Putting Robin Together Again

Putting Robin Together Again

Innocence Lost

What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. That’s what they say anyway. But death seemed like a sweet release from the nightmare I was trapped in. This is my story, my journey into overwhelming darkness and my struggle to find light again, to find hope and peace.

Looking back I realize I was always a little depressed, even as a child. There was a lot of emotional,and sexual abuse at the hands of my stepfather. He was the monster in the dark. I was afraid of him, of what he would do next. Memories of the first time he molested me haunted me all my life.

1966

The only sound in the dark bathroom was my stepfather’s heavy breathing. I was on my knees on top of the clothes hamper. He had lifted me up there as if he were placing me on a carousel ride at an amusement park. Only I wouldn’t be waving at him as I went round and round, smiling as I saw his face among the other parents watching their children.

His face was close to mine now, his breath hot against my ear. He was frustrated again and pulled slightly away from me. I closed my eyes and cried quietly, a sniffle escaping now and then. My chest quivered as I gasped for breath between sobs. He had told me to be quiet when he called me into the bathroom. My eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the darkness when I had entered, but I could see him in the dim light. The little bit of moonlight coming in through the window shone on his bare chest. I instinctively knew, as children do, when something bad was going to happen. Now kneeling on top of the clothes hamper, something very bad was happening. He was trying to push something inside of me again. It hurt. He pushed harder. I didn’t understand what he was doing, but I knew it was wrong. Little girls aren’t supposed to see their father naked. Little girls aren’t supposed to be on top of a clothes hamper in the dark with their dress shoved up and their panties lying on the floor.

1970

He preyed on my innocence. He would lie peacefully in wait for me, ready to strike without hesitation. My eleventh birthday was no exception. I had spent the night at a friend’s house the night before my birthday. I felt a weight bearing down on me as I walked home the next morning. I knew he would be there, quietly watching me, quietly waiting to devour me.

My mom had reminded me the night before that my stepfather would be home so I needed to be back early. He didn’t like it if we weren’t home when he came in off the road. He was a truck driver and felt like we should be there to enjoy his presence whenever he was home. I hated it when he was home. When he was gone the house was noisy and lively. With five kids at home there were always a lot of other kids hanging out at our house. The telephone always seemed to be ringing, the television loudly competing to be heard over all the chaos. But as soon as he came home it seemed like a funeral parlor. We weren’t allowed to have friends over, none of our friends wanted to come over anyway when he was home. The house always had to be in order and quiet. I always tried to make myself invisible when he was home. If he didn’t see me or hear me, then maybe, just maybe, he’d leave me alone.

I saw his truck in the driveway a block away as I headed down the hill toward our house. Just the sight of his truck filled me with dread. As I neared the front porch, I could hear the television playing through the screen door. I quietly opened the door and slipped inside. To my relief my stepfather was asleep on the couch. His boots were lying on the floor next to him. His shirt was off and wadded up behind him, his large belly hanging over the edge of the couch. I glanced at his face making sure he was asleep and hurried into the kitchen. My mom was at the sink doing dishes. I gave her a quick hug and told her I loved her.

“I love you too”, she said hugging me in return. “And happy birthday”! she told me giving me an extra squeeze.

“When can I open my presents”? I asked with excitement.

“Not until after you’ve blown out your candles”.

“Or now”, I teased her.

“Nice try, but not until later”, she said laughing.

Like a violent storm suddenly unleashing itself on a bright day, my stepfather yelled for me to come to him. He sounded angry. I looked at my mom, my heart sinking as she nodded for me to go see what he wanted. I stood in the doorway and waited for him to say something.

“Come here”, he demanded. I slowly crept closer, watching his face as I neared him. He never took his eyes off mine. I came to a stop in front of him, my heart beating quickly as I held my breath and waited.

“You think you’re special”? he demanded. His eyes bore into mine as he waited for a response. My brain scrambled for an answer. I looked down at him as he continued to lie on the couch. His face was slack, but his eyes hardened with contempt. I remember thinking I was something important in this small world of mine, maybe not special, but something good. Just before I could latch onto that thought, he blew it away.

“You’re nothing”, he told me “definitely not special, not even important”. My lips trembled as tears ran down my face.

The day I was told I was nothing changed my life forever. It clouded my thinking, my perception of my place in the world, even in my own home. As a child of eleven years old, my stepfather had conveniently summed up my worth on my birthday. A gift as it were. But instead of wrapped in ribbons and bows, it was draped in contempt. Nothing was spared. After all, it was my birthday, might as well go all out. As I stood in front of him, already reduced to shame for feeling undeservedly excited about my birthday, he continued with his lavish dismantle of my childhood innocence. He eyed me like the predator he was, giving pause before his final blow, sizing me up like a lamb at slaughter. His eyes bore into mine as he inhaled deeply on his cigarette.

I watched his face as he watched mine, waiting for my reaction. But I was too terrified to move. So I just stood there, immobile, waiting for more. A trait I would always seem to find myself stuck in most of my life.

He sat up and leaned forward, his trucker tan arms resting on his knees, his large white belly hanging between his hands, trapped for a moment.

