the misfit west

Tag: depression

  • a mother’s love

    a mother’s love

    I have been called nothing less of a hot mess for a few years now and I have been treading water. it’s a mental swishing back and forth through thoughts made of murky, cold water. The one who dislikes me most though is probably my mother.

    I have had the job or sorting through my uncle’s things which had been incredibly healing. I found hope in my grandma’s jewelry box but mostly I found pain.

    Yesterday, I found myself reading my mom’s will and essentially it’s written that my brother and I shall receive nothing. All of us kids have major issues: schizoaffective personality disorder, conduct disorder, psychosis, depression, anxiety.

    In a baby book my mom had written how I, as an infant of 8 months, was showing jealousy toward my brother. This was recorded, written down and defined my life. Firstly, babies don’t get jealous. Secondly, my brother now hates me too.

    I’m no saint in any of this and the estrangement with my siblings was because I told my mom about the highlight reel. Various crimes committed by my siblings trying to show her: they aren’t how they think you are.

    It didn’t help and only further estranged me from my siblings. They aren’t going to admit dirty secrets and through some pretty extravagant entanglements nothing changed and I was the villain.

    I started soothing myself and caring for myself at a young age and would spend so much time alone that the popcorn ceiling is one of my biggest memories popping up again and again dusting my existence like the drywall when it was first set.

    When my feelings got bigger and it was harder to soothe, I found that drugs could easily replace the love and affection I so desperately needed at home. I often wondered if I would ever get married when I was younger but I started not to care.

    I found a note from my Uncle who really saved me right before he died himself. He had written all the details of treatment and had wrote “150 pills in two weeks.” I can’t even fathom how I’m alive. From 150 pills of fentanyl and that elusive feeling of comfort to zero pills and a disabled soul.

    If my mom had doted on me maybe I would be like my sister but she is no better off. Everything I’m proud of in this life I obtained by myself. My parents didn’t fund college and no fucks were given when I graduated.

    I might be a hot mess but another way to say that is a dysregulated human who experienced significant neglect as a child leading to extreme isolation as an adult. My mom ended up killing herself so imagine we were close–how would I move on?

    I am okay with myself and I think I will end up okay. That doesn’t mean each day I don’t compartmentalize every experience and sometimes don’t have the bandwidth to dissect my fuck ups. I edge on a personality disorder just like I edged on death.

    Mom–I’m sorry I couldn’t help you and I’m sorry you wouldn’t let me. I hope you find peace and know you left three children here–not just my sister. And Mom, it was though our distance that I could heal but I needed your love so much and I know it was there. All is forgiven as I learn to see and find love outside of having a attentive mother.  Still, I know I missed out.

  • archetypes & anguish

    archetypes & anguish

    Archetypes start appearing in therapy for me, likely due to my partial immersion in reading and writing through an English degree. The narcissist, the crying woman, the immigrant, the joker—these archetypes, ancient and ever-present in our subconscious, haunt my sessions.

    Binary thinking, which seeps from the leaky faucet of my family’s culture, brews a tempest within me—a seething storm of thoughts and emotions, desperate for release through the art of writing. Instead of succumbing to the allure of sleep-filled afternoons, I grasp my pen and seek solace in the fluidity of ink on paper.

    My mother, with her elegant yet indecipherable cursive, often found refuge in writing—a trait I both admired and envied. I wish I could have emulated her elegance, although I was far more adept at maneuvering my ’89 Cadillac Deville down hidden backroads, finding comfort in the hum of the engine over the humdrum of classrooms and the banality of city life.

    They say depression is anger turned inward, and I feel like I swallowed a bean burrito of rage that sits in chunks in my stomach, ready to unfold and spill all over my meaning and purpose. I seethe with resentment towards clients and friends who blatantly disregard my time, vanishing without a trace, only to mirror their own forgetfulness with misplaced anger when I don’t honor a session they neglected. I rage at my family, who seem to revel in a parade of dysfunctional behaviors, and I despise myself for responding to their chaos with my own brand of destructive actions.

    I navigate this labyrinth of discontent, confronting the criminals in my life, both literal and metaphorical, by delving into drug-fueled dark corners of suspicion, uncovering the sordid pasts of those around me in search of reflections of my own flaws. An article about a shifty storefront in Sheridan serves as a stark reminder of the constant shadows of deceit. Once a silent observer of this underworld, I become acutely aware of its existence through my ex-boyfriend’s involvement.

    It started simply: I clicked into the dark theme of incognito mode and begam analyzing his LinkedIn, Reddit—anywhere I can investigate the people and entities he claims to have founded or led. Simple searches reveal that none of these men at his newly found “Starseed Village” have any formal education. The only commonality is their involvement in cryptocurrency. My paranoia isn’t entirely unfounded; what I uncover is a hard reality.

    I could write about that man for a long time and I have. When another man once asks me what’s MY problem, what’s so wrong with me that two men would pull a gun in my face and why I chase them away, I try to explain over my discomfort with how he perceives that I create these things in my life, that I am just trying to save my brother. Family members are not exempt from my skip tracing distrust, and I find out things I don’t want to know here either. Another long story short, I find crimes committed by a family member, including some charge that actually lists intercourse as the offense.

    Life becomes very hard when your family members are criminals, all of your exes have been shady AF, and then what becomes true is that you cannot exist in this system and be exempt from it. These people represent my shadows, my unfinished work, my own anger at myself for times I’ve crossed boundaries.  I don’t feel angry anymore, at least right now, and maybe I’ll even eat a burrito.