if you get better, who am I?

[zebra]

Kind of weird to be on an old school forum like I was when I was a preteen.
But anyway, I just need someone to tell me if I'm melodramatic or if this is could have caused PTSD or complex PTSD... Because I'm 21 now and I can't stop being plagued by memories and pains over things that happened years ago. Most recently I feel emotional about it because my sibling are getting better and I feel like them being ill is very much part of my identity and role in my family... Like the bar for me succeed is set at "don't be hospitalised for mental illness or drug addiction". I talk to my family about this and they don't take seriously how something that happened to THEM could affect ME so much. This is the briefest possible rundown sorry it's so long!

At ten I moved to another country, had to learn a new language and had a lot of trouble fitting in. My sister was put away for alcoholism and bulimia at 18, when I was about 12. It'd been rough from the start with her because she was constantly flunking out of school and being found passed out on the street. My brother meanwhile was in college in another country. He won't come up in this story for another few years. My sister was in and out of different places, finally being diagnosed bipolar. While she was home life was obviously *, she'd make me enable her in her alcoholism and my home was just not a safe place. I remember once coming home at 4am when I was 15 (my parents where elsewhere) and a man in his thirties in his underwear covered in talcum powder opening the door, my sister was having a little heroine fueled shindig. She'd threaten me with violence, but also give me valium and encourage me to get drunk. Then she used that to blackmail me into doing things for her. My friends all admired her of course, and I was the ugly chubby duckling and she was a hot * up girl all the boys I liked desired. In this she could also be very sweet. My mother was severely depressed. I started having panic attacks and cutting myself, only to be upstaged by my mom who would cut herself too and make no efforts to hide the deep wounds. It was my fathers only mission to help her. Several times mom would come to me late at night, having drunk wine on her sleeping pills, to weep and beg me if it was all her fault. I could feel my heart closing and wishing she was dead. I read her emails and found out she wanted to kill herself, and I was very angry. "Do it." I thought.
I was in a car accident that fractured my skull and scarred my face.
Of course I made friends outside of home and skipped school a lot, later getting into party drugs (with my sisters older friends). I'd leave home for days and go to parties in other states. In this time I treated my weepy parents with the utmost cruelty and disdain, and it makes me angry that they had no idea why. One day my friend (the same guy who answered my door in his underwear) called me telling me something was wrong with my sister. I ran down my street and their was a crowd on the corner, my sister was on the ground in the middle. Paramedics were doing that electricity thing to start her heart. She was dead. So still. A policewoman started leading me away. But no, they started her heart and took her to the hospital where she was in intensive care for a month. She'd purposefully drank an entire bottle of methadone, maybe to kill herself. My friend had sold it to the guy she got it from. I was alone after this and just walked to the beach and had a hallucinatory vision of a blue woman coming out of the sky to tell me everything would be ok. I was 17. I really started to do drugs after that, I didnt talk to anyone about what I had seen. Nobody could listen.
My brother turned out to be a heroin addict too, and he came to stay with us at the height of my drug use.
At 18 I started dating a man in his 30s who is also bipolar. This was accepted by my parents. We fell in love, I stopped doing drugs and it was amazing for awhile. Then he had his severe psychotic manic episode, and it was my sister all over again. He was a danger to himself and those around him and none of his family gave me a heads up. I had to stay up all night with him for days and sneakily take away knives he was hiding in his pockets. Scary for an already traumatised 19 year old. He was ultimately hospitalised.

So right now I'm in college, my brother is recovering very well, I have an amazing relationship with my parents. My sister is still hospitalised but recently seems to be doing better. Still if I try to talk to them about this they say I can't blame everything on them, after all, I was just a bystander.
To this day I feel very anxious around lots of people and like I have a black hole in my heart. If I have a panic attack, pretty rare now, I feel like I'm 14 years old again in my room listening to my mom weeping and kicking down my sisters door. When I feel bad it's like I'm trapped in a nightmare, I'm still that miserable alone teenager. I feel trapped in the past. And now if my brother and sister get over it, how can I justify my pain? How can I justify always reliving these experiences?

I want to be free!

[Bimsy]

Hi zebra and welcome! 

Your story is very intense, I wonder how one could go through all of this and NOT be affected!
You learn about life and how to deal with things from your family and obviously your family was not capable of dealing with emotions in a constructive way.
It seems that they are in denial, I guess one has to be in order to keep living in a dysfunctional way and not realizing how their behaviour affects their surroundings.
Even when things seem fine there is always a possibility that things could get really bad again unless one is able to learn from ones mistakes.

