I will always be second to my brother’s heroin addiction.

I will always be second to my brother’s heroin addiction.

Time and time again I express my feelings to my parents how uncomfortable and unsafe I feel around my brother. Time and time again I tell them that I will not go up to their house if he is there. I’ve stood my ground most of the time. However, my protective instinct for my nephew kicks in and I don’t want him to be the one who suffers because of my selfish feelings towards his father. I feel so bad for him. I was his age when his father’s addiction first started shaking up our family’s life. I’ve blocked out so many memories of my brother when I was younger. I guess years of therapy finally paid off in that sense. I didn’t want to remember those memories. They haunted me for years. However, since my brother’s heroin addiction has resurfaced, I find myself revisiting those memories again. Randomly, sporadically, they appear in my mind. I hate it.

I know he’s my brother and I’m suppose to always be there for him, and I feel like I’ve done that. However, I can’t keep living this lifestyle of his. It stresses me out. It makes me stand on edge. In the past month he’s been arrested for an OUI, crashed his car, lost his job, been in rehab twice, and have hurt everyone in my family.

The way he talks to me is cruel. My mother hates the girl who trashes me on twitter, yet she keeps allowing someone who treats me worst, calls me even more terrible names, and makes me feel unsafe, back in her house.

It hurts my feelings that as much as I stand up for every member in my family, they don’t stand up for me. I tell them how he makes me feel and how I stress when he’s around me. They keep allowing him to come back. It’s hard because I feel like they don’t care enough about how I feel or they don’t take it seriously. I’ll always be second to him and his addiction. What about what I’m going through? What about all the trials I’m facing with my own life? Why do I have to just deal with it? What can I do to make them understand how it hurts my feelings when they choose him over me again and again? He screws them over constantly. He insults my mother all the time. I stand up for her each time. He’s let terrible people into his lives. Why doesn’t my dad protect his family and kick my brother out? He’s not safe to be around. He’s dangerous. He’s manipulative. He does this act all the time like clock work. He shoots up -> parents kick him out -> apologizes or goes into a 24 hour rehab -> they let him back in -> he messes up again -> cycle repeats. It never stops.

I feel bad for my parents because I know they blame themselves for his addiction. They shouldn’t because that is all on him. The only thing I blame them for is to keep allowing him in the house.

What about my nephew?

I don’t want him to feel all those feelings that I felt when I was his age going through the same thing. When I was his age, I hated my parents. I knew my brother was doing bad things and I knew they kept allowing him to stay under the same roof as me. It bothered me so much. And as I child I felt like they didn’t care enough about me to protect me or keep me safe. They just kept allowing something wrong continue in their household. It took me a few years to realize that they just loved their son too much to keep putting him out of the house all the time. I feel so bad for them. I was able to move out and escape the constant nights of my brother’s problems. However, they are stuck there. The stress of his addiction ages us all.

I just want it to stop. I want him to get better. However, after almost 11 years of this, I know he’s not going to get better until he wants to get better. He needs to hit rock bottom. He was so close to that and they just let him back in. I can’t keep living in this life, like this. I’m always on edge. I’m always looking over my shoulder. I don’t eat. I barely sleep and when I do I sleep walk, sleep talk, and grind my teeth. No one cares though. I just keep on going, smiling and keeping to myself. I have lost all my friends. I don’t trust anyone anymore. Everyone has left my side. They’re tired of hearing the same old things just like me. I have no friends. Even my best friend has deserted me. She never answers my calls and texts anymore. She’s always either with her boyfriend, family, or working. I understand everyone has a life and when you’re in a relationship you spend less time with friends. I get it. I just wish I had my best friend back. I could use a friend right now. I could use someone to talk to. My family is all twisted in the web of lies of my brother’s addiction. I’ve never felt more alone than lately. Even though I’ve started talking to a cute guy, I fear it won’t last because my life is too stressful to want to be a part of. My ex (Padriac) and I would fight over it all the time. It’s too much for me, how can I ask someone else to be a part of this craziness? I don’t even want to be a part of it. I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m lost for words. All I have is 11-year-old hope that my brother gets better. I have faith that my parents will find happiness again. I have hope and faith for my nephew that he doesn’t feel the way I did and he knows we’re just trying to protect him. I love my family very much. I just don’t love the life I’m living at the moment.

I wish there was a way to see into the future just to see if I make it out of this alive. I use to think that my brother’s addiction would just kill me, now I wonder if it’s going to claim anyone elses lives as well, like mine? Will I not make it through this? Can someone actually die from a broken heart?

