The girl with a curl Story based on true events of my life -- (Author) Emmagar

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Author: Emmagar
Timestamp: May 27, 2020 at 12:02 PM
Content: The Girl With A Curl
My name is Madison Donahue. I am a thirteen years old that is only 5’3” with brown curly hair and blue eyes. I consider myself a loner and an introvert. I live with my mom and my older sister, Gretchen, by three years. Gretchen and I are very close. We would make up dances together in the living room to songs by Britney Spears and Gwen Stefani. She is my best friend and has always been someone I could count on. Sometimes in the early mornings I would make cinnamon rolls from scratch then go in her room and jump on her bed waking her up.

My mom divorced my dad when I was 4. He had visitation on the weekends but sometimes made excuses why get couldn’t come bring us to his place. He got remarried when I was seven to a younger woman by ten years. She liked to be referred as a step “mom-ster”.
When we would go to Dad's, we would spend most of our time cleaning his apartment while he sat around playing video games. On Sundays we were dragged reluctantly to his Presbyterian church (we were Methodist at Mom's). I hated Sunday school because I didn’t really believe in God. I believed in Jesus though even though some would say “well that doesn’t make sense. Jesus is the son of God”. What got me hung up on God was, I didn’t believe that He created the universe in a day. That just didn’t seem fathomable to me. I believed in science. I believed we all came from carbon atoms and eventually became humans.

In third grade, I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. The teachers would tell my mom that I wouldn’t sit still or I was making too much noise in class (i.e. clicking my pen or having random outbursts). I struggled during tests or the timed times’ tables. Homework was very hard for me. I couldn’t focus at all and it would take me several more hours than my classmates to complete it. While my fellow peers played outside, I was stuck inside doing flash cards. I really struggled with reading. Especially reading comprehension. At first I was two grades behind where I should have been. Luckily my mom was an expert on how to get kids who were behind in reading. She would spend hours with me, gently pushing me to read harder material than I could. She helped me sound out the words and would ask me questions about what I had just read to see if I was comprehending or not. She would continue to do this all throughout my scholastic journey.

I didn’t have many friends because I didn’t trust people. When I would make friends I started to get paranoid that they actually hated me and were being fake around me. I would also get insanely jealous if they had other friends.

In my early adolescents, I got angry a lot. Something that would stress a normal kid out and throw me into a rampage. I tended to throw and break things (or at least try to). I had no coping skills to deal with stress. My mom tried her best to get me to settle down during the rampages. She would just send me to my room where I would punch my pillow or strip my bed to my bare mattress and throw the bedding across the room.

At thirteen, I was diagnosed with a “mood disorder”. The doctor told my mom that I had bipolar but didn’t want to put that label on me just yet. When you’re my age, you think you know more about yourself then some quack doctor so there is no way I have “mood disorder”. I just have anger problems just like most teen girls I know. I’m hormonal and I’m just getting to know my body and my emotions. My mom thinks there’s something wrong with me so she makes me take the pills the doctor prescribed.

Pill number one made me obedient. My mom would ask me to do something and I’d do it right away without question making me feel like a robot. Pill number two made me sleep for a full 26 hours making my mom think I was dead! Pill number three stabilized my moods but made me nauseous to the point I got down to 103 pounds so they took me off of it. I stopped taking anything after that. I told my mom that I was a normal teen. It wasn’t until a few years later that I would reconsider my diagnoses.

I decided to change schools due to severe bullying -one whom was threatening my life. Diana Hennessey was bipolar. Her moods were very rapid cycling. She did drugs and hung out with the stoners. I would stare at her for too long and get caught. She would demand, “what’s your problem?! Look at me one more time and I’ll snap your neck!”

Sometimes I couldn’t help but stare at another person. There were many reasons for me to stare at them. Either I am taking in their beauty or studying their behavior or perhaps I was just staring off into space in their direction. It would get me in trouble a lot.

The summer before my freshman year I enrolled in summer gym class to get it out of the way. One day we were canoeing and it was a lot of fun, that is until they started threatening to tip my canoe. I begged and pleaded them not to tip it. I was scared of swimming with fish in the water (a fear I’ve had for years). My pleads fell upon deaf ears. They continued to rock the canoe back and forth. My anxiety grew to the point I used my oar to push them off. It didn’t work. They tipped it shortly after. I screamed and cried and swam to shore as fast as I could. I flipped the whole class off and stormed away. No one stopped to ask if I was okay.

