LivingANightmare
New Here
So where to begin...
I completely stink at introductions so lets see if I can't get this all out into the open. I'm a mid-twenty year old mother. I've been diagnosed with PTSD, depression and bereavement since May of this year. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the whole situation. I've lived a pretty self destructive life. Not by drugs or drinking but by choices I've made, mostly in the way of men. Who to stand by, who to trust, who to abandon.
My biological father beat my mother when he found out I was in her stomach and she ultimately left him because of this to move in with her older sister. I was thus raised by my Aunt basically until I was 6. My mom married my current father and we moved in with him. My father's family saw me as a abomination because I was born out of wedlock. I hadn't been baptized, etc. I started religious education classes and other things with the church very quickly as a way for my family to be shown I wasn't so horrible. As early as 6, my father would beat me. Throw me. Kick me. Slam me around. My mother watched, but never stood up for me. She'd merely take me after he was done and go to our local gas station and wait for my aunt to come get us. She'd act fearful for a few hours but every new morning would bring a new day back in the same situation. I was a only child for a few more years until my brother came along.
My father and mother are married to this day, and up until the age of 14/15 years old he'd beat me. Degrade me and tell me how much of a failure I was, how I'd never amount to anything. To this day, my father still does the degrading thing. Social services was called on him 3 times, by three different people, and because he is part of law enforcement and because he'd only ever lay a hand on me (not my mom or brother) and because my mother NEVER would speak ill of him - he always got away with it. There was just never ENOUGH evidence.
Now at 18 years old I moved out, enlisted into the military and got the heck out of there. I had a boyfriend at the time all the way from school that had joined the military before me. He came off leave right before I went to bootcamp and proposed to me. Being the diehard romantic I am, of course I said I would. Not long after I hit my first duty station I became pregnant. My fiancee turned into my husband and then I learned what it was like raising a family, without having a partner. He originally was stationed in a different state but even after our son was born and he moved into the home I had set up, he was still absent from the picture. He never helped pay bills, he never watched his son while I had to work shifts or weekends. He came home most nights at 2 am, drunk. Long story short, one day he cheated on me - and that was it. He was kicked out of my house and we never looked back.
My son was but a year old and I had something happen to me. Due to this event I did end up being pregnant. Now I had one child, one on the way and a single mom. I worked my ass off to get everything I needed for my daughter-to-be. I tried adapting my son to having a sibling (to which he wasn't too fond of) and I fought myself internally. The day I saw my daughter for the first time was hard. It's hard to see so much of your attacker, a living nightmare in the face of a innocent child. At the time I was planning on a vacation home once she was born. Taking two children on a flight alone scared me so a good family friend and almost a second mother to me took my daughter back with her first, and my son and I were going to follow. My leave got yanked and I argued with my chain of command. Unbeknownst to me they were processing me out for issues related to my failure at not only my marriage but my personal life. I'll admit it wasn't the most stable of times.
Now facing the reality of not having a job, a home to really go to (other than my parent's) and two children to care for I panicked. I tried to save as much leave as I could to have as much money as I could when I got out and told the woman who had taken my daughter back with her that I'd be home as soon as I could. Most people get attached to newborns, it's a motherly thing to do. So days before I was to return to the states this woman talked with me on the phone and told me she wasn't giving up my daughter to me. She had fallen and love and how would I care for such a young child, along with my son and myself without a place to go or a job to go to? I flipped my lid. At first I threw the phone across the room, I cussed and screamed and eventually cried and shook. I was worried she was right. I had done all I could from a different time zone to make arrangements to survive until I could afford to move away, but realistically she had a lot more to offer my daughter. And I'd be lying if I said it wasn't getting more difficult to cope with seeing my attacker in my own daughter's face. Everything about her looked like her father. Not me, not my family. I almost felt like she had just been planted inside me - none of my DNA had taken. I know that sounds horrible, but it's the way I felt at the time. I still loved her, I wanted what was best for her, but what would I be able to provide? How could I give her things I didn't know I'd have available? What if I didn't have enough for her to eat? What about my son? Neither father (the one for obvious reasons) was involved. I was doing this alone.
