to him. He actually agreed to let me get back on the meds because he didn't want me to be so sad. 

The next day, we got into a fight because he was being disrespectful towards his mother and started to take it out on me. He left me at his parents' house, refusing to apologize, then cut off contact with me for three days. He only spoke with me to dump me. I believe that he couldn't handle knowing how deep my depression ran, so he took the fastest road out.

Him dumping me was the best thing that ever happened to me. Within three months, I moved out on my own. In a place close to the job I love, which he kept pressuring me to leave because he wanted me to make more money. I pay my own bills, I put food on my table, and I'm the only person that I have to report to if my house is a mess. I am so proud of myself that it makes me want to cry. 

That doesn't mean that my depression has gone away. 

At this point, I have exactly one person other than my mother or my son that I consider myself truly close to, and she's basically my sister so there is no severing that tie. She's been there through all of this. She knows all of this, not because I've told her, but because she can read it in my tone of voice. She knows where my head is at, and she's still my best friend in spite of it. In spite of me pushing her away, in spite of the differences in our lives (and the states we live in), she is here. 

I'm rambling here. I should stop rambling. I'm really nervous about this post. If my level of crazy is too much for you, I understand.