Damaged Goods | A Day in Mollywood

Part III: A Second Chance

January 6, 2011 By Molly

Please read Part I and Part II before continuing with Part III.

I am ashamed to admit that I did not stay in the psychiatric hospital that night. Did I belong there? Absolutely. But I did not stay. I barely remember going up the elevator. I can scarcely recall anything about the experience at all. As with other terrifying experiences I think my brain shut down to protect me from these memories. But I know was when I was shown my room, a shared room, I was suddenly resolved to get the fuck out of there. I could not let my parents leave me there. I didn’t belong there. I was not crazy. These other people that I saw walking the halls. They were crazy. But not me. No, not me. How did I end up here?

I know I should have stayed. But at that time I wasn’t strong enough to face my biggest fear. I wasn’t strong enough to face the answer to the question I had been asking myself when all my problems started manifesting. What was wrong with me?

How can I explain it except to say that I was too frightened to stay?

My mom and dad were both there to check me into the hospital. Ordinarily, when I was upset, I would talk to my mom. But this day I remember looking into my dad’s eyes with tears in my own. Like a child I began to beg and plead with him, “Please don’t make me stay here, daddy.” Somehow my dad talked them into letting me go. I’ll never know how he managed to get them to release me. I was clearly suicidal and had been for awhile. You always hear people talk about hitting rock bottom. That day was the bottom. That day was the black abyss of my depression.

I have many regrets in life. One of my biggest regrets was not staying in the hospital to get the help I so needed. To get the help I deserved. There is no telling how the next few years might have unfolded had I stayed there. Unfortunately, I took the chicken exit. I just wasn’t ready to face the reality of my mental health.

I stayed home that summer. I completely stopped taking anti-depressants. I slept late. Swam in my parents pool. Hung out with my youngest sister. Took a job as a waitress at a restaurant. Decided not to drink or smoke anymore. Decided I could force myself to be happy without meds or therapy. I would talk myself into normal. How hard could it be?

My parents decided to enroll my sister and I in college for that fall. A small college with about 5,000 students in attendance. I don’t think either of us wanted to go there. But it was only about an hour from home. And as much as I hated to admit it, it was a fresh start in a new place.

Did I have it all together. No. Did I need to be leaving for a new college. No. But my parents were forgiving enough to give it a shot. I had wasted an entire year’s worth of my parents’ hard-earned money. But they forgave me for everything and let me try again. True unconditional love.

I had my sister with me this time. Maybe I could do it. Maybe I wouldn’t fail. Maybe I wouldn’t screw it up this time. I swore to myself that I would find a therapist when I got to school. I also swore that I would not drink or join the chapter of my sorority on campus. I figured the parties and boys would lead to trouble again. I figured right.

But with a new set of sorority sisters came friendly faces in an unfamiliar place. I joined and met some good people. People who seemed to support me. This time I was more open with my new “sisters” about my struggle with depression. Always careful not to reveal too much. None of them ever knew the whole story. None of them knew about my first year of college. In fact, I kept that entire year to myself. A dirty little secret.

This college experience was different but not without challenges. Drinking again became a problem for me. It was readily available even though I was not of age. But everyone drank. I only wanted to fit in however cliche that might sound. For some reason I always felt more confident with a couple drinks in me.

I made it through college in three years. I was not medicated during most of those and went through numerous therapists never finding one that clicked. There were some grave mistakes made on my part. I hurt myself with risky and unpredictable behaviors. I hurt others who were close to me. I was happy one week but plummeted into depression the next. I confused my friends. I confused my family. I confused myself. There was no self-awareness at this time.

In the summer of 2000 I was at my parents house and received a call from my old best friend, Breanna. We didn’t talk much anymore. We had gone our separate ways after high school graduation but still kept in touch over Christmas and summer breaks. I figured she was just calling to catch up. I was, instead, taken aback by her reason for calling. She had talked to Amy. My former best friend from high school. Amy was interested in getting together with me.

