My love life, drugs & an escort agency (its not what you think!) Part 1
My love life, drugs & an escort agency.
(It’s not what you think!)
I always thought that a relationship was what I wanted. I was the worlds biggest romantic. I loved relationships & being in love. Even during the soul killing heartache that followed I knew I would come out the other side & find love again.
So here I am confused again, wondering what the hell is wrong with me nowadays.
I’ve tried counsellors & having a good look at myself but I just can’t see what the problem is. So I’m writing it down. Maybe you guys will be able to see the reason why I cant fall in love anymore? Why I’m so scared of waking up in 20 years & realising I’ve wasted my life being in a relationship when I could’ve been out having fun!
All my thoughts are a jumble & I can’t make head nor tail of them. Have a read & see what you think.
My son was born when I was 18. I had severe postnatal depression. I had it for 4 years. That part of my life is pretty much a blank.
Somewhere in that 4 years me & the dad broke up, he met someone else. We were stuck in a rut so it was the best thing for us. Nevertheless I was still upset when it happened. When a relationship comes to an end it always hurts no matter what the circumstances, it’s still sad.
Fortunately he is a good dad & had his son every weekend without fail, and also my mum was brilliant. The postnatal depression meant I couldn’t bare to have my son anywhere near me. I hated him, and there was nothing I could do to stop the way my hormones were making me feel.
It’s so gutting. You’re all geared up to be a good parent, and then you come home from the hospital & can’t stand the sight of your baby.
So I missed out on the first 4 years of his life. I feel sad when I think about it.
Before I fell pregnant I’d been a recreational drug user since the age of 12. It started out with smoking pot & sniffing solvents, then as me & my mates gained access to other drugs over the years we tried other stuff. It never went as far as Heroin though. I stuck with what I liked – Pills, speed, acid, coke & pot. I stopped when I was pregnant. But after the break up I got back into it again. I was out every weekend, and when I wasn’t out I smoked all the time. I was always stoned.
At that time I was living in a flat in town. I was living on state benefits & getting in a financial mess. On the few days my son was home I screamed at him all day. He was only 18 months old & he hated being home. Even at that young age he realised me & his dad had broken up. He found a picture of us together one day & clutched it all day saying ‘Daddy gone’ and got upset if I tried to take it off him.
It wasn’t a very happy existence for either of us. I considered suicide on a couple of occasions. I tried the different anti depressants the Doctor gave me. And my mum, bless her, took me to a homeopath to try another way of getting me back to normal.
I was a monster; the depression had turned me into some awful person I never knew was in me. And I felt like it for so long I forgot what the real me was like before. I felt like I was falling down a hole with nothing to stop me falling into the darkness.
After a few months of caning drugs I started to hear strange noises & was afraid to be in my flat on my own at night. Either the drugs or the postnatal depression, or maybe both! had bought on some kind of psychosis. After about a month I was too scared to go in my flat in the day because I was convinced there was something in there trying to get me.
Ha it sounds funny thinking about it now but at the time I was really scared.
So I spent my rent money & had to move out.
I moved into my mums fiancés house cos it was empty now they’d moved in together.
I lived there for a year in a rut, still in the clutches of postnatal depression. I ran up huge bills & spent all my money on pot. My son spent most of the time with his dad & my mum cos I didn’t have enough money to feed him.
Then one day I was round a friend’s house. Her boyfriend had a couple of mates there too & later that night she called me to say one of them (Darren) had liked me & wanted to go on a date. So a week later we went out. And from then we were inseparable.
We didn’t have any money, but we were stoned all the time. I call him my knight in shining armour because within a couple of months my postnatal depression started to lift! I couldn’t believe it was going. It went & came back & I was depressed & crying for a day then it would lift again. The gaps in between it coming back got bigger & bigger until it was eventually gone. Darren had lifted me out of the rut & we had a great summer together.
Three months later I got a call from his dad asking me to go round. I’d never met his dad before & couldn’t work out what was going on.
When I got there he told me that Darren had handed himself over to the police that morning (I thought he was going for a job interview!) because he’d jumped bail for ABH 4 months before & was getting worried about being arrested.