“Go get a bucket of hot soapy water, and wash my motorcycle”, he snarled at me. I quickly spun around towards the kitchen. “And while you’re scrubbing it” he continued after me, “I want you to remind yourself how worthless you are”! There. He had removed any trace of doubt I may have had about his opinion of me. As I scrubbed viciously at the dirt and grime on his bike, I polished away any spot of pride or confidence a broken eleven year old could muster up. I caught a glimpse of myself in the side mirror. My eyes were red and swollen from crying, my face hung in sadness. At that moment I remember thinking he was right, and I felt guilty for having ever thought I might somehow be good or important in this small world of mine. I was disgraceful!

Life’s Little Lessons

When you tell a child they’re not special they believe it, especially when it’s a parent. It stayed with me all my life. Once guilt set in I began to think I was guilty for everything that happened to me. I knew I had to be guilty of something terrible, something I didn’t understand. Why else would I be treated so horribly by my stepfather? He must be punishing me for being bad. I would spend most of my life trying to figure out what that was exactly. I tried to be as unnoticeable as possible. If no one could see me, no one could hurt me. A behavior I carried with me for many years.

School Daze

As per my usual morning routine before junior high school, I hurried to the library and grabbed an old frayed book entitled “Beauty”. No one ever checked it out, and I was too embarrassed to check it out myself, too pitiful really. I’d sit at a table by myself and reread what I had read the previous day lest I forget what to do. Then I’d try to absorb new information in the next few minutes before the bell rang for school to start. I’d glance at the clock nervously, worried I might not find a cure, a cure for my ugliness. A way to make myself acceptable. After all, if I wasn’t accepted at home, maybe I could find a way to make myself acceptable at school. It seemed to me pretty girls were definitely accepted. I knew I wasn’t pretty. My dad made sure I knew that, as if it were a personal mission to him, one he took very seriously.

One time I found a compact of powder. Thinking it might make me look better, I layered it on. I looked at myself in the mirror. I felt different. Anything different was good I rationalized. I ran into the living room smiling and joined the conversation. My dad looked at me frowning. “You think you’re pretty”? he asked. Of course he didn’t wait for an answer. He was always the predator, always looking for his kill. “You’re not pretty. All the powder in the world won’t help”. He leaned forward a little more, smiling with satisfaction. “Now take that powder off, and go look in the mirror, and tell yourself you’re ugly”. I looked into his unfeeling eyes, tinged with laughter. Embarrassed and hurt, I ran back to the bathroom and grabbed a washcloth. I scrubbed the powder off, and continued to scrub my face even harder. Maybe the more I scrubbed, I might look better, acceptable.

As I put the book back on the shelf, I glanced at the other kids through the glass into the hallway. They all seemed acceptable, carefree. They laughed and tossed their heads back easily. I wanted to be like them. Yet I always gravitated towards the kids who clung to the wall, eyes down like mine. We knew we weren’t acceptable. We had all been told that in one way or another. Some common unspoken thread bound us. My confidence was fragile, held together tenuously with the twisted self preservation of a damaged 11 year old. I just wanted to be acceptable to anyone.

The Silent Struggle

When I was around fourteen my mother and stepfather divorced. I remember him packing up his things to leave. I was tempted to go help him. I was worried he would change his mind and decide not to leave. Once when I had overheard him say we wouldn’t be able to make it without him, I piped up and said we’d all pitch in and be fine without him. I had spoken without thinking and thought he would be angry, but he just laughed. He didn’t think I was serious. But he did end up leaving. There were no tearful farewells, just a welcome sense of finality.

My mom didn’t know about the abuse. No one talked about things like that then. And children rarely tell. They live in fear of what may happen to them if they do.

My mom was a hard working woman. She put food on the table for five kids. She was a very loving mother but not home very often because she had to work double shifts to support us. Because there was little parental supervision, most of the neighborhood kids hung out at our house. It was a volatile environment at times. My sister’s and I would often get in physical altercations. We even had the police called on us at times. Scratches, bloody noses, and once a fractured rib, were the results of our battles. I was a runt, but I learned how to hold my own.

Even though my stepfather was gone, he had left me emotionally fragile. I had no confidence in myself, no sense of self-worth. I was broken. I didn’t think people liked me and I was surprised when they did. I expected the worse in people and the worse in myself. I was quiet and withdrawn. I was a wall flower. I remember somebody telling me that once, and I took it as a compliment. Flowers are pretty, and even though it wasn’t really meant to be a complement, I was flattered to be compared to any kind of flower, I had such a low opinion of myself.

When girls like me first start to get attention from boys, we don’t realize they are usually only after one thing. I thought they liked me for me, and it was pleasing to think someone, anyone did. They made me feel like I hadn’t ever felt before, that maybe I was even pretty. But I soon found out in the ambiguity of darkness what they really wanted. That’s how girls like me get reputations. We are so hungry for someone to love us, or at least what we perceive as love, we meekly oblige them, thinking they will want us forever. But they quickly move on to the “good girls” beyond the cloak of darkness.

