Per my therapist’s most recent suggestion, when I was home alone in silence, I found the box of family photos in the upstairs closet.
There, I dug up photos from my life growing up: from when I was a newborn, to the most recent photos of me that my mom had printed. But, the second I laid eyes on a picture of myself in the hospital as a newborn being cradled in my mom's arms while my grandpa Lyle looks on, tubes and wires poking out of the blanket I'm swaddled in, attached to a life-support machine, I slammed the album shut.
Feeling nauseous, I stumbled to my feet and headed into my bathroom because I felt physically sick. I collapsed to my knees, hugged the toilet bowl, and dry-heaved for a few minutes until the nausea passed. Feeling absolutely disgusting and extremely cold and weak, I took a long, hot shower, refusing to look towards the mirror till the shower glass fogged up. I didn’t want to see my now-faded, though still very visible, heart surgery scars. The pain was just too much.
Being alone in the shower at midnight was what I needed to get my feelings out so I could feel normal again. But, my reaction to that single picture from over twenty years ago honestly scared me. I didn’t know I was that impacted by a past I was way too young to remember. Yet, I apparently am.
After my shower, I quickly scribbled down a summary of what had just happened so my therapist could see just how bad my PTSD really was. Then, I went to bed, completely drained of my energy from that little episode.
In my sleep, I dreamt of being in a really bad car wreck while driving a red sedan, ultimately ending up in the hospital. I woke up, safe and sound in my bedroom, when the doctors in my dream put an anesthesia mask on my face as they held me down, preventing me from escaping.
While I sat straight up in bed with my dog snoring at my feet, I realized that my nightmare wasn’t entirely just a dream. The car wreck part was completely fabricated by my mind. But, the part where I was being held down as I was being put under wasn’t fabricated. It was a memory. A memory from when I was six years old with a lung infection, having to undergo a bronchoscopy procedure. Damn, did I fight like hell to resist that fucking mask (it took a total of six nurses and my parents to hold me down long enough for the anesthesia to kick in, but it took the anesthesia almost a minute to actually knock me out because I was so determined to stay awake).
Instinctively, I began to talk to God. More accurately, I quietly ranted about how unfair it was I’d been through so much when I was so young, and that it was still heavily impacting me over twenty years later. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t just. It didn’t even seem necessary. What made God think it was okay to let me suffer like that, only to keep me around to suffer horribly even more? Honestly, I thought (and still tend to think) a merciful, loving God would’ve just let me die as a newborn, instead of keeping me around like He has.
At the same time, I cannot deny that there is a silver lining to my life story. While death seemed to be my shadow till Trikafta came along, I’ve obviously survived. In some ways, I've even thrived. I’m miraculously healthy and functional. But, I’m still not normal. Meaning, I’m not Cystic-Fibrosis-Pulmonary-Atresia-Autism-Anxiety-Depression-PTSD-free. I never will be. And, that is deeply disturbing to me, to say the very least.
I’ve been stuck in this loop of, “I just wanna be normal” for quite awhile now. Well, I think I’ve always felt this way. It’s only more poignant now that my health conditions aren’t deadly anymore, and covid’s more or less faded into the background. But, I’m painfully aware of the fact that I’m still very much disabled, even if I don’t always look or even feel like I am. Being labeled “disabled” alone is often soul-crushing.
I’m doing absolutely everything in my power to fucking accept who I am and where I am in life. However, it turns out “radical acceptance” is much, much, much easier to do on paper than it is in real life. Mostly because, I simply don't want to accept where I am right now. In a way, accepting where I am now feels like accepting defeat. It's waving a white flag and declaring CF and anxiety have me officially beat. To me, accepting my current situation is no different than finding a hole to die in. Accepting my past is even worse. I really want nothing to do with my pre-Trikafta life. I really wish I could just forget it.
My past is especially gruesome and devastating. I was so close to death for so damn long. Even when I was "healthy", I was always one minor infection away from risking losing everything in one of the worst ways a person could. My family could almost never rest, especially when illness took a hold of me. Nobody knew how much time on Earth I had. Doctors only said it would be very short compared to my peers'. Some doctors predicted I'd die before my first birthday. Others were more optimistic, believing medical science would progress as I aged, granting me the gift of a normal lifespan and near-normal health.
Needless to say, the optimists were right.
I'm going into my twenty-first birthday with an average lung function of 120%, and an average weight of 135 pounds on just one or two meals a day (nowhere near the over 4,000 calories of food I had to shove down my throat every damn day, just to have the chance to maybe gain a pound per month). My tolerance for physical exercise is only increasing, even though I'm not doing nearly as much intense exercise as I did as a teen (I can usually jog up the stairs to the fourth floor of my college without stopping. As a teen, I could barely walk up one flight of stairs without bending over wheezing at the landing).
My tolerance for extreme cold and wind is much better too. Pre-Trikafta, I could barely stand walking several yards in temperatures below twenty degrees, and dusty weather made me feel like I was choking to death. Now, I shovel my drive and walkway in sub-zero wind-chills in very light winter gear (a couple hoodies, cowboy boots, a baseball hat, and motocross gloves), and only my fingers freeze. Dust also doesn't bother me any more than it does anyone else, though I'm still very wary of it.
Overall, I'm just doing my best to adapt to a new version of my normal self, knowing that I won't die of a lung infection anytime soon. But, that hasn't done anything to help my anxiety or depression. If anything, my mental health has only been made worse by Trikafta.
Trikafta, as I've explained before, fixes my cells after they're created. Trikafta can't alter my DNA, but it can (and does) fix most of the damage dealt to my cells by my faulty CFTR gene (the gene that causes CF by causing my cells to form with severely twisted-up salt chambers, preventing them from properly receiving and processing sodium, causing my body to be dehydrated and produce excessive amounts of sticky mucus). Trikafta isn't perfect, and it isn't a cure. I still have CF. I still suffer some complications from CF. But, Trikafta does significantly reduce the severity of my CF symptoms. With a cost, of course.
