davidthegnome
06-03-07, 17:26
Even though I am afraid to share my story, I feel a strong desire to share it with you folks here. It is long, very long - and not all that pleasant, and you may despise me once I have told it, but I wish to all the same. The people here have really touched my heart in many ways, by being so empathetic and caring for others, despite their own trauma. I would also like to let you know that this post could be disturbing to some. I've never done this before, so please bear with me.
*************
I was thirteen years old when my real trauma began. Oddly enough, for the first time in my life I was actually enjoying school, I even had friends. I had just moved to a smaller town in Stockholm Maine where I could go to a smaller school. Despite how I'd been treated at the larger one earlier, bullied, harassed, usually friendless and alone - I did well at Stockholm school, I made friends, something I wasn't sure I'd ever be good at.
Not meaning to bore you with too many details, just trying to paint a picture, a picture of a thirteen year old boy who for the first time in his life was starting to have confidence in himself. I had friends, I was liked, eventually somehow I even got a date with one of the prettiest girls in town. Don't know how, I was kind of chubby and always a bit nervous. For me, it was a big deal, my first date. In my thirteen year old mind, I felt like I was on top of the world.
Well, to sum up... I discovered rather quickly that this date of mine had only expressed an interest in me in order to get close to one of my friends. When I found out, I was really heartbroken, it shattered my newfound confidence. I was always a very shy, sensitive child and I think it may have effected me worse than it would others.
I stayed at home for days, crying in my bed, I didn't want to go out anymore or see my friends, I just wanted to be alone. My grades dropped, I became less and less friendly as time went on - I became somewhat agoraphobic.
Then I discovered the internet. I began spending every free hour I had on it, playing games, talking to all sorts of new and interesting people who couldn't see me to judge me. Strangely enough, I was well liked in my little internet circle, even by girls. I became obsessed with it, spending more and more time there and avoiding the real world, or going out in public.
One day, as I was feeding my obsession, my sister had to use the computer for her homework. Well, I wouldn't let her. My mother got angry at me and tried to pull me away from the computer - and I shoved her. I had never done that before and never did it again, I don't know why I did, perhaps because she was pulling me away from my obsession.
Well, when my Father came home that night, he was furious. I had never seen him so angry. After dinner my parents told me it was time for a talk. My Father grabbed me by the hair and told me "This intimidation of your Mother is going to stop right now. If you think you can be man of the house boy you go ahead and kick my butt and you've got it." I was terrified. No way was I going to even try, he was my Father.
When he discovered I wasn't going to, he sat back down in his chair and put his head in his hands. He began demanding to know why I was the way I was. Why I avoided school, why I didn't like it, why I had been acting so strange. He decided something must have happened to me, I had been abused, he decided. He slammed his fists down on the table and demanded to know "What happened to you?" Wine glasses shattered as he slammed his hands down again. "What's wrong with you?" Again his fists hit the table, I'm amazed it didn't break.
I told him "Nothing happened to me. Why do you think something must have happened to me?" He responded... "Because this isn't like you! You've been to school councillors and they say there's nothing wrong with you but there is! You're smart, there's no reason you should be doing poorly in school. There's no reason you should be intimidating your mother! Someone must have hurt you to make you this way! What happened to you?" Again, his fists hit the table and he glared at me.
I was afraid of him, I kept repeating that nothing had happened. Yet eventually I became so afraid that I made up a story.
I told my parents that I had been abused by a neighbor of our's, at the old house where we used to live. They accepted the story. Suddenly the anger faded and they sent me to bed, telling me they'd get me help, that I'd be going to see a therapist.
Well, therapy began the next day with a social worker who tried to probe my brain. I was later sent to a Psychiatrist who perscribed zoloft for depression.
I had never hated myself so fiercely. I had never imagined a person could feel such terrible guilt. I knew I had lied, accused an innocent man of doing something he hadn't, I felt sure I would be damned to hell. Somehow I managed to live anyway.. and one day I heard someone say "If you convince yourself that something is true, then for you, it becomes so." I spent weeks lying to myself, telling myself that I had been abused and I wasn't just making up a story. To some degree it even worked - I stopped thinking how much I hated myself and wanted to die. I retreated from the world outside to the internet, where I then spent all of my time. An old packard bell computer, it became my life.
Then came my first day of high school. Back to the world again, back to thinking everyone was judging me, back to seeing the kids in the city I had grown up with. I had no friends - it took me five minutes wandering around in the cafeteria to find someone who would let me sit with them. I felt terrible, I hated it, perhaps I hated them, but most fiercely of all, I hated myself.
