Family (what it should be)

With the year I had last year, I understand more than ever the meaning and importance of family. I never truly appreciated that no matter what, my family has always been there. While I may have had a difficult upbringing at their hands, they have always been there. I see other families, some I consider to be what I wish I had, while other are much worse and totally dysfunctional in their own ways. Why can't we appreciate what we have and accept people for who and what they are? It's just sad.

The best definition of family I've found is;

Contemporary society generally views family as a haven from the world, supplying absolute fulfillment. The family is considered to encourage "intimacy, love and trust where individuals may escape the competition of dehumanizing forces in modern society."

I don't judge anyone, we all make mistakes, that is part of life, we live and learn. But when you turn your back on someone who you are supposed to love unconditionally and not just turn your back, but even take the side of the person who has abused, wronged and tore them down, then I find it very difficult to understand or agree with.

I really hope we all can take a look at what you've done and fix things before they are no longer fixable. It would be a huge loss overall to allow it to continue to crumble away to nothing. Life is so fragile and none of us are guaranteed anymore time that what we are given here. You can't say someday I'll fix it, someday may never come. That person may not always be here to fix it with and tell them how much you love and care about them. Don't put off until tomorrow or someday what you need to do today :)

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Letting Go....

If I've learned anything in life in the last few years, I learned that you never know what life has in store for you and that you have to roll with the punches. You may lose someone close to you to death, or struck down by a debilitating illness. You may be married and thinking life is going along great, just to find out that the other person isn't happy, whether with their self or with you. You may think you have a great  job that will always be there, just to find yourself unemployed and losing your home. You may find out someone you put so much trust into didn't value your trust and friendship at all. There are no guarantees in life.

Loss of any of these kinds, death, divorce, end of a personal relationship, loss of employment, etc, etc, can be devastating and take a long time to get over. Many of us tend to hang on the what we've lost and cause ourselves suffering. We all have to go through pain with these losses, but many of us, just can't let go and move on and we drag out the pain, thus we are causing ourself to suffer.

Letting go of what we are hanging on to is easier said than done. Whether it's being scared of being alone, or being scared of what changes will happen with this loss, what will others think of us, or whatever it may be, letting go will allow you to start healing and start living again.

After this year, I see alot of people out there suffering, some I can help, some I can't but wish I could. I can't judge anyone, there is NO one that I look down on, we are all equals and we're all going through life in the same world with pain, happiness and sadness. I hope these people who I know are suffering find a way to let go and find some peace and happiness. It all doesn't have to be so angry, hateful and all. Think of the blessing you have, whether it's children, a loving immediate family (mother, father, siblings), your health and your life,  no one can take away these things.

We have no idea of the life someone else has went through, why they are how they are and we definitely have no right to judge them. We're all in this world together, reach out and help someone when they look down, are upset and just give them an ear. It can change their world, it can change their day.

Here is a great article on letting go after a failed marriage. It really helped me this year when Missy left and I found myself alone and dealing with childhood trauma, it helped me make it through and turn my life around.

http://www.drphil.com/articles/article/213

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Angels & Demons

Today the sort of euphoric happiness I had got a reality check. I finally started dealing with the real feelings from what happened. Mindfully I've dealth with them and shared with Missy the damage she did and the danger she put me and others in. I accept my part in it, but she had a hand as well. I'm ready to lay it down for tonight.

I seen Jen for the first time in 19 years today. It was amazing, it was like we've known each other for years and just got back I'm touch, instead of being acquantiences and just start talking. It is scary that feelings of love have developed for both of us, but we're communicating and taking it slow. Our first kiss was amazing, I hope I never lose that memory. She is such a sweet, caring, patient and loving woman. I have no reason to rush, she's going no where and we both know what our hopes and desires are. I feel good about this. While it may have happened faster than I wish, we can keep it healthy. I hope tomorrow is a good day :)
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

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Ouch, My nose!!!

So in attempt to make a long story short, after so recent events I found out that I have a mental disorder called Borderline Personality Disorder or BPD. It can be debilitating at times and is tough on those around me, especially in times of crisis. With such inner pain, turmoil, powerlessness and defensive reactions, coupled with limited coping and communication skills, it is hard for others to understand or even tolerate, thus my current situation. Anyways, part of the management of BPD is some medication, only to deal with the anxiety and depression, which can come and go with whatever is going on in life, then the other part is Dialectical Behavior Therapy or DBT. Currently I'm on my 5th session of DBT and this week's homework was to think of times when we've cut off our nose to spite our face. Evidently a pretty common thing, due to our poor coping skills and inability to deal with anger in a healthy way. This made me look back at my life and think about how I have done this in the past. So here it goes.