The smokers, druggies, hoodlums, other “unacceptable” kids were my friends. But even they had a hierarchy of people who were popular in their crowd, and who was not. I was near the bottom, at the fringes of being acceptable. I was so scarred, so damaged, that I barely spoke in a crowd. Invisibility was my way of surviving.

Still Feels Like High School

Even years later after high school, I was still being made to feel invisible, and insignificant.

One warm summer afternoon, I went to watch a T-ball game in my hometown. It felt more like a pleasant afternoon at an amusement park. Kids wandered playfully throughout the small stadium with ice cream cones, and nachos. The adults mingled with one another, sipping on soft drinks, talking leisurely, smiling and laughing. As I approached a set of bleachers, Kelly, a popular girl I had gone to high school with called out my name. She waved me over and smiled. She was with her husband Scott, whom I had also gone to high school with. I had ran into Kelly throughout the years, and she was always very sweet and kind. We made casual conversation for a minute or two, enjoying catching up.

“Scott”, she called over her shoulder, “aren’t you going to say ‘hi’ to Robin”?

But he just stared ahead indifferently. When she asked him again, I was suddenly thrust back in high school, feeling “unacceptable” again. “Judge’s”, a voice rang out, “do you find Robin acceptable?” The moment hung in the air it seemed for eternity.

“No”, Scott spat out finally.

I was embarrassed, as others watched this shaming exchange. Kelly looked at me apologetically, and smiled. I turned and walked away. I couldn’t comprehend why someone would feel so offended to say a casual “hi”, a mere half second of their time. But that half second was a cold reminder that I was, and always will be “unacceptable” to those whose egos are so fragile.

When I was forty, I discovered I had cancer, and had a bilateral mastectomy. I had chemo once a week for three months, and radiation everyday for six weeks. My hair was finally beginning to come back in when I saw a notification about the class of ’77 high school reunion. It was our 25th reunion. I had never been to any before, still feeling like I wasn’t “good enough” to attend, that I would be ‘unacceptable” still. But having cancer gave me a feeling of “life’s too short to worry about things like that”, so I decided to go. I still had ports in my chest, and my hair was very short, but I was actually excited to attend. After all, 25 years had passed. Surely no one’s going to act as if we’re back in high school, with all the social stigmas still firmly intact, but I was wrong. I was an Air Force veteran, and had earned a degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders from a university. I was accomplished, and I was successful I rationalized. I felt like I had nothing to be ashamed of, despite being made to feel that way in high school.

As my friend Steve, and I were sitting at a table, a group of the “popular kids” sat at a table near us. I had told the group of people I was sitting with about my bilateral mastectomy, and that I still had two ports in my chest. The ports were noticeable, and a few people were asking about them. I pulled the neck of my dress down a tiny bit, and explained the procedure. I looked up and saw some people at the table near ours begin to snicker, and whisper as they continued to look at me condescendingly. I’m sure they thought I was being solicitations, trying to show my “boobs” just for fun. They didn’t try to hid their presumptuous stares from me when I met their gaze.

I tried to brush it off as Steve, and I meandered through the room, occasionally stopping to say “hi” to others. As Steve was chatting with a friend of his there, this friend mentioned that he and his wife, Trish, had seen me at Steve’s reunion. He said she had gone to school with me. Puzzled, I asked him who his wife was. He told me, and I immediately knew who she was, her and I had gone to school together since grade school.

“Oh, I wish I would have known that at Steve’s reunion”, I offered “I would have said ‘hi’ to her. She probably didn’t recognize me either”.

“Oh she recognized you!” he said, then immediately caught himself, looking uncomfortable.

“Oh, I get it”. I said bitterly. I got it all right. A girl I had gone to school with since we were little, couldn’t muster up the courtesy to say “hi”, to humble herself to speak to me. I will always be “unworthy”, in their pretentious eyes.

This may seem like a “no big deal” to some. But the message was loud and clear to me, deliberately sent, deliberately received.

Marriage and Mayhem

Relationships with men were always a problem. My stepfather had demeaned me for so many years that I believed that was normal. That’s what I was comfortable with. I seemed drawn to men who were abusive. Rooted deep in my mind somewhere, I felt guilty for what happened to me years, and years ago when I was little, that something was terribly wrong with me. I was still trying to figure out what unacceptable thing I had done when I was little to make my dad treat me that way. That notion, that deep seeded responsibility I had unfairly burdened myself with, would stay with me for years.

I met my husband on a blind date. He did seem different in the beginning. He didn’t continually criticize me, or strong arm me. I felt “protected”. He seemed proud of me. I wasn’t used to that. I began to let my guard down. I felt sure he would never make me feel anything but acceptable.

I know now that was unrealistic, husbands and wives are going to let each other down, say things that are painful and do things that hurt one another. But I had put so much faith in my marriage that when it began to fall apart it was more than I could handle. I didn’t have a strong emotional foundation to endure it. The same face that once looked at me so lovingly, now looked at me with exasperation, and disappointment. I felt like a burden, an emotional waste of space. He literally turned his back on me when I needed him the most, my tears only seemed to anger him, my need for affection feel on deaf ears. I had to ask him for comfort, and he would grudgingly comply. I was so desperate for some semblance of empathy from him, that I eagerly accepted his ingenuous concern.

