Meet me

My name is McKenzie Marshall. I am 24 years old. Feeling older every day. This morning I thought, I can no longer say that I am in my early 20s. Rather I am closer to mid 20s. How time flies when you are having fun… NOT! My life is a mess right now. I am trying desperately to escape an abusive ex, I have so many anxiety issues that I can’t function most days, and I am realizing that I lost myself just as I am getting old enough to start worrying about mortgages and my career. Needless to say, it is stressful. It is my hope that this blog will allow me to find myself again so to speak. You may ask what the heck that means. I think it is a pretty weird saying myself… “find myself”. We hear it so much though. For me, it means that I feel like I have been through so much that with every obstacle I have over come, I have gained another protective layer. I have buried my self a little bit deeper. I am going to try to face myself. Really get out the garbage that is in my brain that I don’t have the courage to share with my friends and family in person. When I can strip away these callouses I feel that I will be able to share the real me with the world.

 

If I can help just one person realize that they are not alone in their struggles by reading about the daily life of an average women, then that is great. I feel like everyone has struggles, but no one has exactly my same struggles. No one could possibly understand exactly what I am going through. Maybe that is right; Maybe that is wrong; Maybe we just don’t talk about our problems enough to know what other people are going through. Maybe we can find strength in finding other people who have faced similar issues and can relate. I myself am willing to listen to anyone who ever needs support. I don’t say this rhetorically. I genuinely enjoy listening to other people rant and feeling empathy for those people. Even though it makes me vulnerable, I like going above and beyond to help others. I feel as though there is not someone out there like that for me. Either they do not understand my struggles, or they do not care to listen. We all struggle. We all have been through things that we do not wish to drudge up. Many people cannot handle the additional stress of worrying about other peoples problems. THAT IS NOT THIS POST! I do not have an ounce of energy left to give to anyone else, BUT I am willing to create my own energy debt. Just for you! Reply to my posts. Tell me your story. Tell me what you need to get off your chest. Lets work this out together.

I struggle with my mental health. I am a real person, with real feelings and real problems. Lets start when I was young, my parents repeatedly cheated on each other. I won’t go into detail out of respect for them. They are my parents and I love them. But it left scars. Big scars. I taught myself how to zone out. How to go into my numb shell. I feel nothing. No emotions. My brain tells me what I should be feeling but my heart is just too over whelmed and has simply blocked out anything that tries to influence it. You may think that as an anxious person this might be a good thing. Not exactly. It feelings like that first shot of captain on an empty stomach. That warm tingle throughout your body as the alcohol sets in. It only lasts for a moment. Imagine holding on to that moment, for a day, maybe longer. That feeling is dizzy yet at ease, physically warm yet emotionally cold, energizing yet depressing. That is what it feels like to have dis-associative personality disorder. I don’t feel it every day. I only feel it when I get so emotionally over whelmed that my body uses it as a survival technique. I was just recently diagnosed with the disorder. I drink. A lot. When I was younger I was aware of the heartlessness that could fill my being if I got too stressed out. I also picked up the bottle at the first sign of stress. For years I assumed that alcohol was my coping mechanism. Alcohol helped me easy my anxiety. A short time ago I reached a point where I could no longer support my own drinking habit. I was spending between $50-$100 a week on booze. Most nights that wasn’t even enough to allow me any decent sleep. I would be so hung over in the mornings that sometimes I was still too drunk to drive myself to work. I couldn’t do it any more. But I needed a way to lessen the intense anxiety I feel. So I decided that after surviving my teenage years without so much as a taste, I  would try marijuana. I replaced alcohol with weed. It allowed me to sleep at night. It allowed my therapist to diagnose me with dis-associative personality disorder (I was still walking around like an emotionless wino randomly with out having a drink in weeks).

I originally sot a therapist because of my terrible anxiety. It turns out I have PTSD. Not the kind you hear about on tv. I did not go to war. I did not experience a natural disaster. I married a sociopath. I mean this very literally. Sociopaths are experts at charming people and exploiting their weakest parts. I fell victim to something that I feel I should have saw coming. I still feel a lot of guilt that I allowed someone to do something so cruel to me. He took away me. He took away my hopes and dreams. He took away my spirit. He took away my ability to sleep. He took away my desire to socialize. He took away my sense of security. He took away every ounce of power I had. He broke me down until I was just a tiny tiny light inside miles of protective layers distancing myself from the world. I would not wish it on anyone. Not even him. He took advantage of the fact that I have more empathy than I know what to do with. He feasted on my pain and my need to help others. He is a monster. I’ll tell you the story in another post. It is simply to much to tell you all at once. My point is that, I am human. I have PTSD. I have dis-associative personality disorder. I am very sick but no one knows. To meet me you would never know. I work full time. I have a degree. I am going back to school for a few more degrees. I raise fur-children. I have a boyfriend. To a stranger I appear to be about as average as they come.

An average person, I am not. I am weird. Really weird. The good kind of weird. I like to think outside the box. I like to be that one exception to all the societal rules. I am open-minded, I do not judge any more than human nature forces me to. I like to be the odd ball in the room who makes people laugh and convinces them to see the good in themselves. I am not the weirdo that you cross the street to avoid. I am the weirdo that you approach when you cross the street to avoid that other weirdo. It would make my entire week to pretend to be your friend, sister, lover, to get you out of harms way. And even though I participate in your escape, I would do the same for the guy that you are trying to get away from. Maybe he has that look on his face because he is having an even worse day than you. Maybe he is tired of the sideways glances. I feel for everyone. Even those that have a less than pure heart.

If you are still reading, I encourage you to check out my other posts. I promise you the truth about me. The boring, weird, sad truths. I hope that you do not find entertainment in my pain. I hope that parts of my story remind you of yourself. I hope that you are filled with empathy for others who face mental illness or who are struggling deeply. Please feel free to give me your feedback. Tell me what you would like to hear. Ask me questions. Tell me about yourself.