That cost being the fact that Trikafta has caused the salt channels in my brain to be "stuck open" in places they shouldn't be. These salt channels are only supposed to open up in times of extreme distress to feed my "fight-or-flight" response. But, now that they're always open, I'm basically being fed a constant, overwhelming influx of adrenaline and cortisol. The only way to close off those salt channels is to get off Trikafta, which is something I absolutely refuse to do. Instead, I'm taking tranquillizing medication to reduce my "fight-or-flight" response. Taking a relatively high dose of Zoloft and Buspirone isn't a cure-all, and my anxiety is still really bad. But, it staves off most of my panic attacks, and keeps me relatively functional.
Still, the world is a deeply scary place. I would feel so much safer and more secure if I knew I was gonna die in the hospital in twenty years or less. But, now I'm being faced with the prospect of living well over fifty more years (doctors just re-evaluated the average life expectancy for CF today, and it's now around 50 years old; a huge jump from just 37 years). Frankly, I'm questioning if I have the ability and strength to live that long. Such a long life doesn't seem to compute in my brain, as it spent my whole childhood being hardwired into believing I would die before my parents and grandparents. That is very much no longer the case, which has really been throwing me through an endless corkscrew since the infamous "Trikafta Purge".
Going to college hasn't helped me combat my existential crisis. It's actually made it worse, because college is all about focusing on my future and learning how to plan for months, years, even decades into my future. I still can't even plan for shit a month ahead of time. Let alone for my retirement. Yet, professors and peers alike seem to expect me to at least be able to comprehend the idea of living into my 80s, because unlike me, almost all of them have grown up just expecting to die of old age.
In a way, college has only made me feel even more alone in this world. It's not a good feeling of being alone either. I cherish and need "alone time" to recharge, and I like being independent. But, I don't like to venture into the unknown alone. Especially since there is no standard path for me to follow.
Most people can more or less expect what will happen to them over time: be born, go to school, go to college, get a job, have a family, retire, die. But, I've never had such an option. I didn't dare dream of a future growing up because... well... I just didn't have a long life ahead. At least, not until literally two years ago, which isn't nearly enough time to get over the shock of everything. Let alone, get used to the opportunities and responsibilities and expectations of an average lifespan.
Now, my future feels like a lifted Chevy pickup with flashing brights and truck nuts, tailgating me in the right lane while I'm going fifteen over the speed limit, with the driver hanging out the window with a loaded 9mm in his hand. My future's right on my ass demanding attention, but I want nothing to do with it. Yet, I'm in college because I want a decent shot at an independent, comfortable life. Apparently, I do want something to do with my future, because I wouldn't be in college otherwise. But, damn it, I am so torn between those two contradicting wants. A part of me is just hoping I'll crash soon, because I don't have the heart to quit myself.
I feel like I'm in a lose-lose situation. If I disengage from college and kind of just retreat into the safety of my comfort zone, depression bites me in the ass. But, if I keep on charging headlong into my studies and future, anxiety bites me in the ass. It's like picking between getting in a fistfight with a grizzly bear or a bull moose. Either way, I'm gonna get fucked up. So, I might as well keep on chugging through my studies.
There's gotta be a healthy balance where I'm not constantly fighting like absolute hell for my life and sanity. There's gotta be a middle-ground somewhere, where I'm not always overwhelmed by anxiety or depression. Why can't I have a little bit of both, instead of an overwhelming dose of one or the other? What am I doing wrong? Am I even doing anything wrong? What if I'm just destined to live with frayed, electric nerves and/or crippling survivor's guilt? What if I can't relax? Ever.
I'm aware that I need to learn how to relax, now that I know I will have a long life, because I can't live forever depressed and anxious as fuck, especially since that depression/anxiety is completely unnecessary these days. I no longer need to spend my summers and holidays travelling the world and visiting with relatives. I no longer need to shoehorn so much into my schedule knowing due to having a much higher chance of dying young than anyone else around me. I'm feeling better about staying home while my family travels (I love a week straight of uninterrupted alone time), knowing that if/when I want to travel again, I can and I won't be too sick. But, I still feel like I'm missing out in many ways, because, well, what if?
What if I've grossly overestimated the effectiveness of Trikafta, and the other shoe will drop any day now? What if I die in a rollover car accident? What if I fall off the hogback ridge in the Valley? What if I'm one of the extremely unlucky (and unlikely) few to die of covid despite being heavily vaccinated against it? What if World War Three breaks out, and Russia sends a shitload of nukes our way? What if, what if, what if?
The what-if game never fails to ruin my day. It never fails to make me so painfully aware of time passing by. It never fails to make me feel guilty, depressed, or downright afraid to just laze around for a day. The what-if game, or more accurately my anxiety, keeps me on my feet at all times, even though I really don't need to be so productive all the time anymore. I have the time and the health to just do nothing every now and then, and not feel guilty or freaked out by it. Yet, my brain, conditioned by almost two decades' worth in doctors betting on my expiration date like it was a horse in the Kentucky Derby, refuses to let me just chill the fuck out.
Again, I don't know what to do to calm my anxiety down besides doing what I'm already doing, or getting off Trikafta. Obviously, I will not get off Trikafta. I am adamant that I stay on Trikafta no matter how bad my anxiety gets. Unless I turn yellow as a result of my liver dying, I will not get off the medication that has granted me the health and strength to attend college and dream about the future.
So far, so good.
Thankfully, it appears I haven't run out of options yet. Humor still exists in the world, whether that's through memes on current events, comedic podcasts (my current favorites being Steve-O's Wild Ride and Two Bears, One Cave), hilarious Youtube videos, and of course, movies. Most notably, I returned to the theaters for the first time since the pandemic began to see Jackass 4, and oh my God I still can't stop giggling about it from time to time.