Hours before my plane left for my hometown my mother called me. Apparently my dad and her had discussed it again, and in fact they decided I COULDN'T stay with them. I now had nowhere to live, a son coming home with me to care for and no job. How would I care for my son let alone my daughter? Keep in mind this woman had built a room for my daughter to stay in, had decorated it, had kept me informed on my daughter's good health and good development over the time we had been apart. She hadn't done anything physically or mentally harmful to her. When I got home my mother let me stop by to get mail from a lawyer that had been delivered to them. I was in for a legal battle for my daughter if I didn't volunteer to let her be adopted. I asked my parents for help. My dad told me I shouldn't have ever had another child and my mother said nothing. I cried a lot but eventually decided that no matter what both children would be okay. I had to make the choice to spend my last few thousand on a lawyer, or on providing for my son and I. I spoke long over the course of quite a bit of time with this woman and her lawyer. We decided to do the adoption.
After the initial paperwork for my daughter's adoption was signed my parents granted me the ability to stay in the guest bedroom with my son. I finally reached contact with my son's father and he agreed to pay a little bit of money for the care of his child. He didn't hate us, he just wasn't cut out to be a family type of guy. Months went by and I eventually got the money to buy a car (taxes came back) and move. I had spoken to a few friends from my military and school time and had found one of them needed a roommate and there were tons of job opportunities where they were. I packed my son and I up and left home. I set up in a little run down trailer with my friend and we lived there for a little while. I felt alone and I wanted to make friends so I went online to chat with some folks locally. I looked up my interests like car clubs and other things. Out of all this sprouted a friend whom would eventually turn boyfriend.
I'll admit I'm probably not the best catch and I've got my fair share of baggage but it's never stopped me from trying to fall in love and find my happily ever after. Anyways, this man was a single father and had a son right around my son's age. I was absolutely thrilled. Life was going well, bills were being paid properly, my son was happy and healthy and now I'd met a friendly guy who had a dog and a child. We met out at the local pet store and he got introduced to my boy. He shared custody with his ex so eventually we got to meet his son as well. After a while we ended up dating. We felt more like a family than any relationship I've ever been in. I opened my heart to him and his son and he did the same to my son. It was so fantastic to see the relationships being built, I felt like I was on cloud nine.
We eventually did become intimate and I did end up pregnant. I've never seen one man so elated by the fact of becoming a father. No man so involved, so loving, so absolutely perfect throughout my pregnancy. This time in my life was probably the best in years. Both our boys were just like two peas in a pod and when we found out we were having another boy, oh lord. It was a blessing - and scared the crap out of me. Financially we were good to go, I got to nest like nobody's business and before our son was even born the entire nursery was decked out. Hundreds of clothes (over 150 pairs of just 0-3 months), diapers, wipes by the hundreds, etc. The two toddlers had gotten new beds shaped like cars, we had moved into a 3 bedroom home with a fenced in huge yard and I had managed to find yard sales with a swing set and a pair of riding kid-quads. In a few years I had seen my life go from absolute crap to absolutely great and now I had a son due that was going to have both parents that loved him.
Needless to say, our son was born and dubbed the rocket baby. I'm a stubborn mother. I walked my happy butt into the delivery room despite being very dilated and got into a gown and onto a bed just in time to let the folks know I needed to push. My OBGYN had gotten the notice I was in labor and just hit the L&D floor when I delivered. A nurse and my boyfriend caught my new baby boy. One push and he was out. Pink, healthy 8 lbs and 3 oz of screaming little boy. Did you know that your body sometimes pushes too quickly? I didn't know that until our son was put in the NICU for fluid in his lungs. Come to find out sometimes babies just come too quickly. A week in the NICU, a lot of sleepless nights and a hard day of having to be told to go home without your baby. But all and all we stuck it out as a couple and parents together. Our son came home 7 days later perfectly healthy and perfectly sleepy. He was such a amazing baby. I might have gone a little batshit crazy because I started recording when he fed, how much, poop or pee. Just everything ended up in a notebook. I wanted to be able to tell anyone that asked any answer they needed. Ever.