I am so sorry that you had to go through all of this, it is not safe and healthy for anyone let alone a child!
It really struck a chord in me that your mother came to you with her problems when it should have been the other way around, you were a child and didn't know how to handle things so how were you supposed to handle your mothers death-wish?
I am sorry that no one noticed that you needed help!
You are not the only one who has become angry with parents who acted this way, I think it's is a way of coping with something you can't deal with and you weren't supposed to deal with such a responsibility at all!
And were where they when you needed them for support and safety?
At some point all you can do is withdraw and just focus on yourself in order to survive.

They may never (want to) realize how their actions affect their surroundings but it definitely does as anyone who cares for them will be part of their emotional roller coaster.
Even if you were watching them from a distance the old emotions and reactions in you would make you feel the same way as if you were with them.

I think that the only way to truly heal is to just stay away from them for a while and just focus on discovering a new way of living, thinking and feeling.
Trust me, it is hard to learn the right way to be in life when you've never been taught how to do it and it can feel scary to go from what you know to something you don't know anything about.
In order for you to dare step into the light and try another way of thinking and dealing with things you need a good space for you that is cleared of all self destructive people and only contains positive environments for you to grow.
This is especially important for you since you are sensitive to similar things that you grew up with like co- dependency, self destructive people and lack of compassion.
A 12-step program could be one way to start since it's always easier if you get help in dealing with all of this heavy stuff.

Even if your family gets better you still have emotional scars and the dysfunctional family dynamics are still there, you don't need to justify anything to people that doesn't understand.
I do not doubt that there is love and also many good times that you've had together but things still went down they way it did, you feel like you do now and you have every right to be taken seriously.

As I always say: emotions should always be taken seriously as it is your reality.

I hope that you don't feel like you have to defend your family now, I truly get that  things couldn't have been easy for them either.
I like to think that people deal with things as best as they can and sometimes their best still isn't good enough as they don't have enough resources to create a positive future.

With that said I still strongly feel that this is the time to focus on yourself and not think about them for a while, it would do them good to do the same thing but you can only control what You do in life.
I hope that you can truly feel that you deserve it because you do!   

[zebra]

Your reply is so comforting! Thank you! Definitely what I struggle most with is that I fall to pieces as soon as anything goes wrong, my immediate reaction is to despair and contemplate suicide. Because of my family! I'm afraid of just not being equipped to handle anything, and therefor not be able to live the life I desire.
I know that's only true if I make it true, and it's a long slow fight.
Thanks for your support and validation!

[tired]

my daughter who is 25 often says things to me like "how come that person can do xxxxx and i can't" or "that person is my age  and yet they can xxxxx and i can't".  I don't have a good answer for that kind of thing.  i can't say why someone who went through the same trauma as me appears to have recovered and i haven't.  i can make a few points though:

you don't have to justify anything to anyone and you don't even need to explain to yourself why you feel what you feel.  sure, you'll figure out why over time but it's not something you have to do urgently.  it is what it is.

sometimes what appears to be recovery is a temporary coping and sometimes what appears to be getting worse is really a form of working through the problem.  some people might take a break from thinking things through and you might too. maybe you might take a break from walking through that fire and numb yourself a little and to others it might look like you've recovered completely.  and there are people who block things forever, and never really work through it.  maybe that's the best choice for them or maybe they are too scared and don't feel strong enough but people who are blocking things sometimes look normal.

reliving experiences is how we work through them, maybe, depending on what "reliving" means.  think about this: there are two ways to move forward with your life.  short term coping strategies to stay alive and functioning, and long term healing solutions. you need both at the same time.  if you want to think about your life and remember things you need to have a source of comfort so you don't break down (whatever that means to you). 

the important thing to remember is that comparing yourself to other people is tempting but really just an illusion.  focus instead on the similaries between people, and how we all cope with life in more or less the same ways.  and we all do the best we can. 

[Bimsy]

I'm only glad if I can help

Have you been in contact with any psychiatrist or therapist recently?
How is your journey towards healing right now?
I know sometimes it's hard to even start and then you have to figure out why that is and how to move forward.

I definitely recognize the same overwhelming feeling that you are describing and how it keeps us from living as we have to restrict things that challenge these emotions!

Your reply is so comforting! Thank you! Definitely what I struggle most with is that I fall to pieces as soon as anything goes wrong, my immediate reaction is to despair and contemplate suicide. Because of my family! I'm afraid of just not being equipped to handle anything, and therefor not be able to live the life I desire.
I know that's only true if I make it true, and it's a long slow fight.
Thanks for your support and validation!