My latest big example of this is probably what ended me in the hospital and almost dead. Though there were many feelings and incorrect thoughts behind it, in the end it was spiteful towards someone I was angry with. Sitting in my truck and swallowing close to 100+ pills of Lithium, 60+ pills of Trileptal and 25+ pills of Seroquel after taking Phenegran to insure they would stay down, not smart, not sane, just fucking stupid. Taking 6+ pills at a time, over and over again until I felt my self getting dizzy, texting my wife to try to get her to say something that would make me stop and knowing that there was nothing she could say, I was aware than I could die. Hell, I hurt so much I wanted to die. I couldn't conceive going on alone, going through therapy that is and will kick up feelings about traumatic events that I never wanted to remember again. And me having no one to support me through this, my best friend and support left because she couldn't deal with me anymore. The doctors can't be with me all the time, the family I have can't support me like I need, I just feel very alone. I go home, I'm alone, I wake up, I'm alone, I go to the grocery store, I'm alone as I walk around seeing people with their families. This is a very scary place to be when you have BPD. This fear and emptiness of feeling alone, along with the anger of my wife leaving when I felt I needed her, made me do this very spiteful and very selfish act of attempting suicide. I don't know really why I so much say attempting, other than that I wasn't successful due to many medical professionals hard work. But I knew what I was doing, I knew what I was taking teamed with the understanding of my body after my Gastric Bypass, that there was little that could be done to undo what I was doing. I very much should have died, I had well over the amount of a lethal dose of Lithium in my system, I was even over the amount for a fatal dose, I guess it just wasn't my time to die. My body wasn't willing to give up a chance to be happy with Missy. And I'm so lucky that Missy took the steps to save my life when I selfishly showed up on her doorstep out of anger at her. What I did was not right in any fashion, not fair to her, not fair to the ones that love me, it was stupid and selfish and could have left me in bad shape, if not dead. My doctor tells me it wasn't a stupid thing I did, it was just a thing I did. I think it's because having dealt with so many BPD patients, he knows how hard and judgmental we are on ourselves. He knows that we'll sit around and dwell on the stupid choices we make. He knows how we think and deal.

So I've figured out, I've done this alot in my life. Why do I hurt myself to show others that I'm upset at them? Is it because I need them and don't want to make them mad by actually doing something to them? Am I actually angry at myself and trying to punish myself as well as them? Why do I try to be so manipulative by cutting off my nose to spite my face to hurt those I love or care about? Can I ever forgive myself for all that has happened? I guess time will tell.

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Falling apart and trying to pick myself back up

Sometimes I wonder why things happen like they do. Is it my doing? Is there a greater force there trying to teach me something? Is my life just like a fragile house made out of toothpicks that can crumble at any minute? I don't know, but sometimes it's just too much for me.

Well, it all goes back, hell, I don't know if it goes back 35 years ago, 18 years ago around my first attempt, 6 years ago when I first met Missy, or 1 year ago when I lost my drug in life. I guess it's all just perspective, which is hard to see from this angle most of the time. All I know is that there seems to be a common thread in all this, and that thread is me. The other thing I now know is that I'm gonna have to fix this by myself, the one thing that I'm more terrified about than anything in the world. I am truly my own worst enemy. I've hurt myself and continue to hurt myself more than anyone can. I have such mixed emotions about things and I'm torn about how I feel about where I am and why I'm here alone. At times I'm empathetic and at others times angry that she's not here with me. The mood swings that follow my disease, the anger, the anxiety and the depression leave me so weak some days. I fight it all I can, I take whatever meds my doctor gives me, I ask for me when things get bad and I try to apply whatever things they have taught me from DBT. Sometimes it just isn't enough, what I'm going through is a major life crisis. I try to explain this to her, but I think she doesn't understand, and if she does, she's just too hard on me because I'm doing the best I can right now. Right now I'm like a guy with a small garden shovel trying to dig a hole in my yard for a pool. I just don't have the right tools and experience yet, it takes time. There are many things behind why I have what I have, what we call for the men of the family, the Coffman Curse. It is very much inherited, it's physiological (else meds wouldn't help), there are psychological factors, early life factors (abandonment/neglect, abuse of all kinds) and the biggest one right now, life experiences, which would be the loss of love, money problems and the many others things that have followed this. Some days I don't want to wake to see another day after how tough that day was, others I'm fine. It's like a roller coaster that I want to get off of, but it never stops so I can. I so lost in a world that I don't want to be in. Then I'm so afraid of letting Missy down by not beating this or hurting her again at that time it's just too much for me.

The therapy scares me the most, I've kind of avoided some of it. Alone here with no real support system, eventually I'll talk about the painful things that I've never been able to deal with. All the abuse, all the things I never wanted to remember, all the things I choked down because we weren't allowed to talk about them. All the things that my brain blocked out to protect my sanity. And when I talk about them to my therapist, who will be with me to comfort me and make sure I'm safe when I have to go home with those raw emotional wounds ripped open and bleeding. Just me. Just me and my painful emotions, just me and my devices of death and self torture. Just me... When will I forgive myself and stop this self hatred for things I've done and what I've let the things that were done to me do to my life and the ones I love.