On top of all the pain of a failing marriage, people I thought I could always trust betrayed me. My son began distancing himself from me and he wouldn’t allow me to see my beautiful granddaughter anymore. She and I had always been very close. She was the light of my life. I loved having her with me, watching the expressions on her sweet face, listening to her little voice as she rattled off about her day. Being a grandmother completed my life in a way I never thought possible. I loved cuddling with her. She would snuggle close to me, her hair tickling my face while I read to her. She would fall asleep like that, nestled warmly against me. I would hold her for as long as I could, loving the feeling of loving her so much.

I had always had a good loving relationship with my son too, so I had a very difficult time dealing with what he was doing. He became critical, and uncaring. He had changed ever since he became involved with his new girlfriend. When I tried talking to him, he was elusive. Sometimes his girlfriend would answer his phone and scream at me, then hangup. I was confused, and beyond hurt. I could not comprehend my son’s behavior…his lack of empathy, his callousness, his support of his girlfriend’s abuse towards me. I would cry in disbelief of what was happening. I felt like I was trapped in a nightmare. My son, my sweet child, was unrecognizable. His lack of love for me, his apparent contempt for me, tore at my soul. I felt like he had been replaced by an alien force that looked like my son, but wasn’t actually him. The son that I loved and nurtured, would never have treated me so badly, or allowed someone else to also.

I remember when he was around three I was reading him a bedtime story, and he fell asleep snuggled up next to me. His little cheek was pressed against mine. That was such a perfect moment. I told God I could spend eternity with him in my arms like this. He always knew without a doubt how much I loved him. I couldn’t understand why he was doing this to me. I felt like he didn’t love me anymore. I couldn’t cope with that. My children were everything to me, they were my world. I began to feel like I was a terrible mom, that there was something wrong with me. Otherwise, why was the son I loved so much hurting me so badly? Just like I did when I was a child, I rationalized I deserved it, that I was unworthy of love.

I wrote this poem one day when I was thinking about my son.

To The Moon and Back

I found a tattered letter

wrapped in a threadbare cloth

that reminded me of sweeter times

before the innocence was lost

Innocence of a little child

with love still in his eyes

holding his small hand in mine

as time passed us by

Throughout the years I kept that letter

more precious to me than gold

sweeter than the finest honey

or sugar ever sold

“I love you forever mommy”

his precious letter read

he slipped it gently into my hand

as I tucked him into bed

“I love you too forever”

I whispered in his ear

“I love you to the moon and back,

in my heart you’re always near”

The hands of time slipped quickly by

and took a painful toll

forever was too high a price

to waste on my worthless soul

Even though I know by heart

what’s written on that paper

I can still feel his arms around me

in every word I savor

To the moon and back

stretches out in eternity

as I whisper in the quiet dark

“In my heart you’ll always be”

Months of this went by, and I found myself feeling more insecure and sad. Nothing was getting any better. My job performance began to deteriorate, marital problems left me emotionally drained. I missed my son, I missed my granddaughter. The hurt from what he was doing was tearing me apart. I carried that with me every minute of everyday. Buried feelings of unworthiness, and self loathing crept across my soul like cancer.

My feeling of depression grew until it became overwhelming, it was incessant. I felt like crying all the time. I had no desire to get out of bed or eat. When I did get out of bed I stayed in my pajamas all day. I had no interest in anything anymore. I didn’t know where to turn, I began to shut down.

Depression is a relentless cycle. The more I thought about what was happening, the worse my depression got, the more I would think about things. There’s no escape. People would say “just stop thinking about things”. Really?! Thanks, why hadn’t I thought of that? You can’t turn depression off like a faucet. The faucet is broke. I wanted so desperately to be myself again. I was willing to try anything. My doctor put me on anti-depressants, but they didn’t seem to work, so he’d try a different kind. Each time I’d think please God let this one work. I literally begged my doctor to help me find a way to end my depression. My mind was in overload. My brain couldn’t find a place to land. So many thoughts were running through my head at one time, so much pain. I began to feel trapped in this dark feeling of loss. Trapped in my own mind! Depression eats away at your brain, at every thought, until there are no thoughts left, just utter despair.

The weight of sadness became so real I could actually feel it bearing down on my chest. It was no way to live. Who wants to spend every minute of every day feeling that way? I began praying to God that I would die during the night. I begged Him to let me die in my sleep. But I always woke up. I was so angry for still being alive and having to endure another day. I was scared to be alive, scared of what was happening.

The Woman On The Phone

“There are people outside waiting to talk to you Robin”. The woman on the phone told me. “I’ll stay on the phone with you until you go outside, just do what they tell you”.

“What are you talking about”? I asked.

“Just go to the door and open it”. This time her voice took on an authoritative tone. I got up off the couch and looked through the peep hole. A uniformed police officer was standing off to the side of the front stoop. He was peering around a tall hedge, his hand resting lightly on his gun. I quickly backed away from the door in shock, stumbling on my housecoat.

“What did you do”? I cried into the phone. “Why did you call the police”?

