Can't catch a break here...

I have lived in pain most of my life, in some form or another.
At 6 my parents divorced. At 9, my mother remarried, and that man died just five months later. Two weeks afterwards my father was remarried. The following summer, my mother moved my sister and I 1600 miles from the coast to Kansas, away from my father and everything else, to “start over”.
I was born with a heart condition that led to a variety of problems later on. I knew from age 7 that I would eventually need surgery.
My first real injury happened at 11 on a trampoline. Dislocated knee and a torn ligament. My mother at this point was completely nuts and never took me to the doctor. She raised me to believe that I was nothing but a nuisance, nobody wanted me around, and I learned that nothing that happened to me mattered.
A year later, at 12, I fell again and injured the same knee. I was finally taken to the doctor the next day to “shut me up” the doctor’s first look at the xray resulted in an immediate schedule for surgery. The torn ligament spent a year withering away and was no longer viable. I wound up with three surgeries and 8 injuries on that knee (operated at 12, 16, and 17).
At 13 I was diagnosed with scoliosis. At 15 I had 12 of my vertebrae fused (T5-L4). Thanks to my mother’s constant belittling, I also believed that any time someone was nice to me, in any way, it was a good thing. I wound up hanging out with a bad crowd and, at 16, witnessed a murder. I was just a few months out of my spinal surgery and somehow ran away, and the pain in my back (due to slow recovery) was so severe I thought I’d been shot.
At 17, my mother’s (second) new husband tossed me through an aquarium when I refused to wake up for school. I was threatened and told I would die if I told anybody what happened, and lying was the price I paid for medical attention. I had surgery to have my right ring finger repaired (I still can’t feel most of it today).
At 16 I started having syncope spells (fainting). I would pass out sometimes four or five times a day. My mother, and also stepfather and sister, swore I was attention-seeking and often refused medical treatment. A year of this went by before I lucked out and wound up somewhere else when it happened, and somebody there called 911. My mother attempted to refuse medical treatment when she heard I was headed in, but by then they’d marked my pulse at 350BPM and were convinced they were losing me. I spent four days in the ICU and, once stable, my mother took me from the hospital and straight to school, where I was “not to embarrass the family” by discussing what happened.
At 18, I had open-heart surgery to replace my aortic valve. I went home with my mother and stepfather, got very little help recovering (if any), and was dragged on a cross-country road trip for a family reunion, with no choice of opting out, five weeks later.
Six months later I was kicked out of the house, in the snow, temps in the teens, in jeans and a light jacket. I slept in a ditch near a local Walmart for three nights and nobody came looking for me. I wound up finding a place to stay with an old buddy I ran into later, and somehow managed from there.
At 21 I was working at a hospital when a patient slid off her bed. I caught her, and since she weighed quite a bit I injured my spine. The fusion I mentioned snapped in two places (bone plus hardware). At 23 I was rushed to the ER with chest pain and finally told my spine was injured, at which point the damage had left me with only 20% mobility. Any worse and I may have been in a wheelchair.
At 26, my father (who was mostly in the background of all of this) called and told me he was dying, and asked if I would help him through is final days. I was engaged to get married and very involved in a successful college career, but I dropped everything and went to help him 1600 miles from home. My three younger sisters wanted nothing to do with me, my stepmother had no interested in me being there, and I was treated as if my only purpose was to run errands while everyone else spent quality time with him. When he passed a few short months later, I drove away in the car that he left for me, returned to Kansas, and never heard much about him or anyone else out there again.
At 27, I was told I needed immediate open-heart surgery, as the valve I had replaced at 18 had deteriorated. I went in for a heart cath and the surgery, but woke up to “bad news”… they couldn’t perform the surgery they wanted to, and I had to wait for a donor instead of getting a mechanical valve. With an estimated “six weeks” before they were certain I wouldn’t be around, I spent four and a half lying in bed waiting for news to come through. My then-fiance was the only person who joined me the night before my surgery for my “possible going-away party”, as it was entirely possible I’d never make it home.
Five days post-op my mother insisted that I was “fine” and she needed to get home. My (now) ex was her ride, and she complained until we relented and checked out. The surgery was done out of state, so we drove four hours home and dropped her off, where she immediately drove home to Kentucky (where she moved years ago). The following night I stopped breathing in my sleep, with fluid in my lungs and a possible blood clot. My O2 dropped into the 50’s and my pulse to the 40’s, and I only survived because my ex was laying there next to me and noticed.
She left me a few weeks later because, somehow, it was just all too much for her and she couldn’t deal with all the “drama”. That’s when the SVT started… a heart arrhythmia that lasted sometimes hours at a time. I was in and out of the ER, was admitted half a dozen times, shocked, his with adenocard, and even had a cardiac ablation. I also have residual pain from my spinal surgeries, of course, so between that and the heart issues I was pretty much bedridden for months. In October of 2014 I overdosed on a full bottle of Percocet.
The next morning someone found me… a 17yo girl who used to be in the youth group I taught (against my mother’s wished, I’ll add). She found me and had no idea what to do, but did the best she could… cleaned up the vomit (and half the pills I swallowed), got me into the shower and somewhat stable again, then spent two days with me at my home to make sure I was okay.
That was a year and a half ago. Since then, I have had three women break my heart. My cardiac symptoms are worsening, and I’m worried I may need surgery sooner rather than later. I work part-time, but may lose the job as I am still visiting the hospital way too often. And the worse part of ALL of this… for me, at least… is that I have to do all of this alone. If I had a wife and family to provide for, I’d take any challenge head-on, but if I have to choose tomorrow between another risky surgery and letting nature take its course, I may just rather come home and die.

Hello Sp1ndle: The Skeezyks welcomes you to PsychCentral! May you find the time you spend here to be of benefit.

I'm so sorry you have had such terrible experiences. There is an author named Parker J. Palmer whose writings I am fond of. In one of his books he recounts an event wherein it was observed that some experiences are so profoundly sad, anything anyone might say would only add to the pain. The best one can do is to bear silent witness to the person's pain. In this spirit, I will write no more with regard to what you have written. I wish you well with the hope that, in some way, you will be able to find deep peace in your life...

Please do keep posting here on PC. The more you post, & reply to other members' posts, the more connected to the community you will become.

If only we could be consoled. What's the purpose of all this pain? How can we bare more? Why do we feel so alone? These are thoughts I've had for some time. Where do we find the strength to endure. Will it ever get better?

I just want you to know someone cares.

You have definitely had more than your share of shi*** breaks. In fact, I'd say you got yours, plus about four other people's. Can I ask you whether you've ever spoken with a therapist or counselor or have had a trial of antidepressants? I know that none of these things will fix the problems, but it might possibly put you in a slightly better frame of mind to face whatever may come.

I hope you keep posting here. This is a very supportive community.