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First off, I haven’t taken my Mom’s cancer diagnosis well at all. In fact, I think I’ve been so upset by it that it has caused me to be upset in every other avenue of my life. I’m not taking it well because I know deep down that this is the end of the road for her. She has cancer in four different places inside of her body (Lung, Liver, Bone, and Kidney) so in the back of my mind I know in all honesty this probably isn’t treatable, and it’s killing me inside. My Mom has always been my biggest supporter, and pretty much the one person who I’ve known without a doubt has loved me my entire life, and it’s killing me inside to know that soon she will be gone, and I know the agony that she is going to have to go through shortly because of this disease, and I hate it. Death is a natural part of life, I understand that, but no matter how or when it happens you are never ready for it. I really don’t want to have this “woe is me” attitude about this, and I know people are in worse situations then I am constantly, but when something like this happens to you it really changes you; and you usually react one of two ways to it to which I’ve reacted badly, and I’ve became so angry about it that I just can’t deal well with it. In Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone wrote, “The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life.” I’ve overcame so much in my life, and yet the ghosts of the past still echo in the back of my mind constantly; and I can’t put certain things that have happened to me to rest. I suffer from major depression, and it all starts with my childhood, and how so many different things happened to me that shaped my being, and the demons that I deal with daily in the back of my mind. I usually don’t talk about these things, but for once I feel it necessary to say this if nothing else to get it out in the open in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, it will bring some relief in easing my mind. My childhood was bad, really bad, and I still deal with the demons to this day. My father was a very abusive man, and physically and emotionally abused my family to no end. He was a dominating tyrant who was messed up really bad on drugs. His drug use led to paranoia, and a personality that was on edge every second of the day. In the back of my mind I can still hear my screams as a child, but nothing being done to help them from the physical abuse. My own abuse wasn’t as bad as my brothers, and one instance stands out in my mind so horribly. My father one night while under the influence of either drugs or alcohol bashed my brother’s head through a wall in our house, and his screams of pure terror still echo in my mind constantly as it’s a sound I’ve never heard since then, and anytime I hear or see something that reminds me of what happened I become so terrified I break down in tears because I remember how it felt to be such a helpless victim of abuse, and knowing if I was to ever say something about what was going on it would just get worse. My family and I suffered silently through the abuse for years, until finally my father’s paranoia and anger led to him leaving our home, and moving into his own place. It was a sign of relief for a little while in my mind, but the dominating tyrant still instilled fear into everyone else, and the catalyst event that caused the turning point in my life finally happened. My Father placed a gun to my Mother’s head, and threatened to kill her; but thankfully that situation was cooled down to where no one was harmed, and more jubilation was soon to be found as he was arrested for multiple drug charges, and would spend the next ten years of his life in a federal prison where maybe he would get help for these problems, and get a swift kick to the ass of reality knocking him in the face knowing that he couldn’t be a tyrant to anyone anymore. Finally, after so long the cycle of abuse ended, and a new sense of freedom and hope was flushed over me, and my entire family. Sometimes however your greatest victories will go into even greater challenges, and about a year after all of this happened my Mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1998. So finally after overcoming all of this incredible peril, more bad news was handed to me and my family. It was around this time as well that my brother had gotten married, and moved out of our home so it was just my mother and I left in the household. I don’t know about what you think, but all of this is so hard for a thirteen year old child to process, and my support system for the most part was gone as I couldn’t voice my concerns to my mother as I didn’t want to worry her, and I had no real access at the time to the rest of my family for obvious reasons, and I just had to deal with all of this; and other things that were going on by myself. As all of this was going on, a sense of anger was brewing inside of me because how am I at this time supposed to deal with all of this on my own? At the time, I’m just a child; and no child should have to deal with all of this tragedy on his own. To add more fuel to the fire on all of this I wasn’t very well liked at school for being a bit odd and different so that just added torment as kids would use all of these things to jab at me, and belittle me. I wasn’t the type to fight back because when you live in small town America you don’t cause a scene because everyone will hear about it, and will whisper about it and use it as more ammunition to think badly of you. Like at this fucking point they couldn’t think badly enough of my family because of guilt by association though. It didn’t matter to anyone that we were innocent victims of my father’s abuse, and police record. I suffered through, and toughed it out for years and as my high school career was finally coming to a close I had proven to this judgmental town that I wasn’t my father’s son, and I had established myself as someone who wasn’t going to repeat the cycle of abuse as it had shaped me as a person to know not to do those things, but inside I was still that fearful child who had been emotionally shaped by everything that had happened to him. I think in a lot of ways in the present I’m just so angry about everything that has happened. I feel as though I have this giant chip on my shoulder, and I have to prove to everyone that I’m better than what I feel like they give me credit for. I have to prove I’m the best at whatever I do, and if anyone is to be critical of me I take it way too personally because I feel as though I’m being judged for whatever reason, and people are laughing at me; and secretly ridiculing me. I can’t accept failure, and more importantly I can’t accept being second best at anything, and when I face criticism I feel as though people are lashing out at me, and they could very well not be, and are just being respectful with that they say, but I just can’t see it as that. I see everything everyone does to me that is slightly negative as being a personnel attack, and I have to then prove them wrong; and I have to be better than what they expect. I know this is destructive behavior, but I can’t destroy the cycle of it. It’s just causing me to become more and more enraged, and I know it’s not healthy; but I can’t overcome it. I’ve been in and out of therapy for the past few years trying to deal with this, but when I start to get better I feel as though I can deal with the rest on my own, and maybe I can’t; and maybe I just need to admit it. Admitting to myself I can’t do something makes me feel as though I’m a failure, and I’m failing everyone around me because I should be able to handle, and do everything on my own. When I can’t do it on my own I feel as though I’m a failure, and I hate that feeling. I hate the feeling of knowing I’ve failed, and that is why I strive so hard to do everything with an success rate of 100 percent. Even if I was to get a 99 percent success rate I still feel like a failure because in the back of my head I say to myself, “You could have done better, and you know you could have.” I don’t know why I’m continuing to ramble on about this, but for the sake of wrapping it all up I’m just going to stop. I guess what I just really need right now is your support and help to get me through everything I’m dealing with as I consider anyone who would read this a friend, and ya know sometimes nothing more than someone just coming to me and saying, “Hi, how are you doing?” Would make my day.
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