“They’re going to help you Robin. Open the door”.

“No, no”! I cried, “why”? I felt like I was suffocating as I gulped for breath. Tears covered my face and fell like rain onto my chest. I tried wiping the tears away so I could see, but they were falling so fast it was of no use. I stumbled down the hallway trying desperately to brush the tears away, I reached my daughter’s room and crouched near a side window. I slowly peeked over the window sill. Another police officer was standing just outside the window, but he didn’t see me. He was looking toward the front of the house. He too had his hand resting on his gun.

“Robin”, the woman said. “What are you doing now”?

I was gasping for breath, afraid to move, scared I would be shot. “Why”?I whispered to her. “Why have you done this to me”?

“It’s for your own safety”, she said sounding aggravated. “They’re not going to leave until you go outside. You don’t have a choice”.

“I never said anything about wanting to kill myself”, I whimpered. I slid down to the floor and covered my mouth with my hand, my fingers pressed hard against my face. I didn’t want the police officer outside of the window to hear me sobbing. I couldn’t grasp what was happening to me. I hated this woman on the phone, this woman who had no idea who I was. She didn’t know anything about me. Yet she reached into my life with her jagged pretense and ripped a hole in it. I was shaking frantically, my hand barely able to hold onto the phone. I could hear the woman on the phone saying something but I wasn’t listening. I looked around my daughter’s room as I crouched on the floor. Just hours before I had came into her room, kissing her cheek softly as I woke her up for school. She had put on cotton candy scented balm before she had went to bed the night before, I could still smell it as I had bent down to kiss her. But now pressed against the wall of her room I felt like an intruder wreaking havoc into the lives of the family who lived there. What would they think of me huddled against the wall while policemen waited outside to take me away?

“Okay”, I told the woman on the phone. “I’ll go outside. My daughter Mariah will be home soon and I don’t want her to see any of this”.

“Good”, the woman said. The compassion she had feigned earlier was gone now. She seemed anxious to be rid of me. I imagined this would make for interesting conversation when she sat down to dinner tonight, clucking her tongue as she recounted the events, all the while feeling smugly superior that she had saved the day.

I opened the door slowly. “Put the phone down”, an officer commanded. I was confused and wasn’t sure where to put it down at. I was still thinking like a human being, but I had lost that distinction when I opened the door. “Now”! he yelled at me. I quickly put the phone down near my feet.

“Come down the stairs and stand here”, another officer snapped as he pointed to an area in the yard. I did as I was told and quickly ran down the steps, my bare feet slapping against the concrete. I counted a total of five officers. Two squad cars were parked in front of the house, a third parked on the side.

An officer walked behind me and told me he was going to handcuff me.

“Why? What did I do? What’s happening”? I sobbed.

“Put your hands behind your back”, he ordered.

I had never been handcuffed in my life. The weight of the handcuffs rubbed against my wrists painfully as he tugged at my hands. With a quick jerk they snapped into place. I stood on the front lawn feeling like I was on exhibition, a freak sideshow in a circus. Cars slowed down as they passed the house, some almost coming to a complete stop to get a good look at me. I turned away from the road to avoid their gaze. I felt ashamed, even though I had done nothing to be ashamed of. The curtain from the house next door was discreetly parted, but I could still see the face of my neighbor staring at me through the window.

The police officers were standing around talking to one another now. Every so often one of them would laugh and shake their head. They were acting like they were at a neighborhood barbecue casually talking about a football game.

“Can one of you put me in a squad car please”? I begged. “I don’t like being left in the yard for everyone to gawk at”. They turned and looked at me, appearing annoyed that I had interrupted their little hen party.

“We’ll put you in when we’re ready to”, an officer spat at me. He looked at the other officers gathered around him and laughed.

“What have I done”? I cried. I was angry now, angry with the woman on the phone and angry with the police. “Is this because I’m depressed”?Fresh tears rolled down my face. “Is this helping me? Is it”? They looked at me with no empathy, no compassion. I could feel my anger growing as they stood there watching me with amusement. This morning I was a wife and a mother, a so called respectable citizen. Now I was a circus clown in handcuffs.

Eventually an officer approached me and steered me to a squad car. “Where am I going”? I asked him. He didn’t say anything. “Can’t you at least tell me where you’re taking me”? He placed me in the backseat and slammed the door without saying anything.

I couldn’t wrap my mind around what was happening. Why am I being treated like I’ve done something wrong, like I’m not worth one scrap of kindness. I hung my head and began crying. The officers were talking to one another now as we drove down the road. One of them laughed and said something about the “crazy ones”. So that’s it I thought, I’m crazy. That’s what they think. “I’m not crazy”, I stammered through my tears. I sat in stunned silence as we drove through town. My mind was blank now, void of any hope of being rescued from this hell.