First day at the new school was nerve racking. I thought for sure people would be talking about my outburst during the canoe trip and therefore everyone would avoid me. I actually started making friends in most of my classes. People were more accepting than at my old school. I became good friends with a girl in my band class. Brittany Carmichael was a bubbly, smiley, and fun girl. She played flute just like me and we even were assigned seats next to each other based on our skills. She was a little better than I was but that’s okay. I liked her. We would talk about everything and gossiped about boys.

For my thirteenth birthday, my dad asked me what I wanted. I told him a camera. I had one picked out and everything. He promised he’d get it for me. However he was unemployed but my step “mom-ster” was an accountant and would give him money for it. When he told her what I wanted and she saw that it would cost $150, she told him no. He tried to back out of his promise.

This wasn’t the only time he had ever broken his promise to me. I would ask him to come to a band recital or I would ask him to come to my birthday party. There were many other times that he would promise one thing but do another. So when he broke this promise of getting me a camera he just hurt me deeply. I cried and sobbed to my mom about it and she ripped him a new one and told him off. He somehow was able to get it for me.
In my history class, I sat next to a very cute guy named Nathan Donners. He was tall at 6’2” with blonde hair and blue eyes. Man was he cute! I smiled at him several times throughout the year. He played linebacker on the football team. Being a nerd in the band this had me very intrigued.

At the end of the school year, I decided today was the day I was going to make my move! Today was the day I was going to ask out Nathan Donners! I wrote him a note that said “would you like to go to a movie with me sometime”. I handed it to him as we walked out of class together. I walked quickly away before he had a chance to read it. He quickly caught up to me and said YES. We exchanged numbers and set up the date.
He would be my first real boyfriend as I wasn’t allowed to date before now.

Nathan picked me up for the movie that weekend. We instantly connected. He was a gentleman and shy. Just the kind of guy that I liked.
We dated all sophomore year and still stayed together when I decided to go to a career technology school close to my house for junior and senior year. I slowly began to not have the same feelings I once did. Just like most young couples we were growing apart. He took me out one last time and I broke the news.

“Nate, I’m sorry but we need to breakup. I need to focus on my studies if I want to get into a good college”, I told him hoping not to break his heart too much. He understood and declared that we will continue to be friends.

I am now 18. I am studying to become a vet at a private university in northern Ohio. My hormones are a lot worse and now I find myself to be hypersexual. Halfway through freshman year, my roommate moves put of our dorm for an unknown reason. This brings back feelings of abandonment from when I was in 4th grade and my best friend since kindergarten told me she can’t be my friend anymore so she could become popular. Which locks in my fear of abandonment to be a cornerstone of my personality.

In late November of my first semester, my mom called me on the phone. She told me my cousin was murdered in Chicago, Illinois. I was devastated I liked Billy. He had a way of looking at life that was so positive (the exact opposite of me). He lit up a room just by walking in. Everyone loved Billy.

I have a physically abusive boyfriend who I met online. His name is Chad Bennington. I fell in love with his smile in the picture he sent me. We have been dating for a few months and moved in together. That’s when he started beating me. I would flip out about some stupid thing and he would hold me down and punch me and choke me. It wasn’t until I broke a glass in the kitchen that I would get the courage to leave.

That night, after I broke the glass, he picked me up by the hood of my FFA sweatshirt and threw up against the wall knocking the wind out of me. I ran for the door and he blocked it so I ran for the backdoor and was able to escape. I got in my car faster than lightening and drove like a mad woman to a friend’s house going 100 miles per hour in a 40 zone. I got pulled over and was visibly shaking when they knocked on my window. It was midnight and I’m sure they thought I was just some kid out on a joy ride. With tears streaming down my face, I explained what had happened. They understood but told me I had to make a formal report. When the officer who took my call asked if I wanted to press charges I regretfully say no because maybe I deserved being thrown across the room and into a wall. Maybe I provoked him. I stayed with my friend for a few nights while trying to find a new place to live.

My mom and my amazing step father Oliver Daniels came up to get my things out of Chad's apartment and help me move to my new home in Ravenna, Ohio. I got a new full time job at an emergency veterinary hospital in Akron. People seemed to love my animal handling skills and chart notes. I felt like I was in my element. However after just a few months working there, I started to get sick A LOT. Or so I thought but looking back now I am positive that it was my mental illness. I felt tired all the time. No amount of sleep would ever make me feel like I was going to be all right. So I got fired for calling off so much.

