xLmOx
28-08-10, 05:34
Hi, I've just joined as a way of reaching out, I don't have anybody I can talk to about this kind of stuff, I thought by getting it all off my chest this way, it wouldn't be so difficult to work through. I am at rock bottom and wondering how to change my life and get better, here is my story;
I grew up in a so-so area, my mother was a single parent, I am an only child. She met a guy when I was nine and he moved in within a month. He was very controlling and made her stop smoking, she cheated one day and when he smelled the smoked on her, he pushed her to the floor and split her lip. That was the first of many times he was violent towards her. At first I couldn't even comprehend what was happening. The violence got progressively worse over the years. I was constantly picked on, spat at, controlled, and one point he stabbed me with a fork in my leg at about 13-14. It ruined my confidence from such a young age, looking back now developing in that environment, I can see how it affects the person you grow into. He was a HGV driver so was working away all week and would come home, drink and then get violent. He would leave for work on Monday morning and come home Friday evenings so we were lucky in that it wasn't all week (or I honestly think he'd have killed her) and luckier for him as he didn't have to see what he did to her. The bruises would always be fading by the time he came home and she became very good with cover-up. I was the one at 12, phoning for a doctor at three in the morning because she could stand the pain, it was my room where she'd hide out of his way, me who held her while she cried for hours while he slept it off blissfully ignorant to what he'd done. He could never remember doing it. I escaped in any way I could, I self-harmed, drank, smoked, took drugs, slept around and hung out with people way too old and bad. I matured so young, at 15 I got into a relationship, my first proper boyfriend, who actually stuck around. He knew about the crap at home, I used him to get away from it. My step-father then decided to move us to the country just before my GCSE's. I didn't end up finishing school as it was just too far away and too late to start at another nearby school. My life became all about my boyfriend who would come when he could to see me and picked me up on the weekends to stay out of the way of my step-father. The thing was is that my boyfriend, was a little miniture of my step-father. He was never violent towards me, but he played mind games with me, emotionally hurting me all the time. He knew he was my only shred of sanctuary and he took full advantage of that. He was a control freak, and a bully, he knew I was suffering and he enjoyed hurting me more. He knew from Monday to Friday I was thinking of him, looking forward to seeing him, waiting for him. I remember once, he came to pick me up, I had my back-pack all packed looking forward to my weekend, the only thing I had to look forward to...He drove me right up to his front door and then told me to get out and get the bus home. He enjoyed doing things like that to me, and probably because I had never known anything else, I just accepted it. I was all over the place, staying at my mother's when my step-father wasn't home, staying with my boyfriend, aunt's and my grandparents. One night my step-father wanted me to stay in on a Saturday night to hang out with his daughter who was staying over, she was about 9 at the time and I was 15...He got drunk, really drunk and started beating my mother, I felt so sorry for my step-sister, so young and hearing what she wasn't accustomed to, she couldn't handle it and I had to do something...I went in (only ever did it once before when I was 12-13 but it actually diffused the situation then) and said to stop it, it wasn't fair on his daughter (years and years of this resolves you to the fact that he would stop for my mother or me) I thought this one plea might calm him, but it just made him worse, he started on me. He was 18 stone of massive bloke and he grabbed me by the neck and picked me up like a rag-doll, he smashed my head into the wall right in front of my mother, and then walked down stairs and fell asleep. I called my boyfriend and explained the situation very, very calmly, I packed my clothes, got my step-sister and got out of there. My mother would never leave him, I begged her that night, but she stayed for her dog, she said that my step-father threatened to kill the dog if she ever left him...even my boyfriend said we'll put him in the car and take him too...but she just shook her head. She always said if he ever laid a hand on me she would leave him. A few years after that they got married. I never went back, I went to social services, reported him and they did a full investigation for my step-sister but because nobody could/would say or do anything, it all just got swept under the carpet. It was 23rd July I was just about to turn 17 on 31st so I was too old to go into care, so they put me in touch with the children's society's project for homeless young people called inline. Through inline, I was giving a social worker and they had to