Depressed & lost

Hi! I’m new here and I don’t really know where to start. I have so many issues – I feel too broken to be “fixed”.

I grew up in a kind of a strict household. I would consider us lower middle class. My dad was the “silent” hard to open up to type and my mom was very controlling and sometime manipulative. But we were loved – there was no doubt about that.

I was shy and because I didn’t feel like I could open up to anyone (besides my parents I had 2 older brothers and a younger brother) I had many insecurities. I didn’t make friends easily (still don’t) and I spent most of my time alone reading or listening to the radio.

When I was about 10/11 years old I was sexually molested by my step-grandfather. He was a very “religious” person and made me believe that no one should know about it and they wouldn’t believe me even if I did tell. So I kept it secret and pushed it way, way back into my mind where eventually I forgot about it until I was in therapy for depression about 10 years ago.

My mother passed away in 1995. It wasn’t a sudden death but it was a sudden illness and she remained in the hospital for 6 weeks before passing. She had never really been sick – we had even talked about dad passing first because he was constantly ill with emphysema. My younger brother lives in NC, my older brother had a family of his own, my older sister had health issue of her own, so with me living the closest and being single, I became by father’s caretaker, which I didn’t mind. I was always considered “daddy’s little girl”. We used to go the professional baseball and football games before he became too ill to manage to do those things. But then he died in 1999. I had just been with him earlier that day. I took him to the grocery and to the pharmacy to get his medication. Later that evening I received a call from my older brother telling me that dad had passed away at home. He had started having difficulty breathing and he had called 9-1-1 but he died before they got there. I got married in October 2000 and then my grandmother passed in November 2000 (the one whose husband molested me). My sister passed in early 2001 and 2 weeks later I found out I was pregnant. My now ex-husband was a recovering alcoholic but he had also gotten messed up with crack cocaine. I was just a good ole country girl and was naïve about drug addiction and he hid it very well. So not only was I having a difficult pregnancy because of my age and family history of diabetes, I had to deal with a husband who was ruining my credit and our lives by preferring to get high than share in the joys of impending parenthood.

I ended up needing an emergency c-section and my daughter was born 3 weeks early. My ex-husband took me to the hospital, hung around for her to be born and then left to go get high. After many tries at trying to get him some help with his addiction and putting us into bankruptcy, I divorced him when my daughter was 1-1/2 years old. I moved to a new home and thought I might be getting myself and my life back on track when my older brother passed away in 2006.

With all this going on, work wasn’t much better. I had been with this company since a month after my mom passed. Several changes were being made – which is fine, change needs to happen. But I was put into a department with a person who, I thought was my friend, but when she became my supervisor I learned a lot more about her than what she had previous allowed me to see. She had had several assistants in the past and I never really thought the issue was her until I started working with her. At first it wasn’t bad, but she knew my situation and knew that I really needed this job and she exploited that. It wasn’t until I was in therapy that I realized that she was a narcissist. But because of my depression and low self-esteem, I allowed her to continue to take advantage of me. She finally left the company and a year later I left. I’m at a company that has good pay and good benefits. The people a nice (to a point – a lot of gossip and backstabbing that I try to stay away from), but I just feel like I fit in. I don’t know if it’s just really not a good fit for me or just my insecurities.

One last thing, my daughter came out to me when she was 15. I had a feeling that she was gay but I was okay with that. However, I wasn’t ready for what she told me next – that she was transgender and that she had felt like she was in the wrong body since elementary school. I knew she was having issues and even took her to counselling but she was ready to open up to anyone so the counseling wasn’t working. She’d get angry at me and depressed. Once she opened up to me about that I said I loved her no matter what but I needed time to let it all sink in. We continued to talk and eventually I found a practice that dealt with the LGBTQ community and she agreed to go. We both saw a therapist for a while and then just her. I started seeing a positive change and with the help of the therapist decided it was time to go ahead with starting to transition. So I now have a son; he is on testosterone therapy for now. He knows that we cannot afford any of the surgeries right now and he is not concerned with that. He would like to have the breast removal surgery whenever he can afford it but knows that the rest of the surgery will have to wait for a much later time. I’ve accepted his choice and have tried to call him by his preferred pronouns although sometimes I mess up and say “she” instead of “he” but he’s pretty understanding.

I am no longer in therapy because I don’t think it was a good fit but I do know I need some type of help. That’s why I’m here. I think anonymous one-on-one and group chats may be more comfortable to me right now. I need to find some motivation to just do normal things – like cook, clean the house, do laundry, etc. And I want to get back into my hobbies – reading and crocheting – but I have lost interest and can’t focus when I try to get back into them.

Well, if you’ve made it this far, I applaud you for hanging in there and “dealing” with all my crap and I apologize for leaving such a long post – apparently I needed to dump this weight and I thought I was just going to leave a small post about being depressed but all this just came pouring out. Thank you for allowing me to express myself.