[littlep]

Some people think that lying in bed or not being able to complete a task is lazy. I don't have the energy to fight about it. I had a friend that worked with disabled people and she said the worst thing is when you "look normal" because people can not see your pain. If you have a a disability that is visible people are careful around you. It is so true they can't not tell how their actions will affect us.
All of this has a major affect on my your marriage. I am struggling right now with should we get divorced? My husband has many moments where he understands but too many that he doesn't and he is emotionally abusive and sucks the little energy I have right out of me. This emotional abuse, him wanting to fix me so I become stable,I am stable but just not the person he wants me to be, has allowed me to lose my feelings for him. I am a very laid back, real person he is more interested in how others see us. I just want to feel like I fit in and am loved for who I am. He tells me he loves me for who I am but I just need a tune up, he doesn't understand my thinking and why I do things the way I do them. I feel like he is the one who would lose the love first because of my depression and not being the person he wants me to be but I am the one who has lost it and I feel guilty. Many people have told me you can get past this if you want to but I don't know if I have the energy to do it. I am really trying since we have two small children, however, I believe they would rather be in a broken home than in a home that there is no love between the parents. His trying to fix me causes me to have such resentment towards him, that I am worthless unless I do things the way he wants them done. I am talking about the littlest stuff doing the dishes etc. I think to myself don't sweat this small stuff you have bigger fish to fry but the small stuff is what sends me spiraling down to rock bottom.

[hamstergirl]

You're right, depression isn't a vacation. It saps you of everything, including energy and your ability to feel pleasure.

But just because you have a visible disability doesn't mean that people are easy on you. That is a myth. I use a wheelchair. I will be using one for the rest of my life. My worst suffering comes from pain that others cannot see and cannot hear.

I've had constant pain since March and it's driving me nuts. It's turned me into a f*cking leper, as if years of depression and BPD hasn't done it already. I also have a hospital phobia, possibly post-traumatic stress disorder.

I've been told to snap out of it. I've been told I'm "wallowing in it". As a disabled person, IT IS EXPECTED that I take everything heroically: Abandonment by my family, surgery, emotional abuse, poverty, loneiness, severe pain. I should have a constant smile on my face, no matter how grim and ugly that something is. GOD FORBID THAT I SHOULD WANT TO COMMIT SUICIDE! Because that means I'm feeling sorry for myself, a feeling that is a no-no in disabled people. Wanting to commit suicide means that I am a coward and a traitor to my anti-euthasnasia beliefs.

I have received these wonderful messages from family and close friends, people who should be supporting me in my hour of darkness. I have been told to keep my pain between me and my God. BY A FRIEND! It hurts to hear these things beyond belief. It hurts me as badly as it would hurt you, maybe more so, because I've had to fight battles for my entire life and the emotional support just wasn't there, nor is it here now, when I am in constant agony and on morphine. If anything, I got emotional abuse, from my own family, or just dead silence.

And then the experts wonder why 75% of people with depression refuse to undergo treatment. The reason is the pain that your family and friends will pile on top of you as a result of having it!!!!!! That makes me sick!!!!!

I will do as my friend suggests. I will keep my agony between me and my God. I will play the hero. God will not judge me for my feelings.

As for your husband, get some counselling for the two of you. Speaking from experience, emotional abuse makes things ten times worse. You deserve better than that, trust me. Life is too short to put up with such garbage, especially from a man who swore to honour and protect you, FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE!!! FOR BETTER AND FOR WORSE. Anyone who expects marriage to be all roses and perfume is going to be in for a severe jolt when the honeymoon ends. (My parents were two very screwed up people and they've passed those screw-ups to their children. They stayed together and they're still together, but at what price? I'm living 500 miles away from them and barely speaking with them!!!!)

Get some counselling for the both of you and if that doesn't work, go for just yourself and discuss options with the counsellor.

Thank God for the Internet, because the outside world just doesn't care.

There is a thing more crippling than cerebral palsy: the prison of your own mind.

[silver_queen]

Why don't you just tell him that you don't want to be changed and that how you are is none of his business, and maybe ask him if he would like it if he was nagged all the time to do something differently.

_____________________
RIP Dexter...
<font color=red>The best dog ever!!!</font color=red>

<font color=green>In the real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning.</font color=green>
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

[shakes]

Littlep,
I completely agree with Ozzie. If this is a vacation it must be one to Club Dread or something. I have said this before to people in my life and very few understand it but so many people who do not suffer from depression look at people who do as being "wimps" or quitters who just feel sorry for themselves and drag others down.
When I was 13 and started going to therapy for my depression I can remember after my first session. My father screamed at me for over an hour about what the hell was wrong with me that I needed to be on medication and go to therapy. People get upset and there was nothing special about me that deserved paying all that money. I just needed to suck it up and start talking to him and my mother when I was upset. He literally told me that of course I would feel better on medication because it was a drug and everyone feels better when they are on drugs and I would become a druggie.
My father sounds a lot like your husband in a lot of ways. When we tried going to family counseling after the first time I tried to kill myself because a lot of it was due to my parents...my father started screaming at the therapist and almost threw a lamp across the room at me before he stormed out of the room. Needless to say my family never went back and told me I had to deal with my own problems.
You are not alone and this is a wonderful place for you.

