Depression Supporters Support Group

Life Story

Becky S

It was 23 yrs ago on July 12, 1983 that I was born. My mom went into labour on the night of the 11th but waited until morning because she did not like the doctor that was on call. I was born at the Welland County General Hospital two weeks premature. I had to spend the first week of my life in an incubator due to low blood sugar.

For the first 6 yrs of my life, I don’t remember seeing my mom a lot. She often worked 2 jobs to provide for my brother and me. My mornings were spent with my grandma or my next door neighbour. I was really good friends with the next door neighbour’s daughter Nina. I hated going there in the mornings before I walked myself 3 blocks to get to school in JK. Sally, the lady who was supposed to be watching me often left me alone with her nephew who was my age. She often made him and I get dressed in the same room. When I needed her help with buttons or zippers that were too hard for me, I often had to go look for her. She was often found in her bedroom with her husband having sex.

My evenings were often spent with my brother and my mom’s best friend John. I always thought that John was my dad. At night my brother and I often argued – he wanted the hallway light off, I wanted it on because I was still afraid of the dark then. John yelled a lot. He often threatened to come upstairs and smack my brother and me. Back then my brother and I somewhat had a decent relationship, but that changed as we got older and things got worse. We often chased each other around the house with hockey sticks aiming for each others head. John drank a lot and the one night when he dropped my brother, mom kicked him out.

We moved for the first time that I can remember into a co-operative townhouse complex (low income housing). Starting at 7 yrs old, I got curious about boys. While living in this complex, I kept having this girl; a stranger coming up to me. I thought that she lived in the same complex. The one day she told me to tell my mom that she said hi. I later found out that it was my biological father’s niece. My brother and I were fighting more and more. I got hit by him almost everyday. At 10, my brother really starting beating me up. Our asshole father tried to get visitation rights through the courts. He also tried to kidnap my brother and me at school. He drove the taxi for our school. It was at that time I was told about whom he was and what he did to my mom. He beat her and left her to die shortly after I was born. He beat my brother when he turned away from watching him have sex with his girlfriend when my biological dad had visitation rights before my mom stopped them completely. I had nightmares of being killed and tortured by my biological father every night.

We moved yet again. John came back into our lives. I can remember when I was 11 or 12 and he was over. I was going to have a bath and he asked me if I needed his help to wash my back. It made me feel very uncomfortable because by then I already hit puberty and started to develop at the tender age of 10.

Mom’s still not around very much. Patrick (my brother) and I were often left to fend for ourselves because mom was then traveling back and forth from Welland to Kitchener for work. I was cooking, cleaning and doing the laundry. I was also in school full time and babysitting/raising these 2 kids from across the street.

Mom met Zolton when I was about 13. He moved to Kitchener with my mom, brother and I. From that point on, I went downhill. I went from being a bubbly outgoing child/teen that was always out babysitting or with friends to becoming a hermit and isolated myself. I had a hard time making friends when I moved to Kitchener. I started to gain a lot of weight from taking birth control to help control getting my periods every other week. Maybe about 3 months after moving to Kitchener things between Patrick and I turned for the worst. The one day, I snapped. I didn’t know what came over me, but I grabbed a butcher’s knife and went after my brother with the intention of killing him. He had to put a bathroom door between him and me. Growing up Patrick and I often had our mouths washed out with soap or we were beat with a belt until we had welts on our asses or slapped across the face when we were in trouble.

I got in huge shit from mom. Soon after that incident, I met Izabella and spent much of my time with her. I met her friends and became very interested in Brandon. He was the first guy that I kissed. The one day I stayed at his house until 11pm. When I got home I got in shit for staying out late because I was a girl and couldn’t protect myself if I got attacked.

We moved yet again. I was entering high school now. I really did not care about myself and really hated myself, mom and Patrick. Patrick was pretty much drunk everyday after school and higher then a kite. His friend Jesse spent a lot of time at our house. Jesse and I started making out and fooling around when Patrick passed out. I started making out with random guys. I became very promiscuous after I turned 16 and had sex for the first time. I met Tracey in my grade 9 yr. She was in grade 11 and we became best friends and pretty much inseparable.

I started working at this pita place and met Franco. He was very good looking and was extremely flirtatious with me. He was 28 and I had just turned 17. He often drove me home at 2 am after I was finished work. We made out on those late nights and the one night he invited me over to his house and we had sex. I did not care about having sex with random guys or making out with them. Sometimes the sex was protected and others it wasn’t.