When our son was a few months old I started looking for work again and found it. Applied one day, started work that same week. I had gotten a childcare sitter that was fantastic and she had children for my oldest to play with. When I got home from work I'd typically clean around the house and whatnot, cook dinner and get the kids to bed. About the time my youngest was 9 months old my relationship had gotten a little rocky. Admittedly we had both done things we weren't proud of but our communication skills just absolutely sucked. We really weren't talking so much and we both were pretty mad at each other for both reasons that were true and others that we just thought were true. It was the first huge rough patch we had and our relationship was sinking fast. I had a family emergency one day and couldn't go to work for a few days. Because of this I lost my job. It paid barely over minimum wage for management and had me working 7 days a week with no lunch breaks, full shifts alone open to close. I figured with my new experience I could get a new job. My boyfriend told me to not worry about the job, that I could go take the free classes for business and whatnot I had mentioned I wanted to take and then worry about a job. As much as this sounded good our relationship was very bad off, I wanted to make sure I had a income. I went job hunting instead.
One day out of what seemed like a massive time of just crappy days for our family's bonds we all got together. My boyfriend had just picked his son up from his mom a few days ago and all of us went fishing together. The boys got to try our adult rods and had nets to try and catch minnows. I ended up scooping up several dozen minnows and putting them in a plastic container for the toddlers to admire. I guess they outsmarted me because they told us we needed to let them go back into the ocean and they started tossing the fish back in the lake. It was fun to watch. Our youngest wanted to go join his brothers but he couldn't. Such a fussy thing when he didn't get his way. Such a strong personality. Anyways, we finished up the afternoon with lunch out at Taco Bell and then back home. The day was fantastic, just so wonderful and so different from how our days had been.
The very next morning my boyfriend got up and went to work as usual in the early morning. Over the course of a few morning hours a accident occurred in the house and my ten month old passed away because of it. The accident was my fault. Despite other factors involved when you get down to the grit the accident occurred because of a mistake on my part. In the days following I dealt with police, news crews even at my son's memorial at the funeral home, a set of parents that just wanted to put their "name in lights" so to speak and a very distraught family. My son went to his biological father because they were unsure if I could keep myself together, let alone grieve while raising a child. My boyfriend's son went home to his mother and two weeks in my boyfriend decided to kick me out of the house. I had nowhere to live, my family decided not to take me in, I bounced from friend to friend. No job. No car. No nothing. I carried a seabag and a few personal things. My boyfriend took leave and went home with his family for over a month. When he came back, he didn't last two days in the house alone. He brought a girl younger than me into the home we'd built.
So the recommendations of everyone around me was counseling and so counseling it was. I suffer from nightmares, I have frequent flashbacks and have a hard time seeing infants and sometimes happy families out together. I'll cry randomly in public when I see a baby or it'll set me in a very depressed state. I feel almost claustrophobic if I'm too close to a infant in a carseat or god forbid I step foot back in the house where all this occurred. My heart beats out of my chest and I look paralyzed in thought sometimes, especially if someone mentions something that reminds me of my family. I feel so darn broken inside most days I don't know which way is up. I don't sleep well still and have sleeping pills for that. I haven't been given any depression meds or anything else medically for my diagnosis. I've found some groups to go to locally but I really don't have the courage to walk right in to them, I typically sit outside and then go back to where I'm staying. I never bring myself to go in. I've basically forgotten most of the day my son died. The events, the small details. They're fuzzy at best. I think maybe I've forced them out which bothers me because I wish I could remember but then again I feel like I remember too much. It hurts to remember, but it also hurts to forget.
Anyways, Hi. I guess that's my introduction.