I told my parents that if they ever made me go back to school I would end my life. They took me seriously and it was decided that we'd try home school. Something neither my parents nor I were prepared for. So they bought (ironically enough) a computer program that would pretty much do the job itself, only had to be occasionally monitored by my mother.
Naturally, as a young boy, not being supervised, I rarely bothered with it. I spent all of my time playing games or talking to my internet friends. There was no way I was ever going back to school, no way I was ever going to face the world again, I decided.
Well, time went on, eventually I got sick of taking the zoloft I'd been perscribed and threw it away. I told my parents I wasn't crazy and wasn't going to take pills. I was sixteen at the time. I had wasted three years of my life not moving forward, not progressing, not being educated or nurtured as I wish I had been.
I became tired of spending my time on the internet, tired of staring at a computer monitor (finally, I suppose) and stopped. My new obsession became reading. I would read fantasy books, the same ones, over and over and over again - so as to avoid thinking or facing the dreadful world, to avoid my overpowering self hatred and repressed guilt.
Then one night, my older sister invited me to a party. I had never been to a typical "teen party", I had no idea what to expect, I was afraid of going there, thinking no one really liked me anyway. I went though, because there was a boy there who had hurt my sister's feelings and I wanted (as any younger Brother would) to kick his butt.
Well, instead of kicking anyone's butt, I made a grand discovery. Marijuana and beer, were good, so I thought as I drank and smoked myself into a stupor. After my seventh beer or so, my sister tackled me and had a friend take us home, I was extremely drunk, perhaps dangerously so.
Suddenly, a fierce thought hit me, the thought that my life was a lie. That everything I did was to hide from the truth, it was a thought I could not shake. I discovered, once again, what a terrible, rotten liar I was and how much I hated myself. I suddenly wanted to tell everyone the truth, yet was terrified that if I did they would hate me. Then I became afraid that I'd tell the whole story because I was drunk.... then, I got home, puked up everything I'd eaten for a year, and passed out on the couch.
The next morning, when I woke, my very first panic attack hit me. I had no idea what was going on, but I was suddenly terrified, I was convinced I had lost my mind, that I had finally gone insane. Again, I tried hiding from the world - but all of a sudden I couldn't read anymore. I could not focus on the pages or the words. This scared me even more and I began spending all of my time lying on the couch in the living room and trying to watch movies. For months I did this and little else.
One day my Father became determined to get me up. He ordered me outside to help him rake the yard. I struggled, but he can be very intimidating when he wants to be, he got me up and out to help him. As we worked, he talked, telling me about how when he was in college his Doctor had told him he had "accute anxiety" which was similar to what I was going through. He said I wasn't crazy.
Somehow, that worked. It was what I had needed to calm me down. Over the next few months I went back to school, to Jobcorps where I earned a GED. I still spent lots of time on the internet and through it I found a girlfriend. Well - a woman who was as shy and as desperate for affection as I was.
After my Jobcorps graduation, my Father helped me to get her up here. She moved all the way from South Dakota to be with me in Maine. Yet, she did not come alone, no, this lovely lady had a four year old daughter. And me, seventeen at the time, an absolute fool, I believed I could be a father to her.
Well, I did try, I worked terrible and low paying jobs, washing dishes for restaraunts, telemarketing, taking care of yards. Yet always my self hatred and fear of others got the better of me, I could never hold on to a job. Eventually it became my job to stay at home and raise her girl while she worked. She was 23, I believe, at the time. She had some college education and worked at the hospital as a medical transcriptionist.
So we struggled on, I did the best I could to raise a troubled little girl who didn't like me very much. She had some severe behavioral issues and said really nasty things, broke things, punched people and so on. Yet I felt I could teach her better and control her. Boy was I dumb.
I was "Mr Mom" for a while, I did all of the laundry, all of the cooking (wasn't very good at that), all of the cleaning and so on. Eventually I became so miserable with my life, so miserable at my failure to be a Father for the girl that I decided they'd be better off without me. I told her I was going back home to live with my parents. Little did I know... a surprise awaited me.
I found out in the next week that my girlfriend was pregnant - that changed everything for me. Here was a chance I had to make amends for being a terrible human being. If I could marry her - could make a family work, maybe my life would be worth something despite how terrible I was. We got back together and I proposed at a crowded restaraunt. I remember it like it was yesterday...
I chose the restaraunt because it would be full and I was a very nervous person, therefor I felt it would mean a lot to her. I got down on my knees and in my hand held out an engagement ring (that it shames me to admit, my father helped me to buy) and I asked her to be my wife. She told me "But you don't have a ring." Guess she didn't see it? When I held it up, she beamed and cried and said yes. The others in the restaraunt didn't seem to notice or care, but for me it was a grand moment.