make sure I was competent to run my own house hold and take care of myself, but they said after what I had been through, they didn't think there would be a problem and I was given a flat and some decorating coupons and £40 per week income support. I went to college and started a GCSE course, my boyfriend moved in with me and he ended up getting worse, he would always be angry, always negative comments, put-downs, not letting me go out, he would punch holes in the doors and smash up what little furniture I could afford, he slashed me sofa's and everytime I kicked him out he would guilt trip me and frighten me into taking him back, If he left me I knew it was for someone else, when he was done with her, he would come crawling back and go absolutely balistic until I let him back in. I once tried to get my life together and started going to the TA centre and met some new friends. I became friends with a nice gay guy and one night after TA we went back to mine to watch movies. I hadn't heard from my boyfriend in 6 months and thought it might be finally over...but he came back that morning and tried to kick my door down. He thought my gay friend was a new fella and was going insane. I called the police and they took him away. Finally I got rid of my him, he just got up one morning and left and never came back. I had such little control in the relationship I knew I could never get away, I knew he'd hound me, but I also loved him, used to him being there, used to him being my crutch. I was never happier in my life as I was then, I was just about to do my exams, I had put up with him, been his house-maid, all through my course, I worked my ass off and I was finally free. I was in the best place I could have ever been, secure and alone with nobody to control me, dictate to me who, what, why, where and when. I passed my exams and got really good results and it made me feel ready for anything. I really thought I was going somewhere, maybe university, maybe making new friends, scrape a life together. Why is it that I always let men take my control? I had it all in front of me... all the possibility in the world, the confidence to go for it. I went for it, I started my higher education course in Forensic Science, I was doing great, making new friends, my own little flat with nothing broken for a change. I always wanted to work in the police force or forensics but I just seemed to slip, it felt like a moment of hesitation, then I was in a place I didn't recognise, It just seemed like too much pressure all of a sudden I was so lonely and I did the thing I only knew and latched myself onto some guy I met in a bar. Within weeks, he'd made a complete fool of me, called me names and always made me feel like something he'd stepped in. Within months, I gave up my flat, my course, my new life, my possibilities. He changed me in ways I couldn't believe, it was like the breaking point of my life and he stood there and pushed my head under, I had been so strong, coped so well for all those years, getting by best I could, I suffered from depression, depression I could handle reasonably. At 19 I found I was pregnant and then found that the pregancy had self-terminated but I hadn't physically miscarried, for two weeks I had to go through each day wondering if this was the day it would come, but when all my tests were done I went it to surgery and had it taken care of. During those two weeks I changed...I was so scared, I have hospital phobia and terrified of needles anything medical is hell for me, I went on auto-pilot, I completely switched off, I couldn't reach out to Dale, he wasn't interested anyway, he made me go to a party during these two weeks that I knew the miscarriage could come at anytime, and I started to have pains, I was so scared but Dale was too 'off his head' to understand me, he wouldn't take me home, and about 4 hours later after crashing on the floor of a spare room at the party, he finally walked me home, I had started spotting and was so scared I was throwing up, and all he wanted was to go back to the party and take more drugs. I think growing up without confidence does have an impact and nothing really would have suprised me but that really broke my heart, out of all the bad stuff in my life, that there broke me completely. After the two weeks I went to hospital and was hysterical from the moment I woke up in the morning until I was on my way home and ever since then I have suffered panic attacks and anxiety. It was always a power struggle, a game, trying to make someone love you, respect you, treat you nicely, but after that I shut him out completely, I no longer tried to get recognition for putting up with him, stopped pleading with him to make some effort, stopped trying to prove myself to him. I wanted him to see how nice I was, I wanted him to want me, I wanted to show him no matter what I was there. I wanted him to think I was beautiful and special, but from then I didn't care anymore. It just seemed like a total power swap. I am still with him now and he had slowly but surely taken every part of me, he has gotten the best of me time and time again, after the early years I