I completely stink at introductions so lets see if I can't get this all out into the open. I'm a mid-twenty year old mother. I've been diagnosed with PTSD, depression and bereavement since May of this year. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the whole situation. I've lived a pretty self destructive life. Not by drugs or drinking but by choices I've made, mostly in the way of men. Who to stand by, who to trust, who to abandon.
My biological father beat my mother when he found out I was in her stomach and she ultimately left him because of this to move in with her older sister. I was thus raised by my Aunt basically until I was 6. My mom married my current father and we moved in with him. My father's family saw me as a abomination because I was born out of wedlock. I hadn't been baptized, etc. I started religious education classes and other things with the church very quickly as a way for my family to be shown I wasn't so horrible. As early as 6, my father would beat me. Throw me. Kick me. Slam me around. My mother watched, but never stood up for me. She'd merely take me after he was done and go to our local gas station and wait for my aunt to come get us. She'd act fearful for a few hours but every new morning would bring a new day back in the same situation. I was a only child for a few more years until my brother came along.
My father and mother are married to this day, and up until the age of 14/15 years old he'd beat me. Degrade me and tell me how much of a failure I was, how I'd never amount to anything. To this day, my father still does the degrading thing. Social services was called on him 3 times, by three different people, and because he is part of law enforcement and because he'd only ever lay a hand on me (not my mom or brother) and because my mother NEVER would speak ill of him - he always got away with it. There was just never ENOUGH evidence.
Now at 18 years old I moved out, enlisted into the military and got the heck out of there. I had a boyfriend at the time all the way from school that had joined the military before me. He came off leave right before I went to bootcamp and proposed to me. Being the diehard romantic I am, of course I said I would. Not long after I hit my first duty station I became pregnant. My fiancee turned into my husband and then I learned what it was like raising a family, without having a partner. He originally was stationed in a different state but even after our son was born and he moved into the home I had set up, he was still absent from the picture. He never helped pay bills, he never watched his son while I had to work shifts or weekends. He came home most nights at 2 am, drunk. Long story short, one day he cheated on me - and that was it. He was kicked out of my house and we never looked back.
My son was but a year old and I had something happen to me. Due to this event I did end up being pregnant. Now I had one child, one on the way and a single mom. I worked my ass off to get everything I needed for my daughter-to-be. I tried adapting my son to having a sibling (to which he wasn't too fond of) and I fought myself internally. The day I saw my daughter for the first time was hard. It's hard to see so much of your attacker, a living nightmare in the face of a innocent child. At the time I was planning on a vacation home once she was born. Taking two children on a flight alone scared me so a good family friend and almost a second mother to me took my daughter back with her first, and my son and I were going to follow. My leave got yanked and I argued with my chain of command. Unbeknownst to me they were processing me out for issues related to my failure at not only my marriage but my personal life. I'll admit it wasn't the most stable of times.
Now facing the reality of not having a job, a home to really go to (other than my parent's) and two children to care for I panicked. I tried to save as much leave as I could to have as much money as I could when I got out and told the woman who had taken my daughter back with her that I'd be home as soon as I could. Most people get attached to newborns, it's a motherly thing to do. So days before I was to return to the states this woman talked with me on the phone and told me she wasn't giving up my daughter to me. She had fallen and love and how would I care for such a young child, along with my son and myself without a place to go or a job to go to? I flipped my lid. At first I threw the phone across the room, I cussed and screamed and eventually cried and shook. I was worried she was right. I had done all I could from a different time zone to make arrangements to survive until I could afford to move away, but realistically she had a lot more to offer my daughter. And I'd be lying if I said it wasn't getting more difficult to cope with seeing my attacker in my own daughter's face. Everything about her looked like her father. Not me, not my family. I almost felt like she had just been planted inside me - none of my DNA had taken. I know that sounds horrible, but it's the way I felt at the time. I still loved her, I wanted what was best for her, but what would I be able to provide? How could I give her things I didn't know I'd have available? What if I didn't have enough for her to eat? What about my son? Neither father (the one for obvious reasons) was involved. I was doing this alone.
