Post your sob stories. A challenge, but serious

[JediMom]

Originally Posted by StuartPants

I don't mean the regular abuse we all dish out when we're frustrated. I mean the constant berating and over the top vulgarity and disrespect that is usually characteristic of alcoholics.

Sounds like the majority of my ex's. That's why I married a guy who doesn't drink.

[deznice]

Originally Posted by Juline

Every single, are you sure?? I wouldn't say that's the case in my circle of friends, but I'm sure there are stories that aren't ever shared.

It was a person that held me at knifepoint, not people. And it was the boyfriend of a friend that I was going to court reporting school with, that I shared *every single class* with. We all moved in together, and within just a few months she moved out without telling me what she was doing. Apparently he was abusive to her, but did she tell me that? No. I was working a lot and spending time at my boyfriend's house, so I didn't see any abuse. I just saw an unemployed loser from Texas that sat around in his boxers all day chewing tobacco and spitting it into an old milk jug. GROSS. I'm convinced he's the reason for my dislike of anything Texas Anyway, she moved out, he started drinking more, and one night when I was alone with him (not unusual, so I didn't have any reason to be concerned, he was my roommate), he came into my room with a knife.

After that my "friend" and I never spoke. She eventually dropped out of school, so at least I didn't have to keep seeing her every single day.

i hope your bf kicked his teeth in

[Juline]

Originally Posted by deznice

i hope your bf kicked his teeth in

Never got the chance to, he went right to jail, then prison. He tried, though. The guy fled (on foot, the loser didn't have a car), and my bf went looking for him. The cops found him first, though, and that was that.

[william]

Originally Posted by StuartPants

2004 - I normally don't go to bed before midnight on any given night.... He died in the hospital at 11:59 pm of cardiac arrhythmia. He had no history of a heart condition, and this has never happened before....

Genes! I hate stories like this.

Yesterday my wife goes shopping while I head to the park. My cell rings and she tells me how a few feet in front of her two cars smashed together and one of them jumped the curb. If she had been walking just a little quicker...

Life's so precious.

[Bebe]

My sister kissed her children goodbye one afternoon and jumped in her car to go to work. Her younger son, who was upset that she was leaving, ran around the back of the car and she backed into him. He died in her arms on the kitchen floor. He was 3 years old. Her older son has never forgiven himself because she told him to hold his brother's hand and he let go.

My seriouso went to the doctor for a check up, they found lumps under his arms. Several blood tests and an CT scan later he was diagnosed with stage four follicular lymphoma. He is undergoing chemo at the moment. Median survival is ten years for this 'non-fatal' cancer.

[ncfcyank19]

My life has been no cup of roses but I'm not going to play like it was a den of thorns either. I certainly had it better than a lot of starving and abused children.

Still, reading Tams story about losing her sister, the post about 9/11, Deuce losing people he knew and other heart-wrenching stories I kinda sit here and reflect on my own life and whether I could be doing more to be a better person, be more successful in terms of goals I've set for myself, etc. Anyways, if I listed all my sob stories they'd taken years to read but I'll condense it the best I can with just ones I remember right now.

Short background. My parents were married in 1976. My mom was a rebellious 15 yr old looking for a way out of the house. My dad was in the US Coast Guard which appealed to my mom's father. My dad got grandpa's consent to marry and they moved out to Long Beach, CA together where I was born two years later. After a few months they moved to Governor's Island, NY where I spent a couple years and where my first memories are. Then my dad was shipped west and that's where this story begins.

Before I get to that I also need to mention that my dad was born into an LDS household and was active until he joined the military. He was already kinda on his way out and all the temptations were too much. He indulged in just about all of them. My mom continued her rebellious ways and enjoyed the men around her while my dad was away. After struggling for 10 years to keep the family together, my parents divorced. My mom would remarry in 1988 and my dad in 1991 after sobering up and becoming an active Latter-Day Saint again. He's never turned back. My mom on the other hand put us through a lot as kids since her new husband had a lot of druggie friends and they'd make us stay with some very seedy people. All things which my mom would later apologize over and over and over for. Anyways, here's the story.

My little sister, Stephanie, was born April 9, 1982 in San Francisco, CA when we were living on Treasure Island.

My sister was the picture of health up until she was 14. She wasn't getting along with my mom and decided she'd move in with daddy. Shortly after moving in she was rushed to the hospital after what I only remember as a fainting spell. I got the call that her blood glucose level was well over 600 and they didn't know if she'd make it. Well, she made it but not without an obvious diagnosis: Type 1 Diabetes. She'd be taking shots twice a day for the rest of her life.