Pretty much all of my anxieties and anger has subsided substantially since I saw Jackass in theaters, at least for the time being. I'm much more clear-minded and level-headed. I'm not only eating again, I've actually felt hungry for the first time in a long time, and I'm going outside and exercising as usual again. Of course, I can't help but keep a close eye on current events (most notably the shitshow that is the war between Putin and Ukraine, which is literally being livestreamed all over the internet), but I'm not falling for the bullshit the media's been hawking for clicks regarding nuclear war and World War Three (neither of which are likely, as we were much closer to nuclear armageddon in the 1990's than we are today).
Overall, I'm actually doing alright for the first time in a long time. All because I laughed my ass off at stupid shit in theaters for two hours straight, while my dad tucked himself into a ball in the seat next to me: something every dude in that theater was doing within the first ten minutes of the movie. My abs are still sore from all that laughter. I can't wait for the movie to be released on Amazon Prime or some other platform.
In the meantime, I still have podcasts, older Jackass shows and movies, Dumb and Dumber, and random videos on the internet to laugh at until I cry. Laughter is, after all, the best medicine. Whatever takes your mind off anxiety/depression/horrible shit in general in a positive way is good. Whatever defangs the problems you're facing, whether that's making fun of your own disabilities, or talking about them in ways that are absolutely hilarious (I highly recommend reading Jay Gironimi's book "Can't Eat, Can't Breathe, And Other Ways Cystic Fibrosis Has Fucked Me"), is almost as great as therapy. Just be mindful of your audience. It's best to joke about that stuff with those who also find such things hilarious (there's a reason why my mom outright refused to see Jackass 4 with me, but she loves Happy Gilmore).
Humor is one of many big reasons for why I've managed to live so long and healthy thus far. Prior to Trikafta, I would spend my CF vest/nebulizer treatments watching comedies that made me laugh until my muscles ached. Those deep laughs brought up loads of mucus from my airways, enabling me to cough it out. While watching things I found particularly hilarious, I could go through almost an entire box of tissues catching the mucus as I coughed it up and out. Perhaps, humor's why my abs were so visible growing up. Those near-daily comedy treatments were a real workout!
Still, the backbone to my sense of humor lies in the suffering I've been through. I mean, what I've been through has been nothing short of horrendous and cruel. My past is nauseating, quite literally. But, it's a past I must learn to accept if I am to heal. Humor helps to defang it tremendously, thus making it easier for me to accept my past and finally begin to truly heal.
Logically, I know accepting my past doesn't mean becoming okay with it. It just means I'm ready to heal from it; to actually stitch up the bullet wounds instead of continuously putting band-aids on them. The scars of my past will forever be with me, figuratively and literally. I will never be okay with my past, and I will always be negatively impacted by it in some ways, even if I accept it and heal. I will forever view my past as the horrific tragedy it was, make fun of it to stay afloat during harder times, and I will always argue with God over it. Luckily for me, that's perfectly okay. It's actually a pretty normal reaction if you ask me. And, God can handle it (no matter what the fundamentalists say).
Dealing with my past is getting much easier as time goes on, especially with the help of a therapist who actually knows a thing or two of what she's doing. The more I work through decades of unprocessed trauma, the less fearful and anxious I become. The less "small" I feel. Dare I say, the more I look back on my past and work through it in therapy and in my writing, the more willing I am to remember it. The less I beg to forget it.
It's not that I want to forget my past. I just want to stop re-living it every damn day. I don't want pictures of my newborn self to make me so upset. I don't want stinging chills to shoot up and down my spine every time I have to go into the hospital for a regular check-up. I don't want to be afraid of letting people into my life out of fear of them rejecting me because of my conditions. I don't want to feel compelled to hide my scars from the world, out of fear of being asked about them and having to relive my past to explain them. Overall, I just don't want to live in fear anymore. I want to be free from my past, but I don't ever want to forget it.
The only way to heal is to work through my emotions in therapy, and in my writing. And accept, learn from, even embrace my past, instead of trying to run from it.
Working through my past isn't focused entirely on the bad. It's also focused on the good. As I mentioned before, there is a silver lining to my life-story. A very obvious one. Not just in the fact that I'm now alive and healthy, but that I had the strength to fight my health issues tooth-and-nail so I could still look and live relatively normally.
Of course, fighting for what little normalcy I could get was anything but easy or straight-forward. To the outsider looking in, it appeared I handled (and handle) my issues with grace and dignity, but that's not all that true. Truth is, things often got pretty fucking terrible and chaotic. I've gone through unimaginable pain and hardship, much of which I don't consciously remember. But, subconsciously, the memories are there and they are powerful. Interestingly, my subconscious memories way more powerful than most of my conscious memories, despite the vividity of my conscious memories.
Perhaps, it's because I'm able to write clearly and confidently about the things I can recall in my mind's eye, allowing me to work through my trauma that way. While my subconscious memory isn't nearly as clear, which makes it much harder to write about and process.
Consciously, I remember what it was like to almost die of a major Pseudomonas infection in high school. I'm comfortable discussing it both in my writing, and with others. Especially with those who experienced it with me.
I can still recall the salty taste of decay as I coughed up bits of my own lungs along with copious amounts of mucus. I still remember how downright demonic my barking, hacking coughs sounded as they rattled and tore through my airways, and how painful it was to endure those hellish coughing fits. I still vividly remember looking at myself in the mirror before a shower, being able to see every bone and tendon clearly through snow-white skin, then stepping on the scale to only see that I weighed 110 pounds dry and naked (which was well below a healthy weight of a minimum 128 pounds). I still remember spending hours online researching bacterio-phage viruses, and how they could be used to combat my antibiotic-resistant lung infection, before getting on a plane to meet with scientists in Portland, Oregon who were interested in using me as their guinea pig. I remember the courage it took me to inhale and ingest those vials of viruses, knowing it was my only shot at staying alive and healthy. But if it went wrong, I would suffer an excruciating death.
When it worked, I was honestly quite shocked. I'd prepared for death, but I hadn't prepared for life. Also, I wasn't expecting the aftermath to be so hard to deal with. The pain of the infection was gone, but my airways were suddenly full of dead bacteria chunks, and I had lost another five pounds. The only way to get over that was to force myself to exercise, eat five thousand calories a day, and cough all of that nasty mucus out. But, I needed some extra motivation to do that. So, back to school I went. This time, through Homebound.
