Day 07 → Someone who has made your life worth living for.

I guess I should be able to say there are alot of people in my life who have given me hope and made my life more worth living but I cannot. There were times in my life where i felt my life was worth living more than other times but I am not really sure there have been many times I have truly felt my life has been fully worth living.

Growing up as a child I did not really know much of things in life that I experience were abnormal even though I was taking from my parents and placed in foster care briefly. I then was placed in a residential home where I was surounded by many other abused and very angry children and adolescents much like myself. Some more angry and some less angry. Some more compliant and some less compliant. Although maybe not so. I may have been the worst child there as it seems that almost everyone that was there when I came left before I did and the ones that came after I did also left before I did. I also did not go home because i earned my way out by behaving and doing what I needed to do to get home after my mother regained custody back years later. I went home at almost 12 years old because they wanted me medicated with medications my mother did not want me on and they said they could do no more for me as i was out of control. So my mother took me home. I was there from right before I turned 7 years old until I was almost 12 years old.

Then at 15 I began self harming and suicidal after the birth of my 1st child and lived in residential after my 1st hospitalization when he was 6 weeks old and he lived with my my mother. I stayed in residential until i aged out of the child and adolescent system at the age of 19.

When I left there i went into an adult group home and left 2 weeks later and stayed homeless and went in and out of hospitals for trying to kill myself and self injury. I was hopeless and my life was not worth living and I wanted to die. I felt there was no point to living and life sucked.

In May 2000, I fond out i was pregnat with my second child. That gave me hope I then felt I had purpose and I felt my life was worth living. That was short lived. Well not that short lived as it lasted 5 years and a marriage and 3 more children until my children were taken and I knew I would never get thjem back as my mental helath deteriated once they were taken from me and my husband. I fought for them for 18 months but that day they were taken I knew it was over my life was gone and not worth living any more. During those 5 years I had been in the hospital 1 time ofr feeling suicial about 3 years before that and once for self injury. I had that May 2000 decided when I found I was pregnant with that 1st child of my 4 youngest that I had reason to live and no longer needed to rely on my hopeless feelings and behaviors to cope with my negative feelings and all those feelinsg came rushing back once they were taken from me and I had no reason to control my urges or thoughts to escape and avoid feeling empotional pain anymore.

Now I feel I have no one who makes my life wort living for anymore. Who once made me feel there was a reason to keep going are gone and I no longer matter.

Letter I just sent to my therapist (was not the intention of me writing to her)

Things have changed and the agency has and still continues to go through many ups and downs. I understand to a degree that this is just a career to you. But why did you choose this career. People do not choose careers in this type of field for nothing. People do not decide they want a job full of stress and that desensitizes them emotionally to peoples pain for no reason. There are underlying reasons people choose a career in the mental health system that is not very rewarding on a personal level. Most people in your position choose the career they are in because of personal life experiences. So why then does it feel to me that your choice to be in your position is not a choice to you anymore. You do it just to do. It seems to me that there are expectations placed upon you that is interfering in your ability to meet the needs of the clients you have on your case load. Yes you work for a community mental health center and with that brings overcrowding and the need for more than the very few counselors that are employed by the agency but why is it that I feel that the counseling is no longer a priority. Why is it that clients continue to need services but yet the needed services do not get provided but yet other agencies provide more services than the agency which is the main agency of service to the client. Mental Health Supports should not be the ones providing my counseling as they are not the one being paid for that service, they are not the ones trained to the degree that you and community services are trained to provide. Do not get me wrong they are helpful and they also aid in my treatment but I feel my treatment through community services and specifically my therapy treatment is no longer important now that you are forced into doing more than your share of the services their at Courtland.