At 14 years old you can guess how she took the news that the diet and lifestyle she'd known was suddenly stripped from her and replaced with a very strict one. She rebelled. Not openly of course. She still cared about those around her and she figured the less they knew, the less they'd worry and nag her. She missed taking her insulin or testing her blood glucose levels. She would sneak in junk food or soda here and there.

About 18 months from her diagnosis she had her first battle with diabetic ketoacidosis or Keto for short. The muscle behind her eye swelled up, pushing her eyeball nearly out of her skull. The pain was intense and she spent weeks in the hospital. It would happen again and again over the next year, each time worse than the time before. She spent almost all of 1998 in the hospital.

Finally they gave her what I believe was Vancomycin. The doctors told her that the next time this happened, they would take out the eye altogether.

She'd go through keto again but never again through the eyes. She had found liquor. She knew why alcohol was deadly to diabetics so she figured taking more insulin before drinking would stabilize the effects. It did for a while but it was the biggest mistake she would ever make.

Spending weeks in the hospital a few times a year became the norm for Steph. She was a bridesmaid in my wedding and all of the photos with her show the bandage on her arm. They were hiding something but I can't remember what. Tubes or something I think.

Anyways, she had issues outside of diabetes as well. Boys. A boy was caught sneaking out of her bedroom window as my dad pulled into the driveway after a week's vacation. She'd party and not tell anyone where she was going. She'd come home drunk and oversexed and my dad was tired of it. He tried every way he knew to get her to behave and everything he tried backfired so he kicked her out of the house. At this point she was 19 and could legally be on her own.

She lived with friends, a couple from church, other friends and each for only two months at a time. She came back to live with my dad again but a few months later it was too much. She was sent back down to Southern California to live with my mom who by that time was living with my grandma since they'd been kicked out of their apartment for missing rent. That due to a cop impounding their vehicle and step-dad using the last of the money in the bank to get it out.

She got a job at McDonalds which she kept the whole time there. She got better about taking care of her diet but she didn't stop drinking. Just decreased it enough where she would go all year without a trip to the hospital. She started school to become a masseuse and this really excited her because now she had found a purpose in her life. She found something she loved to do, that she was good at and that could be a career for her.

She also found herself a man. A man that she would eventually fall in love with. They'd spend weekends together. She'd teach him about the LDS Church and he'd try to play her knight in shining armor by keeping her honest about her health and keeping her straight about drinking. Little did they know it was already too late.

She had bought a lot of decorations, spent money on special invite bottles and made grand plans for her 23rd birthday. Just 2 weeks before her birthday though, she'd end up in the hospital again. This time it was serious.

Her kidney were functioning at below 2% and she'd have to start dialysis treatments. It turns out all that extra insulin she'd been taking to counterbalance the alcohol had eaten away at her kidneys.

She came home after 14 weeks in the hospital and started going to her treatments three times a week. They tried inserting something into her stomach so she could do the treatments from home daily but it didn't take. After a couple months she started having incidents where she'd go out to the car to get something she'd forgotten but by the time she got there, she didn't remember how to open the door. She knew that she should know but she just couldn't figure out how to work the handle.

She'd take a bath, get out, and know that she had to go pee but forget how. She'd try brushing her teeth and forget how the brush worked with the teeth. These moments would only last a few minutes and be cured immediately with a snack candy bar or cookies. Sometimes she'd pass out or seize up and the sugar would have to be forced into her mouth because she'd either locked her jaw or forgotten how to chew. After a few minutes she'd be back to normal. These were the first signs things weren't going right.

Soon after this she'd started helping my grandma out by pulling old wallpaper off the walls in a spare bedroom and repainting the walls. She worked and worked until she was so tired and sore she'd lay down on the bed and pass out with the brush still in her hand.

Then she'd be talking to someone and debate simple math with people. She was obviously wrong but she'd insist she was right. Or she'd talk to grandma about something and for a moment she was a child and then she'd go right back to being herself again. Turns out, she hadn't filled her prescriptions of blood pressure medication in almost a month. No one notified the family and we didn't know until it was too late. Here, are my blog entries of what happened next:

Week One
Week Two

Basically her boyfriend had picked her up like normal and when he got there she was sleeping. This was unusual but not alarming so he waited for her to wake up. She did but complained of a headache so he gave her some medicine and they took off.

She spent Saturday cleaning his apartment which she did because she claimed he was a pack rat and she hated all the boxes of stuff everywhere. She again complained of a headache and took a nap. Josh, concerned, called the doctor and they went in to see him. They noticed her levels were unusually high and scolded her for not filling her blood pressure prescription. They also scolded her for not filling out the paperwork and doing the tests to get the process started for finding a kidney donor. They got her levels back to normal and the doctor said to come back in two days so he could check on her again.