I saw the hospital looming ahead as we continued to drive. The patrol car slowed down and turned into the entrance marked “Emergency Room”. “What are we doing here”? Neither of them responded. “Why are you ignoring me”? I yelled in frustration. “Don’t I have any rights”? We came to a stop in front of the crowded waiting room. They each took an arm and marched me through the sliding doors. They paraded me through the waiting room like I was an infamous outlaw that had finally been apprehended. All that was missing were the flashing lights of cameras and the urgent voices of reporters asking how they did it. They stared at me in my handcuffs and bathrobe as we made our way to the admissions counter. The admissions clerk looked at the officers as they gave her my information. Now and then she glanced at me, then quickly looked away if I met her gaze. It reminded me of an old joke I had heard before, “don’t make eye contact with the crazy people”.

When they finished admitting me, the officers led me to a room at the back of the emergency room. They finally removed the handcuffs when the security guard arrived, apparently relieving the officers of their claim on me. The security guard stood outside of my room with his hands behind his back. Now and then he glanced at me as if making sure I wasn’t planning to escape. The only furnishings were a hospital bed and a small stool with wheels on it. There were no cabinets in the room, no medical equipment hanging on the walls. This was a room for people like me. A room with nothing I could use to hurt myself or anyone else. It didn’t feel like a safe room, it felt like a holding tank. I sat on the bed and waited, not sure what I was waiting for.

“Can I call my family”? I asked the security guard. “I know they’re wondering what happened to me”?

He looked at me and said it wasn’t up to him, that I’d have to wait for somebody from the hospital staff to talk to me. I sat there and waited, lost in my thoughts. Finally, someone entered the room with a clipboard in his hand. He sat down on the stool and glanced at his paperwork.

“How are you doing…” he glanced at his paperwork again “Robin”?

“How do you think I’m doing”? I responded angrily. “How is this supposed to help my depression? If a person wasn’t suicidal before, this would definitely make them consider it. I never told that woman on the phone I was going to kill myself. She wasn’t even the one I wanted to talk to. I was trying to call Gina my social worker at the cancer center”. I didn’t give him time to interrupt me. Maybe he would let me go. “I just wanted to talk. I was having a bad day. But Gina wasn’t there, another woman answered the phone. I told her I’d call back but she was practically begging me to talk to her. She seemed so desperate to talk, I practically felt sorry for her. So I gave in, I told her I had been feeling depressed lately. She started asking me all these questions over and over, I was getting confused”. I started getting angry just thinking about her. “So she called the police and then I was being hauled off like a criminal”.

The man with the clipboard looked at me for a moment. He didn’t seem to care one way or another. I had no control of my life anymore. What was happening?!

“You’ll have to wait here awhile longer until we get you processed into the Stephens Unit”, he said blankly as he scribbled something down.

“What?! The Stephen’s Unit”? I had heard people refer to the Stephens Unit before. It’s where the crazy people went. “Why? Why do I have to go there”?

“It’s just for a few days”, he replied “somewhere you can feel safe while you sort things out”.

“I feel safe”, I babbled. “I feel safe at home”.

“It will be ok”, he said absently.

He tried to reassure me, but his voice trailed off as he scribbled something down again then left. I felt like I was having a nightmare, but there was no one running in to comfort me.

I went to the doorway of my room and called out towards the nurse’s station. “When is someone coming to get me? What’s happening?” But no one responded. The security officer turned to face me, a look of aggravation on his face. “Don’t look at me like you know me”, I told him. I began to cry again. Nobody there knew me, yet they all treated me like they did. Like I was just some crazy lady they hauled in off the street, unworthy of compassion, unworthy of respect. “I’m just depressed”, I cried. “I’m not crazy”.

I was put on a ninety six hour hold at the Stephen’s Unit. It was all so surreal. There was no empathy or compassion from the staff. One staff member, Rene, seemed hell bent on making my time there miserable. One time in particular she refused me my right to make two phone calls a day. The psychiatrist was arrogant and uncaring. He threw me out of his office when he became exasperated with me. It became painfully clear that people with mental illness were thought to be undeserving of any real concern. We were made to feel ashamed and somehow unclean.

“I understand it now

The vacant shuffle down the hall

Silently making our way nowhere

Just another stain on the wall”

I went back home still depressed, still feeling hopeless. My family didn’t know how to deal with me anymore. They became frustrated with me. I became needy. I needed emotional support, someone to put their arms around me even when they didn’t feel like it anymore, to stay and comfort me when I was at my worst. But I had exhausted them.

Eventually I lost my job, and my marriage. I still longed for my husband, even though how he was treating me contributed to my depression. Memories of when we were happy flooded my mind, the way he would look at me, the way he would caress me, the way he would make me feel so special. Then the reality of our relationship would hit me like a truck, the way he looked at me now, the way he wouldn’t touch me anymore, and the way he made me feel so insignificant. I would cry hysterically, sobbing uncontrollably, feeling so heartbroken and unloved.

My son was still not speaking to me. I missed my granddaughter more than I can convey, the weight of missing her consumed my body, my heart, even my soul. I would think about all the times I held her, all her sweet little kisses, and endless hugs. I missed her voice, I missed cuddling with her, and mostly I missed her love. My spirit was broken, shattered beyond repair it felt.

