~This is something new for me, since I am not a very open person. Those that think that they know me, do not know the half of it. I am usually a very private person, so what I have to say next is going to throw some of you for a loop. Please bare with me, since this kind of writing is new for me to do. . . .

~My name is Kristie, and I am a divorced, mother of two, a boy, Michael, and a girl, Caitlyn. I have a pair of best friends that I love that keep me sane (one of them is on here). I had a good childhood, being raised not only by my mother, but also by my grandparents, who doted upon me as I was the only granddaughter out of five grandkids and the oldest of them as well. I had a few close friends, but for the most part, I was a loner. I hated people, and still do to this day.
~As I got older, I became more withdrawn from people. The few friends I had slipped away, not because they wanted to, but because I pushed them away. I am not an easy person to get to know. There are a great many barriers between me and you. Some people are lucky to get past the first few. Others have gotten in deeper. My best friend Chris is in deeper than everyone, but others stratch the layers and peel some back.
~This one guy I know is one of them. I have known him for over 12 years now, and I love him in a way that cannot be described. But I can never be with him and the reason for that is: he raped me anally. Plus to top the matter, he is an alcoholic, and a very abusive one, at that. I was only 17 when he did this to me in the back of his vehicle. Only a few know about it.
~After he did that, the depression sank in. I was usually a mellow person in life, not over reacting or unfriendly. I was always polite and well-spoken, a product of my mother's and grandparents' teachings, but after that night, I withdrew into myself, and self-loathing became my main feeling. I sank deep into it, feeling like there was nothing left for me to live for.
~That's when the suicide attempts began.
~Now, I'm a logical kind of person. If I want to kill myself, I don't think a bottle of pills is really going to work for me because I have a terrible gag reflex when it comes to swallowing pills. I don't think that slicing my wrists are a good way, either, since all you're going to do is bleed slowly enough to cause great pain, and more suffering. I am not into pain like that. I know how to end myself. One chef knife against a wall, through the ribs over my heart. Bang, dead. But the few true friends I still had began to spend waking shifts at my home.
~When I say waking shifts, I mean that, one person would come over and watch me for several hours, then another would come and take their place so the first one could go and get some sleep. They knew that, if given even 10 seconds back then, I could do something horrible to myself.
~As I battled depression, my home life took a turn for the worst. My mother and I started fighting. We fought three fist fights, and I was the winner of those. I am stronger than she. But to this day, I live with the all-consuming guilt of my actions against the woman that birthed me. To her, I say that I am sorry.
~Fast forward a couple of years to a month before my 18th birthday. I was excited about finally turning 18 on March 8th. ~It was still Feburary and already I was planning on my party. Then I made a mistake: I got pregnant by a man that swore that the 'pull-out' method really was safe. Young, stupid me... . . . I bought it, and paid the price.
~I found out I was pregnant by a man that didn't want the responsiblities. He left state and I never saw him again. My son, though, is the point in which my depression finally lifted to barable levels. With the arrival of Michael, my world changed. At least for the better for alittle while.
~I had moved though from one place to the next with him 3 times before I met what would be the man that I married for the wrong reason: I became pregnant again. Michael was 2 1/2. The guy was, and still is, an alcoholic (see a pattern here?), a drug addict (coke, pot, acid, shrooms), and, I found this out AFTER we were married, a registered sex offender. Well, our daughter, Caitlyn, was born, and we spent the next two years of her life trying hard to make it work for her. ~During that time, my husband had a thing about leaving every night, getting trashed, then coming home and wanting sex. I hate the smell of alcohol upon one's breath, so when he would crawl (literally) into bed, I would just pretend to be asleep. He wouldn't care. He would roll me over onto my stomach, pin me down with his large, and heavier, body, and then rape me, most times anally, since that was his thing, as he put it to me. These occasions I would fight him, trying to get away, and usually end up beat for my troubles. He didn't think anything about beating me almost to death, even straggling me, while I was pregnant. I don't know why I stayed, but the depression gripped me again, making me think that it was all my doing and that drove me further down into that empty, black pit of despair than I had ever gone before.