I couldn’t breathe. It had been three years. Three long and lonely years since I had heard from or talked to her. Three years since she had vanished from my world. And now, the time had finally come to see her again. I asked Breanna if Jessica would be joining us but was told she wouldn’t. It hurt but at least I had the chance to get two out of three of my friends back into my life. I had waited for this moment for so long. The moment of redemption. She would see that I had turned my life around. See that she wasn’t a part of it and that she should have been.

I met both Breanna and Amy at a familiar restaurant in our hometown. I was so nervous that my whole body was flushed red in hives. I had to sit in my car and breathe in and out before putting my feet on the ground. One before the other.

Then there she was. As if she had been there all along. No time passed. There were instant hugs. Familiar smiles. Nervous laughter. We sat eating and talking for a long time. The sun shone when I went in and it had gone when we left. Just like old times. Only it wasn’t. I had planned it all out in my head. The mandatory I’m sorry-s that were owed. She deserved them. But then something I never expected happened.

Amy apologized to me.

And I did the worst thing I ever could have done. I accepted her apology. I was still full of pride. Still full of anger. She had taken away her friendship without even asking me. How could they have left me alone to suffer like that? The drama of that first year, the lost year, unfolded in my head again and the poison of resentment boiled in my stomach. All of this was happening inside of me as she went on and on about how wrong she had been.

I should have stopped her. I should have said NO, Amy. It was my fault. It is me who should be apologizing to you. But the hurt from being abandoned still stung. I never even expected her to want to sit at the same table with me again. Let alone apologize to me. It felt so wrong to look her in the eye and accept it. Because I didn’t deserve it.

When that conversation ended another one started. It was a conversation I thought nothing of at the time. The apology was still swirling around in my head.

Amy asked me about the time in high school when I had an ovarian cyst. She said she had been having some pain in her side and thought maybe a cyst might be the cause of it. The pain had been getting worse over time. I told her not to wait. To make an appointment to go see her doctor. She said she was going to see someone the next week.

Goodbye hugs were exchanged. So were phone numbers. We promised that we’d see each other again soon. Make plans to go out in the near future. But the near future came and went without a phone call. She didn’t call me and I didn’t call her. And I went back to school that fall.

As I was sitting on the sofa one night the phone rang. It was my mom on the other line. Her voice was different and I could sense something bad was coming. She told me that Breanna had called the house asking for my phone number at college. She ended up telling my mom the news. Amy had been diagnosed with leukemia.

I sat there, holding onto the phone like the last leaf hanging onto a naked tree. I told my mom she would be fine. She had to be fine, by God.

Because I still owed her an apology. And she owed me more time.

Continued on Part IV: The Day the Earth Froze

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Filed Under: Damaged Goods, Depression, Friends, The Lost Years 12 Comments

Let’s get to the bottom of this.

January 4, 2011 By Molly

I remember thinking it to myself. I think every mama-to-be must think these same ridiculous thoughts before their first baby arrives.

I will not let myself go. I will not forget about me. I will not move myself to the bottom of the list.

Well, shucks. Pop out a couple babies and that’s currently where I sit. The bottom of the list. It’s not a pretty place to be. Staring up at all the people who get oodles of my attention. It’s understandable. However, I have no one else to be mad at but myself. I know exactly how I got here.

Flashback to two weeks postpartum with Brigham when I noticed two HUGE lumps in my right breast. I will tell you that I knew those lumps were bad news. Everyone around me, including my R.N. husband, told me to go to the doctor. I knew it was more than mastitis or a clogged duct. They were protruding like huge tumors. But what did I do? I waited two weeks and then ended up in the emergency room getting my breast sliced open and having abscesses drained. It was not fun, people.

Flashback to last August when I started coughing. The boys were both coughing and had runny noses too. Of course, I took them straight to the doctor. But me? Oh no, my health was somehow less important. I didn’t need a trip to the doctor. I was fine.

Only I wasn’t. I actually had double pneumonia. It also was not fun. It also was not NECESSARY. Had I gone to the doctor, oh a month earlier, I’m sure it would never have gotten that bad. It is clear that with the stress of a new baby (who is sick a lot of the time) and the stress of a new job, I started completely ignoring my health. Because my babies are more important than me, right? RIGHT? I can’t take care of myself before their needs have been met. Because wouldn’t that make me a sucky mom?