Have you lost sight of the reasons you chose a career in counseling? Is that no longer important? Do the clients not really matter as we are just a means to bring in more income and funding to the agency no matter how much less productive and how much less services truly are being provided.018153 is all I am to you and everyone else in that agency it seems to me. It feels as if there is no point to coming there anymore for treatment as I do not feel treatment is being provided on a needs basis but rather on a basis of case managing. There feels as if there is no therapy being provided and my life is no more important to that agency as it was to my abusers growing up. I feel I am just a statistic to that agency as of lately and that me as a human being is not really what is looked at. My needs do not get addressed. The agency needs gets more addressing than the clients’ needs. The clients need more services than the agency provides. The agency needs to stop cutting services out and stop limiting the needs of clients to the limited services they are willing to provide. Stop cutting services and instead build more services to help the clients like productive lives and lives that should be worth living. What progress has the agency made with DBT? Non that I have seen. Dbt instead in my opinion has gotten less productive and less structured than it was back when I first began DBT in 2006 at Community services. Instead of building up programs the agency wants to continue trying to cut out services and do less of mastering the services they claim to provide. They continue to sacrifice Mental Health treatment, groups, and services and fight to provide and maintain addiction treatment and services that are instead of improving just being used to claim as a service provided but is it really being provided and maintained to a level that it should be maintained and provided. TREM was started and is a much need group in the area as there is no other trauma related groups in this area but it was cut out and never maintained as it should have been. The funding was not placed on maintaining that group in the agency. DBT now is just a fly by no effort to place on group within the agency. The recovery enhancement group is no longer done and that was a group that help some and could be beneficial to many if marketed properly and maintained to a degree it should be maintained. IOP is a forever unproductive group that seems to need more structure and commitment placed on it from the agency. DBT core group was stopped and never again even given a second though to it. How you ever realized you have a voice and could really help people if you advocated to a degree of advocating as you are able to. Yes I understand you advocate but do you truly really advocate for services that are in place to be revamped and actually given the attention that is need for them to truly succeed in helping people succeed in their lives. And maybe you have and maybe you do I just have not seen it and do not see progress within the services provided through the agency. I have seen so many changes effect the agency as a whole and us clients but do not see them as helpful in maintaining stability.

There have been many services cut out of the agency and non that have replaced those services. The very same services that I was involved with that had been helpful to some degree in the past are the very services that have been cut out and given no attention to them to maintain or to reorganize them to a point where they can be used to provide much needed services in the greater Lynchburg and surrounding area. How is it that services can be shutoff and unmaintained as the services within the agency has. Do you even realize, recognize, or understand all that I see that has happened within the agency over the past years and if so how is it that you act unaffected and as if all this is not important and do not matter to you and you continue to come to work and not stand up for the needs of your clients or the community when you took the counseling oath you took. There are many reasons like these that make people in your position decide to get out and make them change career paths or get away from agency such as the one that is employing you but yet for whatever reason you continue to stay in an agency that does not appear to be concerned with services to clients or the community but just in maintaining staying open. The services has greatly depreciated and no longer even seems to feel as a service but it feels as just an in between place where you can go to get information regarding the services in the area and be pawned off to some other services but yet keep us as the main service providers on paper so we can keep getting funding for the lack of services we provide but refer you to any and every other agency around. Do you see the effects of the way the agency is run on clients? Does anyone see how these things have effected clients? Does it matter to anyone in the agency how I as a client and not just case 018153 is and has been effected by what has occurred within the confinements of the agency that you work for and they run.

I understand you are just one person, one employee there. I also understand that you are one voice that I believe could make a difference if that voice truly care about us clients as people and lives really worth that voices efforts. Yes maybe I am not the client that is worth your voice but realize and understand your voice is the voice that could be used to advocate for more than just someone like myself. The way the agency is being run it may be you or a co-worker who needs the services at some point. Then would your voice be worth using. Is it just that we, including myself are not worth your advocating for the needed services, maintaining of the services that are provided, and the improvement of those services. Could it be that a family member of yours or yourself or a coworker needed the services could that be a motivating factor in people in that agency maintaining, improving, or providing services. Does no one there see that we are not just people we are members of families, some of us are employees, some of us could be very productive services if people really put the time, effort, and confidence in us as they do their own families, and selves.

I guess I am going to stop this ranting and tangent and hopefully have made some important points and given you some things to truly think about as my motivation for writing to you tonight was to get some frustration out regarding my need for treatment, stability, care, support, hope, and help. I also intended on expressing to you my thoughts recently and how my actions have contributed to my underlying depression, but instead I have used this as a message to vent regarding stuff that is not going to matter to you or anyone else there and instead I have wasted my time, effort, thoughts, and energy on things that are important to me and hopefully others like me and never got into what I originally sat here to write to you about. I may choose to do that in a bit but need to take this time in this moment to reflect on all I have just contemplated and relayed to you in this message. I only hope that I have not made you feel unimportant, alienated, angry, frustrated, or targeted by my anger towards what is happening in your job and its effects it has on me. I do realize that you are doing your best at the moment but I hope I also have helped you to see that you can try to do more than you do instead of just sitting there taking orders from the people above I hope I have inspired you to use your voice as an advocate for people like me who do not or cannot always use their voices.

