Defiant Not Compliant – Cerridwens heart’s Mental Health Journey Part 2
An abusive alcoholic father, a mother who wished she had aborted her, caused Cerridwen to self loathe. This finally led her to develop mental health challenges. Cerridwens Heart continues her awe inspiring story from the last time below….
Drinking heavily was the norm in my life growing so why should I be any different? Besides I was okay I maintained a 4.0 average in college, I could hold a job and excel at it, people liked me so, what did it matter if I didn’t like myself? No big deal.
And the drugs I could now afford as well with my new found success were just a bonus, they numbed the pain, gave me energy and got me through long work periods as an apprentice.
I had it all, money in the bank, traveled when and where I wanted, had a body that wouldn’t quit and any guy I wanted, and yet I wasn’t happy and I often considered if the world would be a far better place if I wasn’t in it.
My wake-up call about the drinking came one night at a major social function. I was sober and approached an old friend who’s debut as a film director I was attending. I went up to him gave him a warm hug and started chatting away. He stood back looked at me and said “I’m sorry but have we met before?” I thought he was of course joking.
“Mike it’s me Kanga” I told him laughingly, using the old familiar nickname he’d always called me by. There was a look of shock on his face as it dawned on him who I was. His initial response was short and succinctly put. “Oh, I’ve never seen you sober before. I didn’t recognize you.”
Needless to say it hit me like a ton of bricks and I made a very conscious choice to change that part of my life then and there and I did, thankfully.
After that change, I still bounced between relationships thinking that my happiness lay with somebody else making me happy and making me feel complete. I still did not realize that I had to be happy within myself and more importantly that I had to learn to love and accept myself faults and all so that I could be at peace with my soul.
One relationship in particular was pretty significant in my life, I met and fell in love with a man named John, who was an alcoholic who suffered from bipolar disorder.
I naively believed that love could conquer all and I stood by him through all of it, often sacrificing myself for him. When he sobered up, took his meds, kept his therapist appointments he was wonderful.
A talented musician, an extraordinary loving man, who adored me, but when he wasn’t he was dark, brooding and often cruel. He broke my finger one night in a drunken rage, as he tried to force a ring onto my finger that had belonged to his late wife who had completed suicide.
That event left me cowering in fear, waiting for a police unit to arrive. He sobered up for a while after that, apologetic and begging me to stay which I did, after all love would change him. Right?
The suicide attempts started not long after that. His demand for intimacy was ‘to bring us back together and connect emotionally’. Afterwards I got ready to go into work. I can remember standing in the bathroom straightening my work tie and thinking we’d turned a corner, that things were looking up for the two of us.
Instead my world came crashing down as I walked into our living room only to find sprays of blood on the walls and all over the new sofa we’d purchased just a week earlier…He’d slit his wrists.
As crazy as it was as I stood screaming for help, the one thought I remember thinking was, “You don’t even want me to eat on the sofa because you’re afraid of marring its pristine condition.” I realize now it was only my minds way of trying to preserve me from having a total meltdown.
An ambulance arrived and the two of us were carted off to the ER at St. Michael’s Hospital. As I watched him being stitched up, listening to him ranting, I wept as I looked at his blood on my hands and covering the engagement ring that I wore.
There were multiple suicide attempts after that first one. I spent endless hours with him in emergency rooms, as he was repeatedly stitched up, had his stomach pumped or whatever the appropriate course of action was at the time.
Emotionally I was a mess, my doctor put me on antidepressants, gave me sleeping tablets and did his level best to help me through all of it. I tried leaving John, multiple times but always came back as he begged me not to leave him.
In our next blog Cerridwens Heart concludes her story on her mental health journey.
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