Maybe one day I’ll meet someone who can stand by my side and help me through this all. I’m done going through this all alone. I just want someone to protect me and keep me safe. Maybe then I won’t feel like this anymore.

To praying that my brother gets clean,

Just Meg

xoxo

Nightmares

Trapped in my own personal Hell as I sleep

Whenever I’m stressed I get them. It’s like an old terrifying memory on repeat. It plays over and over and over again. When will the nightmares stop? It’s been over two years since it happened. It got to the point once where I stayed up for four nights straight. Didn’t sleep for over 48 hours. I got sick from it and really worn down. I’m not scare to sleep anymore. It’s not like I’m seeing anything I haven’t seen before in my sleep. But it still shakes me up. I just want the nightmares to be gone forever and never come back.

It’s the same nightmare each time. But each nightmare it differs from point of view. Sometimes, it’s in my own perspective from the night it actually happened, and others I’m floating over the horrifying scene to see it happening to me from above the bed. That’s the scariest one. That’s the one that gets to me. When I’m floating above I can see how scared I was, how hard I tried to fight back, how much I kept trying to get away. I can see the tears streaming down my face and into my mouth as I’m crying out loud for him to stop. In my nightmare when I’m floating above my attack, I try screaming for someone to come into the room. I know it sounds weird but if I could see what would’ve happened if someone had intervened or tried to help me, I wonder what the outcome would’ve been. Would Drew have tried to kill me for successfully getting help? Would he beat me to death? Would he sitting in a jail cell now? I wish I could save myself in my nightmare. I wish I could have saved myself back then.

 

I can see everything in my nightmare. Every detail. Every bruise, cut, scratch, red mark, hand print, sweat, tears, facial expressions, I can see it all. I can see him puffing his cheeks out as he continues to violate my body. He never stops. He never even paused for a moment to think about stopping.

When the nightmare is in my own perspective of the night it happened, I say the same things I said that night, “No!” “Stop!” “Please!” “You’re hurting me!” It’s like reliving the worst night of my life in my sleep. I can feel it happening to me all over again. It hurts me like it did that night. I feel every bruise, cut, scratch, red mark, hand print, sweat and my tears. I have to fight back all over again. But I never can stop him. I hate feeling him in my nightmare. I hate seeing him in my nightmares. I hate having to start over again every morning after the nightmare. It’s all in my mind though. It’s not actually happening again to me. I’m trapped in my own mind.

Whenever I’m stressed, it triggers it all. It doesn’t come back in glimpses, or foggy lenses, or even in small amounts. Once that trigger is pulled, its like a bullet of a memory that gets lodged into your mind and you can’t do anything but let it run its course until it’s over.

It makes me so restless the next few days. I’m so tired. All I want to do is sleep but I can’t sleep without seeing it happen. I’m run down right now, and I feel bad because when I’m tired I can be a little moody. My family doesn’t understand. No one understands. They tell me I need to get over it. They don’t realize it’s not that easy. I’m constantly working to get better. It’s just a hard process. I have a very close family and we all love each other very much. But it’s always been hard for me to reach out when I needed something from them. I don’t like talking to them about things that have happened to me. They all have so much going on and to talk to them about something that happened two years ago seems like such a burden to put on them.

All I want to do is sleep. The past two nights I have crawled into my sister’s room in the middle of the night to sleep in there because I awoke from the nightmares in terror. Whenever I wake up from the nightmare I always feel like either I got free from him in the room and I can escape, or that I got free but he’s coming after me. I hope one day I can put my head down to sleep after a really stressful day and not have to worry about reliving my rape again. I know it won’t be like this forever. It’s just getting harder to deal with now. I just keep pushing off to the side. I can’t keep doing that though because I’m having a hard time with it right now and nobody knows it but me. Once I sleep through the night without having to relive it.

Here’s to hoping I get some actual sleep tonight,

Just Meg

xoxo

A Song For Amy

A Song For Amy – Bobby Bishop

 

This song helped me get through my rape. It’s a Christian song about a girl who tells her story about when she was raped. She’s angry with God for allowing that to happen. But through the song she realizes that God gave us all free will and that some humans decide to hurt others with their free will for their own sick desires. She finds peace within herself at the end of the song.

 

I just wanted to be Beautiful…

There wasn’t much of a choice to be open about it, or to seek help on the matter. I knew though, that the eating disorder I was masking was ironically, eating me away inside.

