But there was one lurking secret in the back of my mind, a repressed memory that one day unlocked and bathed me in reliving the experience. The next day I turned and realized that the fellow I was sitting next to in French class had drowned me on a church trip. When I say drowned, I mean out of body experience, waking up staring open eyed into the sun, floating on top of the water, and seeing my attacker who had held me under until I had breathed in the lake, fleeing to the shore. I should not have been alive. Consciousness returned and I coughed up the lake. No one saved me. There was no one giving me mouth to mouth... I just came back.
My mother had unlocked the memory by mentioning it one day, years later. I had buried it in order to function, but it came flooding back when she mentioned it and I staggered where I stood. His parents were lawyers, and threatened us, but we had not the financial means to defend me. I learned that day that money determines guilt or innocence, more than truth. The result was entering a new school where my attacker was to become the popular star quarterback, and I had a reputation as a liar for telling on him. What was worse, we not only went to the same school, but the same church, and I was supposed to carry on as if nothing had happened. But it had, and as Ayn Rand said, "you can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of reality."
Without memory of the incident, I found a lot of the memories of that time also suppressed, as was my joy, my desire to live, and my tolerance for being called a liar, especially when I had been working pretty hard to be the best person I could be, before and after that point. I was post traumatic and villainized especially for the ensuing depression. I remember taking the SATs and thinking... what does it matter, I'm going to kill myself tomorrow. Rarely did I study, and rarely did I care. Life felt brief and cruel, separate from those around me, and I became even more introverted than I had been before. I went from a straight A student to not caring much about my studies, doing homework either before school or during home room. After all, when you don't feel like you have much of a bright future, who wants to work toward one. I was just going through the motions of what was expected of me. To make it worse, I ended up getting braces before school pictures in 7th grade, which only added to my growing unpopularity.
Truly the only healing came when at 15, a life long dream was realized. At 3, my parents told me that I could have a horse when I could afford to pay for it myself. I took this to heart, and by 15 I had the money and we had a place to keep it. She was my shelter in the storm of youth, and of course not all things were bad. This was when I was happy, on a horse.
Still I was gripped in depression. Added to this were the expectations of others, and the other stresses of high school. Repeatedly I was told, "You would be so pretty if your legs weren't so big". Mostly it was my brother who said this, and took delight in criticizing my body, but I became anorexic, hoping that maybe if I was pretty or thin enough, someone would love me. My grandfather, whom I adored, told me I needed to lose weight when I was already anorexic, comparing me to cousins with higher metabolisms. However it was never good enough. I had big legs, because they were strong legs from horseback riding. Whatever I did, it wasn't good enough, and by the time I entered college I was fully anorexic, bulimic, and binging and purging. Meanwhile I was working out to insane levels. I would do aerobics, bike 10 miles to the gym, lift weights, and bike back, often adding horseback riding, martial arts, and fencing to the list. But I was doing too much on too little fuel, and in essence killing myself to be loved. One day it took it's toll and I found myself utterly depleted. It was then that the next attack occurred.
In a weakened state, multiple "NOs" were ignored by my best friend's boyfriend, and I once again found myself in the grips of dealing with trauma that only magnified the previous depression. My brain told me to "give him what he wants and he'll leave you alone" ... so I did, and it was not worth it. I didn't have the energy to fight at the time, but the guilt that followed was overwhelming and destructive. The tenuous thread that made me want to keep breathing, was cut and panic attacks increased. All the while instead of help, or the sympathy people thought that I was doing it for, I mostly got disdain. When I cut myself, it was not for the reactions, it was me trying to get the nerve to end it, and with that end, to stop the pain that I found myself in constantly. It was a form of penance for the horrible person that I felt I was, and that I did not deserve to live. I felt I could never be perfect, the person that I was expected to be, so I wanted to end the pain and die, in hopes that I could go to heaven forgiven before I screwed up again. I did not see any hope for me or my soul, which felt under constant scrutiny.
This of course was not the time to end up in a relationship, when I was self-destructive, depressed, and unstable, but of course who could resist someone holding the carrot of love, when you had been literally dying for it until then. Honestly I am not proud of who I was during that time, but it was a mutually unhealthy relationship in many ways. I didn't know what a healthy relationship was, because I'd never had one. So instead I did what I always did, tried to be the person that I thought he wanted me to be, instead of being myself and finding someone who appreciated that person. I thought it was love at the time, but it took me a long time to figure out what that was.
Afterward, I picked myself up, and losing that relationship was a huge turning point. I only wish it had happened much sooner, when I had tried to break it off the first time. We both would have been much happier and honestly should have never been more than friends. There were other relationships, flashes in the pan, but the next traumatic relationship was the exhusband. I was 23 when we met and he was 32. At first I was trying to just be friends with him, but he had only one thing on his mind, and every No I threw his way, was a new challenge to overcome. It seemed that he had not been told No very often and it was something that he just couldn't have.
