The Girl That Chaos Built

Merriam-Webster defines chaos as a state of utter confusion. At some point in all our lives, we've experienced it. Since the beginning of time, it has laced its existence throughout lives and events. Whether its running late everyday and feeling like you have no grip on your time or just flat out feeling insane, we've all been there.

I was born into chaos.

I was born the product of chaos.

On a wet and rainy Monday night on April 22, 1991, I was born to an unwed 17-year-old mother who had no idea what she was doing and burdened by the thought of how I came to be. The chaos she endured in my creation.

I wish I could say that was the end of it, that that was my chaos.

But it isn't.

It was only the beginning.

I don't remember much about the short time I lived with my mother. After I was born, she married a man that agreed to love us both, even though I wasn't his. He cared for her and loved us both unconditionally. He worked and provided for us.

But that wasn't enough for my mother.

See, my mother was born into chaos too. She didn't have good parent role models. She had unresolved traumas that had left holes in her that not even I could fill.

So, she left.

Eventually landing herself in jail for a sum of years, I was left to bounce around from family member to family member and eventually in and out of foster care.

In that time I suffered sexual, mental and physical abuse. My earliest are memories plagued by things that children shouldn't even know exist.

I stole to feed myself.

I would sneak Brussel sprouts from the grocery store into the pockets of my homemade dresses or cookies from the Chinese grocery in town to make sure I had something to eat later.

At 7 years old, I went to live with my great-grandmother.

Born in 1917, my Mamaw Ellis was a saint in her own right. Raising twin boys that she had adopted from their own chaos, losing two husbands, owning a flower shop, and then raising me, she was amazing.

But I was already broken by the time I got to her and she saw it.

I was shy, a loner, and scared of everything.

For the next year she tried her hardest to give me a normal life.

In 1998 she got sick. Her heart was failing.

In leu of me going back into the foster system, she found my biological father.

All she wanted was me to have a normal life.

To take away my chaos.

She had no way to know at the time that she was sending me right into the chaos storm.

The Chaos Storm.

I was 8 when I first met my father. He was in his late 20s, tall, grey haired and a look in his eyes no words could ever explain.

He and his wife had two kids when I moved in. I had siblings for the first time in my life.

I started showing signs very early on of a child who had been through some real shit. I knew things that kids shouldn't know.

But no one seemed to notice.

For the next few years things were...dare I say....normal.

About 5 years in, things took a terrible turn.

My step-mom had developed an addiction.

Once again, my life was chaos.

She would drink, get mad at me for "ruining everything", because I wasn't hers. He would get mad at me for "being unruly" and "only causing problems".

For years this went on.

They would fight, drink, fight some more, play the kids against one another, just all out....chaos.

At 14, I started dating anyone I knew my father would hate, just to spite him.

At 15, I got pregnant for the first time.

15.

I couldn't even drive a car yet.

How the HELL was I supposed to raise a kid?

I did the only thing I knew to do.

I drank until I couldn't hold another drop.

Two weeks later I wasn't pregnant anymore.

Was it the right thing to do? Probably not, but no one said this story was full of great decisions...

I held on until I was 17 when finally it got bad enough that I put my foot down and said, "no more." My step mom got physical and I gave it right back to her. I told her no more. I was drawing a line in the sand and that was it.

After that, she got a DUI (for the third time) and went to jail/rehab.

Things were ok for a little while.

At 18, I got pregnant again.

This time, I thought I was in love. The thing about love is that no one really understands it. We've all been in love at some point in our lives. What I didn't know then was that love for me meant tolerance. I simply....tolerated him. I didn't know who I was or what I was going to do.

Shortly after my daughter was born, we broke up and I moved back...home.

So, under advice from my "family" I went to college, leaving her with them.

They were better now right?

WRONG.

A few months after getting to college, my lifelong depression caught up with me. I was offered a drink and I drank until I couldn't see anything. I couldn't feel anything. I was with people I knew, so I thought I was safe.

WRONG AGAIN.

Four weeks after that night, I was pregnant. Again.

