I am not ok
I need to decide if I should go to an inpatient program for PTSD/trauma or maybe an intensive outpatient. Therapy I’ve been doing for over a year now helps but I think I need more. My medication for anxiety and depression (from the trauma) is maybe not working anymore. I can’t function with work and the debt I’ve been left with is crippling. I let all my clients down and they all are frustrated. I hate myself for that but I didn’t mean to. I just can’t function. There’s not really a way to repair my business. I don’t want to declare bankruptcy.
I can’t pay my bills and I can’t get a loan bc of how bad everything is post his abuse.
My dad has cancer again and so does my aunt. I don’t want them to die. It’s really bad.
I feel like my brain is broken. I can’t work but I don’t know what do if I can’t work. I can’t pay my rent and all my cc are declined. The one thing I hold on to is that I can physically take care of myself and my home. I do the dishes, take care of my body, cook, the little things. It’s anything mentally challenging I can’t do. I’m so smart but it’s like my brain is broken .
I’m feeling so sad and hopeless. I feel like I’m out of options to fix this myself and to heal. I feel alone and like no one really understands. I hate where I am left from all of his abuse. Left broken, broke, and beyond hope.
I can’t do this anymore - I hope someone can reply and offer any encouragement. I’m not going to hurt myself but sometimes I wonder if not being here would better. I want to run way to a cabin in the woods and away from all the problems. I know that’s not realistic but I feel so lost with no hope that it feels like a solution.
I've been there, some days I'm still there yellowbutterfly. I won't go into detail, but I have had some very scary thoughts about my ability to go on.
I lost my business to covid one month after the love of my life ditched me for the holidays, cutting off communication and leaving town. I didn't hear from her for more than a week, she didn't answer phone calls or texts before she left. At the theater event her son was in, for which I volunteered the week before, and for which I paid $115 for the tickets, she was mean and snapping at me, walking away from me at intermission leaving me standing there alone in front of her family. She mocked me in front of her family, then walked away. I never saw her again.
On Christmas Day, I found myself sitting on my couch with the gift I bought for her sitting in a bag next to me, a handmade merino wool scarf- from her favorite store I intentionally remembered from a conversation months earlier, in her favorite color, all wrapped in a nice box with a beautiful card. I cried at the realization that my love had not returned calls or texts for over a week, had humiliated me in front of her family, then slipped out of town for Christmas. She didn't want me with her. The reason? In our last call she said that she didn't invite me to join her and her family for Christmas becuase "she didn't want to have to cover up for me in front of her family again". I said what? Your family really likes me. She said "I remember that sh*tty book you got me last year for Christmas! You bought it in the checkout line of a grocery store!"
My business was so fulfilling to me, my customers were so grateful to me, my employees loved me and were intensely loyal...I still see them, employees and customers-they still call and text, we go for rides and coffee. My ex called my business "stupid" and me "a sh*tty businessman" and "none of my friends have even heard of your business".
My income went down to $0. I went from going in to the business every day, happily, to sitting around alone with no income and massive rumination on the horrible- ugly, disgusting- words my ex called me in our last phone conversation. She was my love, I planned to spend my life with her.
I tell all you this because I understand. I really, really do. It's been dark and scary. Very scary and very lonely.
My belief has been, throughout all of this, to keep going. Just keep going. Get one thing done per day, if that's all I can do. Treat people well, create good karma in the world. One day at a time.
The goal is to know myself again, to somehow find myself in the absolute deafening storm of HER voice in my head. I've had to deal with the shame and self-hatred...until, a couple of times per week, I found myself.
Music has been a salvation for me. I got an electric guitar after this happened, and have been learning music theory and scales every day since. I play no music with it, but the intense concentration has been a godsend. Focusing on the notes, getting my fingers to do something that they don't seem to want to do. Celebrating when I memorize a scale, celebrating when I can get a hard sequence down. I've gone to bed at night- for me some of the worst times- thinking of scales and patterns and recreating the feeling of successfully playing something.
I went on medicaid this year. I'm not ashamed of it. It's what I need right now as I rebuild my life. My family helps me out with money, I spend hardly anything at all...and don't want to. I'm putting myself back together, this is a full-time job.
All of this is to say, we know the feeling. We really do. I am saying my prayers and sending healing energy to you...please know that you're not alone. You may not believe you can do this, I didn't either. But I did think that I could get through the next hour, get to the gym this morning, get to bed time. Take it in little pieces. We are all here for you.