I don't know if I was really ready to go back to school when I did. Mentally, I absolutely was. Physically? That's very questionable. Perhaps, I should've listened to my mom and put on another five pounds before going back to school.
Regardless, I was sick of being cooped up doing nothing and of being, well, sick. I also really wanted to get my diploma. After all, I was three semesters away from graduating high school. I was definitely not ready to quit. If anything, my latest brush with death only spurred me on. Fueled almost purely by spite towards my circumstances, I launched back into high school. Amazingly, with Eric's guidance, it went very well, and the rest is history.
Though, I will admit, for the first week or so of walking a mile to the library and a mile back home, I felt like I was dying. But, my body rapidly regained the physical strength I so desperately needed.
Even though my health rapidly improved in Homebound, I never felt like my old self again. That damn Pseudomonas infection did one hell of a job permanently damaging my airways. On paper, my numbers were pretty good. Back then, my FEV1 numbers were in the mid 90's on a good day, though they dipped into the 80's whenever I got sick; still remarkable for someone with CF my age and condition, but not where they were before the infection. It was my weight and digestive system I struggled with the most, though. Even though I walked two miles every day, five days a week, and forced myself to eat several hefty meals per day, I only gained about a pound a month if I wasn't actively fighting some sort of infection. Whenever I got sick, I would lose weight I couldn't really afford to lose.
I was pretty much a walking skeleton. I wore almost exclusively skinny jeans that didn't look like skinny jeans when I wore them, and I wore heavy, baggy clothes not only to keep my perpetually-cold self as warm as possible, but to keep strangers from asking me if I was anorexic. I was also very weak, though I didn't really know it at the time. At least, I didn't realize the extent of my skinniness until I was no longer so frail.
Of course, I hid all of this to the best of my ability. I didn't complain about my circumstances that much (at least, not about the problems that mattered, though I loved to complain about the stupid shit). I tried not to think too far into the future, and instead just focused on getting through high school before I kicked the bucket. The only way most people could tell I was sick was by my deep, barking cough and my nasally, hoarse voice. However, those closer to me were much more aware of just how sick I was, even though I frequently and severely down-played the seriousness of my illness.
Still, I stubbornly pressed on. I wasn't a quitter, though I did sometimes wonder why I was still in high school. After all, I didn't see myself going to college. Not only did I fear I'd be too sick to go, but after years of shitty teachers and exceptionally cruel peers, I was certain I was far too stupid to make it in college, let alone in high school. Thankfully, Eric was pretty damn quick to prove me wrong, even though I was sure that he was wildly overestimating my ability to pass Physics or Algebra Two (spoiler: I did, in fact, pass both classes with flying colors).
Miraculously, I not only graduated high school. I graduated on-time with A's and B's, and was able to buck another Pseudomonas infection in the process. Better yet, in the fall of 2019 (a few months after I graduated high school), Trikafta was approved by the FDA. The sickest patients got it first. So, I got my first box of the medication just after Christmas of that year (several months after the FDA's approval). Within hours of me taking my first dose of Trikafta with a steak from Outback, the Trikafta Purge began.
I was no stranger to taking experimental drugs and experiencing crazy side-effects as a result. However, Trikafta was an entirely different animal. It evicted the mucus from my body like a bug bomb thrown into a house infested with cockroaches. I had mucus pouring out of every orifice for about a week straight, including from places I didn't expect there to be mucus. I quite literally gave birth to a mucus baby in the shower one night, and doctors later told me about the Trikafta "Baby-Boom" after it cleaned out everyone's uteruses. Women went from not being able to have kids at all (due to the build-up of mucus even in the uterus and fallopian tubes), to giving birth to healthy, normal children on the first attempt at it after starting Trikafta.
Even my tear ducts expelled a few greenish strings from time to time, and a few mornings I couldn't open my eyes because my eyelids were crusted over. And, after being constipated for five days (for which I probably should've gone to the hospital, but I instead just chugged an entire bottle of prescription-strength laxatives with apple juice and begged God for help), my bowels were exorcised of every drop of mucus they'd been accumulating for over eighteen years within less than fifteen minutes.
It. Was. Gnarly.
But, it was all worth it.
I had, in a pretty literal sense, been reborn into a brand new body. On the outside, I was still... well... me. But, because I was suddenly and shockingly nearly completely cured of my condition, I was a much better, healthier version of myself. Especially when my appetite finally kicked in after the Trikafta Purge, and I raided the fridge like a bear multiple times per days for several months, eating a diet rich in salmon, beef, wild game, berries, greens, and whole grains, putting on almost thirty pounds. Only then, did my body finally realize I didn't need to eat four or five thousand calories per day to put on weight, and my appetite subsided (along with the grocery bill).
Of course, shortly after the Trikafta Purge, the anxiety and depression settled in. I suffered from daily panic attacks for a few months before I finally agreed to try some medication for my anxiety. Why did I wait so long? Frankly, because I was scared and upset about needing another pill or two to be more "normal". But, when my panic attacks were getting to the point they were seriously disrupting my daily life, I knew I had to get on medication for them. Needless to say, the medication helped tremendously.
Just in time for covid to rear it's Godforsaken head and pelt everyone with one giant monkey wrench after another for two years now.
And now, people are losing their shit over the prospect of World War Three and Nuclear War, as though we're back in the 60's or some shit.
The chaos never ends.
The subconscious memories, on the other hand, are much harder to deal with. I can't bring my subconscious past to my mind's eye like I can with my conscious memories. This makes it much harder to verify and pin-down exactly what happened to me, so I can organize it on paper and bring it to therapy to process. Worse, my family is pretty broken and split in a lot of irreparable ways, complicating things even more.
My parents divorced when I was a toddler, and were never really able to put their differences aside to have an important conversation without going after each other's throats, with me right smack dab in the middle of their vicious arguments. Their relationship (if you can call it a relationship), was made worse when my parents began to date new partners, who, let's just say, were far from awesome people.