I’ll answer my own question. No. Actually what it did was make me a sick and exhausted mom. A lot of good that did all of us. And it nearly caused me to have a nervous breakdown in late September.

Here’s another way I know I haven’t been taking care of myself. It’s also the part of the story where you get to hate me a little bit.

I wear a size 2. And they’re always falling off.

I know. I KNOW. But before you yell profanity at your computer screen, can I just tell you that I am a size 2 because I haven’t been taking the time to eat. I’m not that size for a good reason.

Most mornings I’m in such a rush that I don’t eat breakfast. I might throw a granola bar in my purse to save for “later.” But then later becomes lunch time. And I’m too busy to stop what I’m doing. I can feel my stomach rumbling. But I do.not.stop. This started when Brigham was born. I always made sure he was fed before I was fed. I was hungry no matter what I ate due to nursing but I know I didn’t eat enough. I wasn’t trying to lose weight. But when you burn more calories than you take in, which is easy to do while breastfeeding, well, it just happened. I was busy with everyone and everything else.

My poor body. I haven’t treated it very well the past couple of years. But all that changes in 2011.

I plan on doing many things that I have been putting off. I’ve already started checking a few things off the list.

#1. Go to the podiatrist to find out why the eff my foot has hurt for 1.5 years (CHECK)

#2. Join the YMCA so the hubs and I can work out and take classes (CHECK)

#3. Start physical therapy (again) for chronic neck pain

#4. See a chiropractor for chronic neck pain

#5. Take a vacation for our 5th anniversary (this is directly related to lowering my stress level so whatever)

#6. Continue therapy & talk to my therapist about the food issues (maybe there is one?)

#7. My tooth hurts when I chew. I need to call a dentist or something (do I have to?)

#8. LOOK AT MY CUTE NEW YEARS BABY!!!

#9. Hey wait, I don’t know how that got in there. But yes, please do look at him.

#10. Stop ignoring yourself, Molly. You’re kind of important too, ya know.

There you have it. A nice little checklist. And yes, I know I added a baby in there. I can’t help it.

I’m tired of the view from down here at the bottom. I can’t say I’ll ever be #1 on the list. But I know I should not be at the bottom.

Because, duh.

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Filed Under: Breastfeeding, Damaged Goods, Depression, Post-Partum, Sickies, Stuff I Don't Love 10 Comments

Part II: The Lost Year

November 17, 2010 By Molly

Please read Part I: On the Edge before continuing.

The same thing happens every year at the beginning of August. I see girls walking around in stores with their moms. Picking out sheet sets and mini fridges and wall decor. The girls always have big smiles on their faces. Eyes wide open, as if a particular coffee pot will mean the difference between success and failure in their first year of college.

Every August I feel that familiar pang of jealousy. I watch these girls with green envy in my eyes. Knowing that I did the same thing to prepare myself for the transition to college. Wondering why it all went so terribly wrong. But there is one fundamental difference between their plans and mine. I never should have gone to college that year.

The summer of 1997 was a blur after I lost my best friends. I found a new roommate for college. I did not know her well but we went to high school together. And I did not want to room with a total stranger. It was too late for us to live in the cool dorm at the university. No, if we wanted to live together we had to be placed in the only dorm left with open rooms. It was the furthest dorm from the center of the campus. A catch all for the students who signed up late, didn’t have any friends or had asked for that specific dorm because it was known as the quiet one. Where you can actually study in peace.

Moving day was a day I’ll never forget. I watched as all the freshmen smiled and laughed and rushed around me. I went up and down the staircase of the dorm carrying accessories that would help to brighten up the barren white walls. I looked around after everything I brought was finally at rest in the room. I tried to envision myself living there for a full year. It was a personal prison cell. I wanted out. To go to the only place I had ever truly felt safe. My parents house. My home that sat a mere 45 minutes away. I wanted to hide from the new. From all this confusion.

Halfway through my senior year of high school I remember sparkling with excitement at the prospect of college. I would be a broadcast journalism major. I would be the next Diane Sawyer. I felt like I held the world in the palm of my hand and I had my best friends at my side. It was a certainty that only a high school student with a fresh start in front of them could feel. That feeling was gone by the time I moved in.

