“I feel like I don’t financially contribute enough to my family. I yell. A lot. I talk to God every week, but I haven’t been to church in years. I dye my hair when I’m feeling stressed.”
- Love What Matters
- Health
“I feel like I don’t financially contribute enough to my family. I yell. A lot. I talk to God every week, but I haven’t been to church in years. I dye my hair when I’m feeling stressed.”
“I cooked when I was asked. I cleaned dirty breeches, dirty dishes, and everything in between. I was loving. I was patient. I tried to look as pretty as I possibly could. I was forgiving. I was ENOUGH. I was more than enough. But for the wrong man, it did not matter. You may be the rib, but a rib cannot fit comfortably in a body it was not designed for.”
“Our babies! Were they gone? We drove the 3 hours to the IVF clinic. The doctor informed us, ‘One baby is still there, and next to the baby is a blood clot 4 times its size.’ I remember my eyes filling with tears. I began crying on my wife’s shoulder. ‘What you two are doing isn’t right.’ No one ever tells you how hard it will be to have kids when you’re gay.”
“He accused me, ‘Your boyfriend is in the RV parked outside, isn’t he? How dare you bring a man into our home, in front of my daughter.”
“When we got married, I had no idea how to relax my body. How to communicate without completely shutting down for days. I struggled to show emotion, to be vulnerable. It took 5 years of marriage for me to believe he wasn’t going to hit me when he got mad. The simple act of raising his arms triggered me and made me flinch.”
“Addiction is a room (and whole hospital waiting room) full of brothers, sisters, nieces, uncles and friends beating themselves up because they didn’t save you. It’s a doctor saying the words ‘legally brain dead.’ An empty chair at every family event. It’s a daughter, a son who have to figure this world out without their dad. This is a man who loved with everything he had. Drugs don’t love you. Your family and friends do.”
“I have a good marriage, a good family, a nice home, and a stable career. I went to college and I’ve published books. But that’s the thing with depression. It doesn’t care how good your life is. I think that’s one of the hardest things to explain.”
“I was dropping my son off at daycare. When we arrived, there was another little boy who’d just been dropped off by his mom. He couldn’t have been more than 3 years old. And he was wailing. This child was genuinely distressed. He wanted his mom very, very badly. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt more in tune with another person’s emotion.”
“It’s picking your skin until it bleeds. It’s always feeling like you’re about to throw up. It’s constant headaches from clenching your teeth together from worry.”
“This year started off rough. I had heart surgery and later got thyroid cancer. I was strong for everyone around me. However, I wasn’t strong for myself. When no one was around, I cried, a lot. Do you know what really helped me? My two best friends. They were strong for me. That’s the thing with true friendships. Not the ‘get the most likes on Instagram’ friendships – the real, raw friendships. We care about is each other. It’s that simple.”