Naturally, getting reliable information (or any information at all) about my consciously-forgotten past from either of my parents has been difficult, to put it extremely lightly. It's especially rough since I have conversation "no-go zones" with both of my parents, on topics that I really ought to discuss in therapy (but don't, because it makes me feel uncomfortable in ways that are indescribable). With my dad, I refuse to discuss his wife, my stepbrother, and my half-brother (on my dad's side), because of how fucked-up that situation is. With my mom, I really try not to bring up any of her past boyfriends with her, mostly because I'm still pretty pissed off about her past boyfriends (especially the ones I consciously remember). Talking to one of my parents about the other parent is also super uncomfortable for me, especially since there's still so much hostility between my parents.
It freaks me out knowing that my family situation is far from normal, even for divorced and blended families. It's so gnarly that I can't even draw out a map of my current family situation on paper. I have so many siblings, yet I have no full siblings. I have two sets of maternal grandparents whom I've known my whole life as my full grandparents, and who consider me their full granddaughter regardless of blood. I technically have a stepdad, but he never married my mom despite having my brother with her, and my stepdad had kids before he moved to the USA from Canada looking for work. I technically have a stepmom, but things got so nasty between us that I can't call her anything more than "dad's wife". Even then, it leaves a terrible taste in my mouth whenever I admit that my dad has a totally different family separate from me.
Just writing those few confusing paragraphs make me feel... just... gross. My family situation, past and current, has never sat right with me. It bothers me just how shattered and convoluted my family situation has become, especially since I'm the glue that keeps it all together. That, and I also have the sole power to reach out to a handful of estranged relatives and attempt to bury the hatchets between us. After all, my dad's been pretty open to the idea of "reintroducing" me to his family, and I'd love to mend those relationships. I just don't know if it's safe to do so. I won't know unless I can figure out what exactly went down to annihilate those relationships in the first place.
Problem is, I can't remember a damn thing that happened between myself and my dad's wife. I just know it was very fucking bad. So bad, in fact, that the courts had to step in many times to get things under control. Frankly, I'm too scared to look through the court documents from a decade ago to figure out what the hell happened. And, I know, damn well, the only way I can really start the healing and reconciliation process is to unearth those court documents, and begin to initiate conversations that delve into the "no-go zones" I currently have with my parents (under the supervision of an experienced therapist, of course, and maybe under the influence of Xanax as well).
I just can't even begin to muster the gull to blow away the dust on those boxes containing the court documents. At least, not yet. But, the desire to heal from all that is there, and it's been growing for several years now. That's a start, right?
You may be wondering what terrifies me about going through the whole "healing and accepting" process, specifically in regards to the trauma of having such a broken and blended family. Well, for one, I don't want to rock the boat too much. I'm terrified of losing the people I love. I don't want to hurt or alienate or blame anyone for anything, even if I end up having every right to.
I'm not afraid of my estranged family attacking me, per say. I can handle that pain if it's only directed towards me, and I'm willing to fight back and defend myself if needed. I'm just afraid that the conflict will hurt others around me, especially those whom I love the most. Because, that's what happened when I was a teenager. In fact, I almost lost my entire paternal side of the family to that bullshit.
When I was fourteen years old, I stopped going to my dad's house because of how nasty my relationship with my stepmom had become, and also because my stepbrother decided he didn't want to be around his dad anymore (for reasons I don't know). Because of how violent and unpredictable my severely mentally ill stepbrother was when we were little, the courts stepped in and said it was unsafe for me to be around my stepbrother unless his condition improved. So, when my stepbrother moved into my dad's house full-time almost a decade after that ruling, having not improved at all, I couldn't be there anymore. Frankly, because of how nasty my relationship with my stepmom had become, I didn't want to go to my dad's house anyway. Though, I still wanted to maintain a healthy relationship with my dad, and feared losing him.
Problem was, I didn't just have my dad to lose. I also had a little half-brother to lose. I'm so thankful my relationship with my dad weathered that shitshow, but I lost my half-brother when I stopped going to my dad's house so my stepbrother couldn't hurt me. I've only seen my brother-from-another-father once since I was fourteen, and it was for my grandpa's funeral. My little brother didn't even recognize me at first. When he did, he sulked away from me as though he was afraid of me, despite my best attempts to reach out to him. I was just a complete stranger to him. I still am, and that eats me up inside every damn day.
I saw my stepbrother at the funeral too. He was so strung-out on tranquilizing pills that he didn't even seem human. He just looked right through people as though they weren't there, and pretty much sat in a corner playing video games on his phone the whole time I was anywhere near him. While he was much quieter than he was when we were just five and six, it wasn't a good kind of quiet. It was a deafening, depressing silence induced by a handful of extreme psychiatric drugs that just hurt to witness. His silence reminded me of my great grandpa Reuben when his dementia really settled in. Simply put, it was absolutely devastating.
My stepmom didn't even interact with me. She just glared and plodded away from me when I saw her for the first time since I'd left my dad's house. By then, I'd grown taller than her, and I was surrounded by family who would lay down their lives for mine, so I felt relatively safe even in the presence of my stepmom and stepbrother (at least, so long as a trusted family member was within arm's reach of me the entire time I was there. I only ventured away from family to seek alone time in nature when my stepmom and stepbrother were nowhere near the farm). Still, it wasn't a nice experience. It continues to mess with my head from time-to-time. Like when I saw my grandma Shirley dying of cancer, attending my grandpa Bob's funeral with my dad's household in the pew with me felt like a fever dream.
A really, really bad fever dream.
However, while that whole week was a nightmare I never want to repeat again (which is why I am so hesitant to begin to deal with the trauma stemming from my family situation), I came out of it even stronger and more confident than I was when I was fourteen. I realized that my step-family couldn't hurt me like they did when I was little, even if they wanted to. I was too strong, physically and mentally, for them to go after in any meaningful way. Even better, my stepmom didn't even try to assert any authority over me. All I had to do was give my stepmom the side-eye, and she would saunter away without a word.