I will try to be as brief as I can with the rest of my story.
We struggled on for two more years to raise her little girl and my young son. I loved him very much, he was the reason I woke in the morning to face each new day. I was unable to hold on to a job or go to college, so instead I focused on being a Father - but the past came back to haunt me. When I was nineteen, I finally found a really good job. It was great pay for a man as young as me - and it was working for a company that makes tax forms. My co-workers were kind. Everything should have been great.
Yet every day I worked I became more and more anxious and finally started having panic attacks. I could not cope with them, I gave up on my job and cowered through the next few weeks, struggling just to do every day things, not knowing what was wrong with me. Finally, one day I was so frustrated I decided to go back through my entire life and search every memory.
As I did so, I recalled the awful lie I had told, I recalled how much I hated myself - and had a powerful desire to end my life. I knew then that I needed help. Finally I confessed the truth to my family - and after many nights of tears and painful confessions, after my little sister started to hate me, I was admitted to a psych ward because I tried to end my life.
Well... over time I did recover and somehow manage to live with myself again, my engagement had ended. I could not expect my fiance to live with me, not like that, nor could I expect myself to be able to be a decent Father. I decided it was best if they went back to South Dakota, to her family.
Later I tried to make it work again with her, by going to South Dakota to be with them, yet I was only able to manage it for a year. She and I discovered we didn't love each other and didn't really want to be together.
I went back home to Maine, to fix my life, get a job, get my own home... somehow face and overcome my inner demons. And... here I am at 22, still struggling, still unable to do many of the things I so wish I could do. Diagnosed now, for the first time accurately with panic disorder, post traumatic stress and God knows what else, I think I am slowly beginning to understand myself better.
*************
It has been all of you people here that have helped me, through sharing your own pains and joys, your own triumphs and sorrows, you have helped me to realize what I have suffered with all these years. You have helped me to understand it. I am eternally grateful for you all and that I discovered this forum. It may be the thing that ultimately saves me from myself. At last now I begin to understand that question I was asked so long ago... "what is wrong with you!?"
This is my story. I hope you do not despise me after reading it. Anyone who did read has my thanks, it was very long... I just had the strongest compulsion to tell it, so now I have.
I am proud to be a member of nomorepanic, I am honored to share it with you wonderful, strong, courageous people who struggle every day with pain that is so little understood. Your triumphs are my triumphs, your sorrows, my sorrows.
And... that's all. Thank you for reading my story.
God bless you all,
David
*************
I was thirteen years old when my real trauma began. Oddly enough, for the first time in my life I was actually enjoying school, I even had friends. I had just moved to a smaller town in Stockholm Maine where I could go to a smaller school. Despite how I'd been treated at the larger one earlier, bullied, harassed, usually friendless and alone - I did well at Stockholm school, I made friends, something I wasn't sure I'd ever be good at.
Not meaning to bore you with too many details, just trying to paint a picture, a picture of a thirteen year old boy who for the first time in his life was starting to have confidence in himself. I had friends, I was liked, eventually somehow I even got a date with one of the prettiest girls in town. Don't know how, I was kind of chubby and always a bit nervous. For me, it was a big deal, my first date. In my thirteen year old mind, I felt like I was on top of the world.
Well, to sum up... I discovered rather quickly that this date of mine had only expressed an interest in me in order to get close to one of my friends. When I found out, I was really heartbroken, it shattered my newfound confidence. I was always a very shy, sensitive child and I think it may have effected me worse than it would others.
I stayed at home for days, crying in my bed, I didn't want to go out anymore or see my friends, I just wanted to be alone. My grades dropped, I became less and less friendly as time went on - I became somewhat agoraphobic.
Then I discovered the internet. I began spending every free hour I had on it, playing games, talking to all sorts of new and interesting people who couldn't see me to judge me. Strangely enough, I was well liked in my little internet circle, even by girls. I became obsessed with it, spending more and more time there and avoiding the real world, or going out in public.
One day, as I was feeding my obsession, my sister had to use the computer for her homework. Well, I wouldn't let her. My mother got angry at me and tried to pull me away from the computer - and I shoved her. I had never done that before and never did it again, I don't know why I did, perhaps because she was pulling me away from my obsession.
Well, when my Father came home that night, he was furious. I had never seen him so angry. After dinner my parents told me it was time for a talk. My Father grabbed me by the hair and told me "This intimidation of your Mother is going to stop right now. If you think you can be man of the house boy you go ahead and kick my butt and you've got it." I was terrified. No way was I going to even try, he was my Father.
