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| Good morning :) |
I’m convinced that your twenties are when you should dedicate all your time and energy (reasonably) to healing what’s been broken. Broken by family, friends, or just the world as a whole. As kids, it’s not our responsibility to keep us out of harms way. That’s a parents job but since no one is perfect, sometimes the world happens to us and we just have to live with the aftermath.
I myself deal with my own struggles. I’ve been depressed since I was 8 years old. I start feelings intense anxiety in middle school. Now thanks to the world being what it is, I was also diagnosed with C-PTSD. When I look back on my childhood, I have very view good memories and for some reason all my memories well like a story someone else has told me. Not a life I once lived. When I think back to all the times I was begging for help, no one heard me so I learned to stop listening to myself too.
In my twenties, my life completely changed.
Growing up through an abusive family dynamic and then all of life’s changes coming at me all at once, I had a lot of work ahead of me. I just wish I would’ve known sooner how much better my life would become if I started listening to myself again.
You’re not alone in feeling this way. Let me tell you the story of my twenties so you can see that maybe we share more esperdices than we may have thought.
In my early twenties I found out I was adopted. I got a Facebook message from a women I’d never even heard of saying something like this:
“Please tell your adoptive mother and adoptive father than my child support payment is late for X number of months.”
As you could imagine, I was shocked!! What do you mean CHILD SUPPORT?? For what child?? You’re saying MY father is a FATHER to some child no one has ever heard of?!?!??! Yeah, you could say I was flabbergasted to learn my father really would do such a thing.
See; thanks to that message being written in PROTUGUESE and English now being my first language, I totally didn’t even realize what the beginning of that message was saying and my brain just blanked those words out. It was so weird.
What a crazy situation. I also have to lightly mention that at that time, my mother was suffering through her own mental health struggles and all responsibilities had fallen on my shoulders. My father was checked out and my mother was dying right before my eyes. I was barely holding myself together. Thankfully my moms family came through and took her to reaceave wonderful care back in the motherland.
So my mom is now healthier and back in the country. She comes into my room and tells me we need to have a talk. That this talk isn’t going to change anything between us and that we’re all still family, not matter what. Mkay. So she confirms that there is a child my father had been hiding from us (anyone he could hide it from). The child support were indeed late and that lady stayed on TOP of her money. Sooooo….
Okay?
Why would that change anything between us? She seemed so dramatic.
Then she started talking about the first part of that strange Facebook message. The part my brain had completely blocked out.
“…your adoptive mother and your adoptive father…”
Oh yeah. I forgot about that.
“What does that even mean?”
I had so many thoughts swirling through my head. I didn’t know where to land on but funny enough, I did find myself saying back to my mom:
“PLEASE tell me that I’m not his biological child with some other woman that you agreed to raise?!”
She reassured me that was NOT the case. I was adopted in Brazil from a teenage girl who may have been named Rose or Rosa; she was passing through town, worked at my fathers family bar, and asked them to adopt me because she really liked them and she didn’t want/couldn’t keep me. That’s all I got.
Cool.
Cool.
…
Yeah, so that’s how my twenties STARTED off, just you wait to see where it goes!
My dad ended up dying while living in a shack in Brazil on his sisters property. Sad but karma? Sorry, not sorry.
As for my mid-twenties, that’s probably when I had the most calm life.
I had at this point moved out of state with my then boyfriend. I got preggers (oops!), then we got married, and then we were someones parents!! Even today that feeling will catch me off guard and it’s always so surreal.
One more move later (North Carolina back to Texas), another healthy baby girl, and then we we mistakenly ended up moving again but this time to the PNW. So now we’re going through mid to late twenties. I have two babies at home, my husband works long long hours for a major distribution company and they are DEMANDING of his time, and pairing that with living in a new state with no friends, family, or a car to drive myself around. I was struggling!
Holy shit did that knock me on my ass!!
I pretty much had a little mental breakdown (remanisant of my moms breakdown years before). I nearly destroyed my marriage and my family, having a minor relapse moment, I was finally able to find my way out of that deep dark fog. I got some much needed mental health care and today I feel like I’m finally learning who I am and who I was meant to be.
A realization most people have in their teens, I finally have found it by making it through my very own TERRIBLE TWENTIES.
Today I am thirtyone years old. I never thought I’d make it through my twenties. I was sure I would’ve checked out early but the fear of losing my family and missing out on watching my babies grow up was just not an option for me. I did a little talk therapy before moving out of the PNW and back to good ol’ Texas. Although I haven’t been able to start talk therapy yet, it’s defintly on my “to-do” list.
I do have a psych physicians assistant (is that what they’re called?? Idk.) that manages my medications. I am so grateful for the place I found, the people who work there, the professionals that worked with me to find the right medications for me, and the wonderful receptionist that just makes you feel so warm and cared for. Thank you modern medicine for helping me through this new faze in life.
Wow. That felt so good to write down. Did it all make sense?? I hope so.
Life is fucking hard. It’s a never ending rollercoaster. We’re all freaking the fuck out together but at least we’re not alone.
So here’s to taking meds to keep our mental on track! Here’s to growth and change! Here’s to what comes next!! :)
Thank you so much for reading about my life in my twenties. It may sound crazy (or not) but it was what I was. I made it though the other side and I’m so glad you’re here with me.
You don’t have to share anything about yourself or your mental in the comments if you don’t want but I’m here to listen if you wanna talk :)
<3 Dany
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