The last feelings and thoughts of 2009

Well here, it is the end of 2009. The beginning of a new decade is going to start in approximately 30 minutes. As the end of this decade, ends there are many regrets I sit here thinking about within. Today as my mom drove away from her visit here, I wanted to go home with her. I wanted just for someone to want me around and for me to feel truly loved by my family but instead I felt the same as I always have.

I felt unloved and not wanted. I felt I did not matter. Then as I began, thinking about this last year of the decade I remembered how close I came to the end of my life at my own hands. I realized how even when all is going well I still feel empty. I have no one in my life who has ever really just wanted me for who I am no matter who that may be or what I may do. I never really have been accepted unless someone needed something or wanted something from me. Then when they were done with me, I did not matter anymore.

I lost a friend that I really tried hard to keep. She was a good friend for the most part but we all have faults and some of the issues I had with our friendship I allowed to get too far and began to resent the friendship rather than openly talking and working on the things that were too much for me. Well that friendship ended and a new one began. Well I thought two new ones began. but I feel as if I need to just be too myself as much as they are great people and I have no issues with them currently they are just 2 good of people to be around me and my miserable world.

They deserve better friendship than what I will ever be able to give them and they do not need any more distress from me in their lives. I know I sometimes am too much and my hopelessness and despair is frustrating for others. So then, why do I continue to express these things to others rather than just keep them inside? I never can really keep good friends around as these things interfere in the relationship or becomes too much for people who I thought were my friends to handle and understand truly.

My mother and sister left today and I cried as they drove away. I cried because I feel as if I will never be truly, honestly loved by anyone. My family never loved me but they continue to control my life for the most part. I let my life be controlled by others and by my misery. I never will be able to obtain an achievable desired level of happiness within myself to be able to enjoy life and face it as others do. I just want it all to stop and for my life to normalize enough for me to be happy and satisfied with what I have, what I can give, and how I survive.

I want to help others without fucking things up more for them. It seems every time I try to help someone and do as much as I can they end up in a worse situation than they were in before I bothered. So then, why do I bother? Why do I keep thinking I can help and make things better for others? Why is it I think I can do any good for anyone when I have always done nothing but failed?

Life shows up so often

Last week my carefully planned suicide failed. I am not sure how carefully planned it really was as although I had researched it for weeks and waited until my son left on his trip to massachusettes I only took half the pills I had planned on taken and got high on crack cocaine right before taking them and then although I had planned on cutting my wrist straight up the vein I ended up cutting it on a diagonal. Alls it did was end me up in ICU for 4 days and with 27 staples and 11 stitches in my wrist. It did do some damage to my nerves as my hand is stillnumb halfway through it and i have achy pain near the side where the vein got cut. It also left me with a bunch of days unable to tell you about as their is no memerories from them including the many conversations I had at the hospital. I did manage to stay out of the psychiatric unit although then felt I needed to be in one since I left ICU. I had therapy monday after being discharged from ICU friday and not sure it was very productive or much of it was set in as in my mind I still planned on finishing myself off. I met with my ehs mental health support worker and then decided yesterday after have a major emotionally traumatizing fight with my now ex boyfriend as we broke up I decided that I needed help. I went and tried to get into crisis stabilization and was turned down as I have been there too many times in the past 3 years and have had many problems while in the program so therefore they denied me the service. Instead I am on a crisis plan which just entails that I will still see my therapist which at this point is weekley but had been biweekley and I will also meet withy the crisis coordnator who at one time was my case manager a few times over the next few weeks to try and get myself and my life back on track before classes begin August 24th. School will also give me soemthing more to do once it starts although it in the past has helped keep me somewhat stable I still have not been able to completely organize keep focused keep up or stay stable throughout the whol semester which will end in december so we will see and alls I can do is try for now. I still have the option of killing myself if none of this helps and even if it helps temporarily killing myself is still an option.