So Darren was in prison for 3 months. I wrote to him every day because I knew he would be climbing the walls in there.
But slowly I started growing away from him & when it was time for him to come home I wasn’t in love with him anymore.
While he’d been away Id struck up a friendship with a guy who worked in a local shop. It was love at first sight for me. He was so shy & cute. That was when I realised that I wasn’t in love with Darren anymore. When I’m in love I’m totally besotted with a person – no one interests me even a little bit. So when I found myself drooling over Ashley I realised.
I asked Ashley out on a date & broke up with Darren. But Darren took it badly & kept telling me he was gonna kill himself.
I felt bad about breaking up with him, but if you don’t love someone its gotta be done unfortunately. I was sad our relationship had come to an end, and also surprised at how quick I’d fallen out of love with him.
Enter Ashley…
Me & Ashley spent a lot of time together, but he wasn’t as devoted as Darren had been, and could be quite cold. He wasn’t really into sex (I think it was because he hadn’t had many partners & lacked confidence) which sent my self-esteem plummeting.
Me & Ashley argued a lot & were always breaking up. I loved him so much and couldn’t understand why he wasn’t as into me as I was him.
I felt ugly a lot of the time because he didn’t ever tell me I looked nice or show me affection. I started to dread naked or pretty women coming on the TV because I felt so ugly up against them. I hated him buying newspapers for fear there was pretty or naked women in there.
Ashley wouldn’t hold my hand or show any affection in public, which was a big issue because I felt rejected. ‘That’s what couples do when they’re in love!’ I’d cry, but it just made Ashley more determined not to do the things I asked. He said I was trying to change him & he didn’t like it.
I hated going out to nightclubs because I was convinced Ashley was looking at all the pretty girls. I always wore jeans & I felt so ugly up against the scantily clad girls.
And then one night I actually did see him making eyes at a pretty girl, while I was sat next to him. I nearly left him in the club & drove the 100 miles back home without him! But I thought maybe I was imagining it.
During that year we took alot of Ecstasy. We both had a deep love of music & Ashley was a DJ, so we stayed in doing pills listening to music. Then one night it all went horribly wrong & for the first time in 8 years of taking them I had a bad pill. I had a panic attack (I didn’t know that’s what was happening at the time cos I’ve never had one before), hyperventilated & couldn’t tell Ashley what was happening to me because I thought if I said it out loud it would make me panic more. So I went for a walk for 4 hours.
I was a mess. It truly was the worst night of my life so far. Anyone whose had a bad pill will know when you panic on Ecstasy the panic is increased tenfold.
The next day I was a shell of my former self. I was still having panic attacks & had chest pains.
The next night I admitted myself to hospital screaming that I couldn’t breathe & was dying.
They did a heart scan to show me there was nothing wrong & that it was the after effects of the bad pill. Then gave me some Diamazipan & sent me on my way. But then I was too scared to put any sort of tablet in my mouth! I went to the doctors; they were no help at all. The only advice they could give was don’t take drugs, and sent me on my way with some antidepressants.
I spoke to a couple of my mates who said they’d had a similar thing happen. One of them suggested counselling.
So I went to counselling & also had something called Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. The whole episode had bought on a morbid fear of death – which I still have now. And the counselling uncovered a few things from my childhood that could’ve contributed towards my state of mind.
Slowly the panic attacks disappeared, and I only have one about every 6 months now. Although its not really a panic attack, more of a flashback of that night. It’s very scary & can last for upto 12 hours.
I call it a flashback because most people who have panic attacks have them for a reason, whether it be because they don’t like being in public places, or a fear of embarrassing themselves, or whatever; mine are caused by nothing, I can just feel when its gonna happen. I think its something to do with the chemicals in my brain.
Also in that time Ashley’s dad was diagnosed with cancer. So all in all it wasn’t a very good time for our already unstable relationship.
We went out for the day on our 1 year anniversary. We argued all day, and then the next day we broke up.
Ashley just couldn’t take it anymore. I was too clingy and asked too much of him...