I hope I can make it through all this, I try to remain positive, but I know I'm growing tired. I'm so tired and how will I keep pushing on. Will the doctor give me another pill to choke down to help with that. It's funny, he wanted to take me off of all my meds, but now he's putting me on more. And everyone is so worried about me, but no one is doing anything. Just the old wait and see. Wait and see if he loses it, wait and see if he finally kills himself, wait and see if he flips out and hurts someone. I'm not sure why anyone thinks the last, I've never hurt a living soul but myself, but I know that I can sense it in a few people. It's hurtful when others are scared of you. It hurts in the same place as when I say I love you and get nothing in return.

Right now, I'm so tired. I want to jump out of my skin and my heart is beating so hard that it hurts. I can't keep living like this. This has to get better, it has to. Doesn't it? This is taking a toll on my body. I grow more and more tired and weary. I'm losing more weight, I'm growing more tired, eventually my body will have had enough and give up. Does that mean I'll have a breakdown? I don't know, time will tell.


I've done some reading about childhood trauma, since that is what much of my problem is and how to heal from childhood trauma. Due to being traumatized as a child and the home I grew up in, I lacked resources to cope and thus things got worse. With the sexual abuse on top of the emotionally abuse that went through with my family, I couldn't cope, my brain and body did whatever it had to, to deal with the abuse. These adults who did these things to me, showed me that I couldn't trust the world. I now know this to be untrue, just some people can't be trusted, but trusting no one leads to a very unhappy life. But none the less, it was ingrained in me at such a young age and this all affected my development as a child on into adulthood. It caused me to not have a sense of healthy limits, thus I have problems with boundaries. This excerpt from an article on sexual abuse says it best.

excerpt from Healing From Childhood Sexual Trauma by Ben Oofana
--
Abusive parents can be so inconsistent in the care of their children and there is often a very ambiguous quality to their behavior. Children of abusive parents may have very little sense of safety and security. These children are often left in a chronic state of anxiety and hyper vigilance. Many of their internal resources are consumed by the need to protect from further assault and survive from one day to the next. These defensives become so deeply ingrained in the personality. The defenses then comprise so much of who they are. They may never have the opportunity to address their own needs or feelings or to develop the basic life skills that are needed to function in this world.
--

So I wonder, can I break the cycle? Can I change who I am? My personality has been greatly affected by the abuse and by the BPD. This is not me, I desperately want to find me, I need me. Without finding me, I can never be happy. So how do you find yourself, if you've never known yourself. How to you let go if everything you've known and let go of the fears that hold you back? This seems like it could be a rough ride, alone none the less. Well, I really have no choice. I can't go on unhappy, I know where that leads, I see how my father is. But will I lose Missy in the process? Will she respect that I'm trying to take care of me and wait for me? Will she welcome me back at some point and help or support me as I continue to find me? So many questions. Will I ever be ok with the unknown? I should be, life is all about the unknown. No one knows what each day may hold, so why do I allow it to freak me out so. I just need to let go and accept I have little or no control, except for how I react t things and how I treat others. Wow, this is just so eye opening. I need to continue being mindful and continue to grow each day. Let's see how it goes.

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Dealing with demons

I'm not sure how many people would understand this, but I grew up in a less than ideal home, one that was verbally and occasionally physically abusive, where no love or affection was shown, at times very inappropriate things went on and I was never allowed to make many friends, let alone go to friends houses or have friends over, I was pretty much felt like I was trapped in Hell. Over the course of my life I've found it has made my life and those around me life's very difficult.

I won't blame all my problem on my parents, though some are probably their fault, I'd say the creation of the problem is their fault. Not having many or being able to make friends and do things with friends made my early and teenage years very difficult, eventually I made friends that I could hang out with, at places I shouldn't have been and doing things I should have been doing with friends I shouldn't have been with. I became very depressed during my teenage years as I wanted some way away from my family and felt at many times I had no way out of it, this resulted in many bad memories that I wish I could get rid of me and that will haunt me for the rest of my life. I've learned and still have to deal with these memories, but it's hard at times. I had one marriage fail because both she and I had no idea what a marriage should be like and what a husband and wife were supposed to do for each other as far as caring for and loving each other, we didn't know how to communicate, as in the home I grew up in that involved yelling and crying, so things eventually fell apart and once again my life became Hell until I got out of that situation.

I grew up in a home with hatred, jealousy, bigotry, disrespect, abuse and a very huge lack of affection. This has left holes in me that may never be repaired. I found a great woman and wife in Missy and I've repaired alot of the damage that happened when I was young, but not many people can understand the uncomfortableness and what may at times seem like unfriendliness that I may give off in social situations, because I didn't get to learn these things at a young age like most people did, it is and has been one of the most difficult things that I've had to deal with, and I still struggle with it at times, but I also refuse to let my ignorant parents to scar me and hinder my life. I will not become the sad, unhappy, ignorant people that they are, they made the choice to be that way, but they can't make that choice for me.