thought I was strong and it enrages me to think I managed through it all only to willingly go back into a life like this. My partner, he knows what he's done, I have put blood, swear and tears into making sure he understands his actions. I used to make up excuses for him, like he hasn't had much life experience and it's not his fault, it's what he's seen growing up but now I see differently. I realise now I am being taken for a fool, I single handedly decorated our flat because he didn't know how and every time he tried he'd mess up. I felt guilty to the point where we were living in filth because I had to pretend his measly efforts with house work were good enough, he'd get so upset with himself if I pointed something out he'd done wrong. Dale is not violent in the slightest, in fact it's hard for him to show any emotion at all most of the time, he's been on cannabis since he was 14 and just doesn't do anything. He doesn't even wash, he has no ambition at all. I know it sounds like he has problems too and believe me he does. I feel like his mother, not his partner, I take care of him, I even think for him because he's too lazy to think for himself. I ran when I had control for the first time in my life thinking I was hiding, safe, I had someone to hide behind, someone else's life to be a part of, instead of being strong and fronting my own life. Instead I got a teenage son at 22, I cook, clean, do the washing, he doesn't lift a finger, he's got us in debt, he's still on cannabis and I have the control, I have all the control for the both of us but still in his little bubble, in his life. I have no friends left, I am off work on the sick with the anxiety and I am taking Citalopram. I don't see anyway of turning, what has become my life, in to anything worth while. I know if I stay with him my life won't change, I am house bound at 22 and he has just been sacked from work so he's with me 24/7. I do everything round the house but he knows I need him for the outside stuff, I just can't face going outside, I don't know what that is, i've never had it before. I feel like I don't have the energy to pick myself up. I feel scared of the responsibility of what life brings. I am terrified of being lonely. I smoke cannabis too because it's the only way I can cope. I have done since I met him and I have needed more and more over the past 3 years we've been together. It's the only thing that makes everything go away, I know the long term effects and can see what they're doing to me. I can see what i've become because it takes away the only thing that has allowed me to get through life so far, determination. I feel like scum because I had a taste of success and now I am nothing. I really want to turn my life around and make something of myself, he spends all my money on the cannabis so even if I made an escape plan, I won't have the funds to make it happen. I have met so many horrible people in my life and have been betrayed and i admit, it's made me a little bitter and also very weary of people. The thing is I am a nice person, no matter how people have treat me, I still can't comprehend doing it to another person, I feel like i am stupid because I value others so much more than myself and I can't seem to train my brain to think otherwise as it clearly hasn't earned me the respect I thought it would. Over the past three years I have looked at myself and found some confidence in myself eventually. I just want to escape from it all, I am so scared of being alone, but it's all i dream of. I don't want to hurt anybody and cause drama, I don't want to hurt Dale, he's used me for so long, I know he won't be able to take care of himself, he won't be able to manage his money or feed himself properly. I feel so guilty that I want to leave, I feel so guilty when he talks about the future and I don't want him to be in it. I know I have every right to want to leave but I feel so responsible for him. I taught him manners, how to talk to people without offending them, I showed him respect, I've shown him how to do house-work, to cook, all the things his mother didn't do, but still I have gotten nowhere and still i haven't seen one shred of effort or appreciation. Deep down I know it's my fault for being such a push-over and I hate myself for it, but I feel like he has been and will continue to use me and suck the life out of me. I recently applied for the army and thought to become a military poilce officer to get the experience I need for later on in life and I could escape him too; I was deferred for two years because I am on medication. It has really broken my heart; It was a tangible idea, I could have really gotten out but now I am back to square one. I am so run down and low at the minute and literally cannot talk about the stuff I have written here, everytime I try I just clamp up and can't speak, I have tried with doctors/family even Dale, but i just can't open up to anyone. I thought to write the whole thing down in an environment where people are suffering too, less personal making it easier. I am sorry for the novel; but if someone out there with similar experiences or suffering from depression and anxiety could maybe relate or share some of their thoughts and advice, I would appreciate it more than you know. Again sorry for how long my story is. x