I watched my parents pull out of the parking lot. My eyes filled with tears. I wanted to scream please take me home. I should have said, I can’t do this. Don’t leave me here alone. But I was stubborn. I did not want to disappoint them. I did not want to be the daughter who lived at home after high school and went to community college. I did not want to be the failure that I already believed myself to be.

At the same time I moved into my dorm with my high school acquaintance my former best friends were also moving in across campus. Moving into the room that should have been mine. The life that should have been mine. I didn’t want to think about them. But it was all I could do to keep myself away. I decided to walk over to their room. I knocked on their door and entered to unfriendly faces. In the past they had delighted in my presence but now it was clear I was in enemy territory. I stood trying to make light conversation. It was terribly awkward. I waited for them to turn to me and say, “Molly, we made a mistake. We miss you. We need you as a friend. We can’t make it without you.”

Instead they said nothing.

I walked out just in time to let the tears drop from my eyes. They were not tears of sadness. Those tears were hot lava spewing out of an erupting volcano. I was so angry. There they were, happy, living as if nothing had happened. Living as if I had never existed. I was dead to them. But I would show them what they were missing. I would make new friends. I would make the dean’s list. I did not need them.

As we were walking back to our dorm we ran into a group of frat boys who invited us to a party. A party? Yes, please. I had never been invited to parties in high school. But here I was party-appropriate. I had just been through rush. My first choice sorority chose me and I wore my letters often. We were pretty girls. We were popular on campus. I was proud to be able to call myself a sorority girl.

And what did being a sorority girl mean? It meant instant best friends in my pledge class. It meant getting involved. It meant a place to run on campus when I felt I didn’t fit in anywhere else. These were all the things it was supposed to mean.

What did being a sorority girl mean for me? It meant embarrassing my sisters with raucous and inappropriate behavior. It meant mixers with fraternities where I drank until I blacked out. It meant alienating anyone who could have been a good friend. Here was a sorority with more than 100 girls, all willing to befriend me, all ready to support me. In the beginning I could count all of them as friends. By the end, not a single one would stand by my side.

But it was okay. I did not need them. I don’t know about other college and sorority experiences. But alcohol was aplenty on this campus. On the small main street 19-year-old patrons were allowed into the bars. We weren’t supposed to be able to drink but once you were inside it was easy. Just ask any 21-year-old to buy an extra drink and pass it on over. At first it was fun. Deciding what to wear each night and where we would go. Pre-party would begin around 7:00 p.m., then we would head to the bars or a Greek mixer by 10:00 p.m. Continue to drink until last call. And don’t forget the post-party at the frat houses or a sorority sister’s off-campus apartment. It went on like this until the year folded into one big, long party.

It never took long for the drinks to hit my system. Especially since I still took antidepressants and I would rarely eat enough so my stomach was always empty. I would chug down a glass of whatever and my insecurities were swallowed right along with the last sip. I felt beautiful. Worthy. POWERFUL. I had always wanted someone to take away the pain. And here they were. My saving grace. My new best friend. Alcohol.

I will always remember the morning my mother knocked on my dorm room door. It was homecoming. Already afternoon. I was supposed to have walked next to my sorority’s float in the parade. But I drank too much the night before and didn’t wake up for the celebration. I’ll never know what my mom must have thought when my sorority walked by, all the girls waving and smiling. I picture her scanning the crowd. Looking for her daughter amongst all the young happy girls. The disappointment and worry she must have felt when she realized I wasn’t there.

Little did my mother know I had absolutely no idea what day it was. All the days ran together. Days of the week had no meaning for me. Time ceased to exist. My alarm clock might as well have been flashing 12:00 continuously. It would not have mattered.

And just like my mom searched for me that day so long ago, I search my memory for that year. It is rare that I can clearly remember anything. Everyone loses things. Their keys, their socks, a memory here and there. But what if you lost an entire year? What if you searched your memories for a night or a face and couldn’t find one? This is how it is for me. I refer to it as the lost year.

