Psychosis

I love my family very much, but sometimes I have to love them from a distance. Sometimes they have so much love to give that it comes off as meddling or controlling. I feel like they see me as that 15 year old girl who needed rescued from her crazy mother. I feel like the little girl that ran to her aunt's house in tears because of my mother's rants and raves. I feel like the screwed up young adult that made a lot of bad choices, and no one will let me overcome those choices.
I had to look at having cancer as a blessing in disguise. I say this because I found things out about me that I may not have otherwise found out. One of those being was my hyperactive thyroid. I was bruising way before my first chemo treatment and doctor's were concerned. My psychologist was concerned that my husband had hit me because I had an unexplainable bruise on my face. Well, it turned out after the blood work was done that I had Grave's Disease, an autoimmune deficiency that with medication can go into remission, and it did. My thyroid issues explained a lot though. It explained why I was so damn irritable all the time and short with my husband and my kids. It explained why I had hand tremors. Here, I thought it was because of all the caffeine I drank, but even without the caffeine I had hand tremors.
I don't know how this accusation started, but Becky told me while my sister was visiting me and taking care of my kids she was looking for alcohol. For one thing, I don't drink. When I do, it's once in a blue moon. After my husband and I separated, I did go to my neighbor's house and did get drunk on tequila. BUT, my children were taken care of and I woke up the next morning and took my son early to his football game. My husband had just left me and I didn't see anything wrong with letting lose.
Becky asked my sister if she had found any empty bottles and of course she had to say no. I have never kept  alcohol in my house except for special occasions.
"We know that Steve hits you," Becky said to me one afternoon.
"What"? I asked.
"We've seen the bruises up and down your arm." She said.
For one thing, my kids and my husband playfully wrestled and I just bruise easily. You could grab my wrists and I would have bruises on it.
"Are you freaking kidding me"? I thought to myself.
Not only was I having to deal with my ex-husband and my sister conspiring, but now this? What part of absolutely no stress did this woman not understand? It was almost as if she was deliberately bringing me stress so that I wouldn't recover from my cancer. She knew that positive thinking was essential in overcoming this, and she was doing everything in her power to bring negativity to my life.
"Leslie, my dad was an alcoholic." Becky said.
"He abused my mother and she refused to leave him."
Why was she telling me this. Did my husband and I argue? Yes. Had he hit me NEVER!. There was one time he came close, but that was only because of an anti-depressant he was on for his migraines. It was so bad that I couldn't wake him up. It was almost like he had Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. He was awake, but he wasn't and he swung his arm at me. When he finally did wake up, he was mortified by his behavior and stopped taking the medication even though his doctor told him to split it in half.
Becky had conversations with my husband on the phone about our marriage and our financial situation. I needed her help. I needed her to convince him that I needed him to come back home.
"He told me that he wished you were dead," Becky revealed to me.
I was in total and utter shock. This did not sound like my husband at all, even when he was at his maddest. He was not the evil son of a bitch that she was making him out to be.
Everyone wanted to know if he was going to divorce me and he said that I needed to focus on my chemo and fighting the cancer. He would not put me through something like that, and he honestly didn't know if he wanted a divorce.
"He just wants to stay married to you because if you do die, he gets everything. You're kids won't get anything," Becky said.
"He can even claim spousal benefits from social security." She said. "He just wants your money."
My husband was not anything like that. My lawyer explained to me that I could have him sign a waiver that would prohibit him from taking anything that was mine, and Steve was willing to do this. My husband was not the asshole she was trying to convince my dad and the rest of my family that he was.
I had lost faith in my marriage, and every time she would bring something to my attention she knew I would be on the phone with him to confront him. I had such chemo fog that I started to believe her. I believed that he wanted me dead. I believed that he didn't give a shit about me when all he wanted was relief and peace from my insanity. I even started to believe that he hit me. Why the hell would I believe that? When someone says something like that over and over again, you start to believe.
In one of my pastoral counseling sessions that Becky sat in on, I revealed I might have been sexually molested. There had been a looming sense of doubt for years hovering and I just could never remember it, but I had this feeling I had been. When I was a teenager, I had entered into a "stress center" and a psychiatrist explained to me during that time period that psychiatrists would plant memories. They wouldn't do this out of malice or to harm the patient, but the questions that would ask raised self-doubt in one's own memories.
Becky knew all of this information and used that to her advantage.