23
votes
When in your life did you feel the most broken?
Brody shit I’m just drunk rn
Go go waltzing Matilda
Waltzing Matilda you’ll
Go waltzing Matilda with me.
Brody shit I’m just drunk rn
Go go waltzing Matilda
Waltzing Matilda you’ll
Go waltzing Matilda with me.
4 years ago. My wife and I found out we were pregnant, this would be our 3rd we were both blown away and absolutely over the moon. We had recently moved interstate, my wife and girls came back home for our youngest's birthday since most of our families lived back here, she was due for another ultrasound at the time so we made the appointment and off we went.
The sonographer said the words you never want to hear "I see something abnormal. you'll have to speak to the doctor before leaving" they found a thickness at the back of bubs neck. Instantly we said that didn't matter we will love and support our baby no matter what. The doctor wouldn't let her fly back home, so we had to make a rushed decision to move back down.
More tests were performed, more scans, more bad news. When I thought it couldn't get any worse we were told "you have 24 hours to abort if that is something you want to do. we don't know for sure what is wrong. we can't say if your baby will survive full term but it's highly unlikely. we will give you a few minutes to decide" they stepped out of the room and with this new information we had 5 fucking minutes to decide what to do.
My wife couldn't do it so we let nature take its course. At 23 weeks we had another scan and right away my wife asked where the heartbeat was, our little boy had passed. the next 3 days were what I thought were the worst of my life. I was wrong. The day we had to deliver took that prize.
My wife had to take a pill to induce labour, she laboured for 16 horrible hours. At one point she screamed in a way I've never heard and shouted "IT BURST. SOMETHING BURST" everyone thought it was a cyst (polycystic ovaries) eventually the NUM did her examination and what I saw still haunts me. We were told she would need an emergency C section, something that the doctors at first didn't want to do as our first two were C section babies (too big to birth natural)
The next few hours are mostly a blur, until I was stuck in a corner that you can barely call a waiting room with a TV that was broken. The screen was off but the sound was belting out, it was too high to turn off by hand and it made me irrationality angry. Finally at around 3am the NUM who was assisting the surgery came out to me and explained so quickly "ok all is done. your wife is fine. baby has been delivered, she burst her uterus and baby was trying to get out that way, it was about 1cm from the artery that feeds the uterus so we are very lucky. We did loose her a couple of times, but the doctor brought her back. I'll send someone out shortly once she is in recovery" then ran off. I tried to process everything but couldn't. I lost my baby that night and almost my wife.
Through all of it no one would be her rock. Everyone around us expressed their sadness over what had happened so I bottled everything up and didn't let my emotions out. It was 6 month's before I did, when everyone else was dealing with what had happened or had found ways to deal with it. That was the moment I was the most broken in my life.
Sorry for any formatting, I'm on my mobile. Also if you made it through that long rant. thank you.
My god. I can't imagine how many years the stress took out of you.
How have you both dealt with this mentally? At first, and then 4 years after? I'm sorry you have to endure this.
Thank you.
I've tried to answer this question before, honestly I don't know how I dealt with it at the time other than pushing on. Its an odd thing to look back at and all I can say is I didn't know any different, if that makes sense. I just had to push on.
Each year we celebrate his birthday, the first stuffed toy someone bought for us was an Elephant. So now our house is filled with every little Elephant my wife can find, so that is part of her way to keep sane.
I personally want to be a mental health nurse, going through that has only made that stronger within me and I've applied for Uni just recently to achieve that goal.
We did have a few therapy sessions right after, we were told its a standard thing stillbirths. My wife had a few more before I was asked to come along with her, they helped massively. She is also a good bit stubborn so refused most medications to help but we have each other and our girls. At the end of the day we are here and healthy, I couldn't ask for more.
As a kid. I wasn't an average kid. Had trouble focusing and retaining interest in anything. I got good test score, but never did homework, so grades suffered. I also struggled with moral choices, like stealing money from my parents, or candy, things like that. I always felt bad about it, just couldn't control myself. Also my family was religious, and I didn't believe it, so I felt guilty for that at first. As well as the usual teen shit, masturbating, porn, cursing.
I just felt like a major fuck up early in life all the time. That coupled with parents who didn't know how to handle me when all my other siblings were much easier to raise. I don't blame them, they did their best. But until I hit about 14-15, I just thought I was some kid who would end up offing himself like so many others around me were. But once I got past religion, life was much better.
Things felt broken again after my divorce, but not like before. I quickly started to better myself and moved past it. It was for the better anyway.
