A Second Second Chance

Hello everyone, and a very warm welcome to all the new subscribers. The response I’ve received after appearing on This Is Actually Happening has been overwhelming. I’m grateful to everyone who has reached out to offer their kind words, sympathies, and shared parts of their own stories. The past two weeks have been a whirlwind. Not only has the experience of telling such a raw story on a podcast been one of the craziest things I’ve done, but it’s also brought up a lot of emotions. The thing about the entire situation is that after it happened, I did go to therapy. I was in a long-term treatment facility for 8 months afterward. However, I don’t think I ever properly had the chance for the magnitude to sink in. I never fully processed these events in my life. My mom and my relationship trailed off, and as a result, I developed this attitude of “I don’t need her anyway.” This resulted in a lot of pent up feelings and thoughts. The guilt of what I did prevented me from feeling like I was allowed to have any negative thoughts towards my mom, so I just became neutral and detached. Suffice to say, the past couple weeks have been a doozy.

Today, I’d like to address a few things. Namely, I’ve noticed some comments asking questions. Additionally, there are some things that got edited out of the final version of my story.

First and foremost: the other car. The people in the red jeep are entirely unknown to me. I have no idea who they are or where they are today. I have no idea how my wrecking my mom’s car into theirs affected their life, and I can only imagine how traumatic it was for them. Directly after the wreck, I was told that both of the people in the vehicle walked away with bruises and scratches. Their car had landed upside down from the impact, and yet they walked away relatively unscathed. I could not feel more grateful for that fact. I touched briefly in the podcast on the other car because the simple fact is there isn’t a lot of information to be had there. I have considered finding out who they were and reaching out to them. However, there are plenty of reasons why that doesn’t feel like the right thing to do. At the time of the wreck, I was 14 years old. It was difficult enough for me to grasp the affects my action had on my mom, who was severely injured in the wreck, let alone the strangers I’d never met. It was almost as if they were an abstract concept. They weren’t totally real to me. While years of reflection have allowed me to see the full scope (the affect on them, their families, my mom’s family members, myself,) none of that was immediately clear to me. If I could talk to these people, I would tell them how sorry I am. My actions were thoughtless and stupid, and if I had taken even a moment to consider how what I was about to do would change the lives of others, I never would have done it.

I’ve said it before: I am so lucky. My actions were extreme, and yet everyone made it out alive. I don’t know where I’d be today if that weren’t the truth. That in itself was a second chance I never thought I deserved.

My original interview appointment with Whit was scheduled to be 3 hours long. I ended up talking to him for 4 hours. Then, he was able to edit it (beautifully, I might add) down to an hour episode. Due to this, there was a bit that got left out. The most important part I feel is this:

When I was 13 and first in and out of mental hospitals, it seemed each hospitalization resulted in a new prescription. I was taking an antidepressant, an antipsychotic, a mood stabilizer, and two sleep aids. I was groggy 100% of the time. I slept 16 hours a day at times. I would sleep during school, then I would come home, take a nap, wake for dinner and return to bed at 9 pm. My memories from these times are blurry in many ways, and I believe that to be due to the medication. Before medication, I do remember having pretty intense arguments with my mom. I would yell at her, and maybe end up slamming doors, but I was never violent. I think some of the medications I was taking had a huge role in my impulse control and overall emotional stability. Most of these medications can be found to increase suicidal behaviors in teenagers. However, at the time of all of this, I had no idea how medication could’ve been playing a role. It wasn’t until years later that I made a connection.