As I was struggling with all of this, my town, Joplin Missouri, was hit by a devastating F5 tornado. I lost everything I owned. I sat in the ruins, just like I sat in the ruins of my life. I was trying to undergo breast reconstruction again, so I still had drain tubes in my chest. I had no energy, or even the desire to go through the pile of rubble. I just turned my back and walked away, numb with resignation.

I remember lying on the couch one night in a little trailer after the tornado. I was surrounded by donated items, even the couch I was lying on was donated. “Whose life is this”? I cried out loud. Nothing was familiar anymore, physically, mentally, and emotionally. My life had changed so much in such a short period of time it was unrecognizable. My brain did not know where to land, everything had changed so fast. I felt like such a failure, depression consumed me even further. I began to feel overwhelmed with self-loathing for being depressed. I hated myself, I hated my depression, I hated my life…I hated existing.

Some people think that people who are depressed are just feeling sorry for themselves. I was told that. I wish it were that simple. We’ve all felt sorry for ourselves at one time or another and bounced back. But depression is not the same thing. When you’re depressed, you’re sorry you’re alive. You’re stuck somewhere between life and death. You are the real walking dead.

“I want to hide under a bed, in a ditch, deep in a hole in the ground

Somewhere no one can find me, hurt me, somewhere I can’t be found

I want to be swallowed up, somewhere dark, somewhere I can’t move

Wrapped up tightly, barely breathing, I want to be consumed”

I tried to hide from my depression just like I tried to hide from my stepfather when I was little. I actually tried to hide in a closet from it. If it couldn’t see me, it couldn’t hurt me. Depression was the monster at the door now. I was terrified.

My little bit of sadness in the beginning turned into Major Depressive Disorder, also known as Clinical Depression. Clinical Depression is the more severe form of depression. I’d take my pills faithfully. I put a lot of faith in those little pills waiting for them to do big things. But I stayed the same crazy me. That’s what people say when you’re depressed, that you’re crazy. I probably did seem crazy. When you’re depressed you don’t react realistically to difficult situations. I was already on an emotional roller coaster, so I just drug everyone else along with me kicking and screaming.

I felt like I had been dropped into someone else’s miserable life. There were so many voids in my life now, and nothing to replace the emptiness that was left. There was no semblance of my old life, nothing for me to drop anchor on.

Eventually I began to see a therapist, a mandatory therapist. I had no choice other than to go, or I’d be taken to a unit. There was no way I was going back to the Stephen’s Unit. My therapist once asked me why I felt like giving up. I tried to figure out a way to describe it so that she would understand. I said “I feel like I’m holding onto a rope while I’m dangling over a cliff. Below me is a bottomless pit of darkness, above me is my life of darkness. I’ve been holding onto this rope for so long, struggling so hard not to fall, so afraid I will, so worn out. Then one day I looked down at this bottomless pit of darkness, and looked up at my life of darkness, and thought ‘why am I struggling so hard not to fall’? There is nothing up there for me anymore, just unrelenting pain. Holding on is becoming unbearable, it would be so easy to just let go of the rope”.

Sometimes I would lie in bed for three days at a time. I barely ate, my weight began to drop dramatically. Life had no meaning anymore, it was just painful dead weight. I could not cope with everything that was happening. So what does a person do when they’re suffering so much? They try to end that suffering even if it means they’ll die in the process. It wasn’t about wanting to die, I didn’t want to die. But I wanted so desperately to stop hurting.

Everyday was literally a struggle to live. I could not even carry on a simple conversation. Speaking took such painful effort. It meant I had to rise above the pain I was drowning in, and form a rational thought. But my mind was so clouded, and heavy with the weight of sadness, that I felt like I was gulping under water when I tried to speak, chocking on my own misery.

I would often take sleeping pills to escape the torment in my mind, but my dreams were worse than reality. Faces of people that I thought once loved me, swirled around me like a carnival ride I could not escape from. My ex husband’s face smiled mockingly at me, followed by my son’s. My heart would immediately break as I tried to reach out to him. But he would just snarl at me with contempt. I heard my granddaughter’s little voice calling out to me, but I couldn’t find her. Other people appeared and vanished before me like scenes from a movie clip gone haywire. Fragmented laughter and disembodied voices quickly slipped past me, barely audible. I felt a sense of loathing from them as they grinned maliciously at me.

So one night, unable to bear it any longer, I decided to kill myself. I cried for myself, for my pain. I thought of everybody in my life, and rationalized that they would be better off without me. They wouldn’t have to fret anymore, I wouldn’t have to see the exasperation on their faces or hear it in their voice. I readied myself with a concoction of pills, and tried to find the courage to just do it. I thought about my daughter, and cried at the thought of her crying over me. I thought about my son, and began to cry even harder because the pain of what was happening with him overwhelmed me again. As tears streamed down my face, the sheer reality of what I was doing took my breath away. I fell to the floor, and begged God to take me home. I laid on the floor sobbing like a baby, and cried myself to sleep right there on the floor.

When I awoke hours later, I could see daylight peeking through the blinds. With my cheek still pressed against the rug, I felt a sense of contentment. Just a very small measure of relief that I was alive. I began crying again, my breath quivering as my thoughts came into focus. I closed my eyes and prayed. I prayed that this feeling would stay with me, that I would find the strength to survive.