Patrick and Jesse took me to get high for the first time at 17. From that point on, I smoked weed whenever I could get it. I was already drinking from time to time since I was maybe around 12 or so. Patrick often had all his friends over drinking all the time. My brother often had parties at our house. Mom always bought our alcohol for us when we gave her the money for it. I started smoking shortly after I began grade 9. I got caught the one night and I was told to quit. I did for awhile and then started back up again and smoked on a regular basis. When Patrick was out getting stoned with his friends and I was still up on the computer late at night, he would often walk around the house after mom was sleeping with his dick hanging out or was naked from his waist down. Since that made me feel really uncomfortable, I had to let my mom know. Funny she made him stop in that situation but whenever I asked her to get Patrick to stop hitting me, calling me names and destroying my self esteem she never did anything about it. I always got “It is sibling rivalry”.

Shortly after I turned 17 I met Lori. She had introduced me to a few of her friends that lived around her. She introduced me to Jamie. Jamie, Lori and I often smoked a lot of weed. I got stoned almost everyday after school and then went to work. Jamie and I eventually started going out with each other. Lori became jealous because she wanted Jamie to herself but Jamie didn’t like her that way. During this time, mom attempted to quit smoking for the first time and was taking Zyban. After coming home from spending time with Jamie, my mom started a fight with me. She called me a slut, whore and a bunch of other names. Patrick joined in on the name calling too. I walked out of my house for 3 days and stayed at Lori’s.

Mom convinced me to come back home on the 3rd day. My mom I got into a huge fight during the summer one night. I was working at Swiss Chalet at the time and often worked split shifts. That night I didn’t get a lot of sleep and went into work the next day. I got off my first part of the shift early and called mom to pick me up so I can try and get 2 hours of sleep. Instead of bringing me home, mom decided to bring me to KW hospital. She tried to get me admitted because she felt I shouldn’t hate her. She felt that I needed to stop hating her for ripping me out of my comfort zone. The crisis nurse told my mom that I didn’t have to stop hating her and that my mom couldn’t admit me if I didn’t want to go. I wasn’t a danger to myself or others. I was even more pissed at my mom for doing what she did. I agreed to see a child psychologist for mom’s sake, but stopped going after my first appointment because I didn’t like that the women was talking down to me like I was a child.

I started seeing the youth care worker at school and my guidance counsellor often. I was able to walk out of class if I was ever having a bad time and go to the youth care workers office. I used that frequently. I started to hate my mom more then I have ever hated her because of the pain that she caused me by allowing Patrick to continue to beat me. The one day I broke down and told the guidance counsellor that my mom and brother hit me. Social services were called in and I got in huge shit from my mom. She told the social worker that I was telling lies and that I never got hit in my life. Now that I think of it now, I should have asked the social worker to remove me from the house so that I wouldn’t get verbally, emotionally and physically abused from my mom and Patrick. Mom always threatened that if I didn’t like living with her then she would drive me to live with my father. I challenged her a few times and told her to bring me there. I thought that it couldn’t be much worse then what I was already living and at least I would be back somewhere in the Niagara Region. Mom freaked on me some more. I finished high school in January of 2002 and was looking forward to going back to Welland for college. Mom met Randy around Easter. He asked my mom to marry him in July before I moved away for college. Randy made it very clear that he didn’t want to have anything to do with Patrick or me because he never spent anytime getting to know us.

I moved back to Welland at the end of August. I moved in with Chantelle and her family. Chantelle was my best friend for 2 years before I moved to Kitchener. We were inseparable. I was often babysitting or we decided to have last minute sleepovers at midnight. Chantelle’s dad considered me to be one of his own. He called me his adoptive daughter. Around Christmas time, my calf started hurting the day that mom was picking me up for Christmas holidays. Each day the pain in my calf got worse and worse. I was in excruciating pain and I didn’t know why. I thought that I just pulled a muscle in my calf from sleeping funny. I was sleeping 4 hours each night. I kept telling my mom that I was in a lot of pain. I started having trouble walking. My mom told me to stop whining and complaining. I kept asking her to bring me to the walk in clinic to get my leg checked out. She refused.