going through some emotions

My son had his first dte today and when he first asked the girl who was my neighbors daughter I was excited. My son is 14 1/2 years old and not a very outgoing boy as he hasnever been a real socialite. But once he gets to know you he is very friendly and social but not unti feeling comortable. He is not a teenager as there is out there today. He is not criminalized. He is a quiet respectable boy. My son opened the car door for this girl then she went around the other side of the car and said she was going to get in on the other side. Then he bought her supper. Yes mcdonalds but it was with his money he worked for and saved to ake her out and that is where she said she wanted to go. Then he went to the movies and watched th Hanna Montana movie because she wanted to. He did everything a young respectfl boy should do and she is nothing but a slimy loser. Later this evening when she got back hours late he invited her up to sit by the fire. she came up here and brought 2 friends only to leave him by the fire alone and hang on my porch with her friends. He looked so sad ad lonely sitting thee by the fire. I came in the house ater he announcing He is not her type because he is not "GHETTO" or "REDNECK" enough. He is too nice she said. She also said he is too young as she will not date anyone younger than 18 becauseit makes her feel like a child and as if she is molesting them. Well my son is not into sex yet ad as this is his first interest in girls and all that sort of thng and I felt so bad when she rejected him the way she did and is still sitting out there and heis still out there by the fire. I came in and cried as I fel somewhat as if it is mine and my mothers fault for being overly protective and sheler him throughout his life to protect him from being like what society portrays teenagers to be. My son is not the typical teenager and I am glad he is not but in a way I feel like because he has been moved alot and that sort he has not been able to socialize and learn to be social which is somewhat damaging as he is cautious who he hangs and opens up to. I am not sure I am sure alot of the tears is more about me and the experience of being unwanted, not good enough, and never belonging and fitting in. Ii am sure that is where alot of my tears came from is my own feelings about rejection and reexperiencing what I have felt as always being not good enough for anyone. But I am feeling sad right now for him and somewhat angry with her, myself, and my mother for doing this to him.

sent 2 my therapst as i hope she will stop being concerned and ease up as its making it difficult 2 get what i need 2 acheive what i desire