I grew up in a so-so area, my mother was a single parent, I am an only child. She met a guy when I was nine and he moved in within a month. He was very controlling and made her stop smoking, she cheated one day and when he smelled the smoked on her, he pushed her to the floor and split her lip. That was the first of many times he was violent towards her. At first I couldn't even comprehend what was happening. The violence got progressively worse over the years. I was constantly picked on, spat at, controlled, and one point he stabbed me with a fork in my leg at about 13-14. It ruined my confidence from such a young age, looking back now developing in that environment, I can see how it affects the person you grow into. He was a HGV driver so was working away all week and would come home, drink and then get violent. He would leave for work on Monday morning and come home Friday evenings so we were lucky in that it wasn't all week (or I honestly think he'd have killed her) and luckier for him as he didn't have to see what he did to her. The bruises would always be fading by the time he came home and she became very good with cover-up. I was the one at 12, phoning for a doctor at three in the morning because she could stand the pain, it was my room where she'd hide out of his way, me who held her while she cried for hours while he slept it off blissfully ignorant to what he'd done. He could never remember doing it. I escaped in any way I could, I self-harmed, drank, smoked, took drugs, slept around and hung out with people way too old and bad. I matured so young, at 15 I got into a relationship, my first proper boyfriend, who actually stuck around. He knew about the crap at home, I used him to get away from it. My step-father then decided to move us to the country just before my GCSE's. I didn't end up finishing school as it was just too far away and too late to start at another nearby school. My life became all about my boyfriend who would come when he could to see me and picked me up on the weekends to stay out of the way of my step-father. The thing was is that my boyfriend, was a little miniture of my step-father. He was never violent towards me, but he played mind games with me, emotionally hurting me all the time. He knew he was my only shred of sanctuary and he took full advantage of that. He was a control freak, and a bully, he knew I was suffering and he enjoyed hurting me more. He knew from Monday to Friday I was thinking of him, looking forward to seeing him, waiting for him. I remember once, he came to pick me up, I had my back-pack all packed looking forward to my weekend, the only thing I had to look forward to...He drove me right up to his front door and then told me to get out and get the bus home. He enjoyed doing things like that to me, and probably because I had never known anything else, I just accepted it. I was all over the place, staying at my mother's when my step-father wasn't home, staying with my boyfriend, aunt's and my grandparents. One night my step-father wanted me to stay in on a Saturday night to hang out with his daughter who was staying over, she was about 9 at the time and I was 15...He got drunk, really drunk and started beating my mother, I felt so sorry for my step-sister, so young and hearing what she wasn't accustomed to, she couldn't handle it and I had to do something...I went in (only ever did it once before when I was 12-13 but it actually diffused the situation then) and said to stop it, it wasn't fair on his daughter (years and years of this resolves you to the fact that he would stop for my mother or me) I thought this one plea might calm him, but it just made him worse, he started on me. He was 18 stone of massive bloke and he grabbed me by the neck and picked me up like a rag-doll, he smashed my head into the wall right in front of my mother, and then walked down stairs and fell asleep. I called my boyfriend and explained the situation very, very calmly, I packed my clothes, got my step-sister and got out of there. My mother would never leave him, I begged her that night, but she stayed for her dog, she said that my step-father threatened to kill the dog if she ever left him...even my boyfriend said we'll put him in the car and take him too...but she just shook her head. She always said if he ever laid a hand on me she would leave him. A few years after that they got married. I never went back, I went to social services, reported him and they did a full investigation for my step-sister but because nobody could/would say or do anything, it all just got swept under the carpet. It was 23rd July I was just about to turn 17 on 31st so I was too old to go into care, so they put me in touch with the children's society's project for homeless young people called inline. Through inline, I was giving a social worker and they had to make sure I was competent to run my own house hold and take care of myself, but they said after what I had been through, they didn't think there would be a