I’m on the upside. Since I last wrote, the doc added a medication and it seems to have done the trick.
We are back to the fun.
We did two Pinterest projects today. We blew up a bar of ivory soap.
Then we did ice watercolor painting.
And then we ended the day with my mama’s Johnny Marzetti.
I loved today. I would take 1000 more of them!
I lived in the dream space for awhile. The space where you get to believe the depression won’t come back, that this won’t be a lifelong situation.
I lived there. And I felt guilty for the times I even mentioned depression, here, to the psychiatrist and to the people in my life. I kicked myself for worrying people, for taking up their time.
The dream space is gone. It has been replaced by the nightmare space. That hellacious space where I’m not suicidal, but I want to escape my head. I want the desperate feeling to go away. I want to feel safe again.
I want to go back to the dream space.
Posted in depression
Please forgive me if this post is not very coherent. My mind is spinning as I try to grasp all that I am thinking and feeling. There is high probability the words won’t come out just as they should.
A few weeks ago I was wondering what ever drove me to go to the hospital. How could I make that choice to be in a sterile, unfeeling place? Why separate myself from all that I know and love? I could not grasp why I had done so.
Unfortunately today, I remember.
Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t need to be in the hospital. But I now remember why I went, why I did need to be there.
There is a clawing feeling at the edges of my mind. A desperation to understand what is going on. A desperation to be free. It makes me cry, it makes me want to scream. Desperately. It makes me want to run and hide someplace safe, but there is no such place. I’m not safe. The demons are inside my mind, torturing me.
And there is this mockery. I have to pretend to be okay. To be someone I am not. And it is an awful lie. I am not okay. I need that to be known. I need my husband to know that. But it sounds so lame when I try to tell someone.
I abhor being someone I am not. I hate the pretending. But I don’t know what else to do. It upsets my girls when I don’t have it all together. It befuddles my husband when I can’t explain it. It just sounds ridiculous when I try to tell someone what is going on.
So here’s to another day of doing what I need to for my girls, keeping busy to outrun the torture, and feeling like a fake.
Excuse my french, but bipolar is a nasty bitch.
Posted in depression
I am living on the edges right now.
I have the corner on perfect parenting right now. My kids are yelling in the other room. I am hiding in the kitchen. They’ll come get me if someone is bleeding, right?
I just can’t take the noise right now. So I am living on the edges.
And I’m hoping it is just an off day. But, often the intolerance of noise has been the harbinger for a terrible downturn mentally. Here I am, living on the edges of terror.
Will this become the downturn I have been dreading? The one I can’t return from? The one to test the newest doc?
I dreamt last night of the wonderful psych doctor I used to have. I am so scared of facing a real crisis without him. I have landed at a doctor he trained with, but their practice philosophies are not the same. And there is no relationship at this point.
I don’t want to test it. So, I grasp the splinters radiating through my mind and beg them to stay together, beg them to just be a bad day. I plead with the unraveling to be temporary–just here for today.
I can’t go back where I was. I can’t watch it all race through my fingers. I can’t let go.
So I live on the edges, praying my girls can forgive me for not being fully present, fully available.
I’ll be okay, they’ll be okay…right???
Posted in depression
I’m really at a loss as to what to think.
I am pleased with the state of Texas’s decision to restrict abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Life is precious.
I just don’t see how anyone can argue that.
And that brings me to the recent Zimmerman trial. He was found not guilty after shooting a young boy, Trayvon. I don’t know the whole story. What I have heard leaves me so confused, it was self defense, it was murder. I don’t know. I do know there are a lot of people angry and hurting.
For them, I pray. And hold my girls tight.
Posted in photos, random thoughts
We’ve been up since 5:30 this morning. Sue woke up sick. And thus ended our night. Daddy got up to help me, but I couldn’t settle back to sleep.
We were early risers today, but my daddy was always an early riser. Most of my growing up years he owned and operated a sawmill. He always said the best part of being your own boss was you could choose which 12 hours of the day you wanted to work. Most days he chose 12+ hours.
But every night he came in to watch the eleven o’clock news. He wanted to see the weather. Every night he would fall asleep at the commercial break just before the weather and wake up as soon as the report finished. Every.Night.
My daddy was a walking miracle. He really was.
