Armadillo's Journal *TW: suicide, self-harm*

[Armadillo]

Fair warning, my story, my traumas, are around suicide and self-harm behaviors.

I'm terrified of hurting people with my words. There's a story behind this that I'll get to. But even here, I worry that telling my story will hurt someone.

If you have been suicidal, if you have children and self-harm, I am sorry. I hope I am not insensitive to your pain as I write about my own pain. I love you and I know everyone tries their best and we all struggle in different ways.

This journal here alone is a big exposure for me...

[Armadillo]

1. Where am I coming from?


As I write this my body is screaming at me through pain. Stabbing pains in my eyes, feet, hands. I don't know why this is the language it chooses. And now the shift...pain to numb dissociation. It gets loud in my head like someone has boxed my ears in. I get sleepy and drift off mid-sentence. Someone will get hurt and my body and brain want to stop it. As I get closer to posting I will get sleepier. I will yawn and start to drift off. My thumbs will go slack. My eyes will water but I won't be crying. My nose will run. I will yawn again. It'll be a battle.

I was raised by a single mom, severely mentally ill though there was never a discussion about it, just denial. When I was about 15 she started cutting. It was really really bad. Not just a little, really no more than 1/8" between, and up the entire length of her forearms. She didn't try to hide it. She didn't hide her bloody razor blades either. She didn't hide the book on methods to commit suicide, but left it hanging out on her nightstand table all the time.

She left her journal out where we could find it. What we found talked about how she would commit suicide, where she would do it, why she would do it (bad daughter), what kept her from doing it (good daughter), and acknowledged knowing how upset we were, scared we would come home and find her dead but we don't need to worry about that, she wasn't going to do it at home. She was going to do it at her therapist's house.

Journal = bad
Journal = painful truth
Journal = these words can hurt someone

I feel like throwing up. I'm 43. I don't want any of you to hurt. I don't want any of you to die. I need to be quiet or someone will get hurt.

[Kizzie]

That's so much to live through Armadillo, no wonder it's so painful and terrifying for you.  If you made the wrong step, said the wrong thing your M might hurt herself more or she might even choose to commit suicide.  It was in your face daily in so many ways and I can see why you would come to believe your actions/words hurt and could possibly lead others to kill themselves.  I have similar feelings/beliefs about getting angry at anyone and I am working on it with a T, slowly and building a sense of safety as we go along. 

I don't know if this approach would be helpful for you but perhaps it would not be such a hard and difficult journey of recovery/healing if you start slowly and go bit by bit. It might not be so threatening and overwhelming that way.  That might reduce the pain as you get used to the idea that your M's struggles led you to believe your words/actions could hurt even kill.

Your choice to share is IMO so brave and I hope by doing so you'll come to feel you're not hurting us here by speaking about your trauma.   

[Armadillo]

2. Shocking Display of Emotion


There was no end point to my fears about my mom committing suicide. It never became something in my past. I continued this whole time feeling responsible for keeping her alive. I remember a couple years ago seeing an article late at night about a middle aged woman being found dead of suicide in the town my mom lives in. I was in a panic convinced it was her and it was my fault. I could barely sleep that night. The next morning I woke up and realized...my mom hasn't fit the description of "middle aged woman" for a couple decades.

She's been battling a couple rounds of cancer, including Stage IV. Also lots of broken bones from falling and not taking precautions of any sort. She ended up in the hospital a few months ago. It was peak COVID season here. There were a few nights I thought she was going to die alone because we could not visit her. I felt sad a bit I guess intellectually.

Mmmm...this part is hard to write...

I don't really feel emotions besides shame and guilt and fear. I cry if I feel those intensely, but not otherwise. One morning while my mom was in the hospital my sis called me with an update after talking with the doctor.  She said "good news. Mom's going to be fine she is not dying." I broke down and sobbed. For most of two days. This is unheard of for me. They were not tears of relief, but just immense and pure grief. Grief that it isn't over yet. That is what broke through my shell and brought me to tears.

I have spent my whole life thinking of myself as kind. That's my identify. I spent my whole life terrified my mom would die and it would be my fault. 

I cried in sorrow that she wasn't dying. What does this mean about who I am?

[Alter-eg0]

I can't imagine how hard that must have been (and still is), Armadillo. What you describe about grief makes a lot of sense.

I hope writing it all down here, helps you.

Hugs

[Not Alone]

That's so much to live through Armadillo, no wonder it's so painful and terrifying for you.  If you made the wrong step, said the wrong thing your M might hurt herself more or she might even choose to commit suicide.  It was in your face daily in so many ways and I can see why you would come to believe your actions/words hurt and could possibly lead others to kill themselves. 

Kizzie put it so well. What an enormous burden you have been carrying.

I have spent my whole life thinking of myself as kind. That's my identify. I spent my whole life terrified my mom would die and it would be my fault. 

I cried in sorrow that she wasn't dying. What does this mean about who I am?

I believe you are kind. I think what is says about you is that the weight that you were forced to bear was way, way too much for anyone, let alone a child. If your mom were to die, that burden of feeling responsible to try and keep her alive would be gone. I think that your sorrow that she wasn't dying speaks to the enormity of the burden, not about your kind heart.

