Monday, August 12, 2013

I'm not proud of it, but it's my truth!

I've been figuring out how to write this post since before I started the blog. We all handle crisis differently. I come from a family of women that are strong. And I am not talking like physically beefy or anything like that. I am talking about emotional brick houses. We are all emotional, there is no doubting that, but when crisis strikes we look it in the face and we handle it. We are calm, we are level headed, we are dealing with it. That said, we aren't strong all the time. You can't be. Not and still hold it together.

Well, after Javad was born I didn't hold it together well. Or I held it together too well, I'm not really sure. My older brother dove into his studies and never came up (doesn't help that he's brilliant). My little brother flew into his friends and video games. I went into drugs and alcohol. Before you jump on the, "you couldn't have been that bad" or the "I knew she was trouble" just breathe for a second. The person you know now, is not the person I was at 14, 15, 16, even 17. When Javad was 2, and I was out of middle school (where I had the best school counselor in the entire world that supported me and was there for me EVERY day when I needed her) and starting high school in a brand new school with none of my friends (went to a private school) and far from home. I lost my SHIT! That is the nice way to say it.

I mean granted in middle school I had dabbled in pot smoking, who didn't (I like to feel like everyone did, it makes me feel better about myself), and had friends that did risque things, but even then my attitude was the worst of it. In high school I just couldn't deal. Javad was sick all the time. My mom was never home. Dad was stressed out on a regular basis because Javad was always sick. I had the perfect brother and I felt like my head was going to screw off and fly off to a far away world and I was going to fall apart and never put myself back together. My freshman year wasn't even that bad. I had been taken in by some Senior who never let me out of their sight and watched over me like a lost puppy. Maybe they sensed that I was on the verge. Maybe they could spot the warning sign labeled "EMOTIONALLY UNSTABLE" a mile away. Who knows? But they just delayed the inevitable. 

I don't really remember when it was, whether it was sophomore year, or summer in between freshman and sophomore but I got on a regular smoking pot (had already been smoking cigarettes since 8th grade in private) everyday rhythm. I drank every change I got. I stole from my parents and my brothers (and then replaced whatever I stole on payday). I worked really hard at the jobs that I did have to support my habit. I got into harder drugs and prescription drugs because the numbed my brain and stopped me from feeling anything. Anything I could get my hands on I was taking. Ironically, I was abusing adderall and  anxiety pills at the time because they made me focused  but didn't interrupt the numb cause by the other shit in my system and they are probably the only thing that kept me functional seeing how as an adult I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder AND bad ADD. Little did I know that I would be on some of the same things as an adult. 

I didn't think anything could hit me. During what would have been my junior year Javad coded in the ICU. He was three and a half. It was the winter before I completely lost it. Javad was trached after being in the hospital for six months. Not a few weeks later I went to a concert with someone that had been a family friend for years, got too drunk, agreed to things I didn't mean and when I changed my mind he didn't listen. I was raped by one of my close friends.

Looking back, that's really when I started to unravel. I drank more, did more drugs, wanted to feel numb and forget what my life was. More machines were moving into our house. Shit was scarier with Javad because I no longer understood what was going on. I was in constant fear that he was going to die at any moment. I couldn't think straight because I was rarely sober and so I did more to try to get my to focus and forget (which let me tell you, you can't do both well). It was the following spring that I literally hit rock bottom. I went out with some friends, drank more whiskey then should have been possible, (I don't even remember if I had anything in my system drug wise, I do know I had a prescription for percocet at the time) and I blacked out. I blacked out, passed out in the back of a friends van, puked, and a good friend saved my life by not letting me choke on myself. Thank god for her. 

I woke up 16 hours after I last remember in the ICU at some hospital with my mom there, totally disheveled. Apparently I had been missing for 4 hours and then they tried to go into a subway and i collapsed, they called 911 and... I don't even know. I know it was bad and I was lucky. That's all they kept saying. 

I moved forward after that. You can't really hit any lower then almost killing yourself on whiskey and pills, by accident. 

I wasn't always like this. I didn't always have my shit together. My mom isn't kidding when she says that during the "hard years" she didn't know which one of us was going to survive. It was only going to be one of us. I tried to have it be her. Some how, probably because I hit rock bottom we both made it. How my mom did it with me being in the shape I was in, Javad being in the shape that he was, still working and making sure that our family still gave a shit about each other I don't know. She's a pretty amazing person. 

We all handled it differently, my brothers and I. I handled it by trying to be strong. Sometimes you can't be strong anymore and at the time I couldn't allow myself to fall apart. Who would be there to put me back together. I don't think I'm alone anymore. But those years, those years between Javad's birth and when I turned 18 I didn't know that I had anyone else. I was pretty certain that I was by myself. Thinking back my timeline might be off because I don't think Javad was that young when my stuff all happened. I just know that it was a lot. My stuff is all in order. I still think of it as the unraveling. I still tell people that if I met who I was then I wouldn't give them a passing glance. I couldn't do it alone, but that's the beauty, we don't have to. 

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