A Particularly Difficult Week

After a particularly difficult week, I have decided to try to get some help coping with my recently changed life. I have suffered from mental illness, depression, and anxiety issues and have had problems from substance abuse for all of my adult life. To make matters worse, I have chosen to keep these things about me private, so there is no one for me to talk to that understands. I need a counselor that specializes in both.

If I had an answer to the question of “which came first” perhaps I would not be writing this or perhaps I would be dead. For those of you who have never considered the question, you can get some good information here: https://www.addictioncenter.com/community/mental-illness-and-addiction-which-came-first/ I certainly cannot figure out what came first, because both issues began after I turned eighteen and was out on my own.

As for my week, well, let’s just say that I have had both conditions interact and cause mayhem in my newly appointed title of: widow. My beautiful husband of nearly forty years died on April 12, 2019 at the age of 58 after four months in hospitals and four months of at-home hospice care. This one sentence sums up how my life changed. I was his caretaker. I welcomed many people into my house during this time, all his friends and family. All of them offered help to us during that time and all said to me that they wanted to be there for me after he died, some insisting and even making tentative plans to meet some time in the near future. Only two of my closest friends have helped me and kept in contact. Two other of his acquaintances left phone messages, but I did not reply. I was, to say the least, devastated at the lack of compassion and abrupt ending of communication. A couple of his friends were calling me regularly to check on us, and a few were stopping by regularly right up to the end.

I have felt like I did not belong in this world since my husband died. And, I have come close to ending my life. This change threw me into a depressive time bomb. It might be easy to understand why I am depressed, but it might not be so easy to figure out why, after many years of sobriety, I now want to drink, do drugs, and be reckless. Hence, I am a time bomb and need help.

I have done many things that I am not proud of in my life, and I have a lot of guilt for choosing to jeopardize everything that I have now just to get wasted. I did not accept hospice’s counseling services, because I felt that it would not help me, because I also suffer from substance abuse and did not want to talk about that with them.

For years, I have always said that it was the guilt that kept me clean. As long as I do not do things that make me feel guilty, I could stay clean. And, that worked for a lot of years. The difference is that now, I am feeling guilt from both sides, from making a choice to use drugs and alcohol at this fragile time in my life and from all of the decisions that I made that I feel were wrong when I was caring for my beautiful husband. I feel like a failure. Everyone told me that I did a wonderful job caring for him, but I am not one to take compliments to heart. I am extremely critical on myself and have always seen myself as unworthy.

Now, last Friday, I took the first step at taking care of myself since he got sick nearly a year ago, and I called to get a list of counseling agencies. I started going down the list and making calls.

The first place that I called asked me what type of counseling I needed. I told them that I lost my husband almost four months ago and that I was depressed and unable to get better and that I also had a substance abuse problem and was getting scared. They asked me for my name and said it was so that they could put me on a four month waiting list. My response was short. I said: “This is not something that I can wait that long for.” and after no response from them, I hung up.

Down the list a bit more, and I realized that I did not want to go into a busy office and waiting room in a town where I know a lot of people. My “past” comes back to haunt me. There have been times in my life when I have gone to get counseling help, but I have always quit and do not now wish to step back into the offices where I used to go. And, since I have gone to great lengths to avoid the stigma of my mental illness, I do not want to run into people that I know. I do not want to be judged or laughed at, which are things that have happened to me before because of my behaviors or lack thereof. And, I certainly do not want to run into any of the people that I knew when I was actively using, and there are a lot of people who I wronged. I lived that life for ten years and have feared running into some people from back then all of my life. And, there have been times, embarrassing times, when I pretended not to know someone, left the room or place of business abruptly, or have chosen to change plans if anyone I knew from back then would be somewhere.

It is interesting to note that a lot of people feel the same as I do and hide their mental illness. There are many reasons to be up front and honest that I never thought about, like “receiving encouragement” and some other good interesting information that is on NAMI’s website: https://www.nami.org/find-support/living-with-a-mental-health-condition/disclosing-to-others

For me, I have suffered for over forty years, so I do not see myself disclosing something so personal. However, I am writing this to help others who feel the same. I have suffered from keeping this private. I have lost my family and now my former in-laws and family. No one can seem to accept or understand why there have been times when I have been unavailable for family functions. I have done this to many people, over and over with no explanation. That has included staying away when I get paranoid, being MIA when I feel anxious, I have avoided doing things due to my depression, I have episodes of low self-esteem and hatred for myself so much that I could not bear to go out or see people, and I often feel like a failure.

The reason that I put the last line in is because half way through my husband’s illness, I was the recipient of a seething and hatred filled letter from a loved one of his who I imagined would never write such things. Especially, since my husband was dying, it was not received well, and I cried a lot over it. It seems that over the last forty years, they think that I am selfish, I have hurt family members by not showing up to functions, repeatedly, and I have avoided some people “like the plague” when they insist that they have always been super nice to me. There you have it. That letter was from someone that I have never told about my disabilities.

Some years before, when an extremely close relative was dying, I could not handle seeing them that way and just left others to carry the burden of final preparations and what not as the end neared. After the death, I went to bed and stayed there all winter depressed gaining forty pounds and crying rather than get help. I tried to commit suicide, but the pills just put me to sleep, and I never told anyone during that difficult time. When I came out of that in the spring, it was too late, none of my own family members would speak tome, and I lost all of them. Again, there you have it. I never told any of them about my disabilities. One time toward the end of my husband’s life, a nurse asked what I was doing to take care of myself saying that she saw a lot of his family members but not mine. I told her that it was because I had no more family. Nothing more was said, because I was crying.

Back to the list of counselors. The next one said she did not do substance abuse but a person she knew did, but they did not return my call. There were two that did not answer their phones, and I did not want to leave a message or wait, as I felt that I needed an appointment on my calendar, in order to survive. It was a positive thing that I felt was necessary. One counselor happened to be gone on vacation for two weeks, and two of them are located in hospitals, and I do not want to run into someone that I know in that type of situation. I think that I fear that someone that I know will ask why I am there, and I will have to lie. It is now the weekend, and I got no appointment. There are three more possibilities on the list, and I will try first thing Monday. In the meantime, I have something to look forward to that will help me. I fully intend to be honest with this person, to go to as many appointments as necessary, and to allow myself to accept help. My future depends on it.

I have always been unable to explain myself and my behaviors to my family. I chose to keep it secret to avoid the stigma. As you can see, this has caused me tremendous pain and heartache. I respect everyone who has been able to tell others that they suffer from mental illness or substance abuse.

If you find yourself in this extreme and similar of a situation and are wanting to use drugs or alcohol or commit suicide, please ask for help by calling the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255 https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org