Hours before my plane left for my hometown my mother called me. Apparently my dad and her had discussed it again, and in fact they decided I COULDN'T stay with them. I now had nowhere to live, a son coming home with me to care for and no job. How would I care for my son let alone my daughter? Keep in mind this woman had built a room for my daughter to stay in, had decorated it, had kept me informed on my daughter's good health and good development over the time we had been apart. She hadn't done anything physically or mentally harmful to her. When I got home my mother let me stop by to get mail from a lawyer that had been delivered to them. I was in for a legal battle for my daughter if I didn't volunteer to let her be adopted. I asked my parents for help. My dad told me I shouldn't have ever had another child and my mother said nothing. I cried a lot but eventually decided that no matter what both children would be okay. I had to make the choice to spend my last few thousand on a lawyer, or on providing for my son and I. I spoke long over the course of quite a bit of time with this woman and her lawyer. We decided to do the adoption.
After the initial paperwork for my daughter's adoption was signed my parents granted me the ability to stay in the guest bedroom with my son. I finally reached contact with my son's father and he agreed to pay a little bit of money for the care of his child. He didn't hate us, he just wasn't cut out to be a family type of guy. Months went by and I eventually got the money to buy a car (taxes came back) and move. I had spoken to a few friends from my military and school time and had found one of them needed a roommate and there were tons of job opportunities where they were. I packed my son and I up and left home. I set up in a little run down trailer with my friend and we lived there for a little while. I felt alone and I wanted to make friends so I went online to chat with some folks locally. I looked up my interests like car clubs and other things. Out of all this sprouted a friend whom would eventually turn boyfriend.
I'll admit I'm probably not the best catch and I've got my fair share of baggage but it's never stopped me from trying to fall in love and find my happily ever after. Anyways, this man was a single father and had a son right around my son's age. I was absolutely thrilled. Life was going well, bills were being paid properly, my son was happy and healthy and now I'd met a friendly guy who had a dog and a child. We met out at the local pet store and he got introduced to my boy. He shared custody with his ex so eventually we got to meet his son as well. After a while we ended up dating. We felt more like a family than any relationship I've ever been in. I opened my heart to him and his son and he did the same to my son. It was so fantastic to see the relationships being built, I felt like I was on cloud nine.
We eventually did become intimate and I did end up pregnant. I've never seen one man so elated by the fact of becoming a father. No man so involved, so loving, so absolutely perfect throughout my pregnancy. This time in my life was probably the best in years. Both our boys were just like two peas in a pod and when we found out we were having another boy, oh lord. It was a blessing - and scared the crap out of me. Financially we were good to go, I got to nest like nobody's business and before our son was even born the entire nursery was decked out. Hundreds of clothes (over 150 pairs of just 0-3 months), diapers, wipes by the hundreds, etc. The two toddlers had gotten new beds shaped like cars, we had moved into a 3 bedroom home with a fenced in huge yard and I had managed to find yard sales with a swing set and a pair of riding kid-quads. In a few years I had seen my life go from absolute crap to absolutely great and now I had a son due that was going to have both parents that loved him.
Needless to say, our son was born and dubbed the rocket baby. I'm a stubborn mother. I walked my happy butt into the delivery room despite being very dilated and got into a gown and onto a bed just in time to let the folks know I needed to push. My OBGYN had gotten the notice I was in labor and just hit the L&D floor when I delivered. A nurse and my boyfriend caught my new baby boy. One push and he was out. Pink, healthy 8 lbs and 3 oz of screaming little boy. Did you know that your body sometimes pushes too quickly? I didn't know that until our son was put in the NICU for fluid in his lungs. Come to find out sometimes babies just come too quickly. A week in the NICU, a lot of sleepless nights and a hard day of having to be told to go home without your baby. But all and all we stuck it out as a couple and parents together. Our son came home 7 days later perfectly healthy and perfectly sleepy. He was such a amazing baby. I might have gone a little batshit crazy because I started recording when he fed, how much, poop or pee. Just everything ended up in a notebook. I wanted to be able to tell anyone that asked any answer they needed. Ever.