Jessica

<font color=blue> You are in this snowglobe. It is encovered in glass and secure. But one day someone comes and shakes the globe and the pieces go flying everywhere. Now they will eventually settle but they won't be the way they were before and they can never be that way again. </font color=blue>

[hamstergirl]

Isn't family wonderful?

Bleah!

Now you know why I'm separated from mine. Stories like that.

You know what the sad part is? I still MISS them and I think that this whole mess I'm in is my fault! I was yelled at and put down so often by my folks that now, if someone says I'm a beautiful person, I don't believe them.

This is what emotional abuse has done to me and no one understands it!
Emotional abuse has to be the worst form of pain anyone can inflict on you. It inflicts wounds on you that may never be healed.You certainly think twice about trusting anything nice that anyone says of you, after hearing for years that you're a disappointment and disgrace. You think twice about trusting anyone at all.

It is much easier to believe the bad spoken of us than the good, especially if the bad is spoken by one so close to us, like a parent or a husband. What if you can't just "walk away."? How do you ever heal from that sort of damage?

I've been away from home for over 10 years and I still can't "walk away." I still hear those negative messages pounded into my head. Right now, they're near impossible to dismiss, to the dismay of a close friend.

I may never be able to walk away.

There is a thing more crippling than cerebral palsy: the prison of your own mind.

[littlep]

HamsterGirl,

I in no way meant to put down anyway who is physically disabled for it is nothing I have felt. I understand all your thoughts. My therapist once told me not to look at yourself as someone who is wallowing in self pity as I feel I do but look at yourself as someone who is mourning the loss of life that they would like to have and mourning never ends. This gave me am ounce of dignity. I wish that I could reach out to you and give you those things that have been taken away from you. That is the kind of person I am when I am not depressed. Emotional abuse is the most pain I have ever felt and that is why we need to stick together and comfort each other as much as possible. It is so true that your family and friends just don't know how to react. Their actions are the ones that make your depression spiral. I have realized that mine as yours will never understand that my brain is so scrambled alot of the time the only way to keep myself from doing something stupid is to sleep and then I am considered lazy. I too isolate myself from many situations because I feel like I don't fit in. Don't keep your pain inside that is why we have support groups. If you are able to get to one you should check out the Depression and BiPolar Support Alliance www.dbsalliance.org.

As for my marital problems. I do go to therapy I need to build my self esteem, unfortunately, my husband takes it down a notch everyday. We went to 4 marriage counseling sessions and he walked out now we waiting to see another therapist. I swore that I wouldn't live in a marriage like my parents, my dad is emotionally abusive to my mother, they are still together but they fought through my whole childhood and all my brothers and sisters have moved away for a reason.

I could go on and on but the laundry is waiting.
My thoughts are with you.

[littlep]

This has been my line of defense but the nagging never stops. I am considering moving on; when you have little self esteem it is so hard. It is a vicious cycle shoud I stay or should I go.

[littlep]

Jessica,

Reading your post just makes me want to cry and scream at the same time. To be treated that way as a child is unfathomable. It is there total lack of acceptance that has made our society the way it is. I do go to therapy, have been for twelves years. Really haven't gotten too far do to my willingess to fight, I end up fighting the system that is trying to help me even though I don't mean to. It is all too painful. No matter how hard I try I don't think my husband will ever get it.

[silver_queen]

Maybe you should leave him then, since he constantly puts you down all the time. It sounds to me as though he has little respect for you. Have you anyone you can move in with?

_____________________
RIP Dexter...
<font color=red>The best dog ever!!!</font color=red>

<font color=green>In the real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning.</font color=green>
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

[hamstergirl]

Leaving someone who is emotionally abusive takes a lot of strength. I know. I had to walk out on my parents 11 years ago. Even though they were both emotionally abusive, a friend of mine practically had to use a crowbar to convince me that something was wrong with the way they were treating me and to convince me to leave. He had to be in the room with me when I confronted my parents or I would have gone home with them, with my tail between my legs.

Even today, I feel they were right in treating me the way they did, even though I'm angry at them for it. I have to live hundreds of miles away from them to feel like I'm my own person and it's not far enough away for me to feel safe from them. I feel so threatened by them both, I daren't use my real name on-line. (They don't feel that they were abusive, they are offended by the idea.) I am to keep this whole part of my life a secret; that is a clear impression I got from them. I'm to just forgive and forget, or forget about seeing them and I'm alienated from the rest of my family. Whether it's because they're angry with me for leaving my parents and for ruining the family's lives or something else, I don't know. But they're barely talking to me, if at all.

I'm so scared of my parents that I will be changing my name before starting a writing career and suing anyone who attempts to publicize my old name.

It's enough to make me wish that I were never born. I'm too much trouble to anyone around me.

Leaving someone who is abusive is possible, but you will need lots of support to do it, before, during and after the process. Are there any women's shelters near you?

Silver Queen is right. You should leave him. It's not worth the additional agony.

There is a thing more crippling than cerebral palsy: the prison of your own mind.

[littlep]

As in all marriages there is more to it than just moving out. There are the kids and the fact that I have no money of my own. I do agree with you I just need to be in a better place to do it.