They decided that Monday night after Josh got home, they'd go back to the doctor and get her checked out again to make sure all was ok. Well, she got another headache while Josh was at work and took a nap. She was asleep when he got home. he was worried that she hadn't eaten all day or taken her insulin so he fixed a meal, woke her up and fixed her a glass of water.

She sat up on the bed, drank the water and then he noticed she started having head ticks to the right. They grew faster and harder each time and she fell backwards onto the bed. He checked her pulse, gave her CPR and called 911. Within five minutes the doctors were there and they rushed her to Irvine Regional Medical Center.

She had brain seizures all night so they couldn't run any tests. My dad came out from Utah, my mom flew out from West Virginia and my family and friends gathered around Stephanie as she lay unconscious. This lasted a week with us getting tiny tidbits of info each day, all of it bad.

Finally on Halloween night around 8pm Pacific Time, they pulled out her feeding and breathing tubes. I think we all hoped she would go in a matter of minutes. Her body wasn't so kind. We watched her go through her "death rattles" for 5 hours before Victoria and I headed home to get a little sleep. We asked my dad and mom to call the moment it looked like she was in her last moments.

She lasted until we got there again at 5:30pm the next day. I had to go to work to get my mind off everything for a bit and give my brain a rest. We got there and within 12 minutes she started taking HARD breaths at about one every 6-7 seconds. We knew this was it so I stepped out to call Josh and tell him to get here right away. By the time I got back she was gone.

I consoled my wife, my mother and my father for a long time until Josh arrived. When he did we gave him a few moments alone with her. Instead he opted to have me stay with him. It was so tough. They had been making plans to marry. She was looking at dresses and they'd already been shopping for rings. He was such a good guy. She was finally getting her life in order. It all seemed so unfair.

She was a huge Tori Amos fan. In fact, the last time I saw her in person was the Tori Amos concert in LA that September that they'd taken us to as an anniversary present. Little did I know that was her way of saying that she and Josh were planning to be married themselves. Neither one said anything about it that night. Now, all I have left is her yearbook, the tassle from her high school graduation, her scriptures, the travel mug I borrowed that night and of course pictures and lots of memories.

Having someone close to you die is hard. I dealt with the death of both my grandfathers and my great-grandmother. Watching someone take their last breaths...watching their bodies struggle to maintain life when their brains have already been destroyed...trying to deal with losing someone so young to something like that is something I will never wish on anyone. Not even the most vile and evil human being in the world. I know some of you have watched a loved one or a close comrade go through the "death rattles" or struggle for life as it leaves them.

While we were grateful to the doctors for keeping her pumped with morphine through her last moments, we were a little upset that they didn't give her something to help supress the rattles. It might have made things easier on us I think. Thing is...none of us thought about that at the time. It wasn't until later that the anger part of grieving brought this thought out.

Anyways...that's my story. Well, my sister's story. The images and sounds and pain is still with me. I had to actually stop typing this out more than a few times because I was overcome with grief. I believe she's in a better place now but sometimes I get a little selfish and I wish she was still here. I guess that's normal. I just think about her sometimes and think she's looking at me and I wonder to myself, "Am I living a life that would honor her life or make her proud of me?" I think about my drinking, swearing, getting angry and I start thinking about things I can improve in my life, ways I can be a better person. Yeah, then I change my life for a month or so before returning back to my old habits. Ugh...growing up sucks.

[st0l3n]

My Dad's only brother got divoriced and remarried into a family of CUNTS
Anyway christmas 2005 my uncle rang my Grandmother on christmas day and cancelled her coming to his house for Christmas lunch .
He explained to her the story that his stepsons sister inlaw had commited suicide buy placing a plastic on her head and sufficatting herself.
Anyway during lunch she didnt say to much
Then just as we are starting dessert she pipes up and she had a burning question she need to know if it was a shopping bag or rubbish bag
I laughed no one else found it funny
Anyway every christmas day these people will have to remember this death
And well it couldnt have happened to a nicer bunch of people

[william]

An old thread, one of my favorites.

I'll revive it with a tale told elsewhere. Not so much a sob story but a tale of love, loss and redemption.

-------------------------------------------

She-She

In family portraits she is there with us. We take her everywhere and everyone knows her name. And every night she sleeps with my daughter. .

She-She is a stuffed animal, a baby lamb. A few ounces of cotton who’s more loved than - sadly - many children are. I don't feel shamed to say that I love her too. She's given my daughter so much happiness, companionship, and comfort. And through the echo of our love, she's given us love in return.

---

We had long prepared my daughter for the birth of our son, giving She-She a baby brother of her own, Shoe-Shoe, getting my daughter used to the idea of a sibling.