problem and I was given a flat and some decorating coupons and £40 per week income support. I went to college and started a GCSE course, my boyfriend moved in with me and he ended up getting worse, he would always be angry, always negative comments, put-downs, not letting me go out, he would punch holes in the doors and smash up what little furniture I could afford, he slashed me sofa's and everytime I kicked him out he would guilt trip me and frighten me into taking him back, If he left me I knew it was for someone else, when he was done with her, he would come crawling back and go absolutely balistic until I let him back in. I once tried to get my life together and started going to the TA centre and met some new friends. I became friends with a nice gay guy and one night after TA we went back to mine to watch movies. I hadn't heard from my boyfriend in 6 months and thought it might be finally over...but he came back that morning and tried to kick my door down. He thought my gay friend was a new fella and was going insane. I called the police and they took him away. Finally I got rid of my him, he just got up one morning and left and never came back. I had such little control in the relationship I knew I could never get away, I knew he'd hound me, but I also loved him, used to him being there, used to him being my crutch. I was never happier in my life as I was then, I was just about to do my exams, I had put up with him, been his house-maid, all through my course, I worked my ass off and I was finally free. I was in the best place I could have ever been, secure and alone with nobody to control me, dictate to me who, what, why, where and when. I passed my exams and got really good results and it made me feel ready for anything. I really thought I was going somewhere, maybe university, maybe making new friends, scrape a life together. Why is it that I always let men take my control? I had it all in front of me... all the possibility in the world, the confidence to go for it. I went for it, I started my higher education course in Forensic Science, I was doing great, making new friends, my own little flat with nothing broken for a change. I always wanted to work in the police force or forensics but I just seemed to slip, it felt like a moment of hesitation, then I was in a place I didn't recognise, It just seemed like too much pressure all of a sudden I was so lonely and I did the thing I only knew and latched myself onto some guy I met in a bar. Within weeks, he'd made a complete fool of me, called me names and always made me feel like something he'd stepped in. Within months, I gave up my flat, my course, my new life, my possibilities. He changed me in ways I couldn't believe, it was like the breaking point of my life and he stood there and pushed my head under, I had been so strong, coped so well for all those years, getting by best I could, I suffered from depression, depression I could handle reasonably. At 19 I found I was pregnant and then found that the pregancy had self-terminated but I hadn't physically miscarried, for two weeks I had to go through each day wondering if this was the day it would come, but when all my tests were done I went it to surgery and had it taken care of. During those two weeks I changed...I was so scared, I have hospital phobia and terrified of needles anything medical is hell for me, I went on auto-pilot, I completely switched off, I couldn't reach out to Dale, he wasn't interested anyway, he made me go to a party during these two weeks that I knew the miscarriage could come at anytime, and I started to have pains, I was so scared but Dale was too 'off his head' to understand me, he wouldn't take me home, and about 4 hours later after crashing on the floor of a spare room at the party, he finally walked me home, I had started spotting and was so scared I was throwing up, and all he wanted was to go back to the party and take more drugs. I think growing up without confidence does have an impact and nothing really would have suprised me but that really broke my heart, out of all the bad stuff in my life, that there broke me completely. After the two weeks I went to hospital and was hysterical from the moment I woke up in the morning until I was on my way home and ever since then I have suffered panic attacks and anxiety. It was always a power struggle, a game, trying to make someone love you, respect you, treat you nicely, but after that I shut him out completely, I no longer tried to get recognition for putting up with him, stopped pleading with him to make some effort, stopped trying to prove myself to him. I wanted him to see how nice I was, I wanted him to want me, I wanted to show him no matter what I was there. I wanted him to think I was beautiful and special, but from then I didn't care anymore. It just seemed like a total power swap. I am still with him now and he had slowly but surely taken every part of me, he has gotten the best of me time and time again, after the early years I thought I was strong and it enrages me to think I managed through it all only to willingly go back into a life like this. My partner, he knows what he's done, I