Bad luck or not? Part two

I have been thinking about this for a while now and I really should get back to this topic. Seeing as how it is probably the biggest thing I have to deal with and one of the major sources of alot of my problems.

So where did I leave off?

And that was only the begining…

Well.. obviously after all that I started showing some of the the classic symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress. Nightmares..constant anxiety.. avoiding crowds..paranoia…flashbacks resulting in panic attacks…and uncontrollable bouts of crying.

I continued to gain weight..but I no longer cared.

And they were constantly increasing my medications. Each doctors visit they would ask me, “Do you still want to die?” and I would be honest and say yes. Their response to that was to increase my meds.
Then..at my next appointment..they’d ask again..and I would say yes.. so they increased my meds again. And they kept increasing them, until one time they asked me again..and I was able to say..No..I didn’t feel so much like I wanted to die anymore. And I stayed that that dose for the next few years.

I tried going to counseling. Went to several different people. One actually said to me..straight up..they couldn’t believe I was actually still alive.

And I can honestly say.. I didn’t want to be. I may not have been obsessed with it so much anymore…but I was actually really fucking angry that I couldn’t kill myself.

See..I knew what it felt like to be the one left behind. And I loved my parents too much to do that to them. I knew what it would do to my parents if I did. So, as much as I may have wanted to..I couldn’t do it. I was stuck here.

So now I was on all these medications.. and they were pretty expensive. Totaling over $500 a month. I didn’t have any kind of insurance..so my parents were paying for it out of their pocket.
So it was decided that I needed insurance..and the only way for me to get it was to go on welfare. But in order to qualify..I couldn’t be living with my parents..I had to have my own place and provide my own meals.
So my parents decided that I was getting my own apartment. And within a couple weeks I was moved out. And let me tell you..I was NOT HAPPY.

I was NOT ready to move out on my own. But I was given no choice.

At the time I was taking classes to get my GED..and I had met a girl there who said she was looking to get a place of her own too. So we found a place together. It was a double and we had no furniture so the whole place was empty except for the few bedroom things we brought with us.

I got on welfare and I got the insurance and food stamps. And I finished the classes for my GED. The thing was, is that I had gone to school for the whole 12 years and the GED tests weren’t any harder than 9th grade work. So I scored such a high score that they gave me a diploma.

Moving out though.. proved to be too much after the past summer and I ended up having my first breakdown. I guess you could call it a nervous breakdown. I don’t really remember those weeks.. it was like I no longer existed.

I ended up moving out into another place where I would be calling my parents up in the middle of the night in hysterics for no real reason. Nighttime was really bad for me. I hardly ever slept.. so I was always up all night. And several times my mom would have to come over and try to calm me down.

I was EXTREMELY paranoid now about loosing my parents. I was convinced that they were going to be killed somehow. Everywhere I looked I saw death. A million different ways to die. I started hating to ride in cars because I was so afraid of getting in a accident. And I was tortured over the fact that my parents were out there driving around and I couldn’t stop them.

If my Mom called me too early in the morning, I would completely panic. Cause no one calls at such early hours unless they have bad news. And every time I had learned about another death that past summer..it was after being woken up by my Mom really early in the morning.

And I refused to let my parents leave me without telling them I loved them. Because I knew that it might be the last time I ever saw them. I still do that to this day.

Then my parents decided they were leaving.

My Dad had retired and they had bought a huge moterhome. They were selling everything to live full time in their moterhome and travel around the country.

I was devestated. They were all I had. And they were leaving.

I couldn’t help but feel abandoned. And to this day I still feel some resentment that they left the way they did. When they knew how bad it was for me. But they wanted to travel and it didn’t matter how much I may have needed them…they were leaving.

Bad luck or not?

 decided that I needed to get into one of my biggest issues here. I guess you could call it my outlook on life. My basic belief system.

One of mine has to do with God. I was raised to believe in a God who was all powerful, all knowing. He has nothing but love for us. He is omnipotent. Could move mountains if he wanted to. Performed miracles. He knows our hearts..knows how we think.. how we really feel. I was taught that if you were a good person, if you followed the commandments, you would be rewarded. You would be blessed.