On the 5th day of having this pain and crying all the time, mom finally realized that I wasn’t complaining for the hell of it. She dropped me off at the walk in clinic. It was really busy because all the doctors’ offices were closed. After waiting 3 hours in the waiting room, I finally got to see the doctor. He wasn’t even in the room for 5 minutes when he told me that I had to go to the emergency room. Mom came to pick me up and I told her that I now had to go to the hospital right away. Mom drove me to the hospital. I was there for 3 hours in the waiting room before I got in to see a doctor there. Once I was brought into a room, I had a lot of blood tests done. He told me that he thought I had a blood clot in my leg and that I had to come back at 8am for an ultrasound the next morning. He immediately started to give me blood thinners. The ultrasound proved that I did have the clot. I was lucky because of walking on my leg and putting a lot of pressure on it. I could have died had the clot broke and went to my lungs, heart or brain.

I lived with Chantelle until about February of 2005. We got into a huge fight and couldn’t stand living together anymore. I moved in with my grandma. Even though I was happy to be back in Welland, I was finding myself feeling sad, and extremely tired. I had days where I was really hungry and days that I was not hungry at all. I started to isolate myself again and didn’t talk to anyone outside of college very often. A few times I went out with Heather and my cousin Michelle and we got really drunk and because I didn’t listen to the doctors order on avoiding drinking I got really sick because of the blood thinners that I was taking. I was getting blood work done about every other week because if I had a higher dosage of the blood thinner then what was needed, I could have died from it. Mom got married to Randy in December of 2002. I didn’t get to go to the wedding because they went to Dominican Republic. Once mom met Randy, yet again I rarely saw her and we barely spoke. She was wrapped in the expensive house, cars and being married to a fire fighter.

When I finished college I moved back in with mom and Randy. I was doing somewhat okay. I had gotten a great job before I moved back from Welland working at Grand River Hospital on 1F as safety assistant. I loved that job until I got involved with the wrong person. I was extremely lonely and became very promiscuous and was having protected as well as unprotected sex again. Because of my poor judgment I lost my job at the hospital.

I started dating Jason a few months after I got fired from the hospital. I started taking online distance education courses from the University of Waterloo. I wanted to start working towards a Psychology degree. My dream is to obtain my PhD in Psychology and work with children since it is a strength that I have. Things were going well until we broke up. It was at that point I finally decided that I wanted to get help. I didn’t want to be feeling sad, lonely, and isolate myself all the time. I found myself avoiding my school work. I had no motivation or concentration to work on it. I made an appointment with my family doctor in March of 2006 and started taking anti-depressants.

Around Mother’s day of 2006, we had Randy’s sister, and mother over. They were celebrating Mother’s day as a family. Randy and mom had been looking at houses as well as looking into options of building a house of their own. Randy was drinking as usual. Mom and Randy were talking about a house they were interested in looking at as well as possibly putting in an offer. I had asked my mom if they got that house if we could get a dog again as I always had one growing up and terribly missed having one of my own. In not so many words that day, Randy basically said that I was 22 yrs old and should be living on my own. I had always gotten the feeling that I was not welcome in the house. He knew that I was on meds for depression. I went and told my mom what he had just said and how I felt because it really upset me. Mom gave me her usual remark “you are just over reacting. Get over it”. I went to my mom and started bawling my eyes out. After a few hours of non-stop crying, I cut myself for the first time in my life. I was in so much emotional pain. Cutting relieved the emotional pain that I was feeling. When asked about what happened to my arm, I always lied about it. During this time I was working at a Shelter. Things started to be somewhat okay for me. I was still feeling down, but it was manageable.

In July of 2006, Randy finally decided that he didn’t want to be married to my mom. He had been cheating on her the entire time. I then finally told my mom the truth behind the cuts. She finally heard what I was saying about how I was feeling inside after Randy’s decision. Living in the same house with randy was very stressful on me. Mom and Randy were constantly fighting when he was home. September I lost my job at the Shelter because yet again I got involved with the wrong person. Finally at the end of September of 2006 mom and I moved out of Randy’s house. We rented a townhouse of our own. We got an adorable maltipoo named Molly. Around December I found myself starting to retreat back into my crying fits. I went to my family doctor’s to have my meds changed because I knew that they were not working for me. She just increased then and told me to come back in a month if I felt I wasn’t feeling any better. I had 3 more uncontrollable crying fits to the point that I could not function at work. I felt that yet again I was not being heard by my family doctor to change my meds, so I admitted myself to the hospital.
Posted on 05/20/07, 11:05 pm