He was a psychopath, not the flippant term psycho given to difficult exes, but a true pathology. As a child, he had pulled the legs off frogs for fun. He lied without compunction, and I found out later that the majority of what he had told me was in fact lies. The manipulations ran deep, and his glamour of charisma enfolded many in its snare. Women were jealous that he chose me. Many had their eye on him, but I was that unattainable one and the chase was on... He contacted my friends to learn more about me, and they happily aided him in his stalking, because it was true love after all...
Although there were red flags, he knew that I considered intercourse to be for marriage. I had been guilt tripped into dating people with a kiss, and being guilt-ridden already, he manipulated that, and me into losing my virginity... another No that he ignored. At the time he was the most romantic person that I had ever dated, and all warning signs were shrouded in excuses and glossed over with lies.
He proposed and when I was not happy about it, he bullied me into telling everyone, and to pretending to be happy about it. I did not want to say yes, but I was already afraid of him. The fear continued, but he still made an attempt to wear the mask until the day we were married, and everything changed. He was being himself for the first time, and that person was cruel and cold. When I asked him what happened to the things he used to say, as everything he said after marriage was contrary, his only comment was "I was just trying to get into your pants." The next 11 months, lasting longer than the previous 2 wives (partially by manipulation of my family) were torture, pure and simple, culminating in his attack a month after the divorce papers were signed, where he kidnapped me, raped me repeatedly, and then got derailed on his way to dump my body in a swamp.
This is how I arrived at C-PTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Disorder) which I still have though lesser today. With it there has been depression. People would tell me how lucky I am to be alive, and then push me to live the life they wanted me to live, but that's how I ended up there in the first place. In response, I aimed different. All my life I'd been following the guidance of others when my gut response was screaming not to. I had been taught to obey others, not myself, and that time was ending. It was not until I started to listen to my gut more and others less that depression began to melt away some. Also I began to see later in life that as a middle-aged woman there are far more people to relate to me now than there were when I was in high-school. More time had exposed more women to similar experiences.
I won't say that I don't experience depression, but I have worked to understand the human psyche, to understand how people can go so wrong, and that has helped. Understanding helps, but being understood helps too. Also being true to myself. I know that I am most depressed under the weight of what others want of me more than I ever am when I go my own way. It is not popular, but I would rather stay true to myself than a slave to another's will.
Also I had to examine my spirituality and the people who wielded it as a weapon against me. Those who were the most intent on telling me how to be a good person and holding me to some high standard, often had a double standard and could not get as close to meeting it as I already was. In so many hands religion is a tool for domination, defining expectations, but not keeping to them. It took studying and determining my own faith to conquer that as well.
Much of my depression over the years came from seeing abuse, double standards, unfairness, manipulation, emotional abuse, and knowing deep down that it was inherently wrong. But at the time I had no words to express what I perceived as wrong in the world, and when I tried, I was often silenced and my concerns minimized. The patterns that I saw around me were there and bright as day. I would say things and people would scoff, then a month later return and say I was right about this or that. But in my earlier social circles I was often pushed down the pecking order and my concerns were a source of disdain rather than regard.
Through research and personal education, I have found those things to reinforce what I already knew to be true, and those things within myself that were wrong. It's a constant battle, not a war to be won. Life is like the 100 years war but more like 72 years. Within it are little advances and retreats, wins and losses. We can tire of the fighting and think of surrender, but learning of ourselves and our enemies provides us with the insight to win more battles until the fight is over. The real enemy is the behaviors more than the individuals, unless it's a psychopath, and then there is no cure for them.
People often rarely take me seriously. Some in the worst situations refuse to believe emotional abuse is a real thing, preferring to color me as someone who thinks everyone is abusive. This is usually because they are only carrying out what they learned in their own families, so it seems normal, even if it's destructive. I've had conversations with people when I talk about emotional abuse and then use the word unhealthy instead, and suddenly the same topic becomes acceptable, and the person more willing to admit to those same behaviors as long as the tag of abuse is not attached. Which means that they know it is wrong on some level, but are willing to accept it as a bad habit more than as something they are doing that is harmful to others.
The struggle to open my own eyes, as well as those around me is a fight against the darkness. It's never ending, rarely rewarded, rarely appreciated, and rarely validated. However when it does happen, when we turn away from those things that destroy ourselves and those around us from within, you can't help but be happy. For it has always been the lies, the denial, the coverups, the manipulations that make me depressed, moreso when pointing out those destructive behaviors and being the villain for not ignoring the elephant in the room, and having the gall to ask people to stop feeding the elephant peanuts.
It's truth ... and finding people living in truth that is the best remedy for depression. Watching people make poor decisions that you can not help but see the future outcome of, is terribly depressing, but watching someone make a good decision and set their life in a more positive direction, is cause for joy. I only hope that I can help people evade those pitfalls that I fell into, climbing fool's hill. We all stumble, but it's important that we get back up and avoid making the same mistakes again.
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