In the past, my stepmom didn't just try to be a parent to me. She straight-up tried to replace my mom, and would tell me how horrible my entire maternal side of the family was every chance she had. When that didn't work, she tried to break my spirit and convince everyone around me that I was some sort of psychotic nutjob who posed a danger to everyone including myself, essentially projecting her eldest son's behavior onto me. Thank God, that didn't work either. So, my stepmom just resorted to good ol'-fashioned verbal and emotional attacks and gaslighting after that failed.
To this day, I still question my sanity because of that, and so much more that happened that I can't yet remember.
I'm only remembering this stuff now because I'm typing things down as the memories return to the surface. Despite the pain and distress this stuff makes me feel, the more I write about it, the less upsetting it is becoming.
Still, it makes me feel really gross. I almost feel like I dove into raw, untreated sewer water in order to barf all that stuff onto the page, and I'm now in desperate need of a shower. Indeed, my family situation is pretty much a cesspool. One that only God can sanitize.
Of course, I'm still very angry and jaded towards my family for their divorce and happenings preceding (and proceeding) it. They could've done so much better at keeping me safe and secure. But, they failed. Certainly, there are things they did right too, such as getting me into therapy from an early age and making sure to stay in my life. But, that neither excuses or overshadows their mistakes, and how those mistakes impacted me, both in the past and present.
I not only grieve over the girl and woman I could've been had I not been cursed with CF. I grieve the person I could've become had I been born into a healthy, tight-knit family. One that didn't force me to endure years of unspeakable abuse from a severely mentally ill stepbrother, or the wrath of an angry stepmom in denial about her son's condition. One that didn't force me to meet another of my mom's boyfriends every few years or so, and witness the breakup and the proceeding fallout. A family I could've looked up to and relied on for protection and sound advice, all of the time.
Instead, largely as a result of my rocky upbringing in a really unfortunate family situation, I've learned (emotionally speaking) that people are dangerous, stupid, and are most definitely not to be trusted no matter what. Everyone, including family and close friends, is a danger to myself and others, and are just waiting for the right time to fuck shit up. In some cases, this is true. But, most people aren't as bad as my upbringing would have me believe. Unlearning the lies my anxiety often has me believing has been tough, but also very rewarding.
Growing up, I never made close enough friends with others to really truly let them in. Sure, I made friends with people who were aware of my health problems, who saw the medications and treatments I needed, and still treated me like a human. But, those relationships only lasted for as long as I was going to the same school as they were. Meanwhile, my parents both had very close friends they'd made when they were in middle school, who have stuck around long enough to basically raise me, and who remain in our lives today. Because I didn't make friends like they did, I felt fundamentally broken, and even more angry towards my family.
Now, thanks to therapy and age, I'm getting better at realizing that my parents' friendships are actually quite rare. Most people don't make lifelong friends with people from middle school. Hell, most people don't even find their best friends in college. Though, I seem to becoming more and more aware of the fact that I've got good friends I met in high school. Or rather, that were sort of just dropped into my life by fate. I'm content with the friends I've made thanks to my writer's group, and I'm getting better and more confident when it comes to meeting peers beyond my writer's group. It's now just a matter of finding the right "tribe" and committing to spending time with them, much like has happened with my writer's group.
I no longer feel so broken and alone as I once did. Sure, the feelings of being broken and alone are still there, along with my anger towards my family and God. But, they no longer overwhelm me. Rarely, do they reach the surface. Though, I'm not yet sure if that's a sign that I'm healing, or a sign that I'm just repressing those memories. Either way, my feelings are valid, and what happened in my past was totally fucked up and uncalled for.
My parents should've done more to protect me, not just from their divorce, but from my stepbrother's (frankly demonic) mental illness and my stepmom's raging denial. I shouldn't have been subject to my stepbrother's mental illness like I had, let alone blamed for it by my stepmom. At the same time, it's good that the courts intervened when they did, even if it was a few years too late. Had it been any later, things could've gone so much worse.
Still, I wish my stepbrother was treated differently. Instead of putting him on heavy psychotics at a young age (which undoubtedly messed him up for life), the hospital should've done something much less extreme, like a therapy horse program like I was in, or intensive group/talk therapy, on top of regular check-ups and "tune up" hospitalizations. His parents should've been more involved in his treatment, and refused to put him on tranquilizing medication unless absolutely nothing else worked. But, unlike my parents, his parents weren't so willing to try everything else before going for the nuclear option (that being a hefty dose of anti-psychotics). They just wanted him to stop as soon as possible, and lacked the courage to actually be parents.
Instead, in a gross attempt to relieve herself of the guilt I can imagine she still has, my stepmom tried to screw me up, too. She blamed me for "breaking up the family" when I was just six years old, and spent the next eight years trying her damnedest to pound that into my very soul. To an extent, it worked. But, when I was fourteen and our "relationship" was severed, my stepmom showed her true colors towards everyone she knew I knew.
From posing as a "concerned friend" in an (illegal) attempt to get information from my therapist about me, to making up a baseless sob-story about how she couldn't sleep at night because of me and was afraid I'd murder her, she inadvertently confirmed to me that I wasn't crazy or making mountains out of molehills. What happened to me legitimately happened as I remembered them, and that hurts like hell to admit, though it's also equally freeing and validating. It wasn't my fault my stepbrother was as fucked in the head as he was. It wasn't my fault I was often subject to his sadistic nature. It wasn't my fault my family failed to protect me, leaving me to fend for myself for nearly three years.
My stepmom's projections were not my fault, either. They really had nothing to do with me (I was merely the target), I did nothing to provoke them, other than telling the truth to a therapist, who by law had to report what I said to authorities. Keep in mind, I was only four or five years old at this time, and had told my therapist about the ways my stepbrother was abusing me; things that no little girl (or little boy, for that matter, as my stepbrother was just a few months older than I) should even have the slightest idea about. Yet, I did, and I knew it was wrong, I knew it wasn't comfortable, I knew I didn't feel safe. Worst of all, I knew the adults in my life who were supposed to protect me were not.