I struggle everyday in some way with what I went through, and to this day, I really hate talking to or visiting with them. This may seem very cold, but for me it will be easier when they are dead, as I can't seem to be as cold as I should be and just cut them off, and some of this may be due to my 39 year old brother and his daughter who lives with them. I'd have my brother come live with me so he could be out of that situation too, but his daughter's mother lives in Ohio, so he's there for her. I worry that his daughter, my niece is being damaged by them, but I feel helpless to stop it. I don't really know where I'm going with all this, maybe I'll come back and add more to this, but really it just feels good to get it out. I want to get out everything they did to me, but I also don't want people to look weird at me after reading it, so some things I may have to hold onto forever or as long as they're not hurting me.

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Catching up

It's been awhile since I posted anything on here. I've been so busy since recovering from surgery and getting back to work. I was 297 lbs. on the day of surgery, on 2.5.09 and now here it is almost 4 months later, I'm at 222 lbs., making it 75 lbs. lost, and leaving me 32 lbs. to be at my goal weight. I have so much energy compared to before, so active doing this or that around the house, or biking, fishing, going to the gym or anything else Missy can come up with. I had not sat on the couch and watched TV in weeks until the other day and still is was for probably a half an hour. But life has been good since surgery. There are a few things that are annoying, the occasional mood swings from the hormones that are stored in the fat my body is getting rid of, the skinny that is getting wrinkly and hanging in a few places and the clothes that fit good for a few weeks and then I look like one on the homeboys with my pants hanging off my ass. But it could be worse, I could still be fat.

I've done so much around the house, so many projects finished and completed. The wall opening and bar counter has been completed, along with the living room being arranged with furniture. Then I built a sandbox for Polly and Ella, the monster dogs, to keep save my tree that they were digging around. After that was done, I decided I didn't like the mess that my compost pile had become, so I had to build a box for the compost pile. Then the lawn mower broke down, so I had to give it a tune up. Then Missy's Mom and Dad came up, so it became a priority to fix up the guest bed room and move alot of the boxes around, or eventually up to the attic. Around this time I changed my work schedule to coincide with Missy's, since the witch at her work was messing with her schedule and my life. So that took some getting used to, and I started going back to the gym at night, which became much easier with so much more of the weight off me. Then on May 9th our house got flooded from all the rain we had had that week. Well that is not totally true, it was from the rain, but also from the neglect of the City of Hendersonville Public Utility department to take care of a drainage problem that it was informed of the year before and it had acknowledged and agreed to take care of. Now the city would not directly take care of it, but it is in the municipal code that the city is required to inform the home owners whose property that the drainage ditch reside on and inform them of what needs to be done and how long they have to fix it. After that point the city is required to take care of it and bill the property owners. That did not happen, the city did nothing, so when the land got inundated with rain and the drainage ditch across the street that my drainage ditch drains to also got inundated and with how much it needs to be dug out, it back water up in my ditch and on my property, to the point that I had 7 to 9 inches of water in my backyard and in the family room (that was once a garage). To say the least, I am less than thrilled with the city, who once again says the drainage ditch needs dug out and amazingly, once I've mentioned pursuing my legal rights, something is being done about it, but they as of right now are accepting no fault. I've contact my alderman, who is not happy about how the city is handling itself, and I'm working on scheduling an appointment with the Mayor to discuss it. I've contacted a lawyer and all seems good, but we're trying to handle this the cheap civil way. We'll see if it's possible, I still have legal non civil ways if the Mayor is out of his mind, those will be fun and open for all to see and read about in the newspaper and on TV. So anyways with all that has happened, we had to get the water out of that part of the house, pull up the carpet, remove the glue beneath it and move all kinds of furniture around. More stuff to keep me busy. We bought a new grill just before the flooding, that was less that a joy to put together and of course it got to sit in the water on my patio. Since then Missy has kept me so busy, it's all just a blur. We did have a first Post-Op support group at Vanderbilt last week that we're leading. It went very well, I think this will be a very good thing for us and others. Now after the support group things didn't go as well, we went to go home, as Missy and I drove separately since I worked that day and she didn't. She got into her truck and started it, which all it did was attempt to turn over and I knew it, the fuel pump went out. So this past Saturday, me and Tony, her cousin's husband, replaced the fuel pump. While it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, the new wiring harness that I had to install was a huge pain in the ass, next time I'd get the OEM part from Delphi. Anyways, it started up just fine after we got it in. Well that's all I have for now, but it's all been a blur and I'm looking forward to finding some time to rest, maybe eventually.

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