I was never an obese child, but I was also never a skinny child. “Average” is the word most would describe me, and I hated it. I knew what that meant. It meant I wasn’t fat, but I wasn’t skinny, I was a good amount of chubby to not be put in either category. “Athletic” “Beautiful” “Gorgeous” is the words everyone described my older sister, Kiki. She was always the one who was better at sports, better in school, had more friends, never was in any trouble, had the best grades, and of course, had the best body. “Kiki, you look great!” and then a slightly judging glance at me would then follow-up with a remark like, “Meg, you look like your sister did when she was younger“. Gee, thanks! (insert eye roll). I never felt good enough in my own skin. No matter what my parents would say to cheer me up, I knew what I looked like and I knew how people saw me. I was the second-hand version of my sister.  The rip off version. The card board copy of the original. Not as good as the original, but wasn’t “that” bad.

Thought the hurt in my stomach echoed pain throughout the rest of my body, I refused to “bite” into its traps. I would put up with the dizziness and light-headedness as long as it meant I was going to be thin. I just wanted to be beautiful. I wanted to be that girl who other girls would look at and think, “I want a body like hers.” I wanted to be that girl who guys would look at and think, “She’s got the perfect body.” I just wanted to be able to walk down the hall without my thighs clapping together, mocking me of the slice of pizza I ate, or the cookie I had for desert. I just wanted to be skinny. I just wanted to feel something I had never truly felt; I wanted to feel beautiful.

I don’t remember exactly when I decided to start skipping meals. I do know that I tried my best to do it subtly. I never thought it would lead me down a crazy world of extreme dieting and diet pills. I was determined to feel pretty. And I wouldn’t stop until I felt what it was like to be known as being beautiful. I got compliments here and there about my long brown hair, my white teeth, and soon enough my weight. But it wasn’t enough for me. I wanted more. I needed to keep losing the weight.

The first time I experienced with diet pills I was 15 and a freshmen in High School. I used the lunch money my dad would give me each morning, to buy diet pills off of a girl in the first floor bathroom before the morning bell would ring. She would sell a mix of different diet pills she got from her mom’s medicine cabinet, or her sister’s room. They differed each day and I didn’t really know the names of them. I just knew that they were diet pills. (Note to anyone reading this: NEVER BUY PILLS OFF OF ANYONE! It is extremely dangerous and you never know what they may actually be giving you.) I was buying the assortment of diet pills for about a month when I ended up on the floor of the girls bathroom during first period one morning at school. I remember texting my friend in class that I wasn’t feeling good. I could feel something wasn’t right and started to panic. I don’t even think I told my teacher where I was going when I staggered out of the class and into the hallway towards the girl’s bathroom. My head felt so cloudy. My stomach was pulsating. I could feel my heart beat throbbing throughout my entire body. My mouth got dry. My face got red and hot. I started feeling clammy and could feel sweat coming through my skin. I went into one of the stalls to throw up. I closed the stall door and went to vomit in the toilet, but didn’t make it, I collapsed.

That was the very first time in my life, I had ever passed out or fainted. It was a complete head rush and I had no control over my body. It was scary. I was only out for a couple of minutes before my friend, the one that I had texted earlier, came into the bathroom looking for me. She helped me down to the nurse’s office and told me to say that I was having a panic attack. I didn’t have to lie. I started having one anyways. Luckily, I had always been the innocent girl in school and at home. So when the nurse was checking me over she never asked if I had taken anything that day or lately. Not that I would’ve told the truth then anyways, but she might have been able to tell I was lying. She called my parents to come pick me up. It was the last time I would ever buy diet pills off of someone ever!

I kept my dieting to a minimum for a few years. I would go on and off with skipping meals. The second someone would notice I hadn’t eaten, I would make it a point to eat something in front of them. I was terrified of anyone finding out how much I loathed my body.

A steady increase of hatred for my body began after my surgery. I was 15 when I had to have scoliosis surgery. I have severe scoliosis and it was effecting the way my body was growing. Surgery was our last resort. I grew 3 inches from the surgery, and now stand at 5 Feet and 3 inches tall! For the rest of my life, I would live with titanium metal imbedded into my spine, and an 18 inch scar down my back to remind me, I was an alien to my own body.

After the break up between me and “Padriac”, I stopped eating. I was so depressed in the beginning of the break up, I couldn’t eat or sleep. When I started to feel better I decided to continue not eating. This time my eating disorder would last longer, and get more extreme, than it ever had in the past.