Being hypersexual may sound like fun. May seem to others that I’d be fun to date. In reality, it’s hell. All I think about is sex. I flirt with all the guys and inappropriately touch them. I fool around a lot and was known for a video chat or two. I can’t concentrate on my studies and it eventually ruins my chances of ever becoming a veterinarian.

My mom pulled me out of college when she found out I was sending pictures to guys on the internet. I moved back home and went to the local community college for a few semesters. Eventually I dropped out after taking the higher biology needed to become a vet but switched career paths to Vet Tech only to find out that the lower biology was the prerequisite for the microbiology class I needed to take next.

I got a job at a local exotic veterinary clinic. The day I got hired I blew my engine in my new Saturn car because I didn’t know what an oil light was or what to do if it came on. My mom was furious. She yelled at me and told me that I couldn’t take the job. I got so angry at myself. Couldn’t take one more thought in my head so I did what I only knew how; punch myself. Punching myself was the only way that I have ever been able to think of to get the loud, intrusive, suicide idealistic, thoughts out of my head. My mom told me she couldn’t get me a new car. Luckily it was on the bus route. So I rode the bus there and back.

I worked there for eight months when my coworker brought in a tiny kitten that was found in the dumpster while she was taking out trash that morning. She told me to go look at the cute kitten (I didn’t like cats but who can pass up a kitten). I went into the ICU where we kept all stray animals that were brought in. The kitten climbed the bars of the cage and reached out to me with its left paw (a lefty just like me). It was crying and begging to be held. So I scooped it up and it immediately climbed onto my shoulder and licked my cheeks (didn’t ever experience a cat lick before). I immediately fell in love. I asked the doctors whether it was a boy or girl. The checked the back end of it and it was a boy! I called up my mom and begged her to let me keep the kitten (she always said she was allergic so I assumed the answer would be no). I told her if I didn’t take him he was going to be a barn cat and I just couldn’t stand the thought of that. She said, “yes you can have him for your birthday”. I looked deep into his eyes and told him “I’m going to call you Casanova”.

At age 20, after breaking up with my college sweetheart, Tim Rickfield, my mom encouraged me to try an online dating site. I was lonely and desperate and felt like maybe I should, seeing as that’s how she met my step father. I filled out my profile on a couple of sites to see if I would get any matches. I met a few nice men but I would scare them off somehow. It wasn’t until January 24, 2012 that I would meet the man that I would eventually marry. His name was Dennis Sanders. He was tall, standing at 6’4”. He had brown hair and brown eyes and three years older than I was. He did the most creepy thing ever and favorited me on the dating site without so much as a “hello”. Being the curious woman that I had always been, I messaged him. I wrote “Hey! Why did you favorite me.” Dennis quickly responds “Oh, um I was updating my profile and didn’t want you to see it til I was done”. We get to talking and it turns out he lives in a small town north of Cincinnati. He also tells me he has bipolar.

We chat online for a few weeks and then exchange numbers. We talk every night after that. Finally we set up a date. My mom being the overprotective single mother insists on talking to him over the phone.

“Hey Dennis, before you take out my daughter, I need to verify that you are who you say you are.”

Dennis nervously asks, “how would you like me to do that?”

My mother tells him to figure out someway to verify that he’s not a liar. So he sends her a picture of him in front of the retail store he works at in his uniform. He also sends a picture of his license and social security card. This makes her chuckle and then she advises him to delete those pictures so he doesn’t get identity theft.

On our first date he asks me where I want to go. I didn’t want to go someplace fancy because I wanted to make sure I could afford the bill in case he wasn’t going to pay for me. So I tell him, “Steak and Shake.”

He tells me, “oh no, that’s not a good enough place to take out a beautiful girl like you.”

“Fine”, I say, “O’ Charlie’s then”. So we set up the date and decide to meet there as it was in between our cities.
I impress him with my eating habits. I’m not like most girls who order a dainty salad. No, I ordered a burger and fries. It was bigger than my head and I ate the whole thing.

We then go to the mall close by to walk and talk and get to know each other. Four hours go by and I learn a lot about him. I learned that he went to boarding school for a few years and then transferred to a local Christian school. He had a strong faith in God. He was unlike any of the men I had ever dated.

At that time I didn’t believe in a higher power. I was lost and broken. Dennis guided me on a path that would turn me to God.

We stop by a smoothie kiosk in the mall. He orders a lemon and blueberry smoothie. I go for my tried and true strawberry banana. We sit on a bench just outside the entrance to Elder Beerman. He and I start out just a few feet apart. I scooch toward him. He scooches away because he’s very shy and nervous. I scooch even closer. He runs out of bench.

