Douchebag

(Trigger Warning – allll the suicided)

Several months ago I stepped down from my position and moved departments. Took a pay cut.

The department I was in was so toxic. We are talkin’ daily verbal and professional assault. It was fuckin’ terrible. It was really hard to let go of my people, the team I built from the ground up. It was hard to give up and walk away. I spent three years being a buffer for these people. Helping them navigate a pandemic. Keeping them out of harms way and taking the punches. I just couldn’t do it anymore. The burnout is real.

I moved to the ICU in a lesser position. It’s been an experience, for sure. I have been in a supervisor role for so long that being in a role where I have no say in anything was refreshing and fucking weird. The people I work for and with are fantastic. I’d follow them to hell and back, so having no control is fine with me. They are so kind. I’m grateful for the break.

I worked really closely with ICU for years so the move wasn’t really a big change other than the work environment improved 100%. They asked for me, and I’m so glad they did. Because, I don’t know that I would have moved on my own. I loved the team I built and feared what would happen when I left (turns out everything I feared unfolded about a week after I transferred. Ugh).

May is their birthday week. It’s also our anniversary month. While at work, one of the ICU nurses that I work closely with asked me a question that I answered truthfully. It led to me giving a quick synopsis of their suicide and the aftermath. The nurse, Jon, spun around and looked me in the eyes and said: “Wow, what a douchebag”. When I say I laughed, oh my stars. That’s the first time I’ve had that reaction from someone. I laughed and replied “Yeah, a little”. Jon started to apologize. I was still laughing. Truthfully, it was a welcome response. Had it been 5 years ago this would have put me in mental choke hold. I explained that, and that he had no reason to be sorry. I then explained that for the most part, they didn’t have a choice in their thoughts or actions; I told Jon the diagnosis. I will never forget his response. Never. Because it was the first time anyone had ever completely understood the situation. He locked eyes with me and said “So, they blamed you then. They left a note blaming you didn’t they?”. The world spun. It fuckin’ spun for the first time in a while. I’d never told anyone. Jon went on to say something to the effect of (don’t quote me here my brain was coming to a full stop at this point): “people with that diagnosis, their chemicals are all messed up and they blame the spouse.” I’d never had anyone understand the situation, or connect the dots so completely like that. I never had anyone point this out. I don’t think I knew this was common.

He had no idea what he did for my soul that day. She did leave a note. She did blame me. I blamed me. I blame me even though I know logically it wasn’t in my hands.

It’s true that ICU is a different animal. Apparently it’s the one I didn’t even know I needed.

XOXOX

Catriona

Bread & Open Diary

Trigger Warning – all the suicide

A few months ago I was excited-mortified to find that Open Diary had been resurrected like a pet long buried in the yard of your childhood apartment complex . Like, do we even know that’s our pet? Everyone buried their pets there, you know? Fluffy? FLUFFY IS THAT YOU? I’m tired can you tell?

I had been writing in Open Diary since middle school. No joke. I wrote very day. Even if it was just tell tell the world to fuck off. I used it as an outlet for my anger. When my first wife started to go into leftfield I used it heavily to keep my head on straight. And then when she spiraled and I followed her down the rabbit hole, well, I used it to keep record of things because my brain was melting from the stress. In 2014 Open Diary shut down much to my disappointment, it was the only constant thing in my life. LOL. I downloaded my entries and put them away. My wife went on to kill herself, twice. I went on to completely lose my face (before, during and long after). After was all said and done I was completed messed up, lol, as we all know (if you don’t just take a look around, you will get the idea). I shoved anything that could remind me, hurt me, bring me back to that time right into the trash. I abandoned e-mails, sites, life.

Time went on and to my own surprise my brain started to heal. It only took 4 fucking years. Prior to then, I couldn’t allow my brain to even peek at that area of my brain without all hell breaking lose for unpredictable amounts of time. As time has gone on I have slowly, very very slowly, doubled back to some things. But, when I read the Open Diary was back online AND had preserved all old account entries – I was a deer in headlights.

About a week later I yelled at myself and made myself go try to reclaim the account. I was relieved when it wouldn’t let me in. LOL. I threw my hands up and forgot about it. I didn’t forget, my brain was cowering in the corner. About 2 months later I scolded myself enough to slink back over to the site and read up on reclaiming accounts. It basically said if you didn’t know the password or still have the E-mail you were shit out of luck as they needed poof of ownership. I didn’t have either of those things. But, I thought “Oh, I can prove who I am. Most of my entries were private and I did not hold back.” So I emailed them with some things I just knew would identify me. I think this is the only time being twisted worked to my advantage. HAHAHAHA. I didn’t get a response. So I thought: “Ok. Then maybe I just shouldn’t revisit all that” and I moved on satisfied that I tried.

But you KNOW that’s not where it ends because that’s not how the Universe does things when it comes to me. LOL. Fast forward about a month or so, I’m on vacation bangin’ through the woods having a great ol’ time when my phone alerts me to an E-mail. Guess who? Open Diary wanted to let me know they verified the information I provided and I now had full access to my old account. Great timing Universe, as per usual. LMAO. I took a mental note that that would be a bad idea, and forgot about it until just now; I was fucking around the house ignoring the chores I need to do when I remember that I was able to log in. So, I while I wait for the bread to bake (Have you ever made Peasant Bread??? It’s FUCKING AMAZING), I signed in and gave it permission to upload 15 years worth of my brain from the server. Just Now as I write this it finished uploading everything in the new interface. Oh man, this was my last entry:

“Fuck it, here it is.

The situation that I was talking about was this: 

She got smashed and attacked me. Punching, BITING, attacked me. I had to fucking hold her down. She was trying to torture me but was too drunk to pull it completely off.

For those of you who don’t already know, I’m a little over 100lb and 5’4. She’s 5’6 about 166lb..seeing the point here?

The thing is, I’ve seen her drink waaaaaay more than she did that night (several times) and never be like this. It was fucking crazy. I was afraid to go to sleep. Then two days later, even AFTER I showed her the videos (oh yes I took videos, so she couldn’t tell me I was lying) she was drinking again. She’s made a rule that no more than 6 beers can/will be in the house at a time but COME THE FUCK ON. YOU ATTACK ME, THEN JUST KEEP ON DRINKIN’? YEAH FUCK RIGHT OFF.”

That was June 30th 2012.

I didn’t even remember this until now. I guess that must have been around the time I shut down completely because I didn’t write again until they announced in 2014 the site was going down and only then I just simply wrote my E-mail address for my readers to find me.

Well I think Imma eat this bread and be done with the internet for a while. LOL.

Anyone else use Open Diary back in the day?

xoxoxo

Catriona

Disclaimer for those who have not been with me though all of this: My first wife had a very serious mental illness. One that we and her Doctors were trying to identify for a very long time, years. Things had spiraled out long before this. I was well versed in all that entailed being main caregiver to someone who was literally coming undone. It wasn’t her fault, for the most part. I was just tired, angry, and losing hope.