He worked as a welder before he started the sawmill. One day at work, when I was five or six, he was run over by a hi-lo at work. It narrowly missed his head. Very narrowly. He had to have back surgery and as part of it they fused two discs together. He could not bend his back for a year following the surgery. And he followed the rules. He got very good at squatting down to do things. I remember so clearly his squatting down to pick strawberries in the patch we had along the fence. Seriously people, I can see it in my mind’s eye like it was yesterday.
I took my girls strawberry picking this year for the first time. We had a great time going out on a train ride, picking strawberries, having cider and donuts and playing on these huge wooden play structures. I wish my daddy could have seen it.
There is no end to the things I wish he could see. But most of all, I wish I could let go of the regret and guilt I have over the years I lost with my daddy. There were so many times I went up north to visit my mom and didn’t go to his place. There were so many holidays I should have called, but I didn’t know exactly what to say. I would give anything to do those lost years over.
But I can’t. So please forgive me as a few times a year I pour out my memories and regrets here, please forgive my attempts to salve my guilty conscience. I loved him so much, but I lost a few years. And now he’s gone. Nine years gone.
Posted in daddy, memories, Uncategorized
Let me say first, no, we are not growing our family. But this post is born out of that (haha, pun not intended, but you better believe I am going to leave it there!).
My friend Rach, over at Life Ever Since, is getting ready to add to her family in a matter of a few short weeks. In preparation, she wrote this post. And I couldn’t agree more.
The anticipation of major life events is amazing. Dreaming of that day someone will propose to you, getting ready for the wedding, preparing for the first, second and third babies. Ah-maz-ing.
The letdown after each…NOT amazing. Heart wrenching really. I can still feel the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that came after each.
And none more so than after a baby. Everyone loves on you while your pregnant. You have family and friends checking on you, in my case a spectacular midwife holding my hand the whole way…and then baby is born.
People stop checking in and there is this new little tether making it harder to go places…kind of.
After Caitlyn was born, I will say we kind of battened down the hatches and stuck close to home. It took us awhile to head out to church or much of anywhere. Going places was such an undertaking. There was so much to pack and put in the car, even just going a few miles down the road. And learning to nurse a baby for the first time…who in their right mind wants to try THAT in public.
But it was summer (I can’t fathom that it’s been just a month and one day shy of 7 years since we welcomed that first girl), and I could take her out for walks, which my hubby wisely insisted I do. And there are a few less germs flying around so we made the rounds visiting people.
Fast forward 15 months. Here came Sue. In the dead of winter. Now I had a 15 month old, a baby and GERMS!!!! And people were afraid to visit. But I HAD to get out! So I put her in the moby-style wrap, zipped my coat over her and while Caitlyn napped, I shoveled the sidewalk. Glamorous, huh?
And then there was the day I nursed her in a hardware store.
We moved across the street when Sue was 5 weeks old. I chose to have all the walls, rooms painted by my hubby, with the same colors we had in our first house. So, Sue’s room was Seafoam Spray. I also wanted the same wallpaper border and decorations I had in Caitlyn’s room.
Insert an adventurous college friend, at the time childless. Off we headed to find my bugs. Too bad the store I had gotten them from no longer carried them.
She called her hubby who did a quick web search for us and we headed to a hardware store a few miles away. Of course Sue got hungry. So I plopped down at a table they had in the store, and proceeded to nurse her. I don’t quite remember, but I am guessing I did not have my cover. I find those hard to use in the early days of nursing. There is a learning curve with each baby at the beginning and those covers, well, they get in the way. I think my friend might have been a little shocked that I nursed right there, with all men around, in front of a large store front window. Thinking back, I am kind of impressed. I have never been an exhibitionist, but when my baby needs to eat, my baby needs to eat. I must say I was pleased none of the guys working there seemed wierded out by me feeding the baby (though I am a pretty discreet nurser, if I do say so myself).
And with as much as Sue loved to nurse, and continued to do so until 28 months old, I got lots of practice! There were many such adventures with Sue. I had this older girl that needed to be out and about, I needed out and about. I did not have the luxury of sticking close to home for too long.
Then came Patrice. And I had two little girls older than her needing entertainment. She was another summer baby, so we went and did–everything. We went to parks, libraries, jungle gym places, you name it we did it. My girls needed to be busy and so did it. There was NO hibernation period. Go, go, go was the word of the day…and still is.
Each mama has to make her own choices on what she feels comfortable going and doing with babies and little ones, but for us, with each child, we kept busier and busier. And IF I were to have another, I am very confident that would continue even more–and why not, now Caitlyn could do most of the work 🙂