“Come on Silly! Put your arm around me”, I joke. He smiles the biggest smile and pulls me close. We cuddled for the first time for several minutes.

The mall starts to close so we head out. We’ve been together for seven hours. We don’t want to leave each other but my phone starts to ring.
It’s my mother. She’s worried sick. I apologize for staying out so late and tell her I’ll be home soon. Dennis and I hug each other goodnight. I give him a quick peck on the lips and head home. When I got home I was beaming. In my head I was fighting with myself because I was already starting to fall in love with him. I told myself, no Emily you don’t love him. You love the IDEA of him.

Three months into our relationship, he saw how I was struggling in all aspects of my life. He knew I was mentally ill and suggested that I should go see his psychiatrist. Dr. Johnson was an older doctor. She had been seeing Dennis since he was twelve years old. She and I talked about my struggles at the end of the appointment she confirmed that I had bipolar but clarified that it was type II. So all this time I thought being bipolar meant that you were like Diana Hennessy. A wild child that couldn’t control any aspect of her behavior. She explained bipolar II had the same hypersexual behaviors and rage and depression that I was experiencing. She prescribed me Lamictal to help stabilize my moods. It did stabilize my moods but I still felt rage and would have outbursts at work. I also noticed that I began having twenty or more bruises all over my body. So my doctor stopped giving me that and gave me Trintellix instead. That helped my depression but nothing else. Every med that I would try would help in some ways but not in others. I experienced bad side effects too. It wasn’t until I was prescribed Geodon did I ever reach stability. The only side effect from that was that I would get sleepy after it being in my system for three hours and that sleepiness would go away after about 8. So naturally I took it at night.
When Dennis dropped me off after our 12th date, I walked to the door but immediately turned around and ran towards his Jeep and motioned him to roll down his window. I whispered, “I love you” and kissed him goodnight.

As our relationship progressed we became more serious. I began to be invited to family functions (which Dennis's grandma wouldn’t allow in the past). Dennis's mom (Wendy) and dad (George) were very welcoming from the get go. His dad especially was nice. Both his parents asked me lots of questions and took their time to get to know me. They were hugging me by the end of our first encounter. I came to rely on George a lot. He became a father figure quite quickly. Dennis encouraged me to bond with his parents and I couldn’t thank him more for that. I quickly fell in love with the both of them and started picturing and dreaming of becoming a permanent member of the family.

That Christmas I got to meet the whole family. Both his mom's side and his Dad's sides. Both his grandparents were so sweet. They hugged me the first time they saw me. I thought to myself these are my kind of people.

Being two months away from our one year anniversary, we started discussing our future. We discussed marriage (casually as to not scare the other away). He even showed me an ad of a jewelry store (one that he had connections to that I knew nothing about). One ring stood out, a three diamond engagement ring with little diamonds going half way around the finger.

Dennis’s plan started to go into motion. He even got my mother into it. My mom took me to a jewelry store in the mall and just casually and sneakily got me to get my finger sized. Once she got that info she told Dennis. A month later he bought the very ring I had wanted.

Part two of his plan was to get my mom to take me out (to the mall). My mom asked me if I wanted to go see Side Effects. At first I was reluctant because I felt like just chilling at home. It was Dennis and I’s one year anniversary and he made no plans with me, so I was kind of depressed. My mom would NOT let up. She said “come on I hear this movie is really good, we can go shopping after for some furniture. “Fine, let’s go”, I say in a melancholy tone. My mom being the master at surprises, drove toward the mall like we were actually going to go. All of a sudden, she says, “you know what? Let’s go shopping for the furniture before the movie”. I just roll with it.

We get into the mall and my mom changes direction again. She sees the pet store and gets excited. “Maddy, let’s go see the puppies!” she says in a chipper voice knowing what’s going to happen just moments later. I agreed and we see a black German Shepard that looks like their dog blazer. I get distracted by a very cute corgi puppy and my mom sneaks away.

She finds Dennis, who is dressed to the nines, holding a bouquet of flowers and a note. He sets them on the bench and hides away in an undisclosed area. My mom comes and gets me and says, “your good friend Britney Carmichael, is out here! Come say hello!” I get excited to see my old friend and come out of the pet store. I look around and there is no one there. My mom says, “huh that’s odd she was just here! Let’s go find her. I look over at the same bench that Dennis and I sat on on our first date. I see a bouquet of flowers and look around to see if I see a girl walking away from it thinking someone must have forgotten them. My mom tells me there is something under the bouquet and I should read it.