When he discovered I wasn't going to, he sat back down in his chair and put his head in his hands. He began demanding to know why I was the way I was. Why I avoided school, why I didn't like it, why I had been acting so strange. He decided something must have happened to me, I had been abused, he decided. He slammed his fists down on the table and demanded to know "What happened to you?" Wine glasses shattered as he slammed his hands down again. "What's wrong with you?" Again his fists hit the table, I'm amazed it didn't break.
I told him "Nothing happened to me. Why do you think something must have happened to me?" He responded... "Because this isn't like you! You've been to school councillors and they say there's nothing wrong with you but there is! You're smart, there's no reason you should be doing poorly in school. There's no reason you should be intimidating your mother! Someone must have hurt you to make you this way! What happened to you?" Again, his fists hit the table and he glared at me.
I was afraid of him, I kept repeating that nothing had happened. Yet eventually I became so afraid that I made up a story.
I told my parents that I had been abused by a neighbor of our's, at the old house where we used to live. They accepted the story. Suddenly the anger faded and they sent me to bed, telling me they'd get me help, that I'd be going to see a therapist.
Well, therapy began the next day with a social worker who tried to probe my brain. I was later sent to a Psychiatrist who perscribed zoloft for depression.
I had never hated myself so fiercely. I had never imagined a person could feel such terrible guilt. I knew I had lied, accused an innocent man of doing something he hadn't, I felt sure I would be damned to hell. Somehow I managed to live anyway.. and one day I heard someone say "If you convince yourself that something is true, then for you, it becomes so." I spent weeks lying to myself, telling myself that I had been abused and I wasn't just making up a story. To some degree it even worked - I stopped thinking how much I hated myself and wanted to die. I retreated from the world outside to the internet, where I then spent all of my time. An old packard bell computer, it became my life.
Then came my first day of high school. Back to the world again, back to thinking everyone was judging me, back to seeing the kids in the city I had grown up with. I had no friends - it took me five minutes wandering around in the cafeteria to find someone who would let me sit with them. I felt terrible, I hated it, perhaps I hated them, but most fiercely of all, I hated myself.
I told my parents that if they ever made me go back to school I would end my life. They took me seriously and it was decided that we'd try home school. Something neither my parents nor I were prepared for. So they bought (ironically enough) a computer program that would pretty much do the job itself, only had to be occasionally monitored by my mother.
Naturally, as a young boy, not being supervised, I rarely bothered with it. I spent all of my time playing games or talking to my internet friends. There was no way I was ever going back to school, no way I was ever going to face the world again, I decided.
Well, time went on, eventually I got sick of taking the zoloft I'd been perscribed and threw it away. I told my parents I wasn't crazy and wasn't going to take pills. I was sixteen at the time. I had wasted three years of my life not moving forward, not progressing, not being educated or nurtured as I wish I had been.
I became tired of spending my time on the internet, tired of staring at a computer monitor (finally, I suppose) and stopped. My new obsession became reading. I would read fantasy books, the same ones, over and over and over again - so as to avoid thinking or facing the dreadful world, to avoid my overpowering self hatred and repressed guilt.
Then one night, my older sister invited me to a party. I had never been to a typical "teen party", I had no idea what to expect, I was afraid of going there, thinking no one really liked me anyway. I went though, because there was a boy there who had hurt my sister's feelings and I wanted (as any younger Brother would) to kick his butt.
Well, instead of kicking anyone's butt, I made a grand discovery. Marijuana and beer, were good, so I thought as I drank and smoked myself into a stupor. After my seventh beer or so, my sister tackled me and had a friend take us home, I was extremely drunk, perhaps dangerously so.
Suddenly, a fierce thought hit me, the thought that my life was a lie. That everything I did was to hide from the truth, it was a thought I could not shake. I discovered, once again, what a terrible, rotten liar I was and how much I hated myself. I suddenly wanted to tell everyone the truth, yet was terrified that if I did they would hate me. Then I became afraid that I'd tell the whole story because I was drunk.... then, I got home, puked up everything I'd eaten for a year, and passed out on the couch.
The next morning, when I woke, my very first panic attack hit me. I had no idea what was going on, but I was suddenly terrified, I was convinced I had lost my mind, that I had finally gone insane. Again, I tried hiding from the world - but all of a sudden I couldn't read anymore. I could not focus on the pages or the words. This scared me even more and I began spending all of my time lying on the couch in the living room and trying to watch movies. For months I did this and little else.
One day my Father became determined to get me up. He ordered me outside to help him rake the yard. I struggled, but he can be very intimidating when he wants to be, he got me up and out to help him. As we worked, he talked, telling me about how when he was in college his Doctor had told him he had "accute anxiety" which was similar to what I was going through. He said I wasn't crazy.