[Armadillo]

Thank you Kizzie, Alter-egO, notalone. It really helps to have your pain seen and validated, doesn't it? First time in my life. Thanks for reading and writing and being here. Reading these responses and even writing knowing others will read it is helping me feel things. Thank you. 

[Armadillo]

3. Fanning the Fear

While I always worried I might cause my mom to die by not being good enough or empathetic and unreactive enough (as my T puts it "Armadillo isn't allowed to exist"), that particular fear only applied to her. It wasn't a pervasive fear that colored my whole life. I could wall it off. Be as perfect as I could be toward her and if anything went wrong just stuff my own needs down and take care of her feelings.

I did walk around though with a fear that people I loved would die. My husband is such a stable steady person. I definitely didn't need to worry he would intentionally hurt himself. But when my husband would be late from work I'd check the news and if there was a car accident I'd zoom in to the photos to make sure it wasn't his car. Once we could track each other on google maps I had a way to reassure myself without being a pest to him. The fear was very manageable.

When our oldest was a toddler we got a very surprising call that my father-in-law was suicidal. This was out of character. My husband went to try to help but his dad completed suicide while he was there.

Ok this is good. I'm starting to feel some sadness while I write this. This is progress, for sure. Not quite a robot. More like early generation artificial intelligence.

What this meant for me was that this fear was no longer reserved for my mom. It had leaked into MY family, too.

If his dad could do this, is my perception of my husband as being stable and steady and therefore "safe" from my fear...is that perception of safety unfounded? Do I need to worry about him too?

In addition...his reaction was pretty accepting instead of horrified so I worried that this seemed like a reasonable solution to things to him.

Then worst of all...will my kids be more likely to commit suicide because of the genetic components and having that risk now on both sides?

Fear, welcome to my home...

[Not Alone]

My sympathies to you and your husband. No wonder FIL's suicide fanned the flames of your fear. 

[Armadillo]

4. Ten. Ten years old.

In my grand tradition of sweeping things under the rug, I moved on. Shoved that fear back under the rug for a fistful of years.

When our oldest was 10...This breaks my heart. He's fine now. See I'm trying to protect anyone reading from the temporary discomfort of not knowing how this ends.

I'm dissociating again and my feet and eyes are stabbing paining again (nice verb!). Alright that's enough for this installment. I'll try again later.

[Armadillo]

Ok I'm ready to try again.
****
4. Continued....

When my son was in 5th grade we moved to a new town. I was a bit worried about the adjustment because we were moving from some place pretty low key to an area with exceptionally high achievers and high pressure. I just wanted to be some place quieter with more trees and trails and peace and calm, but where I live that is where the overachievers go.

It started out ok (well the youngest had a pretty rough adjustment but that's another story). But about half way thru the year my son stopped turning in assignments and crumpled them and threw them around his room instead of turning them in. Once or twice I found papers with the word suicide on it which made me catch my breath but I convinced myself I was overreacting because of my own past and fears.

My husband has higher expectations than me and he had been getting on him about assignments and organizations and every time I felt it so hard like it was me...I was being wrong and bad and disorganized but he wouldn't try to fix me so he had to fix our son and it was all my fault he was like that and yeah just a big old shame spiral for me. (And my husband never did or said anything to justify those feelings in me, now I know that's the CPTSD talking but I didn't know it then.)

Anyway I was feeling really guilty for not being a better mom with higher standards and wasn't being united with my husband so I um yelled at my son one day about his school work. I don't yell much and I don't care about school assignments for a 10 yr old that much. I was just feeling so freaking defective and bad and wrong and like my husband deserved someone better etc).

But when I yelled at my son, he broke down and told me about how he had wanted to die since he was about 8 and he didn't know why.

Ok dissociating again. Time to stop.

[Armadillo]

4. Continued, again

Hearing my son say he had wanted to die since he was 8 broke me. Terrified me. Wow ok dissociating already. I'll stick to the facts for now. I'll work on the emotions later.

I got him to his pediatrician who recommended a psychologist. She was awful. Really could not connect with him on our first visit, told me that maybe he had just conflated feeling upset in that moment with having wanted to die and it was nothing to worry about. Even though I already told her of family history on both sides.  And then told me AFTER our session with him that she's trying to move away from that age group so she couldn't help us. Ugh. There's some anger!

[Eidolon]

I hope you've found a good therapist for your son, Armadillo- things sound barely survivable from what you're describing. Sending hugs your way.

[Armadillo]

I hope you've found a good therapist for your son, Armadillo- things sound barely survivable from what you're describing. Sending hugs your way.

thank you. I found him an AWESOME therapist and he is so so so much better...just took 6 months cause he was so young it was easy...and now his awesome therapist is my therapist. That of course is taking much longer cause I waited to get therapy until I was almost 41. 

[Jazzy]

Armadillo, I don't have a lot to say right now, but you're doing great sharing things that you've been struggling with for so long, despite your own fears. You're also doing a wonderful job of stopping when it becomes too much (dissociation).