Just to make this clear, I'm not searching for pity. Everything I say is 100% true. I'm lucky to be here and happy to have made it through all of it. I just feel like I need to "spill the beans" so to speak. Get it out there and get others ideas on it because it's a little more personal than I'd like to say to another person face to face. At least I can still retain my anonymity on the internet to an extent. Another disclaimer: I have worked through this all in the past 5 years. I've let it go, I just need to vent.

:yumeh2:

I'm 19 years old and a Sophomore in college. I'm an art student. I've lived in southern Mississippi for most of my life (yay hurricanes), but to really get to the center of everything I have to start about 15 years ago. July 6, 1995 I lost a baby sister. I was 4 1/2 at the time. Her name was Amber and she would have been 2 years old the very next day. She drowned in a creek not even 2 miles from our home. Needless to say, I witnessed everything. I have no very pleasant childhood memories before or after that. That day is my most vivid yet foggiest childhood memory. That and Amber's wake.

Imagine the next few years. I'm 4 1/2 and got along with my little sister better than most siblings. We never fought and always played nice. And all of a sudden my baby sister is gone and I don't know where she went. All Mama and Daddy would say was "Amber went to see Jesus," which I didn't really understand at the time. A 4 year old can't comprehend death. I'm the only child now and will be for the next year or so. My parents were busy grieving and I'm just left in the dark with my imaginary friends (mom says I used to talk to them at the dinner table). I didn't remember doing this until my mom told me, but I used to go around to all my family members and friends of the family and ask "Do you love me?" over and over again. Everyone was so preoccupied with grief that I was ignored a little bit.
:yumeh2:

I turn 5 and about 8 months later in August of 1996 my mama has another baby. Another girl. Named Courtney. I'm still left on the back burner so to speak. A new baby plus a little more grieving. Not to mention I start Kindergarten and get picked on. I was about 7 years old when my Nurse Practitioner decides to put me on Zoloft, an antidepressant medication, because apparently I'm a morbid little kid. To put a child on antidepressants is a big no no, and we know this now, but didn't then. Then when my little sister Courtney starts to turn 2, about the same age Amber was when she drowned, my mom started binge drinking.
:yumeh2:

I had a rough time in Elementary school because of home life. I didn't get a lot of sleep either. A fledgling insomniac. Parents fighting, new baby in the house, Mother drinking or popping pills. I didn't have friends in Elementary. I was scared to bring anybody home. Scared of what they'd think. I didn't have the greatest clothes growing up. Nobody really made sure I was clean and washed and ready to go to school the next day. Elementary passed into Middle school where I finally made a friend. Im a good kid in school. Hate getting in trouble. Keep to myself most of the time. Read a lot of books and always doodling in notebooks. Always writing. My mom was in and out of rehab clinics for drinking. She had her good days. She had weeks where she was a model mother. A wonderful provider, but then she'd cave and binge. She went sober for a while and I passed into my first year of High School. Wham. 2005. Katrina. Everyone knows about Hurricane Katrina and Mississippi. Luckily nobody was hurt in my family and luckily our trailer, surprisingly, withstood. It was still a lot of stress and destruction. A lot of fear. I'm 14 at the time and then after that I stopped taking for granted what I had because I realized I could lose it so easily. So what I had clothes from Walmart and Hudsons. I had clothes, didn't i?

The year before my dad left his job due to familial reasons. My mom started getting sick. My dad is unemployed and my mom gets a check each month because she's unable to work. We live off of that little bit, which is hard but manageable. I finish my first semester of high school without any complications and begin my second semester in a flurry of stress. Im in honor's english reading books more difficult than I've ever read before. I have a 95 test grade average and my teacher tells me it's not good enough. I think I snapped. Everything I was dealing with on that point weighed down on me so bad, and the full weight of everything that had happened in the past 15 years just hit me like a train.

Mental breakdown. I black out one night and wake up with cuts on my arm. Not shallow but not too deep either. Enough to hurt, enough to bleed, but not enough to kill me obviously. Emo, no, they do it for attention, sadly enough. I don't remember doing it and I certainly didn't let anyone know. But it continued because I felt better afterward. My mom traded one addiction for another. Eating her medicine like candy and zoning out on it. She'd still have her good days. She started dropping weight like crazy going from 300 plus pounds to my size, about 170 at the time. maybe a little less. She got real sick. Her pancreas started messing up. On one of her good days she found out what I did to my arms and sent me to a behavioral clinic for a week to talk to shrinks. I had flashbacks of Amber's death and just couldn't leave the past alone. Post traumatic stress disorder triggered by Katrina. It was underlying the whole time, it just hadn't been set off til then.

