What It Was Like

I owe my life to a power greater than myself I choose to call God.  I fell into a pit that I didn’t think I could get of.  I used to say it started when Rich died, but that’s not true. 

I always had a depressive and addictive personality.  I have memories of when I was a child watching myself in the bathroom mirror as I cried.  Maybe I had a reason.  Maybe I was born that way, but I always felt alone.  I remember daydreaming.  I would go off by myself and not want to be disturbed so I could live the other life I created in my mind.  I was a boy named Danny and I had a dad.  That’s really all I can remember about it.  I know now it was how the child me escaped.

I spent some tween years with anorexia.  This also was about escape.  When I was 10 I was diagnosed with scoliosis.  I started wearing the Milwaukie brace the summer before I began 6^th grade.  It was a solid piece of plastic that wrapped around my abdomen.  A thick bar stretched up to my chin and wrapped around my neck.  Two thinner bars went down my back to connect with the body of the brace.  I wore it until 9^th grade.  Talk about traumatizing…  I systematically stopped eating and started exercising an absurd amount of time.  I wanted to shrink and hide.  Isolating myself began.  I was addicted to starving.

After a lengthy stay at Children’s Hospital and my “secret” was revealed I was able to get through the physical damage it caused.  The emotional damage had never been addressed.

I had no sense of self as a teenager.  I was emotionally stunted.  I didn’t know how to make new friends in a high school that tripled in size from one school year to the next.  I certainly didn’t know how to maintain any sort of relationship on any level. 

My addictive personality and my wanting to escape from myself found the best thing ever – alcohol.  Drinking on the weekends became the norm.  I blacked out at the very first high school party I attended.  It was fruity, numbing bliss! I found the answer.  It didn’t matter how I felt because I couldn’t feel it.  Perfect.  College was even better.  Everyone was drinking every night!  At least I thought they were.

Then I met Rich.  He did not drink every night – hardly at all, in fact.  I calmed down a lot, but he knew there was something in me that could get quite ugly when mixed with alcohol. I knew it, too.  I finished college.  I finished graduate school.  I became a teacher of at risk youth.  I married the man I loved.  I had a beautiful daughter and was expecting a son.  Then Rich died.

All my untreated crazy erupted!  The easiest escape was to drink it away.  Slowly at first.  Soon my self-confidence, self-respect, self-worth, personality, laugher, career  and much more, but worst of all, my children were gone.

Stayed tuned for what happened.

Then It Got Worse

Getting started isn't so easy!  So, I'll keep this intro simple. I have a dozen messages swirling in my mind.  There is so much to sort through if I want to present my story in a meaningful way.  The last time I wrote anything down I was existing in unlimited misery.  If you followed along with www.richrust.com, then you know.  If not, it’s still there – be sure to scroll to the beginning to understand what happened.  I don’t read or edit it.  I certainly do not what to relive it.  It happened.  It was my tragedy.  It is now my testimony.  My husband, Rich died.  I fell apart.  There were 8 years of depletion and wilderness. 

My point?  The human spirit can go to the bowels of hell and come through.  We can come back to life, to health, to wellness, to joy, to love…  We can come back stronger than before we fell. I used to touch people with sorrow.  Today, I touch people with hope.  I am restored and redeemed and I make a daily decision to live in joy.

My last post on richrust.com was me prattling on about how things were looking up and I was feeling better and ready to live again.  That was not my truth.  I wanted it to be, but my hell was deeper than I realized. 

I want to tell my story, but I think I’ll do it in pieces.  I made many bad decisions that aren't easy to discuss, but I will if it can help another struggling person. Some hard lessons were learned that now make up the better part of me.

My story involves deep depression, inconsolable grief and baffling addiction.  The depression and grief are pretty well documented in my earlier blog.  Rich started an online journal in 2001 when we were driving to California for him to take a job in San Francisco.  I began to add entries after his death in 2004.  Rich Rust was my absolute love.  I nearly threw my life away when his was gone.

When he died I wanted everything to end.  I didn't want to feel, to think, to dream, to laugh.  I didn't want to be a widow.  I didn't even want to be a mom, but I couldn't help but love our children.  I didn't want to leave them, but I didn't want to be.

I turned to alcohol.  It was numbing and anesthetizing. It was like drinking an antiseptic that I hoped could heal everything that ached inside of me.  It worked until it didn't. I have an addictive personality. 

Then it got worse…