Well be frustrated or be upset with me it is alright. I know when you try so hard to help someone and they cannot will not or choose not to accept it how frustrating and angering it may be. I am sorry I know I should never have manipulated you into giving me that card number and I am sorry but I do want to say you have been helpful in many ways and I just have difficulties accepting what is and that I cannot and never will be able to be who I was when I had my children with me and who I want t to be as I will never and can never be normal. I will never be the perfect American family living the American dream. I am sorry I have been willful and even when I take steps to try and do something that is best for me since I will be on the street with nowhere to live soon I wait every day to find that eviction notice on my door and I wanted to save that money so I would be able to have somewhere to go but I blew it all. I bought a car this weekend and yes I know you had the card but I moneygramed the money to the person and there is now only 33 dollars left so ohwell thank you for trying. I did not buy any pills again as I fucked that up by blowing my money on the car that legally I should not be driving right now as I have not registered it and the plates on it are not mine they are the person I bought it from but it does got a new sticker on it and it drives nice. It is a small little car and it will do me somewhat good as I will now have a place to sleep when I do get evicted. Next month’s check I will change everything over to my name and then hopefully I will not feel as stressed about it but after I did it I was upset for a bit as now I will not be able to order my pills I needed. I did however order that lidocaine which ended up being 50 dollars and I will probably never get it as I know it was mailed and there has been a lot of seizures of out of country packages because of prescriptions. But needless to say if I get it I get it if not I do nt. I dropped my classes at cvcc but am thinking of resigning up for them as obviously I am not going to be dead before then so I need to do something with my life I am however signed up for 2 online classes through 2 other Virginia community classes currently but really need to cancel those ones as I do not have the money for them. I have gone to visit my son today and drove by Dakoata house which I got excited as he had a 2 wheeler outside with training wheels so my little man is growing and getting bigger. He is riding a bike. It made me happy. Then I walked around Kroger for no reason and dollar tree and drove around Rustburg it felt good to have some freedom and get out. I cried a lot Friday night and Saturday night as Pete and I have been somewhat arguing and he told me there has been a few times he has just wanted to walk away and never come back but he cares about me and knows I will hurt myself if he does. I told him I am not real good with relationships and am not used to a normal female male relationship but that I do not just hurt myself because of stuff like that I hurt myself because it is how I cope and a year ago I may have done that but at this moment I would sure not do it if he wanted nothing to do with me. I told him he was not worth it but yet I have wanted to do it so much this weekend just drive away from here and cut but have not I am going to show you all that I do not need to do that just because I hurt emotionally. So I told him he needed to stop the mind games and if he wants to go go now do not stay because you do not want me to hurt myself as it will be worse a year from now I told him if he wants to go and he wants me to leave him be just say so but yet then he says your still pretty and wants to play sexually as I feel like lately this is how it has been a little game ever since I gave in and gave him what he wanted. The many times I tell him no I do not want to and he tells me no means yes when it comes to me I sometimes feel like that’s what I deserve just to be someone’s whore and treated as if I am just good for that but yet other times it angers me feeling as if that is all that is wanted out of me and that is all that is good about me and that is all people want from me. I don’t know I am such a complicated person and my mind is very conflicted it is difficult for me to live with it and figure it out so I know it must be more difficult for others to figure it out. I can go without sex but yet it is what a relationship is based on and without it you are not wanted or good enough to people so I feel it is an obligation but yet then want it to be taken as so I do not have to feel like I gave it up and am just as I was years ago. I have difficulties with it a lot especially now that it involves the person I am with as he is much older and some specific features of his reminds me of my mother’s ex but I am able to fade out of for some time. So it’s alright. Sometimes I wish I did not I wish I experienced the whole thing and could somehow take control and stop it since I did not when I was younger but I still don’t even when I am experiencing it fully and want not to be doing it or be involved. Sometimes it is hard to fade away from it. But it’s alright I don’t care. It seems I don’t care much about anything anymore but I will say since driving around I have felt less anxiety although maybe the few xanex I have been taken recently has helped that somewhat but also I think I am not as feel as if I have to depend on others and that I am trapped as I can just drive out for no reason and drive around amously. And then I really felt good after seeing that bike toady with the little training wheels. It made me feel good. I did email the social worker last week after going to chat with Connie and she did never respond so not sure what’s up maybe she is sick of hearing from me or maybe she had no answers or maybe she found out she was not supposed or I don’t know but she is supposed to be having a baby soon Connie said so I was inquiry as to whether she would be back and if Daniels worker will change and stuff like that but she never did respond do I do not know. Anyways I cleaned Corey’s room for him but yet cannot clean my own house and do not even weed the garden. I am depressed and things have been up and down for some time now but right now I such feel numb not really sad as I cried off and on for a few hours Saturday and been alright with the one thought of driving the car to the mountain just to cut so no one would know about it but decided not to that just cause I was sad and hurt it does not mean I need to hurt myself physically so I have not done it. I think I am alright for now even if I slack on real life such as laundry showering cleaning cooking and shit like that. Well thanks for trying and I am sorry I have fucked it up again. I do try even if it seems I do not and I have not been on the computer that much this weekend and have not been in that chat that I had been for the past 6 weeks so it may be helping as I am not reading and writing so much negativity. I might not be there this week as I have court Tuesday which I really do not want to go I would rather it just to be over with since they have moved but have to go so I do not get issued a warrant for failure to appear after a subpoena had been delivered. And I really not sure about therapy as it is difficult to sit face to face with you. It just feels to vulnerable and you know too much I think and I am not sure I want to expose any more of my fucked up self as I am really not a worthwhile human you should be wasting your time on. I am disgusting and I feel ashamed of something’s I have been involved in in my life and it is difficult to face you one to one after telling you some of the things I told you but yet seems I need therapy and the system as that is why I have survived so long. I have survived because of the system if it had not been here and I had not stayed involved I can almost say with a certain I would have been dead. Maybe I just need another therapist someone who does not know all that nasty stuff and someone who only knows the surface stuff of me such as diagnosis and treatment without going further into reason and cause. I am not sure I am just feeling anxious about being in therapy with you now. I am afraid to face you and of what you really think not just what you tell me and the therapeutic response to what I told you but real thoughts about how nasty and disgusting I am and have been my whole life. I have to go before I let this go to my head obsessively.