The lost year included many random parties. Rooms packed so tight you couldn’t move. The push and shove of a drunk crowd. Strangers bumping into me like fist on flesh. I could never remember how I got there. And I never remembered how I got back to my room, if I even did. Some mornings I would wake up in an unfamiliar place. I would wake up to strange smells and people walking around in the next room. And I had no idea who any of them were and it terrified me. I would fall out of the bed, eyes squinting from the blinding sunlight and head pounding as if last night’s party music were still playing. Scramble aimlessly on the floor trying to find my clothes. Don’t ask me why I wasn’t wearing them in the first place. There was no time to ask questions. My brain was begging for a doorway to get out of the situation in which I had mysteriously found myself.

I would get back to my dorm room, close the blinds and pull the covers over my head to try to escape the chaos from the previous night. Then I would sleep. Sleep with no knowledge of what time it was. The room was dark and that was all that mattered. While the rest of the student population moved all around me I slept. To me, it was always night. It was always dark. It was always black. This was the only way I could hold on for another pathetic day.

My schedule rarely included classes. It became a vicious cycle. Drink, sleep. Drink, sleep. Drink, sleep. I did not want to feel anything and these two things took care of that for me. I never saw the danger in drinking so much. I only saw respite. It made me feel like I could do anything. Boys I might never have approached became fair game. I smoked cigarettes. A lot. I drove drunk. A lot.

During this time I also had a boyfriend. He was older and lived out of town. He was verbally abusive. He did heavy drugs. I only watched. Alcohol was enough to take me to the place I wanted to go. Our relationship ended when he broke up with me after finding out I had not been faithful to him. I went to see him to try to talk this addicted, abusive boyfriend into loving me. He put both hands around my neck and choked me until I almost passed out. You might think I was sad that he choked me. That I was glad to be out from under this abusive, good-for-nothing man. But I had such low self-worth that I was only sad he wouldn’t take me back.

After another failed relationship, I fell even further into the abyss of depression. I allowed myself to become so incapacitated that it was easy to take advantage of me. And take advantage, they did. But I never felt it was fair to call it what it was. Because ultimately, it was my fault I ended up in the wrong hands. I would drink so much that I was literally unable to say no. I taught myself how to think of it as a bad nightmare. None of it really happened. That’s the only way I can survive these memories. I pretend they don’t exist.

I barely remember going to a rugby party in a field off-campus where there must have been 500 party-goers. There was a bonfire. And a heavy metal band playing. I only remember waking up the next morning. My body covered in black soot. The smell of something burning but I couldn’t put my finger on it. My entire body aching, I slowly raised out of bed and walked into the bathroom. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The bottom of one side of my hair had been burned off. I was later told that I had thrown myself into the mosh pit and passed out inches from the bonfire. A few sorority sisters pulled me away from the flames just in time. That day I went to the salon and had them give me a short haircut so my family wouldn’t know what had happened. Out of sight. Out of mind.

They didn’t know. My family did not know the truth of what was going on. Had my parents known they would have dragged me home kicking and screaming. Sure, I wanted out of this life but I didn’t want to go home. I was too ashamed of what I had become. Plus, my parents had never allowed drinking or smoking. And I liked doing both. It was the only thing that took the pain away. I was self-medicating. I just didn’t know it as that at the time.

My pain was only amplified when I saw my former best friends on campus. On the rare occasions I went to class I would usually see them in the halls or walk past them on the sidewalks. And as I did, they would put their heads down and pretend not to know me. Out of all the hellish experiences of that year this might have been the worst of them. Seeing them reminded me that I was once happy. I couldn’t understand how I had gone from meaning everything to them. To meaning nothing. Every time I saw them. Every time they ignored me, it erased a little piece of who I was.

And so I would drink to speed up the process. I would drink because I thought I could find a better me in the cup I was holding. I would drink because when I took that shot I became invincible. I was in a world where those friends couldn’t hurt me. Ex-boyfriends couldn’t hurt me. What happened in Hawaii couldn’t hurt me.