The Aftermath

Depression is like an angry sleeping giant when you’re feeling better. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to take much to rouse it from its sleep. But it awakens with a vengeance. It came roaring at me with everything it had several times since, trying its best to pry my fingers off that rope. Sometimes I don’t understand why I even kept holding on, but I did. It takes more strength to live then it does to die. That’s why so many people let go. It takes the strength of an army to hang on at times.

I know this sounds like a cliché, but time does make it better. But oh, time will try to destroy you also. Time is your enemy, and time is your friend. Trying to live when I felt like dying made time unbearable. I felt like a terrified kid wanting to hide under the blankets until morning, but it was a long, desperate, unbearable night. There were days when time was my friend, when I felt hopeful. But I still felt like I was walking on a “time tight rope”, always dreading the inevitable enemy of time waiting to trip me.

I grasped at anything and everything to save myself during the darkest days of my depression. If someone would have told me that standing on my head, and singing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” would help with depression, I would’ve gladly done that. Talk therapy didn’t seem to help, and medication wasn’t working. It seems I just could not “snap out of it”, like people expected. I was stuck on a train running through my brain telling me I was useless, and worthless.

Rumination can eventually kill you. I could not stop it! Oh God how I wanted to, but the train just kept plowing forward with the same message over and over again. So, I decided to jump off. It takes more courage to hold on, then it does to let go. So when people say those that commit suicide are cowards, have NO CLUE what they’re saying. It’s an all encompassing fear, never ending exhaustion, and the weight of feeling worthless, that forces us to “jump”. It practically pushes us off. We’re afraid to open our eyes in the morning, and afraid to close them at night. We are barely existing.

If it wasn’t for a controversial, and new treatment, I honestly don’t know if I’d still be here. It caused the train to slow down just long enough for me to relax my grip a little without fear.

I could even have a conversation, such a simple thing to most people, but terribly hard for people who are deeply depressed. Life began taking on true meaning. It wasn’t just the treatment, it was being able to finally focus on things outside of myself. As time passed by, I began to feel a sense of normalcy.

I wish I could say I was all better now, but I still struggle with depression. But it does not consume me like before. There are days when I still feel like I am hungover with sadness after an evening of battling depression. An evening where I had began to dwell on things again. I have not seen my son, or my granddaughter in almost 11 years. This is the great tragedy in my life. And always will be. I have missed birthdays, holidays, and milestones in Zoey’s life that I will never get back. I have missed kissing her little cheek, and feeling her arms around me. I have missed hearing her call me grandma, and telling me she loves me. I have missed sharing in her joy, and her sorrows. At times I find myself suffocating in a blanket of sadness, anger, confusion, and love concerning my son. He has caused a hole in my heart that can never be filled or replaced. A longing that never diminishes, a sadness that always lingers.

Forgiveness

As long as I continued to hold onto my anger at people for what they had done to me I would never get better. I know that’s hard to do, it doesn’t mean you’ll forget or have to allow them back into your life. Forgiveness releases that power they have over you, the power to cripple you emotionally. I needed to forgive them, and forgive myself too. I was angry at myself too for hurting the people I loved when I was too consumed with depression to realize what I was doing. When you’re drowning you grab at the closest thing to you to keep from being pulled under. The closest thing to you is usually someone you love. I dragged them down with me as I flailed around in desperation looking for help.

I forgave my stepfather, he was not worth the anger it took to keep the pain he caused alive. I let go of all the anger I felt when I was younger when I was in school, the anger I felt at home growing up, the anger at my son, and my ex, and all the pain they caused. I let go of feeling like I was a punching bag just there to be used. But I think I will always be a defensive person, because I’ve always had to fight, it seems, just to exist. I had to assert my right to be where I wasn’t wanted. I felt like I had to prove I was acceptable all my life. Now, I don’t really care if I’m accepted or not, I don’t care what people think of me anymore, and that has given me emotional freedom. It has given me peace. And that is key to living a life with purpose. It doesn’t have to be a life-changing purpose, like finding a cure for cancer, or climbing Mount Everest. But just a purpose that makes you feel happy, or even contented.

I’ve had to accept my life as it is, without people I always thought would be a part of it. I was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s. But I will not let it control me. Depression controlled me for years. Parkinson’s is just another thorn in my side, not the end of the world. I am planning on living, and traveling solo in my car. A way of proving to myself, and others, that I can roar! That I survived, and that I will thrive!

My purpose now is to help others struggling with the torment of depression. And especially to give their loved ones a glimpse into the hell they’re drowning in. Perhaps then they can find real compassion, real understanding. Anything that gives them a reason to hold onto that rope.

After all the pain, and agonizing sadness, I feel stronger than I have in a long time. I wrote this as a sign of rebirth, a new beginning.

Thank you so much for reading my story. I hope it helps!

If you are struggling with depression, and have suicidal ideation, please call the number below.

The national suicide prevention lifeline

800.273.8255

This book is dedicated to my daughter, and my family for sticking with me. It is also dedicated to my good friend Eddie for pulling me back when I felt like “jumping” so many times.