There was no way I could raise a child. Not like this. But I couldn't fathom doing what I had done before. I was still dealing with all of that trauma, years later.

So, I found a family for him.

The perfect family to give a son.

I went back to school and tried to feel "normal" while this baby grew inside of me.

It was there that I met him.

He was nice to me, I was sad and alone, so, he stuck with me.

Together we went to Louisiana to give this baby to his family.

Now, I don't know if any of you have witnessed childbirth, but, its a magical thing that can make you feel things you wouldn't normally feel...

Between that and my overly impulsive personality, we decided to get married.

Eventually we moved back to Kentucky to be close to his family and so I could see my daughter. We bought a house, had a son of our own and everything seemed....normal....

Then, the next storm came.

He decided he needed to join the Marine Corp. to fill some sort of hole inside of him.

While he was in boot camp I was pregnant with our second son and diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

I dealt with it and when he got home, had our son and shortly thereafter a full hysterectomy.

....

Up until this point, I had let the chaos storm inside of me fester and grow. I packed it all inside. Tight. And sealed it up with pain killers.

Addiction.

After the birth of my son in Louisiana, the doctor was quick to prescribe me "pain" killers. I learned pretty early in that they killed more than just the physical pain. I figured out that by taking more, I felt better. I felt....normal. There was no need to deal with the chaos up until then. I could just....hide it.

The thing with sweeping dust under the rug though is that eventually it piles up so high that you have no choice but the clean it out.

That's exactly what happened.

Eight years into my marriage I broke.

Finally, 27 years after my chaos was started, it had come to an explosive end.

On August 21, 2018 I tried to kill myself.

By fate alone, my husband walked in and stopped me.

That night he drove me to the local psychiatric hospital.

It was here that I first heard the words. My diagnosis.

Borderline. Personality. Disorder.

Strangely, I wasn't upset with it.

Finally, I felt like I had an answer. I wasn't crazy, just broken. Broken to my core so badly that it literally had rewritten who I was.

I stayed there for 3 days and was then sent to a rehab in Tennessee to find the answers I so desperately needed.

Over the next 30 days I learned how to cope with my BPD and gained the tools I needed to be who I was supposed to be.

Who would have every thought that in 30 short days I could begin to unravel the mess of chaos that had made me who I was.

Re-Start.

Shortly after my stay in rehab, we got divorced.

He had moved on while I was away and it was just too much for him.

That was okay with me because I knew I had growing to do and he wasn't ready for that.

It didn't take long for the universe to give me exactly what I needed.

The Girl That Chaos Built.

"If you could choose between being invisible or being able to fly, what would you pick and why?"

That's how it started.

He chose invisible with the stipulation of being able to turn it off and on. Between his response and the fact that he was GORGEOUS, I was hooked.

We started talking and quickly decided that we need to meet.

Two days later he drove down and we met up at the Mexican restaurant in my town. After we ate we sat in the parking lot for what felt like hours. Talking about anything and everything.

I felt something in the pit of my stomach I couldn't describe. Something I'd never felt before. He made me feel....normal. Like I wasn't a freak. Like I was...human.

We have pretty much been inseparable since then.

We moved in together in November of 2019 and he's been the most supportive person in my life.

I've tried medical school, more business ventures than I can shake a stick at and he still supports whatever I decide to do.

It's amazing.

But the most important thing that he's helped me do is love myself.

"You shouldn't let someone else define how you love yourself!"

Yes, I'm aware.

But guess what.

I have a mental illness. I don't think, act or process normally. Everything I do, every move that I make has to be thought of and thought about before I do it.

Mistakes are defined by our circumstances. What maybe a mistake to one, may just be defined as poor judgement to someone else.

We all make mistakes. We all have times that we should have taken the other option.

That's what makes us who we are.

We are all strong in our own way. My story is no different than anyone else. If you choose to let the world define you, at least choose who is in the world around you.

I've been abused, and hated, homeless and at the absolute pits of hell.

But,

It's what made me The Girl Created By Chaos.