Yesterday I had a doctor’s appointment. It was my first appointment with my new doctor because I needed a primary care physician who would actually, you know, listen to my concerns regarding my mental health. Prosac has helped with my depression and anxiety, but it has no been anywhere near enough. It took losing my friend Ryan to see just how much I’ve been masking and avoiding the truth regarding my own mental illness.
It’s been over a month and a half now since he died, and I have been in a consistent and horrible depressive episode. This week and some of last week I’ve been able to function better, but it’s still not good. Like, it’s really not good. My new doctor and I talked about my mental health and came up with a plan for treatment moving forward, which includes me staying on the Prosac for now but adding a new medication to take along with it. If in a couple of weeks I don’t see an improvement, she said we can move to a different medication and see if it helps better.
But it’s not just this loss. It’s pretty much my entire fucking adulthood that has lead me to this place. My marriage. The living situation after my marriage which is still a nightmare that I have to process through because they’re still lying about me publicly. My miscarriages. The false plagiarism accusation. Like, yeah, toxic people are gonna do their toxic shit, but it’s really hard to deal with that and the emotions that come with it on top of everything else. It adds to the trauma. And knowing that they then continue to mock me for talking about the pain they caused reinforces so much of the abuse that I internalized from my marriage.
Abusers don’t and never will acknowledge the damage they cause others. And they will always frame their victims as the abusers because it’s the only real power they have. They get off on knowing that their words and actions can still cause pain. How messed up is that?
I’m still learning how to acknowledge my feelings, while reinforcing what I know about myself. It’s okay to be hurt by the lies they spread, but I also need to remember that they are just lies. They don’t have any real bearing on who I am or how I see myself, unless I choose to carry those lies as part of my identity.
Which I don’t.
Today is a raw day. It’s a hard day. I don’t feel strong or courageous or in control. But that doesn’t mean I’m not those things. I did the best I could, and I still do the best I can. I can get my needs met. I fucking survived so much trauma. And I am ENOUGH. Who I was then was enough. Who I am now is enough. And who I’m growing into is enough.
Standing firm in who I am is hard because my entire adulthood has been shaped around other people telling me that who I am is trash. But when I think about how those people reacted to me enforcing my own boundaries (or the ways they removed any chance for me to actually establish those boundaries in the first place), the pattern of manipulation, toxicity, and abuse is abundantly clear. I survived my abusive marriage. I survived the abusive living situation I was in after my marriage. I am not the person they say I am.
I survived.
I am enough.