I get better and I take a break from school. I miss most of my second semester of 9th grade and pretty much fail. I go back the next year, a half semester behind. Yay, I found a boyfriend. yay I have friends now, but not really. A year passes and my mom is still doing what she does best. Now she's really sick. Vomiting all the time. Her pancreas is the culprit. cancer? maybe. I'm worried about her at this point because, hey, she is my mother even though she may not be the best. I love her. I end up taking my GED to get the hell out of high school when i'm 17 and then I attend my first year of college in 2008. I love it. Well. Second semester of college i turn 18, bf misses my birthday for disney world. My mom has a surgery on her pancreas that we hope will fix her. Then my boyfriend breaks up with me, i'm distraught yada yada. I go on with my life upset one day, happy the next. I have new friends, better friends. people i actually get along with. I work and go to school during the summer. No break. I try online dating because I'm lonely and I need a rebound. and it doesnt work. I'm worried about my mom, stressing about school, trying not to be so lonely. Second year rolls around.

I take some art classes and try to relax. meet a guy here I think is pretty cool, a good boy, likes the same music, he's a little younger than me. I'm 18 almost 19 then and he's just turned 18. We start hanging out and he starts flirting with me, then coming onto me then we start making out pretty much. I'm thrilled because NOBODY has ever done that before. Nobody has ever thrown themselves at me like that. Off the record, at this point, I'm still a virgin. And this boy eventually pressures me into having sex with him. Takes care of himself then rolls over and goes to sleep. No matter he left me hanging. No he just took my virginity as if it weren't there and it didn't matter. I get upset about that. He goes back and forth. he's with me but he doesnt want anyone to know, he doesn't know what he wants, he's with me, he's not. Pretty much. He's a player. A womanizer. Cheats on me breaks my heart the whole shebang.

then ensues a whole semester of bullshit...........Then 5 months ago I see a little light at the end of the tunnel. I skip classes one day just to hang out with a friend, Matt, that I haven't seen in a while. he just got out of a bad relationship. me too! Then I realize, oh my gosh. He's flirting with me. Then I see that he gives me this look at one point and I ask him what the look was for. He tells me "I'm trying to resist..." I'm all ???? and then he just kisses me :D

I'm happy. He's sweet and very cute. He was a virgin when we started dating. Then we go out in the middle of a field at night and it was just too perfect. it was how the first time should have been. So I begin this semester. I'm 19 now. Well. I'm an RA for my dorm. I also have an absurd amount of classwork to do. My mom has lost a lot more weight since her surgery. down to 120 now and she's just wasting away. Still eating pills like candy when she can and it feels like the only thing keeping me afloat is Matt.

He's asked me to marry him <3 but the only problem is he owes some money to a college and we can't get married until he pays the debt (and gets a place) which involves getting a job (good luck) and a working vehicle. The saddening prospect is he might have to go away to look for work and I don't know if we can both handle being away from each other. the longest we've been apart in the past 5 months is almost a full week. I just got back from spring break and just dealing with my mother has gotten me stressed. I've got an absurd amount of math homework that I had to do before 3 today and a test that I did not pass...plus what feels like a million other things just piled on top.

Blah. I don't know what to do for my mother anymore. All I can do is pray for her but only she can change herself. My dad says she's got a death wish. the prognosis for the surgery she had is 5 to 8 years. She doesnt think she'll last 3. If her pancreas doesn't kill her it would be her blood sugar too high or too low, or her popping the pills, which are her prescription. I'm just at a loss.

There's just so much more to this story, I mean, it's pretty much my entire life. and believe it or not this is the condensed version.

Now I feel a little better for venting. If you read all that I'm sorry it was so long. I didn't feel like blogging it because well...I don't like blogs. And I need gold on here so I said what the hey why not. So yeah. Opinions?

........wow... o.o;

As someone who's been confronted by death at an early age aswell, i can only say, don't hide from it, but instead imbrace it.
Hiding away behind a book only prospones your problems, even now.

As for your mom, remember that you are not to blaim for her actions. As much as you love her, you are not resposible for her.

Also, if your boyfriends WANTS to work, he will. Take it from a highschool Dropout who's gotten two jobs since i left school.
he might be appart from you, but he wont be going to africa. count your blessings for that.
remember that you need to live life to the fullest. you are not your deploma, and your deploma isnt you.

if you have any questions, i'll be around

Well, I read all of it.

You're doing very well for yourself after all you've been through. =)

And the idea that someone is just cutting themselves for attention is a myth. I'm sure there's a couple of people out there who would, but for the most part, no one is going to hurt themselves like that unless they are feeling extremely desperate. That belief comes from a society that likes to make people feel bad about their mental problems and kick people while they are down.

Anyway, it's good to just vent like this sometimes and talk a bit about yourself to other people. Although I know you said you hate blogs, but you might enjoy getting a private one or something. I'm thinking about getting one myself (although I'm paranoid about someone hacking into it or something because whenever I've had a diary someone's always read it in some way or another) because I'd just like to get some things off of my chest as well. It would be nice.

Well thank you all for taking your time. I know it was a lot but it's really only the surface. I'm feeling a little less down now, unlike a few days ago when I felt so overwhelmed by everything. Mostly my mother and her health and how she doesnt make it any better by treating her medicine that way.

Well it's good you feel a little better. I'm sorry you had to go through that but your life isn't over so there is still a chance.