The Joy & Pain Project

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. 

​​