KaTia's Story: Overcoming Trauma
New Year. New Me
I said the words out loud for what felt like the hundredth time, but the truth was it was ten days into the New Year and I’d brought the same foolishness into 2014 with me. I’d brought the same foolishness into the last three New Years with me if I was being honest with myself.
Three years and three months into my marriage, I was 6 months pregnant and we were expecting our second child together. (My third, my first being from a previous relationship.) From the outside looking in you would think we had it all together. We were married, had beautiful children, financially stable, a nice home and even traveled. On the surface things seemed perfect but there was a problem...
Instead of picking out baby names and painting the nursery I was sitting on the edge of the toilet contemplating suicide.
Behind the perfect façade of a marriage was a husband that couldn’t keep his vows. For years I turned a blind eye to his cheating and when it was so obvious I had to address it, he would apologize and I would forgive him.
This time was different. Maybe it was the hormones, maybe it was the weight of constantly being the bigger woman...I don’t know...but I was tired and broken.
Exhausted.
Desperate
Overwhelmed.
I’ve always had friends and been someone people could talk to but who do you talk to when you have to pretend? Everyone thought I was okay, everyone thought I was tough, but deep down inside it was breaking me and wearing the mask wasn’t something I was sure I could do anymore. How much I would have given just to have someone stop by and look into my eyes and know everything wasn’t okay, that could have saved my sanity. I never understood “check on your strong friends” until you’re the strong friend and no one is checking on you.
Tired of the pain and the lies and even with all he put me through, even with all I sacrificed and forgave...he was the one that decided he needed space. A grown man responsible for two children and a pregnant wife moved back in with his mother because “He needed space.”
As if that wasn’t enough to break me, I had to find out that not only was he cheating but he was cheating with someone I considered a friend. She was our co-worker, we all worked together, and it wouldn’t have been okay if it was a woman I didn’t know but the fact that it was a woman I knew took me beyond suicidal thoughts and depression.
It took me to homicidal thoughts. I thought about killing her. I dreamed about it. For a week straight the dreams were so vivid I worried what would happen if I saw her. Not eating and not sleeping were making me delirious, I was the walking dead but I wasn’t going to be the only person that lost their life. The only reason I would spare him and not kill them both is because I wanted my children to at least have one parent. Those thoughts faded but they were there and that is what scared me.
We watch shows like Love and Hip Hop and you see these women sleeping with the same men and going back and forth and it doesn’t feel real because it’s only an hour and there’s background music. When it goes off, our lives go on but what happens when there’s no commercial breaks or ending credits? You’re left to think about all the times she smiled in your face or listened to you talk about the same man she was screwing and the family that was being destroyed.
On a quest to getting better I read my bible and prayed A LOT. Prayed until my knees were sore and my tears could no longer fall. I meditated and wrote down my feelings, trying to do all I could to escape what was going on. Only to still be left with my thoughts. Most of this took place in my closet because even though I knew my children were young, I didn’t want them feeling the energy I was putting out. If I’m being honest, nothing was working. Nothing! The depression I was in was taking me deeper into the hole than I’d ever been before. The part of depression when it comes to women, especially black women that we never talk about is that we don’t get to get better. I couldn’t afford to lie in my bed under my covers and forget the world existed. I had young children that depended on me to survive. I also had bills that needed to be paid.
Putting my two year old to sleep I walked in the bathroom, knowing I needed to eat but not being able to, looking in the mirror I wondered what I’d done to deserve all of this? My phone was full of text from co-workers and friends telling me about the affair. Texts where they both lied to me like I was a fool. Where they tried to make me seem crazy even though they weren’t even trying to hide it.
My entire life I thought suicide was a selfish act, you may feel like you’re doing the world a favor but in the end you’re just leaving behind a mess for someone else to clean up. My children, my unborn child, leaving all them behind because I’m feeling like there’s no way out.
Suicide is selfish.
But when you’re in a dark place, all you hear and feel is the pain and when nothing else works, you just want the pain to stop. That’s suicide.
I opened the medicine cabinet and took out the pain pills from my last child birth, I held the bottle in my hand shaking and crying knowing I couldn’t take it anymore.
That’s when I felt it. That’s when I felt him kick and move for the first time and immediately my heart fluttered I slammed the pill bottle in the bathroom sink before falling to the floor crying.
“I’m sorry baby! I’m so sorry!” I said to my unborn son as I rubbed my stomach and lay on the bathroom floor.
“I was a good wife! A good mother! Why God why is this happening to me? Why are you putting me through these tests?” I cried out to him wanting an answer because for the life of me I couldn’t understand.
It was at that moment my two year old reached her hands under the door, it was too tall for her to reach so whenever I was in the bathroom it was her way of trying to get in. And like he was speaking to me to let his sister in and get it together I felt my son kick again and I knew I had to be strong for them, I had to overcome for them. I pushed the thoughts of suicide out my head and held my babies on the bathroom floor.
That time in my life opened my eyes. It showed me that I was stronger than I would have ever imagined .I am bigger than depression...Life can really suck at times but you cant let circumstances allow you to lose yourself.
I also learned that you cant let how people treat you affect you in such a way that you want to harm yourself or others. I was in a dark space that I will never visit again.
My life is important. Life is important. How I'm treated doesn’t define me! If it wasn’t for those dark days, I’m not sure I would be here today. Maybe I wouldn’t be dead but I know I wouldn’t be this version of myself.