Underneath was a note that read, Close your eyes. I mean it, close your eyes. So I close them but being my curious self, I peak through and see my amazing boyfriend in a tux. The tears start coming, my heart starts racing. I can’t believe what is about to happen!

With his heart pounding, he grabs my hand and gets down on one knee. Looking deep into my eyes get asks the most important question he had ever asked. “Maddy Gar, on this day last year you forced me to cuddle with you for the first time, will you cuddle with me for the rest of your life?”
Choking back the tears, with the biggest smile I could muster, I exclaim, “Yes! Of course I will!”

Nine months after we married, we had a dog named Anakin. He was a year old and not obedient what so ever. I enrolled him in training at the pet store I worked. He passed beginner and moved on to intermediate followed by advanced. On the last day of training I was driving on southbound on the highway. I had the dumbest idea to plug my phone in to charge it. I looked down for maybe 5 seconds. I look up and see that I’m headed for a guardrail because the interstate was turning left. I froze. I couldn’t think of what to do. If I corrected I might hit someone. The only thing I could do was to brace for impact. The sound of the metal against metal followed by concrete rang in my ears. The passenger side of the cat begins to peel back. Glass shatters. Sending shards of it into my hair. The impact sends me spinning into the traffic. I take my wheel and slam on my breaks completing the 360° turn. I pull over within a hundred feet from the impact site. I get out and start bawling. I just ruined another car. Anakin is about to run off when one of the people that stopped to help me stepped on his long training leash to stop him. Moments later the officer that was called came. He said that this could have been a fatality and was surprised it wasn’t.

As I’ve grown up and progressed in my illness, I’ve come to face facts. I’ve come to know that “sane” will never be a word that could describe me; nor normal. I wear my crazy badge with pride and acceptance. Being mentally ill and having bipolar do not define who I am as a person. I’m still the caring, smart and capable young woman I have always been. I share openly with my struggles in hopes that someday people will stop loosely using the word bipolar when they really mean “emotional”. I also wish to end the word “crazy” when in reality they mean odd or unique. Still sometimes when I speak about my mental illness some people get scared and tread carefully around me. When they hear bipolar, images of angry rampages, violence, and mania come to mind.

My anger only comes out around people that are closest to me. Especially my poor husband whom I love dearly. I try all day to keep my anger in check because I know one wrong move could end up me being put in the slammer or the mental hospital. I don’t want to hurt people so usually when the anger gets bad I take it out on myself. My go-to move is to punch my upper thigh as hard as I can. It never bruises there so it’s easy to hide and do it in the privacy of a bathroom stall. There were a few (thousand) times that I would consider doing other harmful things to myself but never even attempted them. I’ve thought about every which way I could kill myself. When those thoughts occur I just freeze. I don’t move a muscle unless to call my husband or my father in law because I can’t get up to take my medicine that would relieve my thought processes. If no one could come then I would just ride the wave like I’ve done countless times.

There was one instance that changed my behavior and my lashing out/violent tendencies. Dennis and I had a big fight over something (can’t remember but it was probably something minor). Dennis has a way of escalating things sending my anxiety and anger through the roof. I was freaking out so naturally his go-to move was to hold me down. This brings back memories of Chad and the way he would hold me down followed by the beatings. Naturally my PTSD kicks in and I use all my weight and all my strength to escape his clutches. I couldn’t get away though. Dennis is 6’4”, 320 pounds and had wrestling experience in high school. So I spat in his face. His bipolar then goes into full swing and screams, “you do that one more time and I’m going to head-butt you!” Scared and frightened my brain only goes to one place, beat him to the punch. I did it to him before he could to me. The day after, we went to marriage counseling and our counselor explained that I could very well go to jail for that. That day, I vowed to stop hitting him.

A bipolar marriage is a lot like most marriages. The wife does a lot of thankless underreported acts while the husband acts like a man child doing a lot of annoying things. Add bipolar rage on both ends and you get to live in a war zone most of the time followed by little slivers of love and devotion. When you’re bipolar like us you tend to feel both love and hate deep into the very essence of your existence. So we tend to fight like cats and dogs but we also love each other deeply. That love stays with us through the World War Three arguments, it’s just put on the back burner for a bit.
In the early morning before we take our medications, we have to tread lightly. One wrong move and it will start a fight. To combat this, I take my anxiety medication while still lying in bed. This helps me not to freak out when I learn that he didn’t so something that I had asked him to do the night before. Which happens more often than not.