What would you do if you woke up one day and realized your entire life had been built on an array of lies? There are many things in life that have shaped me, yet nothing could have prepared me for what happened in May of 2018. To truly understand how May affected me, let me give you a back story of my life.
I was born two and a half months early. I spent the majority of my life in the hospital. I always had something wrong with me. I had severe asthma, two rare blood diseases, recurrent UTI’s and other vaginal issues, and so many other ailments. In school I had no friends and was severely bullied. I was bullied for my color, and because people felt threatened by me. Yet throughout all that was happening, I maintained my composure. As a little seven-year-old I was a friend to everyone, even if it wasn’t always reciprocated. I started getting bad headaches and stomach aches in fourth grade and would go to the nurse’s office daily complaining of different pain. Eventually, the nurse said I was no longer allowed in her office because, like she told my teacher, she was sure I was just faking it for attention. These accusations began to come from everywhere as I got older. I broke ten bones between fourth to ninth grade, and classmates would constantly accuse me of faking. I started to get confused as to why people said I was faking pain. I didn’t understand why anyone would do such a thing. I was in pain, people just couldn’t see it. So, at age eleven I would begin to try breaking bones more than they were already broken just to prove that the pain was real. I would force pain onto my body in hopes that if I felt it more, then someone would see it. Doctors never knew how to help me. We would go from hospital to hospital until someone would finally do a procedure or give me some medicine. I learned that I needed to cough more and show the doctors how bad I was hurting. I usually let my mom do the talking though because she always understood my pain better than I did. I couldn’t explain the pain, I just knew I was hurting.
I have had severe asthma since birth. I did nebulizers multiple times a day, used an inhaler, and have taken multiple medications to try controlling my symptoms. My school made me run the ½ mile and the full mile, and every year I would end up in the emergency room. One ER doctor told me I wasn’t having an asthma attack and that it was just a panic attack. I couldn’t believe that a doctor would try saying I didn’t have a disorder that was diagnosed at birth. I began letting myself have asthma attacks and refusing to use my inhaler, telling people I just needed to breathe. I would black out, and often times throw up, but it felt like the only way to prove that I did indeed have asthma.
My health took a turn for the worst when I started high school. I had a double concussion, ruptured ovarian ulcers, pneumonia that landed me in the hospital, bronchitis, bronchial spasms, torn ligaments in my ankle, a fractured wrist, migraines (ended up being diagnosed with Chiari Malformation Type One which is a brain thing), and then I had severe back pain. At fifteen years old I ended up having two rods and four screws put in my back after going from doctor to doctor until someone finally listened.
Not long after all of those things happened, I ended up being taken out of my mother’s house because of her alcoholism. Surprisingly my asthma got a lot better, I no longer broke any bones, and I wasn’t quite as sick. I still missed a lot of school and was sick in Anorexia, but I began doing a bit better at least.
From ages sixteen through twenty-one a majority of my time was spent in treatment for Anorexia. I was still always sick. I would start school or work and would eventually have to quit when I made my way back to treatment. At age twenty-one I started to live a little more and would have longer breaks between treatment stays. I spent these years trying to discover myself, while trying to figure out my health.
This brings us to May 2018, when I was twenty-two years old. I had been out of treatment for about five months. I was taking full time classes, working, and really starting to enjoy life. I had cut contact with my mother because I realized she just wasn’t the greatest person to invest time in, and had built a family of choice and a support system filled with love and grace. I was taking Abnormal Psychology at the community college. It was my favorite class by far because I loved learning and also helping others learn things to break stigmas around different disorders. It was a warm sunny day when I walked into class on this particular Thursday afternoon. Everything was normal. I sat in my seat and my peers all sat in their seats. We took out our books and notebooks and were ready to learn about whatever our professor planned to teach on. Our professor decided it was time to talk about two pretty intense disorders, Munchausen’s, and Munchausen’s By Proxy (MBP). She talked about how MBP is really a form of abuse. She said it is usually the mother that has this disorder. She started to speak of the different symptoms; multiple hospitals (check), many odd problems (check), doctors can’t always find what is wrong (check), mother wants attention (check), sometimes the mother exaggerates or causes illnesses (checkmate). I stopped writing. I was flooded with memories.
“Remember when mom would get in car accidents, but we couldn’t tell anyone? And then we would go to the hospital? What about the fact we spent our whole life in and out of many hospitals? Remember all the nebulizers, and how sick we got? Oh, and all of the medicine that made us sick? What about all of those scary procedures that always came back with no issues? Auntie did say we went from hospital to hospital until someone would give us the diagnosis mom wanted. She said we were always sick. Wait, remember my back surgery? Nobody wanted me to have that, but then someone finally gave in. Everyone always said we were faking illnesses and that it was all for attention…”
Parts internally were going crazy. The memories just continued to come. That was when it all clicked; my mother has Munchausen’s By Proxy, and I was her object. I don’t remember much else from that day. Everything was kind of a blur as I tried to understand what this meant. I quickly relapsed into Anorexia as I suddenly couldn’t eat without breaking down. Within two weeks I landed myself in residential treatment. This time was different though. I knew what I needed to work through. I got records sent in from only two hospitals. The findings were painful. They were laden with evidence that I didn’t want to see. The truth in those papers rocked my world. Reading the words sent shivers down my spine, made me nauseous, and caused the room to seem like it was spinning. Here is what I found out from that stack of papers. I never had asthma. I never had the rare blood disease mom swore I had. I had been deprived of food since infancy and began inducing vomiting on myself by age 1 ½. I was sexually abused starting in infancy. My mother was inducing vomiting on me. At least four doctors over the span of eight years sent reports out suspecting my mother had MBP and trying to get me taken away from her. And yet for sixteen years I endured the abuse. The back surgery that I had at age fifteen should have never happened. The back pain, the rods and screws in my back, the chronic dental problems, and the acid reflux are all direct results of the abuse from my own mother. The joint pain, the asthma symptoms, and the headaches are all psychosomatic pains because of her as well.
I cannot believe the legal system failed me, but it has given me a passion. I was lucky to survive. I was lucky to have the memories suddenly come up. I was lucky to get a chance at life. My 35-year-old sister is still sick. She has no idea that it was all a sick twisted game. She doesn’t know she was used and abused. She may never find healing. I was lucky. My new passion is sharing my story and raising awareness. I will change the legal system someday.
In May 2018 my life was flipped upside down. I felt pain and betrayal and grief deeper than I thought was humanly possible. I didn’t think things would ever be okay, but here I am. I made it to the other side. If it hadn’t been for that class, I would still be reenacting the sickness. But instead, I have found freedom. I have realized my body was never the problem, my mom was. My body was never broken, that was mom’s lies. I was never faking anything, I thought my mom loved me. I was never the problem; my mom was and so were all of the people that accused and blamed me while assuming I was a problem child. The truth is I shouldn’t be alive. My doctors are amazed I survived, as most MBP victims die in childhood. The fact I am alive and well is even more of a miracle. I lived twenty-two years in a world that consisted of mom and me; a world where I was sick. It’s a miracle that I found my way out of it all. And because of that, I have now dedicated my life to saving other people going through this. May 2018 gave me a purpose and a vision, and although I have a lot of work to do, I am well on my way to changing the world.