So as you can see, I’m not being terribly active on this blog.
I’ve decided to consolidate this blog with my more-used blog: The Slavic Polytheist, here.
I’m not quitting blogging. Just consolidating everything so it’s easier for me to manage. I hope at least some of you check out that blog. I imported some entries from this blog, and will continue my writing about my mental health over there.
Posted in Read Along
Earlier, I was just thinking in relief, Hey, at least I showered finally last night.
Then in my head I heard the questions my family has asked. Not without merit.
“If you can’t take care of yourself, how can you be trusted to care for a child?”
“What is it doing to your child seeing you with all this anxiety and depression?”
“Are you sure you can handle it?”
There are many parents without mental illness who can’t handle being a parent and they bail out. Mental illness makes it harder, not impossible.
I don’t know if it’s in my female “nurturer” dna encoding or if it’s because my childhood ended around the time I was eleven and took on the role of substitute mom, housekeeper, budgeter, ‘cos both parents worked full time.
Could have been the fact I always had pets and the caregiver thing was imprinted.
Whatever the imprint, I’ve always fared much better at taking care of others than myself.
So caring for my kid and pets..it’s really a no brainer.
Do my conditions impact her?
I’m sure they do in some small ways. She’s so young I doubt it really makes too much of a dent. As she gets older, it just might become an issue. Much as we try to shield our children, kids are young and naive, not blind and stupid.
When I am stable or manic…I am an amazing mom.
When my anxiety is running full tilt, I am a jumpy fidgety woman.
When depression kicks in…I am on autopilot.
My kid still gets fed, bathed, has clothes, toys, gets to school. It feels much like Sisyphus pushing that boulder uphill for me, but I do it.
Kids are more forgiving than adults.
An adult sees you crying and trembling and looking sad, they become uneasy. If they see it happen too often, some run for the hills. In the case of employers, you’re easily replaceable with someone stable.
But my kid…I don’t have to 100% every single day for her. I meet her basic needs, make sure she knows she is loved, and she lets me be…me.
I do have concerns how it will impact her as she gets older.
But how is struggling with mental illness while being a parent any different than a parent with a chronic physical problem? No one takes their kids away or questions their parenting ability as long as the kid(s) are well cared for.
The best you can do, as a parent with mental illness, single or otherwise, is to be honest with them. My daughter will ask, “Why do you look sad?”
And I will tell her, “Sometimes people get sad even if there’s no reason and it’s okay to be sad like that.”
Society wants to paint this shiny happy people thing but most people aren’t. We all have ebbs and flows in our moods, stress levels, and demeanor. Teaching kids one must be smiling and happy at all times is setting them up for failure and an unrealistic expectation of life, and the human condition.
So maybe I bathe my kid every other night and I give her a poptart on my bad mornings. Maybe she has some cat hair on her clothes. Maybe I’m not stringent about bedtime every night. Consistency is a great notion and an awesome goal. But since it’s never been my strong suit in any way, I am not going to waste time guilt tripping about not being super soccer mom.
Actually, part of me wants to kick ass on soccer moms or at least soap the windows of their minivans. I am, after all, the anti mom.
But mental illness or not…I am a mom. A single mom. And I struggle but I am managing. My kid knows she is loved and has all her needs met.
So being doubted and questioned about my ability to be a parent…
Is offensive.
I’ve proven myself ten times over in situations where others would crumble.
I am not a woman with mental illness who happens to have a child.
I am a mom who has a child and has some wonky mental issues.
Hardly fatal.
Maybe growing up watching me struggle…may just make my daughter empathetic and educated about mental illness.
Which would put her ahead of a large percentage of polite society.
Some of you may have noticed that I haven’t been around for awhile (has anybody noticed? Maybe I flatter myself). Welllll I had the coolest thing happen to me on Christmas Day! My fucking hard drive crashed!! Awesome huh! Sooo I have been limping along with my iPhone, waiting for a new hard drive to come in the mail. It finally came yesterday. I guess you could say that it was a “lucky” thing that it happened while I was in Colorado, because I was able to go to my storage unit and I actually FOUND MY BACKUP HARD DRIVE and on said backup hard drive there was a RESTORABLE IMAGE!!!! Not only that, but I had backed up my files in August before I moved!! I love it when Anal-Me does something so shockingly efficient and helpful!!! Oh I was a happy girl today when I realized that I wouldn’t have to go out and buy Windows 7 for a shitload of money (more than the cost of the hard drive). That just makes my day . . . . YESSSS!!