So I started to worry when my life started to fall apart. When nothing but bad things were happening to me. I guess you could say that the first thing was my being Bipolar. But back then..I really didn’t see how that was much of a problem. I had just been diagnosed and I had no real idea of the effect it would have on my life.

It was 1996..I was a senior in high school..I was in love.. I had awesome friends.. and parents who cared about me. I had no reason to be depressed.. but I was. I clung to my boyfriend..who I loved more than anything..like my life depended on it.. and did my best to deal with my conflicting emotions.
School became too much. I had already been in the alternative program for “problem” kids..which was supposed to make things easier on me. But I still ended up getting sort of homeschooled. Where a few of my teachers actually came to my house and taught me. I was six credits shy of graduating.

My friend Ryan was the first to die that year. He and his best friend Dustin, another friend of mine..were in a car accident. Dustin went through the windshield and Ryan was crushed by the roof when they rolled over several times. Dustin was in a coma when we had Ryan’s funeral..and nobody knew if he was going to make it or not. Luckly, he did. But he would have years of surgeries..and physical therapy ahead of him.

Then my boyfriend killed himself. He shot himself in the head.

I died that night. It’s really the only way to describe how I was after that. I was breathing.. but for all intensive purposes..I was dead.

My parents panicked and put me under a 24 hour suicide watch. They hid all the knives and pills and wouldn’t let me out of their sight. My Mom did just came out and asked me once if I really wanted to do it..and I told her that I didn’t really want to. That I had thought about suicide before..but it had always been this idea. It wasn’t something real. But Jon made it real. He made it something that could actually be done. He made it an option.

I didn’t care about anything anymore. I stopped the homeschooling…stopped seeing my friends..stopped taking my karate lessons..(which I had been doing for six years..I was a black belt)..just stopped living.

I had found out about Ryan after my Mom poked her head into my room very early, waking me up, and it was like deja vu when one morning, about two months later, she did the same thing. Only this time, she told me that there had been a plane crash. That the French Club at my school had been on their way to Paris and the plane had exploded shortly after take off. There were no survivors.

I had known about the French Club’s trip to Paris. My best friend, who I had known for seventeen years, had been saving money to go on that trip. But I hadn’t talked to her in months, since Jon died, and I realized that I had no idea if she had been on the plane or not.
With my heart in my throat, grabbed the phone and dialed her house. It was only 5:30 in the morning but I didn’t care. I had to know.
Her Mom answered and all I said was, “Erika?” And her Mom said, “Don’t worry, Kelly. She wasn’t on the plane.”

Even though I felt better knowing Erika was ok.. When I got downstairs, every channel on television was showing video of the burning wreckage of the plane..floating on the surface of the ocean.

I had actually been in the French Club myself. But had quit during my junior year. It had been a couple of years since then so I couldn’t really say exactly who had been on the plane.

I was in shock. The whole town was in shock. This was the kind of stuff that only happened in movies. Talk of bombs and terrorists…Things like this just didn’t happen to little towns like us. But now, instead of watching the reporters on tv talk about how total strangers had been killed..we were watching them talk about people we knew. They were talking about my friends..some of whom I had known my whole life. They were talking about explosives and wreckage and terrorist threats. But it still didn’t feel real. Not until they released the names of the people who had been on the plane.

That day, I found out that 18 of my friends were dead. Kids I had known my whole life. Kids that I had seen every damn day at school. Friends I had made through Erika, who was two years younger than me.

The days after that were filled with grief and fear and finding out who’s body had been pulled out of the ocean that day.

Reporters from all over the world swamped our little town..surrounding the high school..where everyone was meeting to share their grief.

I was there.. I was sad of course..shocked.. and horrified. But I didn’t cry. I didn’t grieve. I think my brain had short circuited or something. Because I kept having to remind myself what had happened. And that I should be more upset. But it never came. I was completely dead inside. I had lost the ability to feel anything.

The high school turned into a funeral home. And every funeral was broadcasted live all over the world. People from all over the world were sending gifts and money and all kind of things, to the high school.

It had only been six months since Ryan’s death…four months since Jon’s.. and by the end of that summer I had gone to 22 funerals.

And that was only the begining…but it’s been a long night..so I think I will have to pick this up again tomarrow.