~Shortly after Caitlyn's second birthday, I finally got up the nerve to tell him to stop his drugs, drinking, and other inappropiate things in front of the children. He would sit there, smoking pot, while holding our daughter. I told him that there would be no more of it. I had a migraine that night, so went to bed early, right after putting the kids to bed. He came in, subdued, muttering something to me about helping his sister, who was up from another town, find something in her van. I told him fine and nodded off. I awoke about a half an hour later, and went to the bathroom, then off to check my kids.
~My daughter was gone.
~I flipped out. I had a neighbor watch Michael as another neighbor took me in her car to go and locate my daughter. My husband had taken our car. His sister and her boyfriend were riding behind him in her van. They went to this little motel. I pulled in behind them. He jumped out and grabbed Caitlyn, who was screaming for me, and ran into the motel room and locked the door behind him. His sister and her boyfriend proceed to beat the shit from me. I went to the cops and tried to file a complaint and assualt and battery charges, but there was only two cops on duty at 1 in the morning and they didn't feel like doing the paperwork. The neighbor and I argued with the cops about this, for she had been witness to what I endured. The cops told me that since he was the father and that we had been living together, he had as much right to take her as I did. They told me not to press the matter that night, but take it up with my husband in the morning.
~I went home, in shock and in a very deep depression, and didn't sleep the rest of that night. I went with the neighbor in the morning, roughly 8 or 9, and they were already gone. ~With the help of his parents and his bitch sister, he and my daughter disappeared from the face of this world for almost three years. During which time, at one point, I had left my son at a babysitter's house while at work and he had come there with CPS and claimed that I had "abandoned" my son. CPS took my son from me, making sure that I had no way of contacting him, much less even writing a letter to him.
~Now, with both kids gone from me, I sank into a deep madness, a shifting of my mind, and had a mental breakdown. I withdrew into myself so much that if anyone so much as looked in my direction, I would snap on them, even if I didn't know who they were. I wasn't myself. I lost mass amounts of weight, becoming malnourished. I couldn't think of any reason to live for again, except my kids, but my kids were gone and I didn't have a strong anchor to keep me stable.
~During that time, I hooked up with a guy that was slightly younger than me by a few years. He wasn't good to me, though I treated him (and every other guy I've been with) like a King. He pulled some good ones on me, but the topping on the cake was the day he told me that he had invited his ex-girlfriend down from the U.P. and she would be staying for 5 nights. This was my house and she was almost on my doorstep when he told me about this. For over a day after she showed, I went into full stress mode because he took her everywhere and without me. And that very night she had shown up, he had taken her to a friend's house and screwed her. The second night, I found him with her again at that friend's home and told his friend, who was trying to cover for him, that he and the whore could have each other.
~I packed everything of mine into my car and told the landlord that I was off the lease, that the place was his now. After experiencing that heart attack, it woke me up and I got out of that situation as fast as I could. I drove 25 miles away to my mom's home and she took me in.
~With my mother's help, I was able to get help and get my son back completely. My daughter, my ex still has. I am only allowed every other weekend with her. She hates her father and where she lives, and wants to come home to live with me, but he won't allow it. Just like he won't let me see her more than just the two weekends of the month.
~We fast forward again to Christmas Eve of 2003. I love Christmas, but hate the shopping. For that is when the people are out the thickest. I was to go and pick up my kids almost 85 miles away, but first, I was to meet up with my family in the town before at the Mall for last minute ideas. I got there, tensed up because of the people, and started to get a migraine. My brother and family caught up to me (we took two different vehicles) and looked at me, saying that I looked like shit, that I should get out of there (he knows me too well). I left the mall, and outside the doors, my car was about 40' away. I walked over to it and by the time I got there, I had a full blown migraine. I couldn't hardly see, but I had to drive the next town over to get my kids.
~I don't remember the trip there. I don't remember the return trip to my mother's house, save for the blizzard that struck halfway between there. I remember briefly pulling into the driveway, and shutting off the car. I don't remember after that. My mother and brother both claim that I got out of the car, looked at my brother and said that I couldn't see, and then collapsed into his arms.
