The Joy & Pain Project
This is the pain half. It began as a blog that ran its course. Now it will be supplemented with a few essays that don't have enough joy but still deserve some air.
About Me
I'm Robin and I was convinced I was dead for nearly a week and then I thought I was a ghost for another week after that. My family of origin has been ashamed of mental illness and abuse my whole life. Nobody saw the meltdown & burnout coming for what it was.
I've been complaining to doctors about these recurring days/weeks of what felt like a burnout to me for at least 15 years. Mostly they just told me to lose weight, but the ones who took me seriously found several possibilities and I parted ways with organs, took all the medications, did all the follow-up screenings, and thought we were done with it all after the hysterectomy a few years ago.
But then here I was again. Burnout. Plus, this one was compounded with a complete emotional meltdown from all the family stupidity.
During the worst of it, I was having trouble speaking and attempts to write were going haywire. Both were compounded by back-to-back-to-back panic attacks that were making me scramble to text my life story to my mom, hoping she could find "the answer" in whatever I was writing. She did not.
When it was all said and done, it was 75 pages of life story, pain, anger, hate, and sadness that I sent to her. I'm not at all ready to look at them so they're hiding on my Google drive.
The worst of it has passed and most of the wreckage cleared. This blog was important to my recovery because my family was acting suspicious AF during a time when I was already dealing with PTSD-related paranoia and panic attacks, my kids were already stressed out, and my husband was ready to buckle from the weight of it all.
I was having flashbacks to my childhood frequently throughout the days I wasn't sure I was alive and/or real. I also had a box of several journals from Jr. High and High School, a bunch of old school papers, and a handful of papers from doctor appointments.
Putting the pieces together required safety, dignity, clarity, time, and Google. Not mood stabilizers. If anyone has a problem with how the story came out, they should have been here to help me.
I don't plan on promoting this project, but I'm not hiding it either. I'm not ashamed of my story.
Take what you need, leave the rest,
and leave me alone ❤️