[zebra]

I wilfully forgot about this forum because I was feeling up for a few days.
I guess I'm getting better at dealing with things, but I'm still constantly depressed. Those few days of happiness I have kind of feel like I've woken from a weird dream I don't want to think about. Then again I lapse into depression, which makes even those moments of happiness feel unreal. I'm trying to change my thought process to be more positive, but it seems like glossing over. It hurts to know that my potential is sooo slowed down by these bouts of inactivity I can't seem to extricate myself from. Seeing a therapist isn't an option for me right now, but I've never had a good experience with one anyway. I'm very focussed on my physical health, I have a very healthy diet etc. It doesn't help that I'm surrounded by people who just want me to snap out of it and cheer up, and they don't understand that black humour is my coping mechanism. When trying to express my emotional situation through irony, because being sad all the time is inherently ridiculous and baffling, I can really make a room go quiet. I'm an art student and though I have trouble keeping up with school, I write poetry, draw and make comics about how I feel.

I'm only glad if I can help

Have you been in contact with any psychiatrist or therapist recently?
How is your journey towards healing right now?
I know sometimes it's hard to even start and then you have to figure out why that is and how to move forward.

I definitely recognize the same overwhelming feeling that you are describing and how it keeps us from living as we have to restrict things that challenge these emotions!

Your reply is so comforting! Thank you! Definitely what I struggle most with is that I fall to pieces as soon as anything goes wrong, my immediate reaction is to despair and contemplate suicide. Because of my family! I'm afraid of just not being equipped to handle anything, and therefor not be able to live the life I desire.
I know that's only true if I make it true, and it's a long slow fight.
Thanks for your support and validation!

[stacey]

Hiya Zebra,

Wow, your family life sounds like it has been a chaotic one to be in!

I know what you mean about getting in a space where you feel more "up" and then suddenly it's the down parts that seem unreal. Sometimes in those up places I tell myself that this is it and I'm always going to be happy and then I go backwards and it's doubly bad because now I feel it's my fault somehow and I must have made a mistake and stuffed it up, and then i blame myself for it. But I think going backwards is just part of it. Even those times when you feel frustrated at yourself for getting in the way of your healing process because you're down - those down times ARE part of the process, I think. Sometimes I think that those times where it feels like you're spinning your wheels and nothing is happening are actually times where lots is happening but we can't see it. Just like how in winter the most growth is happening but it's hidden away and it's not until spring you see the result of all that hard work.

[V]

ah - my dear zebra, you are you no matter what anyone does or says - only you've had a rough start figuring out who you are because you've had to deal with alot of family members' problems ... strive for balance daily, eat your healthy diet, get excercise, paint flowers upon your dark background, and stay away from stress and drama because it is now your life and your life only to live how you choose

life is sometimes hard when things are not going right and it is in those moments when I am most quiet and reflective and hopeful - most times its just a matter of getting through the day safely and sanely - when the lows come, find ways to dig deep and find your light - the beautiful "you" deep inside is craving to be held and loved and paid attention to - sit and look at nature and marvel in the wonder of this vast world and all the beauty that has been given to us - create your new world out of things that you love and cherish and strive for - not money necessarily - just a grateful balance of the necessities

don't look back, look forward and stay in the present - you are ok now - what happened to you was so sad but it is the past and you have the choice to be different from this moment in time forward - you are good and you are here and will find a worthy purpose - stay away from people who want to influence you in negative ways with drugs, alcohol, and their own problems and pain -don't let them into your "harbor" - only let in the worthy ships into your beautiful port of being - we all need good souls around us to help us all move forward in the right direction

the native americans said "the past can't be changed and therefore we should not grieve"

we are right here in this moment and we have the power to be more creative and move in a positive direction and surround ourselves in a safe and healthy and loving environment where the inside is the same as the outside - let the tears come and when they dry our souls breath new air ...

with much love and hope for you, V

[Bimsy]

I do think that this is too hard to work out by yourself, impossible to say the least!
And I too know that it can be hard to find a therapist that you might trust and open up to but it will totally be worth it if you find one.
Emotions like this is nothing you can "snap out of" as it is your reality, what are you supposed to "snap in to" if you don't know anything else?
I think that it is crucial to not share your feelings to people who won't understand and respect them, people that have never felt really bad don't know any better and often say things like "snap out of it", not knowing how damaging and invalidating it can feel to hear.

You matter, your emotions matter, your pain is REAL.