Life is what you want it to be. Chapter thirty. Life worth living.

I have written about my life, the effects being abused as a child had on my life, about my life long struggle with depression. About how my earliest memories of life, are of being beaten, physically abused by my mother and sexually abused by my dad. I was left to deal with the abuse on my own, by the authorities meant to help me. My parents treat me with contempt and as a result, I developed a negative self-concept and felt unloved and worthless for most of my life.

By the age of ten, I had survived numerous attempts on my life by my mother that included strangulation, attempted drowning and poisoning. My mother's sudden death when I was ten years old, put a stop to further attacks.

My father and others sexually abused me from a very early age. All my early memories of my dad are ones of being sexually, physically or emotionally abused and they are memories I would rather not have. The last time dad abused me, I was fourteen and already seriously depressed and trying to cope with my confused emotions by self-harming. I was offered little support as a depressed teenager and I had no where to turn.

Having a low self-esteem and no one who cared about me, I ended up in abusive relationships, married three abusive men and continued to be abused and lived a miserable existence, until one day I finally found the courage to say, STOP! Enough was enough. No more will I allow myself to be abused or allow myself to settle for a life void of happiness.

I went on a mission to understand my depression and search for ways to lift my mood when all other efforts had failed. I did not want to be depressed. I had no quality of life, just depression and my battle with it. People would say, 'Pull yourself together, everyone gets depressed'. I could not pull myself together. The depression I experienced was not like some would say, 'I feel a bit depressed today', but a deep dark depression, like a long dark tunnel with no sign of light at the end of it.

For many years I managed to work, raise my children, study for a degree and counselling qualification despite my depression, but inside I was in shreds. I found every day a serious struggle as I tried to carry on as normal as I could. Then came a time when I could no longer carry on pretending to be ok when I was not. I could find no joy in life and at the time, could not imagine what would brighten up my life. 'Surely your children are enough to make life worthwhile', someone once told me. I felt terrible guilt because even though I love my children and lived for my children, my depression did not lift. In front of them I had to pretend I was happy but I did not feel it.

I had desperately sought the cure of my depression by taking the academic route. I seriously thought I was depressed and not getting cured because I did not have the right language to explain to my doctor how I felt. A degree was suppose enable me to explain in a clear precise way what I was experiencing. Understanding my depression and the possible causes did not cure me. Prescription drugs, psychiatry, psychotherapy, did nothing to help.

I had spent my life working, studying, researching everything I could get my hands on in an effort to help myself recover from depression. I wanted to learn so that I could fix myself and get on with life, so that I could pass the information on and hopefully others would be helped too. Intellectually I understood everything I had studied and was often inspired, but still I was in the same situation, depressed!

I saw all the specialists who inform me that I would have to live with my depression as there was nothing they can do, other than give me drugs to numb me up a bit. Maybe I had clinical depression, the clinical psychologist did not know the answer. Maybe my head was so damaged as a result of abuse, and now I am not able to feel joy. The specialists did not know and neither did I.

I did not want to be drugged for the rest of my life, numbed just enough that I can function to do daily chores that needed doing. I was not about to give up another minute of my life being drugged up so refused medication. My life had not been worth living but I did not want to be a total zombie like I have been most of my life, under the influence of prescribed drugs. I did not want to just get through life, I wanted to enjoy life.

Out of desperation, I contacted a brain surgeon at Bristol University, England, and asked if he could help me. He agreed to help me by probing my brain and stimulating parts of it in an effort to cure me of depression. I was prepared for any risks that there might have been taking such a drastic step in an effort to lift my depression. I needed referring but my doctor said no one would fund such a treatment.

When life got really difficult and I lost my dearest friends, became physically ill and gave up on my mission to get better. My physical health deteriorated because I barely left my bed or ate a decent meal. I was too devastated to carry on trying to survive or get better. I did not want to try any more, life was too hard. I was extremely lonely, never seeing another person to talk to for weeks on end. I was cold as my body struggled with raynaud's and fibromyalgia and spent my freezing days trying to stay warm. I gave up and was just laid in my bed, waiting for the end to come, slowly, lonely and in pain, I went towards death, too exhausted with the struggle of life to do anything else. I could see no purpose for being alive other than to be there should my children need me. A big part of me wanted to stop the struggle of life and the depression that had haunted me all my life and I was prepared to give in. As usual I had an inner voice telling me, 'Get up and do not give in now!' This time when I got up, things changed and I found an inner strength to get up and try something else to make myself feel better, I wrote about my experiences. I shared my whole embarrassing life with strangers and I felt better about myself and my life.

As I shared my story with others, I realised like I had never realised as clearly before, I was ashamed and embarrassed that my life was ruled by depression, a so called mental health problem, and embarrassed and ashamed of my past and myself. I felt stupid that I had accepted the label of depression so many years ago. At the time of diagnosis I had been badly beaten and had teeth marks in my face along with two black eyes and a busted mouth. There was only the doctor I could tell, I had no one else. I was taught you can trust a doctor and so I believed him when he said my distress was depression. Now I know, I was very unhappy and hurt because I had been beaten, like I had been all my life, not depressed. I needed help or advice not a label and drugs.

We are ruled by our beliefs and what we belief about life and ourself is reflected in our experience. Subconsciously, I was still living in fear and believing that my mothers labels of mental, stupid, gormless were true. I know now that I have nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about. My life has taught me that I am strong and I am a survivor and I was determined to find happiness one way or another.

I learnt to identify my negative beliefs about myself and write them down. There were many and were all about not being good enough, worthy enough, good looking enough, clever enough and so on. It was a heart breaking process but an important exercise as a negative belief system was destroying my chances of happiness. I believed I was worthy of nothing better than what I got from life. For each negative belief I wrote a new positive one and then erased the negative belief from my note book. Everyday I went over and over my new beliefs until eventually I started to believe them myself and felt that I could really change my life for the better. I became excited about life.

I know now that I do have a choice. We all have choices. I recognise now the choices I had in my past were, to stay in an abusive situation, or not. To accept any form abuse, or not. To stay in unhappy situation, or not and many other similar situations, I had a choice and I chose to stay. Seems an alien idea to me now, to stay in an abusive situation, but I did.

I understand now that I could have been living a happy life but chose not to. I could have been living a life of my dreams, a glorious happy life. All I needed to do, to achieve such a happy state, was to believe it was possible. If I could have imagine that it was possible for my life to be different, it would have been. I needed to believe that it could be true that I was as worthy of happiness as the next person. It does not matter who we are, our race, sexuality, religion, colour or culture, social class, employment status or gender, we all deserve happiness, we all deserve to feel loved. In order to have happiness, we have to believe that we are worthy because life can be what you want it to be, if you believe it can.

I am beginning to believe that I am worthy of a happy life of joyful experiences.

Chapter thirty one to follow

Previous chapter. Demonic demon within.

My story and why I tell it

Self-harm. Part one