In my bedroom we set-up a co-sleeper - a modern day bassinet, Velcro and all, where our son would spend his first few months. When she first saw it, when we told our daughter what it was, she trotted off to her room and came back with Shoe-Shoe, She-She's baby brother, and placed Shoe-Shoe inside the co-sleeper so that our son would have a lovey all his own.

--

February.

My son is born.

Our lives change forever, for the better.

Snow falls that month.

And then the unthinkable happens.

I pick my daughter up from school and in my rush and my discard - thinking only of the blizzard that was enveloping the city; I struggle with the stroller over crevasses (my cargo one of precious love) and forget to "leash" She-She.

Hours later, I realize She-She's missing. For three years she has lived with us and now...

In the dark and slush, I go out to look for her. I have lost family member. I look at the photos of her and imagine someone picking her up tossed her in the trash, unbeknownst to them how much love that little bag of cotton represents.

My wife reminds me that what matters most is that we have two healthy children…

But I have let my daughter down. The one thing - the only toy she cherishes - the one that is with her day and night, that everyone who knows her identifies with her –

I Have Lost.

And that breaks my heart more than anything. She who was not yet three and through my negligence I have let her down.

My daughter's love lost in snow
Failure breaks my heart.

In the darkness of her room, I give my daughter Shoe-Shoe.

"Not She-She," she says.
"It is."
"Not She-She!"

With kisses and cajoles we get her to go to sleep and then I sacrifice Shoe-Shoe.

Shoe-Shoe, who we bought to give my daughter's love a baby brother, now falls under my hands as I try in desperation and remorse to recreate those places where She-She had grown old under my daughter's amour.

Love wears away all until we're left with an echo of the flesh and an emancipation of the heart.

To love is to use
To grow accustomed to
To take and to return with adore.

After my daughter falls asleep, I take Shoe-Shoe and wash it over and over again in Bleach to wear it out. Then with a copper brush I scuff it further and open a small hole in the back to pull out some of the fibers.

Then in a mixture of dirt and prune juice, I rinse it then place it in our dryer.

Would the ruse work? Even if it does, in my heart I will never be satisfied.

Remorse sweeps within me; the irrational remorse of love, of wanting to please the one you’re in love with and failing. A thought whispers in my heart: Never forgive.

Ever.

Later that night, with my hands burning from the bleach I go out again.

Looking through piles of snow, knowing it was beyond hope, I search for Her - a grayed ball of cotton just the right hue to hide among the snow and slush. I retrace my steps, looking in garbage cans, pausing at each corner, kicking all the snow and gunk aside.

Nothing.

Lying in bed, I formulate a plan. I would post a reward.

She was called She-She.

Before the sun rises, I sneak into my daughter's room and gently kiss her. There, tucked in her arms was Shoe-Shoe, the first betrayal in her tiny, innocent life.

It was so, so cold that morning.

With a flyer in my hand and a photo of She-She in my pocket, I decide to make one last run before going to the copy-store to post all over the street my plea of love.

My hands were burring. If your eyes are the windows to your soul, then your hands are its instrument. In my rush to spare my daughter, I had scarified them.

I retrace my steps, back to my daughter's school, the last place I saw She-She.

I meet a teacher. She knew how much She-She means to my daughter. She would search for her too.

And so I walk back, back to my place, back towards the store where I will print up my plea.

On the corner, cold -
My heart lays low.
I dream where She may be;
A red light keeps me still

Here seventeen hours before, I stood, fighting the piles of snow as I struggled home.

With this in mind, with my heart lost, to the right I look, knowing that like a flow of ice, time and traffic would have moved her outwards and then to the right, where a car would hit her and push her back.

Hundreds of cars each hour.

I look where my mind and not my heart tell me to see and there she lay - a frozen block, filthy beyond belief.

Love trampled underfoot.

-----

With tenderness and love I wash her, restore her.

Movements before my daughter awoke I remove the substitute. She wakes calling for her.

"Here she is." I hand her a damp treasure.
"She-She!"

I tell my daughter that She-She was dirty and had to be washed and now needs to dry.

My daughter surprises me. She understands. And for the first time ever she goes to school with "Doggie," leaving She-She home to dry and heal.

Old habits die hard; I take a moment to offer thanks to a God I know is not there.

She-She.

Our Love.

[manny21]

man cant we just leave these next 2 days for jesus??

[Rhian]

Originally Posted by william

[SIZE=2]An old thread, one of my favorites.

I'll revive it with a tale told elsewhere. Not so much a sob story but a tale of love, loss and redemption.
[/SIZE=2]

I love to read your musings, William. Hope all is well this season for you and your family.