Running Screaming

Losing my Mind

The thing about loving a toxic person is that even when you know they are toxic, you continue to love them because some part of your heart tells your mind that you need them there. When you are told over and over in repetition that you deserve to be treated like shit because that's all you're worth, you begin to believe it. An somewhere in the back of your mind the small voice screaming that you deserve more than that begins to be drowned out. It becomes silenced so that the screams can no longer be heard. And all the pain you experience in your life, you believe somewhere deep in your heart that you deserve it. 

Everything falls apart, your values, your sense of self worth. Everything disappears. You fall deep into a dark you can't escape unless you take that single step separating you from the light. But you won't. Not right now, because even when it seems so simple, you aren't ready yet. You haven't hit your seemingly endless bottom line. Not yet. You grow anxious for the end, at the same time that you aren't ready for it to end. There's still more to come.

This is where I was at. I was ready for everything to end, but I wasn't ready to take that step out of the black area. The gray in the world had disappeared. It was either good... Or it was bad. But 9 times out of 10 it was always bad. I don't know how or why... Somehow I struggled through. I don't know how, but I did. Everything crumbled around my feet, and I still stood tiredly looking around the world. All the pain I felt, the unbearable agony and immense suffering? I couldn't let it go. It was Killing me.

So I made the hardest decision I ever made in my life. I let her go. They were never going to let her come home. They used every small little thing they could possibly mention against me. Like Andy fighting with me in visitations to him no longer attending them. To him shooting me in the face with a pellet gun on accident. And that incident was truly a freak accident. At least, I want to believe that, I really truly do. But now, as I reflect, I have my doubts. I doubted everything in our relationship nowadays. 

It was a really cold night that night. I was working at a call center. Had just gotten off, it being somewhere around 9 or 10 pm. He took me to Jason's house across the small town of West Salem. Jason lived with his grandmother still, whom was still old and disabled. She couldn't really get up or move around. So them having a bonfire meant them being pretty much uninterrupted as they fooled around with dumb and dangerous things. But that night took the cake. They had Andy's pellet gun, which I was told had been emptied before he went to pick me up. And they were playing, waving the thing around and taking aim at things, not squeezing the trigger because supposedly there were no pellets in the damn thing. 

Supposedly.

So as I crossed the lawn to get warm by the fire, I didn't mind what they where doing as Andy spun around and played with the Black Ops Edition high powered Assault rifle styled pellet gun. It was powered by C02 cartridges, so the thing packed a kick. And it went off. 

"Mara! Look out!" Jason yelled to me. Surprised, I turned my head the exact moment the God forsaken thing went off, Immediately dropping and hitting the ground before I knew what had hit me, my whole world going black. I could hear screaming. A gut wrenching sound that made me sick to my stomach. And that's when my vision came back and I picked myself up off of the ground, realizing that my face felt kind of numb. It was odd. I had no idea what was happening to me, but I could taste something metallic in my mouth. The scent flooded the area and my teeth felt funny. I reached into my mouth, not understanding what was going on as I felt over my teeth, only hearing a garbled version of the words that they spit rapidly at me. 

As I reached in and felt around, I felt something come loose and I pulled it out. The dark only showed that it was light in color and most definitely coated in thick, slimy blood. As a matter of fact, I thought it was my tooth I had just pulled out, only now coming to the understanding in the haze of my brain that I had in fact just been shot in the face. I started to scream and cry horribly upset by the thought that I had possibly just lost my tooth, completely disregarding the fact that I had just been shot in my face and was pouring blood from my face in rivets, just like a faucet. It was immediately decided that I needed to go to the hospital, and on the way, I cried over and over again, apologizing for the fact that despite pressing  cloth to my face, I was bleeding all over the 91 Toyota Corolla he had just got the week prior to this one.

The cops were called on the way, letting them know that we were speeding due to an emergency, and I felt myself begin to drift in and out of focus due to the blood loss. Sitting in the emergency room ,I had immediately been admitted, the hospital deciding my face was indeed an emergency and took priority over the mill of people they had in the waiting room. They tried to numb my face and stitched it up, covering it with a cloth. I was sent home with Oxy as a pain reliever. But it didn't occur to me until later.

Had I not turned to look at Jason, with the trajectory of the pellet, I would have been shot in the temple and it could have actually killed me. And now that I think of it, Andy had admitted that the reason he had freaked so bad when it happened, when I passed out? That reason turned out to be because he thought he had killed me. When I went down, blacking out from the in-the-moment shock I had experienced? He thought he had well and actually killed me. He thought he would be arrested for murder. If only. Sometimes I wish he had.

And so, finding out about this, the DCF used this against us in court, trying to use it as a testament of why my daughter should not be allowed to come home. My heart was destroyed. Didn't they understand that no matter what, she was mine and I would always protect and watch over her? In that moment, hearing those words, I wanted to die again. I was asked if I was being abused and I vehemently denied it. They could never know what went on at home. NOT EVER. If they did, Lia would never be allowed to come home.

I fought so hard. But in the end, it never mattered. A year and a half after Lia was born, After I was betrayed by my best friend and effectively kicked out of my apartment because I had dogs my landlord had originally okayed and I refused to get rid of them... Just one year and 6 months later... I finally gave up. I had seen proof. Lia didn't need me. No one needed me. I was better off not around. I did the thing I regret to this very day. What killed my soul inside.

I signed over my rights.

It was 3 suicide attempts later, realizing now, if I die like this, she will never know how much I love her. I had hope. I believe that one day, when she finds me, I will show her this. I will show her everything I ever went through, a testament of how I somehow managed to hold on, my body not giving no matter how I was beaten, betrayed, used abused and cut down. That I got up over and over again, even when I wanted to lay down and give up.

Life was hell.

But somewhere, I made the decision that ripped me apart. I no longer cared about anything anymore. I didn't care about myself, my life, where I was going. Nothing. I had no friends. No one knew what I was going through. I couldn't voice it. I was a miserable, trussed over excuse for a person. But I still Treated Andy like a king despite the abuse I was enduring from him. That man did horrible things to me. Some of which Haunt me in my nightmares even to this day. I can't close my eyes without seeing it again.

But I kept going. I moved back in with Andy in secret. His family hated me, and would stop helping him if they knew I was there. But of course we got caught together. He was "Afraid" to leave me alone, so after the woman I trusted to foster my huskies sold my white male and stole my black one, I had lost my child and both of my dogs in less than a month. He was afraid to leave me alone. It wasn't much longer than that, he got me a companion. My red and white female husky.

That was the nicest thing he had ever done for me. I believed that there was still good in him somewhere. Even when the abuse continued. I didn't give up on him, even when I went through my third Miscarriage of the relationship, one right after the other, losing a little boy 15 weeks into my pregnancy... I did not let him go. I wanted to show that I was still here. That I wasn't going anywhere. I wanted my Lia.  But we don't always get the things we want in life. This was a hard, desperate lesson learned.