I received an email today from a lady who had read a comment I had written on another blog. It's kind of cool that you can either help or inspire or reassure people who you have never met and never will meet with just a few words graffitied on the internet. I'm glad she took the time to send me an email. I vaguely remembered the post she was talking about, so I searched until I found it. This is the post on moodymama that she read and my comments are farther down. Take a minute to read it or you won't understand the rest of what I am about to say.
Done?
Ok.
I spent years in hell. YEARS. In HELL. I thought I was crazy. Thought I should be locked up somewhere. And it just got worse and worse and worse. When I was pregnant with Willa and the year after I had her, I was seriously considering Red River. I had been bad in years past. Breaking things, raging and raging. Hurting myself mostly. Physically anyway. Emotionally myself and others. Now, I knew a lot of it was due to my hormones, because the worst of it would hit before my period, it was bad during and some after. It was a vicious cycle. The week before my period I was like a land mine. Set and ready to go off and who knew when or on who it would go off. I was temperamental and irritable and hostile. There were times when I literally saw red. It was like the "dragon" had possessed me and I could feel the rage and hate overtaking me until I wasn't there anymore. Then, when I started my period... I was depressed. Crying constantly, getting my feelings hurt over and over for nothing. Then the week after my period, that was the worst. Suicidal, feelings of worthlessness, why should I live I am a horrible person I wish I would just die please God just take me now and get it over with. I dreamed of dying, killing myself, being killed in some random accident. Fantasized about it. And this went on for years. From the time I was 13 or 14 until I was 31 years old, progressively getting worse and worse. I had times when it wasn't so bad. But that could all change in a moment. It was always there, lurking. Since I've had the hysterectomy I have been a different person. Oh sure, I have my moods. But that's life. Now I have a handle on them and can discern between real emotion and the irrational, out-of-control monster that had overtaken my emotions. Stress is gonna happen. But when it is coming from inside of you... what do you do? Especially when you can't control it. I had taken pills upon pills upon pills to no avail. If it had gone on the way it was headed, who knows where I would be now. And I had pretty much forgotten all of that. Well, not forgotten but pushed to the back of the memory vault. Who wants to remember horrible stuff? So, I am glad that woman read my words and took a moment to write me about them. It was a great reminder. Because yeah... things could be worse.