have put blood, swear and tears into making sure he understands his actions. I used to make up excuses for him, like he hasn't had much life experience and it's not his fault, it's what he's seen growing up but now I see differently. I realise now I am being taken for a fool, I single handedly decorated our flat because he didn't know how and every time he tried he'd mess up. I felt guilty to the point where we were living in filth because I had to pretend his measly efforts with house work were good enough, he'd get so upset with himself if I pointed something out he'd done wrong. Dale is not violent in the slightest, in fact it's hard for him to show any emotion at all most of the time, he's been on cannabis since he was 14 and just doesn't do anything. He doesn't even wash, he has no ambition at all. I know it sounds like he has problems too and believe me he does. I feel like his mother, not his partner, I take care of him, I even think for him because he's too lazy to think for himself. I ran when I had control for the first time in my life thinking I was hiding, safe, I had someone to hide behind, someone else's life to be a part of, instead of being strong and fronting my own life. Instead I got a teenage son at 22, I cook, clean, do the washing, he doesn't lift a finger, he's got us in debt, he's still on cannabis and I have the control, I have all the control for the both of us but still in his little bubble, in his life. I have no friends left, I am off work on the sick with the anxiety and I am taking Citalopram. I don't see anyway of turning, what has become my life, in to anything worth while. I know if I stay with him my life won't change, I am house bound at 22 and he has just been sacked from work so he's with me 24/7. I do everything round the house but he knows I need him for the outside stuff, I just can't face going outside, I don't know what that is, i've never had it before. I feel like I don't have the energy to pick myself up. I feel scared of the responsibility of what life brings. I am terrified of being lonely. I smoke cannabis too because it's the only way I can cope. I have done since I met him and I have needed more and more over the past 3 years we've been together. It's the only thing that makes everything go away, I know the long term effects and can see what they're doing to me. I can see what i've become because it takes away the only thing that has allowed me to get through life so far, determination. I feel like scum because I had a taste of success and now I am nothing. I really want to turn my life around and make something of myself, he spends all my money on the cannabis so even if I made an escape plan, I won't have the funds to make it happen. I have met so many horrible people in my life and have been betrayed and i admit, it's made me a little bitter and also very weary of people. The thing is I am a nice person, no matter how people have treat me, I still can't comprehend doing it to another person, I feel like i am stupid because I value others so much more than myself and I can't seem to train my brain to think otherwise as it clearly hasn't earned me the respect I thought it would. Over the past three years I have looked at myself and found some confidence in myself eventually. I just want to escape from it all, I am so scared of being alone, but it's all i dream of. I don't want to hurt anybody and cause drama, I don't want to hurt Dale, he's used me for so long, I know he won't be able to take care of himself, he won't be able to manage his money or feed himself properly. I feel so guilty that I want to leave, I feel so guilty when he talks about the future and I don't want him to be in it. I know I have every right to want to leave but I feel so responsible for him. I taught him manners, how to talk to people without offending them, I showed him respect, I've shown him how to do house-work, to cook, all the things his mother didn't do, but still I have gotten nowhere and still i haven't seen one shred of effort or appreciation. Deep down I know it's my fault for being such a push-over and I hate myself for it, but I feel like he has been and will continue to use me and suck the life out of me. I recently applied for the army and thought to become a military poilce officer to get the experience I need for later on in life and I could escape him too; I was deferred for two years because I am on medication. It has really broken my heart; It was a tangible idea, I could have really gotten out but now I am back to square one. I am so run down and low at the minute and literally cannot talk about the stuff I have written here, everytime I try I just clamp up and can't speak, I have tried with doctors/family even Dale, but i just can't open up to anyone. I thought to write the whole thing down in an environment where people are suffering too, less personal making it easier. I am sorry for the novel; but if someone out there with similar experiences or suffering from depression and anxiety could maybe relate or share some of their thoughts and advice, I would appreciate it more than you know. Again sorry for how long my story is. x