I always hear people saying shit like, I wish I was a kid again, and it just gives me PTSD thinking about it. I'm glad we always grow and don't go backwards in life. It only gets better and I'm glad I'm still around.
When? When I was in early high school. Probably around the age of 14-16. Did something happen around then? No. It wasn't about anything that happened around then. It was the culmination of everything that had happened in my life up until then, the isolation I felt, how all of those feelings festered and destroyed any sense of self that I had, and the lack of a support network to help me deal with it all.
If I were to sit here and write about my experiences in detail, I could fill an autobiography's worth just for that brief period in my life. I could write about the time the only childhood friend I'd ever made in the fourth grade had chosen to pretend that he didn't know me so that I wouldn't ruin his image with the new friends he found. I could write about the time I watched my mom and my cousins' mom fight not 5 ft. away from me when I couldn't have been more than 10 years old, the pummeling and screaming it entailed, and how difficult it was to physically stand on my own two feet with how badly I was shaking. I could write about the time I had to force myself into the locked bathroom to stop my mom from cutting her own wrists. I could write about the undignified feeling of knowing that my family had to steal bags of donated clothes left outside of donation centers late in the evening in hopes of finding clothes to wear and that we had to pick up any can we saw to collect every nickle possible for gas money. I could write about a great many things, but I'll settle for the brief glimpse above.
I'm a very fortunate person. In the end, I was able to find a support network when I needed it most, found a career that I love, and have managed to find a level of stability that I once thought impossible. I'm still discovering the many ways in which my experiences have shaped who I am, and fixing the parts of myself that have been damaged over the years. It's taken a long time, but I've found purpose in my life and I'm finally starting to learn to love and take care of myself.
I've gotta say, though, hitting the peak of all of that in high school was kind of a dick move from the universe. I'll take "things I'd like to never do again" for $800, Alex!
Between 19 and 23. It was the culmination of a decade of stress, and I'm still not fully recovered.
Long story short, I started experiencing dysphoria at the start of puberty. I had no idea what it was about - I only learned about the existence of trans people at 21 - but I went from "wouldn't it be cool if I woke up a girl" to "wouldn't it be cool if I got in a car accident that mangled my genitals" to "wouldn't it be cool if I just died".
That wouldn't have been enough - I probably would have had a breakdown by now, but not at 19 - if not for the rest. My brother died when I was 14, and I blamed myself for it. The rest of the family didn't take it well, either, and I felt like I was the one who had to keep it together. My grandmother ended up bedridden by a stroke days after his funeral. I ended up being one of her caretakers by 17, when I started university - spending 14+ hours out, some days - and the one who found her dead by 19. I tried performing CPR. I discovered that it doesn't work like on TV.
I also blamed myself for her death. I started living alone the year after that, and stopped going to class. I couldn't sleep, so I spent days by myself, trying to stay up late to fix my sleep cycle, and failing. Days became weeks, and then months. I was already depressed by then - I kept it a secret and never asked for help because I didn't want to be a bother - but that just added even more guilt to the pile.
My parents realized that something was going on after ~a year. They staged an intervention, made me see a therapist. I resisted. By that time, I was depressed, self-harming, suicidal, and heavily dissociating from my body. It used to be "the carcass" in my inner monologue. I eventually worked through my grief and guilt - leaving religion helped there - but I didn't really get better until I was ~a year into transition. My education has yet to recover.
It's interesting how in the media they always portray (re)joining a religious group as a good thing, while on the Internet I've read a lot of stories where leaving faith made people happier.
I wish you a happy transitioning and all the best.
I wouldn't say it made me happier, it's just that my guilt was bound up in my belief in the supernatural.
I was very angry at the time, but, no matter what, I could not reconcile what I believed in - an omnimax god, a just god - with the suffering I kept on seeing around me, with the existence of death. Happier or not, I can't believe in a lie, or just not think about it. It's not worth it.
Heh. Thanks, but the hard part was actually starting it, and luckily I managed to do that almost three years ago.
My parents and I got hit by a propelled grenade to the armoured Land Rover's sidewindow; buried them the same day a few hundred miles down the coast with only the dog as compagnon through the mumbo jumbo and left.
I keep voting for you (& others) cause it's my way of saying "Good stuff. Keep on." but you made me think with that non sequitur.
If that happened as you describe it you shouldn't just drop that some place and say nothing else.
It's not a personal dig, but a friendly tip, OK?
Of course that happened as is. I'm anonymous here, why should I omit or embellish? I was in an odd mood though, and nearly deleted, but I already got a vote, so I'm keeping it!
Don't worry about it.