In 2018, I was in a different wreck. This one was no fault of my own. A semi truck turned left into my driver’s side, spinning my car and lodging me beneath the trailer. I was able to walk away from this wreck, and because it was in town, we were going 25 mph at most. I was lucky. However, about 2 weeks after the wreck, I started having seizures. I began seeing a neurologist, who first prescribed Lamictal. If you don’t know Lamictal is a common medication for bipolar, mood disorders, and epilepsy. For all of those things, it’s relatively unknown why it works, but for some people it does. Lamictal is one of the medications I was on back when I was 14. It was the one I overdosed on in the first long-term treatment center I was in (one month before the wreck.) So, my neurologist prescribes Lamictal. For a few weeks, everything was relatively fine. My seizures hadn’t yet subsided, but I was told that could take a month or more. Slowly but surely, I began noticing changes. I would get severely irritable over the tiniest things. I found myself arguing with my fiancée, yelling at him, and sometimes even throwing things across the room. These arguments would always end in me breaking down and crying, because I felt so out of control. I had no idea what was happening to me. It just felt like there was this intense energy inside me that kept bubbling up, and if I didn’t act on the energy, I felt like I might explode.

At my next neurologist appointment, I told him my seizures were still happening, but also that everything seemed to be falling apart. I told him of the mood swings, the crying, the out of control feelings. He said, “I wish you told me sooner! Lamictal can do this to some people!”

This led me down a rabbit hole of researching psychotropic medications and their affects on people. I found crazy stories of people getting WORSE after being prescribed medications for their depression, anxiety, etc. Suddenly, everything made a lot of sense. It all clicked into place. I discontinued the Lamictal, and within a week or two, I was back to normal. Thus began the journey of trying to find the right medication to control my newfound epilepsy.

My mom mentioned this in her episode, but before I submitted my story to TIAH, she and I hadn’t talked about the wreck. She said, “We’ve probably talked more in the past few months than we have in the past 8 years.” That is absolutely true. We saw each other a handful of times, and every time, the unacknowledged wreck was an elephant in the room. We, like so many other times in our lives, tried to act as if nothing had happened. Only this time, it was impossible to have an even remotely normal relationship. So contact just dwindled. I felt like it was never my right to bring up the wreck. I thought that by doing so, I would cause my mom more trauma. Additionally, my mom’s side of the family didn’t feel good about having me around, especially directly after the wreck. It just felt easier all around if I allowed myself to be shut out. If I shut myself out. When I was invited to things, usually by my older sister, it was a 50/50 chance if I’d actually show up.

So, the podcast has given me a unique opportunity. I can’t predict the future, or hop on over to other timelines, so it’s hard telling what would’ve happened if I hadn’t submitted my story. I have a feeling my mom and I both would’ve let the years slip away, minimally contacting each other, never fully addressing the situation. It’s not like that’s what we wanted, but at least for me, I just didn’t know how to breach it. It’s such a HUGE discussion to have, where do you even begin?

In two weeks or so, I will be seeing my mom for the first time in years. We will have the opportunity to have the hard conversations we have always needed. I am hopeful that I have grown enough since I was 14 to finally have these discussions. I am also hopeful that my mom has reflected enough to have them as well. It’s so weird for this to be such a “public” reuniting. I feel unbelievably lucky in my life. Despite everything, despite my own actions that could’ve ended or ruined multiple lives, despite all that I went through beforehand and since, I have the opportunity to thrive. I have great friends, an amazing fiancée, I’m going to school to become a nurse. I have control over my life in a way that I never thought I would. My teenage years were spent believing I was worthless, that my life would be an endless pit of despair for as long as I lived. Yet, I’ve shown that to be untrue. And now, I have the chance to rebuild a relationship with my mother. A relationship that I had long accepted was dead. It could go any direction. It’s possible rebuilding isn’t possible when the foundation itself was so broken. However, I’m at a point in life where I am finally able to embrace any relationship with my mom, even if it isn’t the one I’d always dreamed of having. My Second Second chance is upon me, and I refuse to waste it.

Thanks again to everyone who reached out. I intend on replying to comments very soon. Between school, work, and emotions in general, it might take me a bit.

Here’s to second chances. To connecting with complete strangers over the shared human experience. To honest, hard conversations. To growth and change. To love.