Dream come true. Chapter twenty three. Life worth living.

On my journey to discover how I could find happiness in life, for me and my children, I read that dreams can come true, if you believe they can. I wished that I could prove I was not stupid, like my mother had claimed and others believed. I believed that those worthy of respect were cleverer than me. Only the educated were worthy of respect. An outdated belief from my parents, that I had accepted as my own. It was time to change that belief into one that made me feel good about myself. I know now, we all deserve respect and are as worthy as the next, whether we had an education or not.

I never attended college and left school without qualification. I had always been too afraid to ask a college to give me a try. Some times you have to just go for it, no matter how scared you are, so aged 36, in 1996, I enrolled at the University of Central Lancashire. My intention was to do a one year foundation course to build up my confidence and discover if I could handle the life of study. I filled in the university application form and handed it in. Later, after talking to a woman who was sat beside me, I realised I had filled in the wrong form and had actually signed up for a degree course. I did not even know what degree course I had signed up for. I was too embarrassed to admit that I had filled in the wrong form, so said nothing. A few days later, a letter from the university came and I expected it to say sorry you have not been successful on this occasion but it didn't, it said, I was successful and it gave the dates for me to start. For a brief moment, I felt euphoric. The anxiety and fear of not being good enough was never far behind though, and as I laid in bed that night, I tormented myself with the inner voices that were telling me, ‘who do you think you are? you are too thick to study'. Becoming a student was a massive achievement. I can remember feeling rather proud of myself before the guilt set in and I would feel bad. My mother told me it was sinful to feel proud and I believed her.

For a while I struggled to accept myself unconditionally, to know that I too was worthy of a good life, to believe and accept that it was okay to feel good about myself. I wanted to believe in myself but the believing part was like trying to learn a new language, I struggled to understand that, yes, it was okay for me to feel good and to enjoy life. Feeling good did not happen over night about myself did not come naturally or easily and I had to learn to allow myself to feel good. I wanted to prove I was not stupid and here I was, achieving what none of my family had achieved, a place at university. Here was the gormless, stupid little bastard, as my parents called me, doing a degree, getting an education. A position, I could have only have dreamt of in my wildest dreams.

David, my husband resented me bettering myself and his attitude made me more determined to continue. It became clear how much he did not want me to have the freedom that education would bring after I broke down one night. The stress of working two jobs, trying to be a mum to my young children, as well as a student, got the better of me and I was exhausted. I had to work as much as I did because David, although he had a good salary, was drinking a lot and leaving us short every month. We were getting into debt and he carried on drinking. I was doing everything I could to keep the family together and really struggling with depression and anxiety. Life just seemed like an never ending nightmare and I could not wake up. David would say, 'You would be able to relax more, if you stop wasting your time with all that women’s crap that you study'. When the kids misbehaved he would tell me 'The kids would behave better if you were home more', or, you think more about your studies than you do your own kids'. Any sense of respect I had for him and I did not have much, went out the window when I realised that he wanted me to fail.

I turned to the bottle to deal with my extreme unhappiness. I felt trapped, frustrated and very angry about the situation I found myself in. I was ashamed that I could not succeed in my marriage and make it work, but I had tried. I could not see a way out of the marriage without many getting hurt. I could not bear the thought that all the trouble I would cause if I pushed for a divorce. There had been a time when I thought I could trust this man, who declared his love for me every day, and I told him about my past. He was now using my past against me, forcing me to stay. I got to the point where I was going to go insane with stress and I could not cope. I tried to explain my feelings to David but could not make him understand. He did not care. ‘What do you mean, you are in emotional pain?’ he said to me one night when I was begging for a divorce. He refused to give me a divorce or to leave the family home. I had no where else to go and could not face taking my children to a hostel. Time passed living a life of misery and then I found that I could not face being in the same room with him any longer. I threatened to leave and he threatened to call social services and tell them I was mental and an unfit mother. He told me, if I did not pull myself together he would take my children away and I would never get them back. For a while I believed him. I can hardly believe that my self esteem could be so low that I allowed myself to be controlled by threats. Like others in abusive relationships, I could not think straight. I was afraid of what would become of me and my children and I did not know if I would cope. I was desperate to leave but too scared to for years.

I decided that since my husband was not going to stop drinking or let me leave with the children, I might as well join him. I started drinking again even though I knew it was dangerous for me to do so, with my mental state being so fragile. Under the influence of alcohol, whenever I got upset and frustrated, I would beat myself. Using my own fist, I would lay into my own face, punching myself hard, giving myself black eyes, busted lips and facial bruising. I was ripping my own hair out and kicking and punching walls and trees. My anger turned inwards. Even though I never wanted to hit or hurt another human being, I was seriously hurting myself. All my life I had been bullied, kicked, punched, slapped and I knew I would never allow another to touch me again, or I would have them arrested, but here I was doing it to myself. I was purposely hitting myself so hard, while I stood at the top of the stairs, hoping to knock myself out and then fall down the stairs, to double my chances of getting hurt. Anything to stop the incredible feelings I was experiencing, feelings I thought I could not escape. I felt trapped and had no one I could talk to. If I had someone to talk to I would have put a stop to the destructive lifestyle I was living. I was too overwhelmed with what was going on in my life to think straight. I felt incapable of making a decision for myself because I had allowed another to take control of my life, again.