After I began to relay this information to my therapist (and other trusted adults), an investigation was launched. Physical, documented evidence of my stepbrother's dangerousness towards himself, myself, and many others began to pile up so high, that every lawyer my mom contacted was more than willing to take the case, for little or no charge to my mom.
No matter what anyone may say, I was, and I remain, completely blameless.
There's so much more I wish I could write. There's so much more written of my past I haven't managed to garner the strength to uncover. I often ponder what might happen today, if I found myself in a room or a restaurant alone with my stepfamily, without my parents or other family members around me. I often ponder what might've happened had the courts not stepped in when me and my stepbrother were still in elementary school. I often wonder what might've happened had my stepmom (and in a way, my dad) not been in denial, and instead had the strength to get her son the best possible care and support? Much like how my parents worked their asses off to ensure that I saw the best doctors, went to the best hospitals, went to the best therapy programs that my insurance could cover. Why didn't my stepbrother's parents do the same for him?
I guess, people reap what they sow. In my parents' case, they have me. As terrible as my self-esteem and confidence truly are, my parents remind me how proud of me they are of me, and frequently highlight my maturity, intelligence, motivation, and overall strength. My parents have also admitted, many, many times, that they never expected me to get as far as I have. In the moment, they had to assure me that I was going to be okay, and I could achieve anything I put my mind to. But, deep down inside, absolutely nobody knew if I would survive to see my teenage or adolescent years. Until I did.
Absolutely nobody knew if I would be healthy enough to graduate high school, until I did. Absolutely nobody knew if I would garner the courage to get over my fears enough to walk my dog by myself, go to the mall by myself, take an Uber by myself, drive by myself, etc, until I did. Absolutely nobody knew if I would be able to be healthy and able enough to go to college, until I did. And, every chance they have, my parents remind me of this.
Meanwhile, as far as I'm aware, my stepbrother never graduated high school. He never learned how to drive. He isn't trusted around people or animals younger or smaller than him. He's supervised almost 24/7, only being left home alone for short amounts of time. His mom has guardianship over him. He will forever be reliant on hefty doses of severe anti-psychotic medications. He will forever pose a danger to himself and to others. It breaks my soul to write this.
His mom remains in stark denial of reality, and has convinced herself that I (a four-to-six-year-old at the time I spoke up about the abuse) "exaggerated" or "made it all up" at the time, against the overwhelming physical and emotional evidence (let alone what the hospitals, schools, and law enforcement had to say). For years, she also tried to convince me that I was the one who caused all that trouble. She went as far as to corner me whenever she could to berate me, tell me how much of a manipulative, dangerous liar I was, and she was the only one in the world who truly had the best interest for me at heart.
I knew I had to get the hell away from her when she decided to go after me while we were visiting Minnesota, and I was thirteen. With the family outside, and me inside taking some much-needed alone time, she attacked. Not physically, but verbally and emotionally, invading my space and raising her voice to scare me. And, when I threatened to go to family to sort it out (it being something that I don't remember), she instead decided it was better to take me on a little drive. She made me give up my phone, left her phone in a bedroom, told the family we were going to town, and spent the next thirty or so minutes tearing into me while we drove aimlessly around the country in the pitch darkness. Too bad I don't remember much of what transpired during our little "outing", other than she called me and my family every name in the book, including (but certainly not limited to) liars, psychopaths, dangerous, disorderly, abusive, so on.
But, no matter how angry and resentful towards me my stepmom may be, no matter how badly my mentally ill stepbrother abused me, I vow to never treat or think about them (or anyone else for that matter) like they treated and thought about me. Every day, I pray to God for the courage and strength to do what's right, to treat others right, to protect and serve the people around me, to amend and learn from the mistakes I make, to take control of my judgement and dissect my kneejerk reactions if/when I have them, to not let denial cloud my decisions and judgement of a person or situation, to not let anger and rage take over, to not let my fears and phobias control me, so on.
It's a constant battle for me, as it is for anyone. But, I'm learning, growing, and becoming more mature and able to love, trust, and just have fun each day, because I don't want to turn out like some people in my life have. Nor do I want anyone else I know to be traumatized like I have.
With that said, I don't think I can give my stepfamily a second chance like my dad hopes. I may be able to forgive and defang them, so I can go to family gatherings with my stepfamily without having my paternal relatives circle around me like a herd of muskoxen. But have a relationship with them? I don't think so. It's very sad that I'll never be able to sit down at the dinner table with just Dad and my stepfamily, or sleep under the same roof as them again, but it's just the way things are. It's just how the way things must be to keep everyone as safe as they can be.
It hurts me to say that, especially since I know it hurts my dad. But, it's not good to try to maintain a relationship with people as dangerous and unpredictable as rabid foxes, no matter how badly I wish I could. It's especially not good to do that, because I really don't have the power to mend my relationships with my stepfamily. In order for us to rebuild a sort of relationship, they'll have to approach me first and genuinely apologize, and work to repent and make things right. A simple, half-assed, "I'm sorry", a letter, or a couple gifts wouldn't even begin to suffice. Not after what I remember happening, let alone what horrific shit the court documents talk about.
Not that I expect any of that from my stepfamily to begin with. My stepbrother will never be in the "right" state-of-mind to be able to even recognize what he did, let alone feel any remorse for it, or do anything to change his ways. From what I understand, my stepbrother doesn't even have the ability to feel remorse or empathy for others, let alone build up the self-control to not hurt people or animals. As for my stepmom: I don't think she cares to or even has the balls to apologize and repent for her dire mistakes. She isn't safe for me to be around, either (though I don't exactly fear her or my stepbrother. I just know better than to get close to them). Which sucks so much.
Forgiveness doesn't mean "let's have a relationship again!" Forgiveness doesn't mean what my stepfamily did to me was even remotely okay or excusable. It simply means I've dropped the burning hot coals I planned to hurl at those who hurt me most, and am allowing my burned palms to heal.