~I don't remember anything during the following nine days, for I was out-of-it, and unconscience most of the time, only awakening to go to the bathroom and get a drink, then pass back out in bed. I don't remember what my kids got for Christmas. On January 2nd, I started to feel much better, even starting to eat solid foods. I was improving fast after that.
~Then on Jan. 5th, I noticed the blood in my mucus. Everytime I blew my nose, blood would come out, but it wasn't a common nosebleed. I bled for two more days after that, though I continued to feel better each day. On the day of the 7th, I was feeling better than I ever had in years. I took down the Christmas decorations and tree, made food, had a great day, except for that blood that continued to keep coming, occasionally spitting up blood and noticing giant bruises all over my body like someone had been punching me repeatedly. Later that night, I developed three open sores that bled in my mouth and my gums had turned all black and blue, and were bleeding.
~My mother, knowing how much I hate the hospital, put her foot to my ass and literally kicked me to the hospital. Once there, they drew blood, then came back to tell me something that still haunts my dreams at night:
~~"we have to admit you. this is a life or death situation. we don't know what is wrong with you, but you are bleeding to death. you should've been dead the previous night."
~Upon hearing that, I immediately told them "No" and reached for my jacket. My mother told me that I was staying. I told her not in this hospital, and the doctor told me that they here didn't know what to do for me, but if I left, they wouldn't give me another half an hour and I would just fall asleep, only to be found in a pool of my own blood the next morning, if not later.
~Suitably freaked, I consented (what choice did I really have?), and they crammed an IV in me and shipped me off to the nearest hospital that could save me, a hospital 90 miles away. They lost me briefly just outside the city and got me back. Upon arriving there, they put a second IV in me, and wouldn't let me eat, much less use the bathroom. I would have died that night from a stubbed toe or a papercut, or just by eating something hard.
The next morning, the hemotologist (blood specialist) came in and told me what was up.
~The virus I got over Christmas was nothing like I had ever had before. It made my immune system work into overdrive. When my immune system started working, it got tricked into believing that the platelets in the blood were a threat like the virus. It started actively destroying the platelets, and with low platelets, the body starts breaking down. I was extremely lucky to have gotten in when I did, for there was no way that I should have been alive at that point, and the fact that I was, showed them that I was what they referred to as a "walking miracle"
~Well, kiddies, I certainly didn't feel like a walking miracle after that, because it was then that he delivered the good news/bad news part. The good news is that it is NOT contagious in ANY way, which means that anyone that is with me, has no chance of getting it from me, and that it is not hereditary, so my kids will never get it.
The bad news? It is not curable, it is very rare, extremely dangerous, life-threatening, and could kill me any day. It is called Idiopathic Thrombocytopenia Purpura, or ITP for short.
~I went through four blood transfusions and a series of blood-lettings before they would like me out of the hospital four days later. I was lucky that time. I had talked to the hemotologist about the disease, and found out that a normal person's platelet count is 250,000 to 450,000 (some as low as 150,000 are considered normal), and that 15,000 and under is fatal. The night that they admitted me, my count was at 1000 and that was a guess. They couldn't find my platelets.
~After that, it is pretty easy to figure out. I am still alive to this day, with the new addition to my routine life: blood draws every two weeks to check my platelets. I live in fear that this disease will take me too soon, from my kids, my mother, and those online that I have gotten to know. I live my days as if they were my last, since I am never sure if I will awake the next day.
~I only pray that I never have to worry about my kids walking into my bedroom one morning and seeing their mother laying in bed in a pool of her own blood, dead.
~Ever since then, my body has been gradually breaking down on me. I've been going through surgery upon surgery upon surgery and while in recovery, something else is usually found wrong again. I'm tired of it all. I've had three surgeries so far, with another coming in a week, and recently diagnosed with Fibromyalgia.
~But here I still am...
~I am sorry if any found this unnerving, disturbing, or anything else. I didn't type this out for pity or sympathy, just wanted to let those that think they know me see alittle bit more than I usually tell them. So one day, if you don't ever see me again, you understand that I finally ceased to be, and that I wish none to mourn me, but honor my memory all those that are truly my friends, for I will be with you in spirit and heart, if not in person or online.