Again, I sought help from my doctor for stress and anxiety and for my depression. I was prescribed a popular anti depressant at the time, Seroxat. Marketed as the miracle happy pill, I gave it a go. Within a few days of taking Seroxat, I was more suicidal than I have ever been. I was bombarded with intrusive thoughts, urging me to end it for everyone sake. I was seriously struggling with extreme paranoia and panic attacks since starting this medication yet my doctor would not believe me. Part of me thought that I was slipping into serious mental state of which I would never recover, another part of me believed the drug Seroxat, had some bearing on my declining mental state. I started experiencing terrifying nightmares, hallucinations and feelings like electric shocks to my brain that were strong enough to knock me to the floor. Every day was a struggling to keep it together and not let others know how bad I felt. I felt like a failure and I was terrified that someone would come and take my children away from me.

Late one night, I snapped. I took a cocktail of drugs, washed down quickly with a bottle of wine. I went into my children’s bedroom and kissed them good bye. ‘Where are you going?’ my son asked. ‘Whatever happens, know that I love you and always will’. I kissed him and told him to go back to sleep and then I went into the bathroom and lay on the floor and waited to die. As I laid there sobbing and waiting for the end to come, I felt a calmness come over me. 'This is for the best,' I thought. No more will I mess up my life or the lives of my children. I felt like I was sinking in to a nice warm cosy place and I allowed myself to sink into that place. Then I suddenly realised, as I lay there waiting for the end, that my husband would not love my children and care for them like I do. He would not think to tuck them up in bed and let them know they are loved. It all came flooding back, how I had felt when my mother had taken her life and left me here all alone. I allowed myself to be taken to hospital to have my stomach pumped. A few days later I packed my husbands clothes and asked him to leave.

I passed my degree with honours and I should have been proud. I know now that I was still hanging on to the belief of my parents that it was wrong to feel proud. I knew I could get over the belief that was stupid because I knew I was not. I could stop feeling defensive towards life and learn how to enjoy life rather than fight it. I put all anger and bitterness towards David to one side and invited him to a meal, with me and the children, to celebrate my passing. I was in a good mood and thought that I could deal with anything now that I had succeeded in getting myself an education. I drank a couple of glasses of wine to celebrate and woke up in the police cells the next morning. I was terrified of what I might have done because I had no memory of anything other than every one enjoying the meal. It transpires, I had flipped after sarcastic remarks from David and attacked him. The police were called out to a disturbance at my house and I attacked them too. The wine had reduced my inhibitions and relaxed me to the point where my buried anger had exploded to the surfaced and something within me snapped. I had a seriously aggressive side to me that I did not like. I felt I had a dangerous side and that frightened me because I would never know when this dark side of me would surface. I had too much pent up pain, anger, guilt, shame and frustration to allow myself to lose control again. I was becoming like my mother, described by my granddad as, this 'Jekyll and Hyde' character. I was too frightened to touch alcohol again and I knew there was always the risk I could seriously hurt someone if I got drunk again.

As far as I was concerned, I would never make the same mistake again. I would never be in another relationship again or allow another to take control of my life. I had stayed in an unhappy marriage for all the wrong reasons and when I look back I find it incredulous that I would do so. I also stayed married for the children's' sake and I learnt the hard way, you cannot pretend for the sake of the kids. The kids know there is something wrong. We cannot hide our deep unhappiness from our children and if we try, then our children will be unhappy too. I did not want my children to be unhappy so I gave up looking for love and companionship and dedicated my life to raising them the best way I could.

I wasted ten years of my life in this unhappy marriage. Too many years went by while I struggled to make a decision to leave a situation where I was so unhappy. I regret that I did not make that decision much sooner. My children suffered for my mistake of trying to make a destructive marriage work. They grew up with a mum that was stressed, angry, frustrated and depressed. This is not the person I wanted to be, I wanted to raise my children in a loving home and I did not know how. I found it difficult coping on my own and became the mirror image of my own mum. I love my children with all my heart and every move I made I made for them but deep down I was resentful of the difficulty of my life. I know now that I martyred myself, constantly doing for others in the hope they will like me. I know now that if life it does not feel good, it is up to me to change it and I can change it. No one needs to put up with any kind of abuse. I also learnt that dreams can come true if you believed they can. At one time I could only dream of having an education and now had a degree. I also saw evidence in my life that I could achieve much higher than I used to think possible.

Next chapter. My angel

Previous chapter. Loveless marriage

Why I tell my story

History of women and depression through the ages. Part one. Birth of civilisation and dark ages