NOSTIGMAS ALLY BLOG
Documenting the lives of the NoStigmas community through stories, creative works & advocacy related to mental illness and suicide.
Viewing entries tagged
loss
I made up lies for why I was upset and anger all the time, so I didn’t look weak! Didn’t help me out at all, people started finding out and I just started hating myself, asking myself why would I, I’m just a disappointment. I just didn’t know why I was upset.
A dark depression took hold of my life when my marriage began to end and consumed everything around me. Eventually I lost my job, my marriage, my home, my car, my son didn’t want to have anything to do with me, and then I lost all my belongings in a tornado. I sat in the ruins, just like I sat in the ruins of my life. I was done.
This, I think, is the great gift of coming through a depression. Learning that life is much bigger than your perception is a gift. It can lead to being a little more humble, a little more hopeful, and little more open to learning about someone else’s perspective…it could make up for a blind spot in your own.
On a summer night in 1995, I came home to a message on my answering machine -- my father telling me my mother was threatening suicide.
It was in March when I was on my way to a job fair for teachers. My phone rang, my mom on the other end of the line. “I have to tell you something,” my mom said solemnly, and I knew it was drastic, because she didn’t follow it with “but everything is okay.”