So I’ve already gone to Colorado and come back to Florida, wow, that was quick! I must admit to quite the little mood crash when I returned from Colorado, coming from the loving bosom of my large family and being engaged with people practically 24/7 to . . . nothing. One of my “kind-of” friends here invited me over for drinks on the first night I was back but I just couldn’t do it – too tired. Then I didn’t hear from him again, even on New Year’s! I did smuggle home some marijuana lozenges and on New Year’s Eve I got completely smashed on said lozenges and Grey Goose vodka. All by myself. That’s very alcoholic-sounding, isn’t it? Well I paid through the nose…literally, puking, even through the nose, late that night and most of the next day. Why oh why does it EVER seem like a good idea to get drunk? I really don’t know. I see that vodka bottle in my freezer now and I just say “FUCK YOU” to it every time I see it. Sooner or later it will sneak up on me again and say “Heyyyy babyyyyy here’s a good time, just have a little . . .” and off I will go. I know! Not. Good.
Well I am getting together with my Meetup group that used to meet up on Thursdays, tonight (minus the founder of the Meetup, who was a dick, who stepped down from running the Meetup and it died because no one took it over). It will be nice to see the other people, chat, have A (one) drink, eat some Mexican food, blah blah blah. It will be good to have some company. The Florida weather has bounced back to sunny and warm after being dismal, rainy and grey earlier in the week. I need to wrap this up and head over to the beach for my daily constitutional. Hope you are all well in this new year, good luck with those resolutions! So far I have resolved to stay alive. That has to be enough for now. Peach out homies!!
Posted in Read Along
Posted in Read Along
In my journal in October 2010, I wrote this line: “I think I’m a spiritual burn victim. I went through the fire and came out damaged and did not heal correctly.”
My journal is unclear as to what circumstance exactly prompted me to write this line down. I don’t think invented the phrase “spiritual burn victim”; a google search brought up five instances of those three words being used together in Christian circles. I do not know where I heard it from. But I do remember certain feelings I had when I wrote it, however.
I had gone through the year without being hospitalized inpatient, so I know I was feeling better than I had been in the past few years as far as my depression went. I had written earlier that I felt like a new medicine had a “miraculous” effect on my mood in that it helped me avoid hospitalization. But my emotions were still very sensitive and raw. I was experiencing nothing but rejection in my creative writing career when I had experienced nothing but success with my freelance writing.
I remember thinking the analogy was apt. Christians going through trials often speak of going “through fire”. I felt like whatever fire I had gone through, I was not able to heal before the next trial came along. And I felt that instead of developing healthy new spiritual skin after each trial, my soul was being covered in ugly scar tissue, making me less sensitive to other people’s pain and only aware of my own.
Posted in Read Along
Today is the first day that my husband and I have had alone since the last time we went to a hotel. I’m bored but happy. I’m glad to have the house to ourselves and be able to watch whatever I want, yet there really is nothing to do since all our stuff is in storage.
Today hubby said he thought I might have ADHD because I am unable to sit and do anything for more than 10-15 mins at a time. Maybe he is on to something. I’ll talk to my psychiatrist about it when I see her Thursday for a med update. I am sure she is going to find the mood stabilizer to be the more important of things right now anyhow.
I actually am looking forward to going back on a mood stabilizer now that the Latuda seems to be working better. I hope it stays that way. Meds and me have a weird way of interacting.
Anyhow that was my day, not really that much to write about.
This is my last entry from Command Central, as Will and I are moving tomorrow and will be off the grid for a few days or so.
Looking around at the house where so much of our lives happened, I’m sad but also relieved in a way—relieved to be out from under it and all the stress living here has created over the past eight months. We don’t have to worry about how to make our $1200/month rent, or how to pay the $400 electric bills we ran up because the house is old and drafty and we were perpetually cold (well, I was anyway). We also don’t have to worry about keeping it clean, a task that became increasingly difficult as our kids, who helped around the house at least some of the time, grew up and moved out.
I’m going to miss it, of course. This is a beautiful setting, and I know we’re going to feel terribly cramped in the beginning because we’ve had so much room to spread out. But then, almost anything would seem cramped after living for 12 years on 2 1/2 acres in a four-bedroom, three-bath house, so we’re prepared to be a bit claustrophobic for a while.
Even so, I also have an odd sense of safety in moving into a much smaller space. It’s kind of like I felt when I was in the hospital: yes, it involves being somewhat confined, but I also don’t have to stress about trying to live a life that finally became too big for me to handle. Maybe it’s the increase in my antidepressant, and maybe it’s just the fact that with a new year come new beginnings, but I feel optimistic for the first time in I don’t remember how long.
Only time will tell if this is the right move or not. I have my misgivings about living with other people, particularly ones I don’t know well, but it sure beats the streets or the shelter. It’s not like we had any more attractive options, after all. As it is, all we have to pay is the rent—utilities are included—and contribute some food, which is not difficult when we get three-plus hundred dollars’ worth of food stamps every month. We can stay warm and dry, we have a lovely bathroom, and we have full run of the house and yard, except for the upstairs where the house’s owner lives. That’s OK—after a dozen years of dealing with stairs, I’m just as happy not to have to anymore.
And so my next adventure begins. Being 95% of the way out of my depression, I’m actually looking forward to what this new life has in store for Will and me. I’ll see you when we get settled. Happy New Year!
Posted in Read Along
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