My Mental Health Story (pt. 2)

Ok, so I posted the first part of this story a little while ago and finally have the motivation to continue writing. The first part of my story makes me easy to sympathize with... the next few parts I come out looking more like a villain.

Here is my disclaimer: This story is going to be a long one. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, I beg of you the mercy and kindness I have seen you all show members who really needed it and/or bared their soul. I am not looking for advice. I'm not looking to be cut down and criticized for my past. I KNOW what I have done wrong. TRUST ME WHEN I SAY that I feel so badly about parts of my past that I will probably feel the guilt until the day I die. I continue to try to accept my past and the mistakes I have made-- I am writing this to show struggling people that things DO get better. People do change. Mental wellness is an attainable goal for everyone who strives for it. If even ONE person reads my story and finds enlightenment or hope, then it would be worth the 100 people that read it and think I'm an awful person. While there may not be anything in this part of my story that is "incriminating" so-to-speak, I feel there is something to learn in every part of my story from a large range of ages.

So I'll pick up where I left off. I met the guy that I now call my ex-husband (and oldest child's father). From here throughout, I think we should refer to him as "CD". We had dated since I was 16. I'm going to try to cut out the parts of this story that aren't very relevant to the story to cut down length. I will skip to where I was 20 years old. It is March 2008. CD asked my dad for permission to marry me (wasn't shocked, he had been wanting to settle down and start a family since we graduated high school). I'm in nursing school. My dad gives him permission.

A couple weeks later we are having sex (and the entire time we have been together, we have used the 'pull-out' method. We NEVER had any accidents) and I remember, very clearly, him asking whether or not he could cum inside of me and I said, "If you want to get me pregnant you can!" (I said it as an obvious joke and he even laughed because he knew that I never wanted to have children). Well, he didn't pull out. I took the morning after pill less than 13 hours after the incident.... and in April 2008 we found out that I was pregnant. I was devastated.

To this day I have EXTREME guilt over the fact that I took the morning after pill-- I can't imagine how lame and sad my life would be if it would have worked. I love my girl so much... she seriously is my reason to smile every morning.

Anyhow, in June of 2008 we were married, in November in 2008 we bought a house and ALSO unexpectedly had our first daughter 5 weeks early. In December of 2008 I graduated nursing school AND turned 21.

Talk about FASSSSST.

I never really had time to adjust to one change before the next one came around the corner. I will admit that I had a LOOOOTTTT of resentment towards CD for making me a mother before I was ready (And I know it takes 2 to tango- I know that. I am so glad for what he did in hindsight... but that is something I have only come to realize in the past 2 years.) I am certain I had depression throughout my pregnancy that developed into nasty postpartum depression that never really resolved.

I was also very depressed because I felt as though I was a single mother. My THEN husband, CD, worked 8-5 M-F and filled every moment of his free time with hobbies. Even Saturdays and Sundays. (Building and fixing tractors/cars, hobby farming, hunting.... any excuse he could have to not spend time at home with me and his infant daughter.) His hobbies were supposed to be money making ventures but ALWAYS ended up costing way more than he ever got back. I distinctly remember begging him to just spend ONE Sunday with me every 2 months and getting into a fight because he refused. Why WOULD he change what he was doing? He had a little housewife who would work, cook, clean, take care of his child and he didn't even have to give emotional support? I remember another very low point for me was that he and I didn't have sex anymore. When we did it was quick and just "a means for an end" kind of sex for him. He said, one night, "You just don't look good to me naked anymore." When I came home from having my daughter I weighed 235 pounds. I felt terrible.

To supplement our income I began working nights in a nursing home close to home as soon as I passed my nursing boards. I would be up with my daughter all day and then stay up all night working then come home and do it all over again. The shift was 7pm-7am. I did that for about 2 months before a hospital called and offered me a position on a surgical floor. I took it in a heartbeat. It was evening shift.