A week before second semester finals, and after a night of heavy drinking, I woke up in the hospital. I won’t discuss the details of the night before. When I try to remember that night it runs much like an old VHS tape on fast forward. When I woke up my mom and sister were standing over me. I had to ask a nurse what had happened the night before because I couldn’t recall anything. She told me I had driven myself to the emergency room and told the staff that I would kill myself if they didn’t admit me to a hospital. I was so enraged I had to be given a sedative. I slept until my mom and sister arrived early that morning.

I don’t think I ever really talked to my sister and mom about that morning. Like so many other memories from that time it was put in a vault and locked away. I have no idea what it must have done to my mother and sister to receive that call from the hospital. Or to see me lying helpless and hopeless in that hospital bed. I think they knew I was in bad shape. But they obviously didn’t know how depressed I was. No one did.

I don’t remember a lot of talking. I was too ashamed to talk. My mom drove me home and I fell asleep on the way. After we arrived home some calls were made and I was back in the car again. I gazed out the window. Tears falling softly from my cheeks. I knew where we were going. It was where I had asked to go. But I was terrified. Now there was no where to hide. The party was finally over.

A full year had passed since I sat at that table where my friends pleaded with me to go to a hospital to get help. A full year of my life. Completely wasted. Completely lost.

The glass doors opened and I walked through to the waiting room. There I sat with my parents waiting for someone to come and take me upstairs. Waiting for someone to save my life.

Continued on Part III: A Second Chance

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Filed Under: Damaged Goods, Depression, Favorites, The Lost Years 24 Comments

Part I: On the Edge

November 10, 2010 By Molly

I have thought of how to write out these memories time and again. Gone back and forth about why I should or shouldn’t write them. Why I should or shouldn’t post them for the world to see. Because I have no idea who will read it. And I have no control over what they will think. But I guess, after all these years, I finally feel ready. I’m ready to talk about the most painful memories of my life.

In a way, it’s difficult for me to think of ways to write this out. Because there is so much background I have to leave out on my blog. For one, there isn’t room. For another, much of it has been blocked out or trapped. I’m unable to recall certain details of these years. I think it is my brain’s way of protecting me. And for that, I am eternally grateful.

I try to think of how I can describe the hell that was high school and college. I will form a sentence in my head and think there is no way it would do this story justice or give anyone even a small glimpse of the pain that I went through at the time. But I want to write about it. I need to write about it. I find women every day in the blogosphere that are brave enough to write the posts that they fear the most. And honestly, I’m terrified to press publish. But fear never gets anyone very far.

And so I will begin to tell it. I will attempt to give my readers a glimpse of the dark memories of my past. I will try to write simply. I cannot go into detail. No, the details will be saved for my novel. The novel that I am determined to finish someday. But for now, these few posts will have to do.

I graduated high school in 1997 and shortly after, the friendships that were most dear to me fell apart. At that time I had no idea I suffered from a mood disorder. It would be years before I would receive the correct diagnosis. All I know is I had been diagnosed as clinically depressed and was prescribed Zoloft. I had been taking it from the age of sixteen. With no real idea of what I was putting in my mouth. I was a kid. My parents sent me to a therapist because they were worried. I went. I talked. I cried. I took the medicine I was prescribed hoping it would make me feel like living. Because for most of high school all I wanted to do was die.

I met my first boyfriend during my sophomore year. I was fifteen. I fell in love with him. I fell hard. He was cute, charming. He told me he loved me. And I believed him. What 15-year-old wouldn’t?

Fast forward a few months and the fairy tale was over. He was breaking up with me and charming a new girl right in front of my eyes. My heart shattered into a thousand pieces. I was no longer the happy-go-lucky teenager with a 4.0 GPA. I could barely pull myself out of bed in the morning. I was constantly late for school. I fell asleep in biology class. My grades dropped. I didn’t care about anything except getting the boyfriend back. I told myself I would do anything to make it happen. When I look back now it makes me so sad. The girl that I once was disappeared in an instant. She was replaced by a girl who could not be recognized.

Not only was I experiencing the depths of emotional depression. I was also suffering from extreme physical pain. I began having periods that lasted an entire month. The blood loss was terrifying to a young girl who had no idea what was going on. I was doubled over in pain. Taking bathroom breaks during class only to find myself soaked in blood. I was constantly nauseous. I never felt like eating and while at school, I usually didn’t eat.

