Good morning. This is my first post here and I don't even know if this is the right group, but here it goes. I've been dealing with trauma, loss, and depression since I was 12, so going on 31 years now. My mother had severe bipolar disorder flare-ups every few years and when I was 12 my dad couldn't deal with it anymore. He packed up me and and my brother, sold our home literally overnight, and next thing I know we're in a moving truck to Miami where my grandparents and the rest of my dad's side of the family lived. My older sisters, who were not my dad's biological daughters, were left behind - one already moved out of the house and the other in a group home. My dad had to rebuild our life and we moved several times over the next couple years. In the span of 16 months I attended 4 different schools and kept having to start over, as if losing my childhood friends back home the first time wasn't devastating enough. I was never as close with my dad as I was my mom, and I resented/blamed him for all of my pain. I was just expected to go along with everything and nobody ever took me, a child, aside to explain what was happening to my life and family. My father made it extremely difficult for my mom or anyone else on that side to contact me, and he would tell me things like "She doesn't care about you, doesn't love you, etc". In high school I got to fly home a couple times to be with my mom, who was doing better by then. But we lost touch in the late 90s after her next bipolar episode and by the time we reconnected years later, she had suffered a series of strokes and was unable to verbally communicate. I reconnected with my sisters, too, and all of them had been through terrible ordeals in their own lives. Jail, drug issues, homelessness, prostitution just to survive. Eventually, in my mid-20s, I married, and had two kids. My relationship with my father was never great, but he did love my kids very much. He passed away 4 years ago, exactly 2 weeks to the day after closing on our first house. Even though his death was expected due to years of poor health, it was remarkably devastating. It also cleaned me out of my family savings because he made no plans for what happens when he's gone. My uncle, his brother, helped us sell some of his valuables and then turned around and screwed us out of the money. A year later, during the first phase of the pandemic, I had to quit the best job and paycheck I ever had because the place became impossibly toxic. My career floundered, my physical and mental health declined, and a year later I had a heart attack at 41. The following day, while I was having an artery reopened to save my life, my sister was 1200 miles away committing suicide. She had been in unbearable pain from a jaw issue nobody could help her with, and she saw no choice but to leave her husband and 2 sons behind. This year I quit a successful career after 10 years because I was hitting a wall and the effort wasn't worth it anymore. Now I languish in a cubicle once again and work for an incredibly toxic boss in a toxic environment rife with nepotism and special treatment for everyone but outsiders like me. I feel like the last few years have blown up my life and after 3 decades of trauma, loss, and depression, I now have high anxiety and fear another heart attack. I don't know what to do with myself. I know better things and better times are possible, I just don't know how to get there. I'm in therapy 30 minutes a week and I also attend a men's therapy group weekly. But it feels like nothing is making a dent. If you've made it this far, thanks for reading.

Posted by JD_PBC at 2023-09-11 14:35:31 UTC