I know it sounds like I am doing a lot of complaining about CD, but this is my perspective of the situation and I'm trying to explain my frame of mind at the time. To be completely fair, from the time my daughter was about 8 months I snapped one night and refused to get up with her during the night anymore. So from the time my daughter was about 8 months, her dad was completely responsible for night feedings. And she got up about every 4 hours. To be fair too, CD didn't have any sort of healthy relationship model his entire life. How was he supposed to know how a good healthy marriage worked?

Anyhow, I took the job on the surgical floor at the hospital. I worked there for several months until in August 2009 (I believe?) I wrecked the Enduro (street legal dirt bike) I rode on my way home from work. I nearly hit a deer, and ended up getting a crushing type of bone fracture where the bones in the legs articulate at the knee and completely tearing my ACL. I was unable to carry my daughter and was unable to put weight on my leg for about a month. I tried to talk to CD about everything, about how I was not feeling like 'myself' about how I thought we needed to go to marriage counseling and about how I wanted to fix these little problems before they turned into huge ones... but he absolutely refused to go and told me that I didn't need to go because I was fine and that was an expense that we couldn't afford.

Something happened to me during that month. I became utterly and completely depressed. I stopped sleeping and began to formulate a very focused plan for getting skinny. I was going to fix what I could fix and I was going to do it fast. In September of 2009 I weighed 210 pounds and was a size 16/18. I began to be able to walk unassisted and put my plan into motion.

This also began a slide down a very slippery slope and eventually led to the demise of my integrity, my family, my sanity. By the time that I was hospitalized in a locked ward of a psych unit for 2 weeks in January/February 2010 I weighed 125 pounds and was a size 0-2 (that may sound like I weighed a lot for being a size 0-2 but I was solid muscle, 6 pack and all).

When I pick up this story again, I want to pick up in September of 2009- when all of the s/s of my mental illness really started to gain momentum.

The parts of the story to come are the hardest parts for me to tell and it may take me a while to put it into words.

I wish I could take so many things back... but hopefully someone out there will recognize themselves in even a small part of my story and speak up, get themselves help and save themselves and their family.

*ETA* This isn't chronological but I wanted to add a moment during my pregnancy that I believe really soured my feelings for CD. We were married and he was doing his hobby farming. CD knew about my past (see mental health story 1) and he knew the men that victimized me- more specifically he knew "Dude". When I had told him about what happened to me a few years earlier and how much they had hurt me he acted like he thought "Dude" was scum and wanted to beat the crap out of him. Strangely enough, CD ended up "hobby farming" with "Dude" against my wishes. They knew one another through a mutual friend and an agreement was made that "he couldn't say no to". (I think CD only had to let "dude" have a very small amount of his crop and "dude" was going to call it even.) I desperately wanted to spend time with CD one weekend and he was going to check his crop at "dude's" house. I begged him just to stay home with me and do it another day but he refused and told me that if I really wanted to spend time with him, I would have to ride along with him. At first I absolutely refused. Then CD PROMISED me that "dude" wouldn't even be there and that the patch was no where near "dude's" house. He said that for the several months that he had farmed there, he hadn't seen "dude" once and that he even knew for a fact that "dude" was out of town at the moment. So I, desperate for CD's attention, went with him to the patch against my better judgement. Guess who was there? "Dude." What is worse is that when we pulled up to the house, I saw him on a lawn chair by his truck and realized the patch was right next to his house. When I saw him I BEGGED CD to take me home, to go home with me, to do anything but leave me there. He refused and made me sit there while he worked in the field. I couldn't even tag along because I found out that he was spraying pesticides and that is a no-no when you're preggers. While I was in the truck guess who comes right up and talks to me as if he had nothing to be ashamed of? "Dude". The whole time I was not brave enough to tell him how I felt- I just kept my answers short, answered with "yes" or "no" and eventually he got the hint and went away. I felt so sick to my stomach... I felt like I could die right then. I felt so vulnerable and betrayed. I felt so betrayed by CD.