My parents thought it was a made-up ailment relating to the break-up with my boyfriend. I don’t blame them. I had become so withdrawn that I barely spoke. It made sense that I would make this up. But I wasn’t. The pain in my side was excruciating. It hurt to sneeze, laugh and at the end it even hurt to breathe. After months of wondering what was wrong my mom took me to the doctor. They found a cyst the size of an orange on my right ovary. Birth control was prescribed to regulate my periods and tame the growth of the cysts. It healed the physical pain but my mental state continued to deteriorate.

I look back now and I can honestly say the only reason I survived high school was because of three friendships that formed in the midst of the worst depression of my life.

I had been best friends with Breanna since we were 12-years-old. We met at a band camp and the rest, as they say, was history. But I believe it was fate when Breanna and I asked two other girls in our band class, Amy and Jessica, if they wanted to go to the mall with us one night. Thankfully they said yes.

The four of us, me, Breanna, Amy and Jessica, instantly became inseparable. I had never laughed so hard in my life than when we were all together. We all clicked, each one of us bringing something to the table. Jessica was so adorable with her quirky teenage wardrobe and dyeing her hair different colors each month. Breanna was shy but determined at everything she did. Amy was hilarious, always making us laugh until we nearly peed our pants. None of us were really in the “popular” crowd. We weren’t really “geeks” either. Labels didn’t matter when we were together. We accepted, supported and loved each other completely. It was exactly what I needed. So many times the depression would suffocate me. I would run to them and I could finally breathe again.

We were all in the marching band together. I, on the dance team, and all three of my friends in the band. The summer of our junior year the marching band took a trip to Hawaii where we were marching in a parade. It was an amazing opportunity. The four of us were ready to make new memories together on the gorgeous island of Oahu. Unfortunately, the only memories I brought home are the memories I wish with all my heart I could forget. Oh, how I wish I could forget.

Ex-boyfriend was on the trip too. After the parade we reconnected. I was shocked that he was even speaking to me, let alone flirting. But I soaked it up. I don’t know what it was about him that always sucked me in. I was desperate for him to relieve the loneliness I felt.

He held out his hand for me that night. Heart pounding, I accepted it and let him lead me to an unfamiliar location far from the hotel.

There I stood in a dark alleyway behind a stranger’s house. There, in the dark, he asked me to do something I never wanted to do. I was so young but I buckled under the pressure. And I went to my knees for him. Because I trusted him. I trusted that if I wanted to stop he would understand. But that trust was broken. I feel I was forced to continue on even though I wanted to stop. Even though I said no. My innocence ripped and manipulated from me by his hands and his words.

It was not intercourse. It didn’t have to be. The fact remains that I didn’t want to do what he wanted me to do. At one point I was very obviously no longer a willing participant. Afterward, we walked silently back to the hotel. I was hurt and confused. Shaken to my core. Oh, how naive I was. I wanted to sit and talk with him. I wanted to make sense of what had just happened. I wanted to hear him say he loved me. Because if he told me he loved me than maybe, just maybe, what had happened in that alley wouldn’t be the nightmare that I knew it was.

The next day he ignored me. He would not speak to me and pretended not to know me. I begged and pleaded to see him. But my pleas went unanswered. The shame and guilt burned a hole in me until there was no air left to breathe. I remember running the stairs of the hotel until I reached the very top. The seventeenth floor. I very carefully pulled myself up onto the ledge. I looked down at the pool’s blue water beneath me. I was going to do it. I was going to jump. I wanted to release myself from the shame. Release myself from what I knew would be a lifetime of trying to get over what had just happened. There I was, sixteen-years-old, two seconds from ending my life with a thud on the cold concrete beneath me.

And then I heard a voice. I felt a pair of arms around my sides. One of my sister’s friends pulled me from the ledge. We both sat on the balcony crying. She smoked a cigarette and gave me a puff. She hugged me and didn’t let go for a very long time. Because of her I survived. I didn’t tell my three best friends. I didn’t tell my parents. I didn’t tell my sisters. I have lived alone with these moments for more than fifteen years. Carried the burden of what happened on that island in the crevices of my body and soul.