Thankfully, I can still heal from the past without an ounce of remorse from my stepfamily, as well as without attempting to rebuild any charred bridges. Our relationship will forever be lost, but my mental and physical health, and my ability to trust people again won't be. In a way, I've already begun to heal. It's apparent in how much confidence I've grown just in the last few years or so. I no longer perceive everything that has a heartbeat as an immediate threat. In fact, I feel rather safe around a handful of people I've met since I was fourteen, such as those in the writer's group, as well as friends of my parents whom I've gotten to know very well.
Of course, I feel safe around my parents, too, even if we get a little heated at times. Because, well, while they may have sucked at protecting me from many things, at least they've never tried to intentionally put me in harm's way. And, best of all, they're willing and able to sit down with me and calmly talk it out, if there's a disagreement or miscommunication or a hatchet to bury. Something not a lot of people can really do, apparently. So many people lack the guts to sit down with each other to apologize, compromise, and get on the same page.
Since my parents have been willing to sit down and talk things through with me, my relationship with both my parents is better than ever. Do we still have our disagreements and misunderstandings? Of course! But, they're not over anything serious enough for me to remember after a day or two.
Family disagreements are normal, after all. The occasional heated fight (not physical, however) is normal. Misunderstandings and crossed wires here and there are normal too. A screw-up here and there is normal. A little smothering from parents is also normal (all moms are a little clingy, and all dads can get a little overprotective). I know that, and I'm okay with that. If my parents and I were perfect in every way, that would be a serious issue.
However, I also recognize that my family situation hasn't always been normal or okay. I mean, the conversational "no-go-zones" have to go at some point. I can't spend my entire life avoiding the subject of my stepfamily with my dad, nor can I spend my entire life avoiding the topic of dating and boyfriends with my mom. Even if I don't reconcile with the people who hurt me the most, at the very least, I recognize I need to reconcile with my parents. Preferably long before I actually get around to publishing my memoir.
Those are conversations I dread having with my parents. But, they're necessary conversations to have (especially if I plan on publishing my life story). They'll be safe, cordial conversations too, as they will be held in an office with an experienced therapist. Trust me, I've spent many nights lying awake, coming up with some sort of "game plan" to tackle these very uncomfortable topics with my parents, in a way that won't annihilate or even slightly tarnish our relationships in the process. The trickiest part is just getting the ball rolling. I'm not sure how to ask my parents to join me in therapy to discuss a "no-go-zone", without just blurting it out one day.
Still, I want to be able to write a memoir. Writing is healing, after all, and I want to organize and "take charge" of my life story. So many people have tried to take control over the narrative of my own life. Many family (and step-family) members have already screamed their side of my story from the rooftops, so the cat's already out of the bag. In the past, I've tried to tell my family how uncomfortable it made me knowing they were sharing my story on social media and to friends and coworkers. I've also tried to tell them to simply shut the fuck up, but that hasn't worked either (now it seems like the whole world knows I've sworn at my parents a handful of times).
The only way to take charge of my life story, knowing what I know, having experienced what I've experienced, is to go out and tell it myself. Thing is, I'm not an extrovert. I don't have the goofiness or charisma to run a Youtube channel. I'm not in search of fame, fortune, or anything like that. I also don't want to just condense my whole life into some obscure blog. It would be nice to see my life story appear on bookshelves in public, but under a pseudonym to ensure mine and my family's privacy. Writing is a way to heal, and it's a way to make one's mark on the world. And, I genuinely believe that not only will I feel much better having written and published as much of my life story as I'm willing to write and publish (which, is admittedly, not actually a whole lot, it just seems like it because I tend to write about the same problems over and over and over again). But, I might be able to help and serve other people, specifically the underdogs who can't seem to catch a break.
To show them that they aren't alone.
I refuse to just keep quiet, even though some people in my (step) family have already warned me (the moment they realized I could write), that they'd take legal action if I even wrote a little bit about them. For the longest time, that terrified me. But, since I've done my research and spent years talking to therapists and lawyers alike about the prospect of writing my own memoir, I no longer fear legal retribution.
The only thing I fear is tarnishing my relationship with my parents. Indeed, I'm close to my parents, but those "no-go-zones" (which are things I absolutely will write about in my memoir) have the ability to completely obliterate our relationship. I don't give a damn what the people that I've cut off have to say. They can write their own memoirs for all I care. But, I certainly care about keeping a loving, functional relationship with my parents.
Thankfully, I have more than enough time to talk through the "no-go-zones" with my parents, finish my memoir, and lawyer up. My memoir can wait as long as it takes.
In the meantime, I will continue to explore these horrific trenches of my past. It's the only way to really truly come to terms with everything I've been through, so I can heal and become the best version of myself I can possibly be.
But, I must also recognize the miracle that I am, as well as the strength that I possess. Frankly, I'm still terrified of pretty much everything and everyone, even though I almost never allow people to see that side of me. My head's always on a swivel. I'm always keeping tabs on everything that's going on around me, and being hyper-alert of every little red flag and gut feeling I ever get. I still suffer from extreme nightmares, and am a lighter sleeper than most. Sometimes, when I get in the driver's side of my Xterra, or walk into my college building, or meet up with friends on my own, or pick up the phone to make a doctor's appointment, I second-guess myself. As though I'm not old enough or competent enough to drive, or go to college, or drive myself to Enchanted Grounds, or make and attend a doctor's appointment by myself.
Yet, I am. And, I do.
There's nothing more satisfying and empowering than responding to the thought, "What are you doing in the driver's seat of this 4,000 pound vehicle? You're too small, young, scared, etc. to drive!" by turning the ignition key, shifting into drive, and getting to my destination completely safe. Because, not only did I disprove that anxious thought, but I overcame it. I defied it. I gave my anxiety (and the people who spent all their time with me trying to tear me down and scar me for life) two giant middle fingers. That is honestly one of the best, most healing feelings in the world.