Somehow, that worked. It was what I had needed to calm me down. Over the next few months I went back to school, to Jobcorps where I earned a GED. I still spent lots of time on the internet and through it I found a girlfriend. Well - a woman who was as shy and as desperate for affection as I was.
After my Jobcorps graduation, my Father helped me to get her up here. She moved all the way from South Dakota to be with me in Maine. Yet, she did not come alone, no, this lovely lady had a four year old daughter. And me, seventeen at the time, an absolute fool, I believed I could be a father to her.
Well, I did try, I worked terrible and low paying jobs, washing dishes for restaraunts, telemarketing, taking care of yards. Yet always my self hatred and fear of others got the better of me, I could never hold on to a job. Eventually it became my job to stay at home and raise her girl while she worked. She was 23, I believe, at the time. She had some college education and worked at the hospital as a medical transcriptionist.
So we struggled on, I did the best I could to raise a troubled little girl who didn't like me very much. She had some severe behavioral issues and said really nasty things, broke things, punched people and so on. Yet I felt I could teach her better and control her. Boy was I dumb.
I was "Mr Mom" for a while, I did all of the laundry, all of the cooking (wasn't very good at that), all of the cleaning and so on. Eventually I became so miserable with my life, so miserable at my failure to be a Father for the girl that I decided they'd be better off without me. I told her I was going back home to live with my parents. Little did I know... a surprise awaited me.
I found out in the next week that my girlfriend was pregnant - that changed everything for me. Here was a chance I had to make amends for being a terrible human being. If I could marry her - could make a family work, maybe my life would be worth something despite how terrible I was. We got back together and I proposed at a crowded restaraunt. I remember it like it was yesterday...
I chose the restaraunt because it would be full and I was a very nervous person, therefor I felt it would mean a lot to her. I got down on my knees and in my hand held out an engagement ring (that it shames me to admit, my father helped me to buy) and I asked her to be my wife. She told me "But you don't have a ring." Guess she didn't see it? When I held it up, she beamed and cried and said yes. The others in the restaraunt didn't seem to notice or care, but for me it was a grand moment.
I will try to be as brief as I can with the rest of my story.
We struggled on for two more years to raise her little girl and my young son. I loved him very much, he was the reason I woke in the morning to face each new day. I was unable to hold on to a job or go to college, so instead I focused on being a Father - but the past came back to haunt me. When I was nineteen, I finally found a really good job. It was great pay for a man as young as me - and it was working for a company that makes tax forms. My co-workers were kind. Everything should have been great.
Yet every day I worked I became more and more anxious and finally started having panic attacks. I could not cope with them, I gave up on my job and cowered through the next few weeks, struggling just to do every day things, not knowing what was wrong with me. Finally, one day I was so frustrated I decided to go back through my entire life and search every memory.
As I did so, I recalled the awful lie I had told, I recalled how much I hated myself - and had a powerful desire to end my life. I knew then that I needed help. Finally I confessed the truth to my family - and after many nights of tears and painful confessions, after my little sister started to hate me, I was admitted to a psych ward because I tried to end my life.
Well... over time I did recover and somehow manage to live with myself again, my engagement had ended. I could not expect my fiance to live with me, not like that, nor could I expect myself to be able to be a decent Father. I decided it was best if they went back to South Dakota, to her family.
Later I tried to make it work again with her, by going to South Dakota to be with them, yet I was only able to manage it for a year. She and I discovered we didn't love each other and didn't really want to be together.
I went back home to Maine, to fix my life, get a job, get my own home... somehow face and overcome my inner demons. And... here I am at 22, still struggling, still unable to do many of the things I so wish I could do. Diagnosed now, for the first time accurately with panic disorder, post traumatic stress and God knows what else, I think I am slowly beginning to understand myself better.
*************
It has been all of you people here that have helped me, through sharing your own pains and joys, your own triumphs and sorrows, you have helped me to realize what I have suffered with all these years. You have helped me to understand it. I am eternally grateful for you all and that I discovered this forum. It may be the thing that ultimately saves me from myself. At last now I begin to understand that question I was asked so long ago... "what is wrong with you!?"
This is my story. I hope you do not despise me after reading it. Anyone who did read has my thanks, it was very long... I just had the strongest compulsion to tell it, so now I have.
I am proud to be a member of nomorepanic, I am honored to share it with you wonderful, strong, courageous people who struggle every day with pain that is so little understood. Your triumphs are my triumphs, your sorrows, my sorrows.
And... that's all. Thank you for reading my story.
God bless you all,
David