I am so far from that moment now. That moment where I contemplated death. That moment where my life flashed before my eyes. That moment where I knew with a stinging certainty that there was not a future for me without pain.

When we returned from the island I suffered even more. I had to see him nearly every day. It was torture. I withdrew from my family. I couldn’t stand to be touched. People would try to hug me and I would pull away. A hand on my skin felt like fire. I begged my parents to let me go to another school. Each day was worse than before. I daydreamed of ways to make the pain end.

Finally, a reprieve. My senior year meant freedom for me. Freedom from the one person who could send me spiraling to hell in an instant. The ex-boyfriend was one year older, which meant he was gone and I never had to see him again. I could finally have one year of high school that wasn’t tainted with terrible memories every time I saw him.

It was supposed to be perfect. But it wasn’t. As the year went on my friends and I talked less about what we were doing together that night and more about college. Breanna decided to go to a different college in a different city. Whereas, Amy, Jessica and I decided to go to the same college and be “roomies.” Not only that but we let another girl join our group. We’ll call her the fifth girl. Breanna kept insisting that it remain only us four. That the fifth girl was not a good person. But we did not heed her warnings. The fifth girl became my future roommate for college. After all, I needed a roommate if Breanna was going somewhere else.

As the year came to an end we were all arguing more and decided to take a break from one another. Jessica had a new boyfriend and was spending more time with him and less with us. I had a new boyfriend too. One who would prove to be poison just like all who came before him and many who would come after.

And then Amy’s parents went out of town one night. She decided to have a party at her house. We had never been girls who went to parties and drank alcohol. No, we found fun in going to Fazoli’s and stuffing our faces with free bread sticks. We laughed until our sides hurt. We didn’t need parties and alcohol.

But my sister’s boyfriend was older and offered to buy alcohol for Amy’s party. And this is where the story takes an awful turn. It was one of the first times I had ever drank. I was still taking antidepressants and had no knowledge of the dangerous side-effects that could happen when antidepressants combine with alcohol. The night is still a blur. The details are not very clear.

I do remember trying to jump out of a moving car. I remember cops being called. I remember running when I heard the sirens and hiding under a parked boat in someone’s driveway. I remember grabbing a knife and threatening to kill myself. I remember my parents coming to pick me up. I remember blacking out.

The next day would change my life forever. I knew I had made a mistake in drinking so much. But I had no grasp on reality at the time. Especially since I couldn’t truly remember the facts of what happened that night.

The doorbell rang at my parents’ house. There stood Breanna, Jessica and Amy. Naively I thought they were there for a hug session and to give support. And in a way, they were. But I was too sick and stubborn to see it at the time.

We sat down at the kitchen table. And they laid out an ultimatum. They wanted me to get help in the form of inpatient therapy at a hospital. If I chose not to they would no longer be a part of my life. They were not going to go down with me. They couldn’t stand by and watch me self-destruct.

I sat, mouth wide open, shocked and offended. I could not believe our friendship had come to this point. There were many tears shed by all of us. I yelled, cursed, told them how unfair it was that they sit there and judge me. Who were they to tell me I needed help? And besides, I was already taking the medicine and going to therapy. Never mind that neither was helping me heal. Never mind that I was still a tortured soul. Unknowingly suffering from a mood disorder as well as post traumatic stress disorder. I thought I was doing what I should to rid myself of the web I had been stuck in for so long. How could they not see that?

They left my house and my temperature began to rise. Through my legs, to my stomach, to my mouth. And suddenly I found myself calling Amy’s house where they had all gone afterward. I told Amy that if they truly felt the way they did then I no longer wanted to room with them at college.

She started crying. Asked me not to do this. But I did do it. I will regret that phone call for the rest of my life. Because without a doubt, that phone call changed the course of life.

What came next was the beginning of college. The beginning of the lost year.

Continued on Part II: The Lost Year

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Filed Under: Damaged Goods, Depression, Favorites, Friends, The Lost Years 27 Comments

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