When our son was a few months old I started looking for work again and found it. Applied one day, started work that same week. I had gotten a childcare sitter that was fantastic and she had children for my oldest to play with. When I got home from work I'd typically clean around the house and whatnot, cook dinner and get the kids to bed. About the time my youngest was 9 months old my relationship had gotten a little rocky. Admittedly we had both done things we weren't proud of but our communication skills just absolutely sucked. We really weren't talking so much and we both were pretty mad at each other for both reasons that were true and others that we just thought were true. It was the first huge rough patch we had and our relationship was sinking fast. I had a family emergency one day and couldn't go to work for a few days. Because of this I lost my job. It paid barely over minimum wage for management and had me working 7 days a week with no lunch breaks, full shifts alone open to close. I figured with my new experience I could get a new job. My boyfriend told me to not worry about the job, that I could go take the free classes for business and whatnot I had mentioned I wanted to take and then worry about a job. As much as this sounded good our relationship was very bad off, I wanted to make sure I had a income. I went job hunting instead.
One day out of what seemed like a massive time of just crappy days for our family's bonds we all got together. My boyfriend had just picked his son up from his mom a few days ago and all of us went fishing together. The boys got to try our adult rods and had nets to try and catch minnows. I ended up scooping up several dozen minnows and putting them in a plastic container for the toddlers to admire. I guess they outsmarted me because they told us we needed to let them go back into the ocean and they started tossing the fish back in the lake. It was fun to watch. Our youngest wanted to go join his brothers but he couldn't. Such a fussy thing when he didn't get his way. Such a strong personality. Anyways, we finished up the afternoon with lunch out at Taco Bell and then back home. The day was fantastic, just so wonderful and so different from how our days had been.
The very next morning my boyfriend got up and went to work as usual in the early morning. Over the course of a few morning hours a accident occurred in the house and my ten month old passed away because of it. The accident was my fault. Despite other factors involved when you get down to the grit the accident occurred because of a mistake on my part. In the days following I dealt with police, news crews even at my son's memorial at the funeral home, a set of parents that just wanted to put their "name in lights" so to speak and a very distraught family. My son went to his biological father because they were unsure if I could keep myself together, let alone grieve while raising a child. My boyfriend's son went home to his mother and two weeks in my boyfriend decided to kick me out of the house. I had nowhere to live, my family decided not to take me in, I bounced from friend to friend. No job. No car. No nothing. I carried a seabag and a few personal things. My boyfriend took leave and went home with his family for over a month. When he came back, he didn't last two days in the house alone. He brought a girl younger than me into the home we'd built.
So the recommendations of everyone around me was counseling and so counseling it was. I suffer from nightmares, I have frequent flashbacks and have a hard time seeing infants and sometimes happy families out together. I'll cry randomly in public when I see a baby or it'll set me in a very depressed state. I feel almost claustrophobic if I'm too close to a infant in a carseat or god forbid I step foot back in the house where all this occurred. My heart beats out of my chest and I look paralyzed in thought sometimes, especially if someone mentions something that reminds me of my family. I feel so darn broken inside most days I don't know which way is up. I don't sleep well still and have sleeping pills for that. I haven't been given any depression meds or anything else medically for my diagnosis. I've found some groups to go to locally but I really don't have the courage to walk right in to them, I typically sit outside and then go back to where I'm staying. I never bring myself to go in. I've basically forgotten most of the day my son died. The events, the small details. They're fuzzy at best. I think maybe I've forced them out which bothers me because I wish I could remember but then again I feel like I remember too much. It hurts to remember, but it also hurts to forget.
Anyways, Hi. I guess that's my introduction.