When Padriac and I broke up I was weighing around 135 pounds, on a good day. Within 3 months off starving myself and experimenting with diet pills, I was weighing 110 pounds. Finally, I was starting to feel good enough. – But it wasn’t enough for me. At first my goal was 120 – then 115 – then 110! But once I was there I wanted to be skinnier! I wanted to weigh 100 pounds. It was like an addiction. I couldn’t lose enough weight. I had to keep going. It was an itch, that I just had to scratch. Three days a week, I would put the entire small container of mirlax into my water bottle and drink it. Along with 2 laxative tablets with it. Even though I was getting sick from it, I was finally starting to feel skinny!

Ever had a colonoscopy? Yeah they suck! I had to have one done, and during the prep for the colonoscopy it hit me! I realized that I was losing a lot of weight from the prep. I decided to start eating even less, taking more diet pills, and up the dosage of laxatives. As ill as I was feeling, I was finally getting compliments all the time.

• “Wow! Have you lost weight?”
• “You look amazing”
• “You look hot!”
• “I’d kill to have your body!”

Even my mother and my sister were taking notice on my new body, and I was loving every minute of it. Although, every minute was spent in stomach quenching hunger pains, I was happy I was finally being noticed in a positive way! The truth of the matter was; I only felt pretty when I was hungry.

Then the comments started to change:

• “Are you feeling okay? You look very thin.”
• “What, are you anorexic?”
• “Why don’t you want to eat anything for lunch?”
• “Have you really already eaten?”
• “You look sickly.”

I tried to lie through my responses but I didn’t have the energy to do so. So, I finally spilled to my sister my secret weight loss plan. Needless to say, she wasn’t impressed. She told the one person I had tried to hide it from the hardest. The one person I hate to worry. The one person I hate to disappointment more than anyone. She told my mother I had an eating disorder.

My mother, being the caring and loving woman that she is, filled my head with scary facts about eating disorders and what they do to your organs. She begged me to stop hurting myself. I never thought of it like that before. But, she didn’t understand. I felt so ugly all the time! I already have to live with scars all over my body. I already have to live with my back being the way it is for the rest of my life! I just wanted to be beautiful! I was so angry she couldn’t understand where I was coming from. Then I saw it. The look in her eyes that I had been trying to avoid. She was sad. She was disappointed. She was worried about me. Just that one look in her eyes, and I had to stop.

However, stopping isn’t as easy as we’d like it to be, is it? Every time I would get asked out for a date, or would want to wear a snug outfit, I’d be tempted to reach for my pills and laxatives. I needed to get help. I was ashamed though. I’ve never been one to ask for help. I was afraid of looking weak. So if I was going to get help, I’d do it without anyone knowing it, and that’s just what I did. I did research on the internet, participated in forums of other people going through the same thing, I even got support from hotlines for eating disorders. I still wanted to be thin, so I starting eating better. I even started going to the gym with my sister. She keeps me motivated, and even though she doesn’t know it, she supported me a lot through my struggle to stop my eating disorder.

I struggled with my eating disorder from when I was 15, until I was 20. I spent five years of my life trying to hurt my body to make it look like the photo-shopped girls on the magazines. I wish I could tell my 15-year-old self, not to do those things, not to hurt yourself like that. I’d tell my 15-year-old self to start loving who you are now, instead of when it’s too late and you’re 20 years old and starting from scratch. It’s hard, but it hurts the ones around you when you put yourself down and hurt yourself. I honestly believe if I had more self-confidence and been able to love myself back then, a lot of bad things that happened to me later on, wouldn’t have happened. When you hate yourself the way I did, or in any way at all for that matter, you make stupid choices. You put yourself in places and situations where you don’t belong. How you treat yourself, is how others around you are going to treat you.

To any girls or boys out there struggling to find the good in yourself – Be Strong! Have Faith! Please, just be yourself. Don’t try to be others in the crowd, those people are already preoccupied with their miserable lives. Be your own person and fill your life with positive thoughts and love! I know that sounds cheesy but it breaks my heart that there are people out there feeling the way I once felt. I would do anything to take that pain away from you. Trust me, I would. There is only one person who can take that pain away, and that’s yourself. You need to get rid of the negative thoughts about yourself and embrace the amazing person that’s been waiting to come out and show the world how amazing you are! It’s hard when you can’t seem to find a reason to be who you are, but be your own reason! Your future self would tell you to be yourself, because yourself is a wonderful person!

You are beautiful! You are loved! Never forget that!

To loving yourself,

Just Meg

xoxo

Trapped

Trapped

 

Trapped in a past

I can’t seem to break free from

Isolated by walls of mistakes

That no one can seem to get by

 

Weakened from a former love‘s wounds

Which can’t seem to heal

Pushed down by words of force

From people I once looked up to

 

Crawling for a way out of this

But escaping is useless

For it is impossible

To run from yourself