July has always been an awful month for me. Every year something terrible happens in July. I know that sounds ludicrous but it's true. There were only two good days in July. But this chapter is not about the good days.
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In July I started feeling incredibly sad, just a few days after summer school had ended. Now, you'd think I'd be happy since I had my credit for Algebra and I had a lovely boyfriend and I had amazing friends. But instead of feeling happiness and content, I just kept feeling hopeless and worthless. I felt so tired all the time. I was hardly eating, it wasn't anorexia I just wasn't hungry. Nothing was making me feel better.
On one occasion that I remember very clearly my uncle came over to visit with my mom and myself. When he got there I was sitting in my room re reading The Fault in Our Stars. My mom called me into the living room and told me to come say hello. I was getting up and about to walk into the living room when my mom said, "Any day now, Bliss, if you don't hurry it up I'm going to take away your iPod." My iPod was my only means of music at the time.
I promptly burst into tears and yelled, "Oh, yes! Because taking away my only means of music is going to make me walk any faster!" I flopped onto my bed and sobbed hysterically into my sheets. My mom spoke quietly when she said, "I was only joking, Bliss." She chuckled at the end of her sentence which only made me think my feelings were a joke to her.
I yelled, "I keep telling you! I don't feel good!" She didn't respond. My uncle walked in and said sheepishly, "I don't know if I'm making the situation better or worse." And I sobbed so he decided he was making it worse and so he left. After I stopped crying my mom asked me to come out of my room and I obeyed.
She sat me down on the couch and started asking me a lot of questions.
"Why haven't you been eating?"
"Are you sexually active?"
"Did someone break up with you?"
And so on.
Until I finally stated firmly, "You are not a doctor. I am sad all the time and I don't know why." She just stared at me like I said the most stupid thing in the world. I scrunched up my eyebrows and questioned her, "What? You're not a doctor and I don't think I'm acting normal."
She stared at me for another moment before she finally snapped back into reality, "Well I don't understand. Why are you sad?" I sighed, "I just told you, I don't know why. I just don't feel like doing anything. I haven't been eating, really. I don't know what's wrong with me." I began crying again, hiccuping softly. At least I wasn't hysterical anymore.
She looked at me stupidly and commented, "Well usually people know why they're sad." I was started to get tired of her making my feelings seem invalid. She really wasn't helping and I told her that. As things went on, I told her she had to make me a doctors appointment and she agreed.
*Eight Days Later*
We were on our way to my doctors appointment when my mom said, "I don't think this is a good idea." To which I asked, "Why not? It's normal for teenagers to see a doctor when they're not acting normal." She glared at me for a moment and said, "I just don't like this." I shrugged and brushed off her weird behaviour.
We waited and we waited and we waited until finally I was called back into a little room with a scale and a machine to take your blood pressure. After maybe five minutes of waiting, the doctor finally came in to see me. She introduced herself as Candace Perciful, or Doctor Candace.
I said a quiet but polite hello and she asked, "So why are you here today?" At first I wasn't sure how to respond but I had to start somewhere, "Well, I haven't been eating very much, probably only one meal a day. I'm sad a lot, for seemingly no reason. I just don't feel like doing anything anymore." She looked at me and said calmly, "Well hon, it sounds like you're depressed." I looked at her until she said, "There are a few ways we could go about this. I could give you a prescription and you can come in again next month and we'll go from there. Or I could refer you to a therapist."
I took in the information she just gave me and contemplated for a moment before a decided to say, "Can we try a medication first?" Candace smiled and said, "Sure, if that's what you think will do best." I was a little thrown off, she was the doctor so shouldn't she be deciding what's best?
Either way, the decision was made and she wrote out a prescription for a drug called Fluoxetine, it's an antidepressant. I walked out and told my mom and handed her the prescription. She looked down at it and frowned so I asked, "What's the matter?" She simply shook her head and said, "They can't give you this." I scrunched up my eyebrows in confusion, "What do you mean they can't give me that?" She looked at me like I had asked the most ridiculous question on earth before saying, "It's too strong, this isn't for you. I'm not going to fill it." This just started another argument between us. An argument that she won.
She never did fill the prescription and she never took me back to the doctors office, not until two years later but we'll talk about that another time.
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And as this depression grew worse so did my mom's drinking problem. My mom has always been a partier, she had two DWI's under her belt so she only drank at home now. Which made things a lot harder for me.My mom was not a nice drunk, she would degrade me, she would slap me sometimes that is until one night, about a week after my doctors appointment.
She had been drinking a lot that night, two whole bottles of white wine all by herself. I can't remember exactly what the fight about but I do remember it was not pretty. I just wanted to go to sleep, it was one in the morning already but she just kept yelling at me. I told her I was sorry, I didn't even know what I was apologizing for. She said she didn't want to hear me talk, so I stopped talking, I almost even fell asleep until she started yelling at me again to get up and come out of my room.
And so I obeyed like I was supposed to. When I walked out of my room and stood in front of her I could just smell the alcohol as she screamed at me, "You're worthless!! You're lazy and stupid! You're and ungrateful bitch, that's all you are!" I just stared at her, I didn't know how to respond. I tried telling myself that it was just because she was drunk but deep down inside I really felt like she meant what she said about me.
I began to back away into my room because she was scaring me, she just wouldn't stop yelling and then she raised her arm to swing at me. The last time my mom had hit me I vowed to never let anyone touch me like that again. So I picked up my radio and grew it at her. It landed on her chest and she stumbled back into my door. She looked at me with such confusion in her eyes and I yelled, "Don't you ever touch me again!" She backed out of my room and when she was just outside of the doorframe she said coldly, "You're just like you're dad."
I've always hated when people compared me to another person. I am me and that's all I'm ever going to be. But she just kept calling me by my father's name and I began to feel so helpless and I slammed to door on her. At this point I had been clean from cutting for about four months but my mom just pushed me over the edge and I needed to.
I cut my wrists over and over, cutting deeper and deeper. I wanted everything to stop. I happened to glance in the mirror and I could barely look at my reflection. I slammed my fists into the mirror repeatedly until all the was left was the cardboard behind the glass. I was beginning to feel light headed and all I remember is falling.
When I woke up the next morning I was on my bedroom floor, surrounded by glass and a little bit of blood. My door was open even though I remembered closing it the night before. And my god, my hands hurt so badly. I sat up but I still felt extreme dizzy and so I just lay back down.
And that's when my mom walked in, "We have to go to the store, I have to buy something to bandage your hands and wrists with." I just stared blankly at her, that wasn't really the reaction I thought I would get but I sat up anyways. And I got dressed anyways and we went to the store anyways.
We carried on with life even though I had cuts on my wrists. Even though my mom couldn't go a night without a bottle of wine. Even though my mirror was broken. And even though my relationship with my mom would never be fixed.
We just carried on just ever like nothing happened.