How Do You Do It On Your Own?

I am lonely. L.O.N.E.L.Y. And it does not do good things for me.

I am not, by definition, a social person. I don't enjoy crowds. Sometimes gatherings with a large group of people turn out to be okay, sometimes not. But I do love my friends and when I went through the Big Batch o' Crazy a couple of years ago, I found out that I NEEDED my friends. I honestly do not understand how some people get through emotional times without talking things through. I have some friends who "deal with it on their own", but for the life of me I couldn't tell you what that entails. I need to have two or three people with whom I feel comfortable enough to share my feelings without fear of judgment. Dealing with it on my own is not a skill I possess.

When my thoughts stay in my head, they tend to get tangled up in each other and mutate. But when I'm able to talk through my feelings, it's like taking bits of snarled twine out of a box, untangling them, neatly winding them up and then placing them carefully back in the box. When I speak my feelings, I'm able to better understand things and that helps me decide what, if any, action I should take. Sometimes it's just nice to get the feelings and words out of me. I always feel better after talking.

If you've read my family blog, you know that my family and I are currently living with my mother and that my husband is driving long-haul truck. He is gone for about two weeks at a time and then home for two days. It's not ideal, but it is what it is for the time being and we try to make the best of it.

What brought on the flood of loneliness was that today I had my first visitor since I moved here four and a half months ago. It was a fun visit. We didn't do much, just sat on the couch and talked and our kids ran and screamed like banshees and destroyed everything that they could destroy. I cried when she left. I realized that she was my first visitor and that I really have not been to see anyone since I moved here, either.

A confidant (or two or three) is as vital to me as air or water, and I have been practically without that for several months. I had some very close friends, but life changed, responsibilities changed, and I felt some shifts in our relationships. I don't hold anyone responsible for me feeling alone because, hello, we all have phones and I have a car and the knowledge of where people live. It's just that things have felt different and so I have kept to myself. Morgan and I talk every day, but I know that he worries about me and I don't want every phone call to be me whining about how hard this is or how lonely I am. It's hard enough for him to be gone; I don't want to make it worse by making him feel bad for leaving me alone. And, even though I live with my mother, she and I don't have the best of relationships so I just feel so...alone. All of the time.

I must give people some credit, though. I have been invited to several parties or gatherings. Some of them were couples' parties and, while I was graciously assured that I was welcome as a singleton if Morgan was on the road, I was certain that going to those functions would just highlight my loneliness and make me feel worse. The other things that I have been invited to I have been unable to attend due to scheduling conflicts or the lack of a sitter. My mother frequently reminds me that since we live with her, she tends my kids every day and therefore does not want to do it in the evenings so that I can go play. So, that makes school nights off-limits. My father-in-law is great to watch my kids, but he isn't always available and it's awkward for him to babysit for me when my mom is in the same house. So, if I'm going to be out past the kids' bedtime, I can't take the kids to his house because then they'll be up too late. I have turned down invitations that I wanted so badly to accept just because I couldn't find a sitter and couldn't handle the guilt of having my mother watch the kids.

I know that attending church would help to ease my loneliness and it's my own stupid fault for not attending. That's a completely different can of worms that I don't feel like opening right now, though. Suffice it to say, this loneliness is mostly my fault, but that doesn't make it any easier to bear.

I have to admit that I am worried that I have chased my friends away. The past couple of years have not been a picnic for me emotionally, and, as a result, I have needed someone to act as a sounding board a lot. I worried then and expressed my worries but I was always told that if it got to be too much that I would be told. Did I over-do it? Did I wear out my welcome? I'm so scared because I really feel like I need close friends, but I'm afraid that I chase them away. Being able to talk about your biggest fears and concerns is a special thing in a friendship and it's not something that just automatically comes with every relationship. It takes months or years to build the trust and love for someone to feel as if you are able to do that.

I really hesitated to write this post. It's been rattling around in my brain for some time now but today the gates broke and it needed to come out. If you are a personal friend of mine, I hope that you don't feel bad. That's the biggest reason that I hesitated to post this. I don't want anyone to feel guilty that they have a life, too. Additionally, if you are my personal friend, you know that I need to get stuff out and I hope that you will understand that this was the only way that I had at the time. This post has been a big pile of whining boo-hoo-iness, but this is where I come to write this kind of garbage. :)

*placing the last of the neatly wound threads back in the box*

I'm feeling calmer now, and I know that I'm attending church tomorrow so I know I'll be with friends. I will be okay. I will learn how to handle things, either on my own or I will find another way. If I have learned anything from Morgan driving truck, it is that I am much stronger than other people think that I am. I believe that people live up to the expectations they are given, so being treated like a bomb that could go off at anytime encouraged me to act that way. I know that a lot of people worried that I would totally lose it without him near me every day. I'll admit, I wasn't looking forward to it. But somehow I knew that I would be okay. It turns out that when you have no choice, you just do it. It's sink or swim. But it's also more than that. You can choose to flail about and barely keep your head above water, or you can swim with style. I'm trying to do it with style, but I do my fair share of flailing. I do know, however, that I will get through this rough spot. I don't know how, but I know that I will. I know what I am, and what I am is a strong woman.

Oh, Crap

It's starting again.

I haven't written in a long time because I've been doing really well. At first I was just working at doing well, then after a while I really was. Things were good. Life was still, you know, life, but I was dealing.

Then a few nights ago I had a panic attack. It struck from completely out of the blue. I'm trying to remain positive and not expect things to go downhill. In fact, the opening line of this post probably doesn't encourage positive thinking.

But I am freaked out.

Why is it happening again? Things are stressful, but they always are. It seems that people think that as soon as they can get through "X" then things will get better. You can bet, though, that as soon as "X" winds down, "Y" will make its appearance, closely followed by "Z".

I'm just making my way through life's alphabet. I don't understand why I have to make things so hard for myself. Lately, it has been such a struggle to not head to the medicine cabinet. I'm not talking about one in a while; I'm talking about every day. I'm staying strong, though. When the urge gets to be too much, I leave the house or take a nap.

I think that having the kids out of school is adding to the stress a bit. I've been so lax with them the past year since I've been focused on getting my mental health back where it should be. My kids don't know the meaning of work and I decided that this would be the summer in which they learned. We made lists and charts and goals and they have done really well. The house has stayed pretty clean, the laundry is usually caught up and they're learning the importance of having a good attitude about having to do a job that is no fun. My rule is that if you scowl and pout and have a crappy attitude about doing a chore, you earn another chore. It doesn't take many "earned" chores before the kids are practically whistling while they work.

Teaching children to work is hard. Which is why I have found it easier to just do the jobs myself, which in turn does no one any favors in the long run. I know that it will get easier, but I find that I spend every waking moment of the day doing my chores, answering countless calls of "Mom!", making sure that everyone else is doing their chores, and then I fall into bed late at night, completely exhausted. There is hardly any down time and I usually feel guilty for the down time that I do take because I know that there is so much to be done.

Moe is almost always gone. Between work, getting a vehicle running and other miscellaneous chores, he's home--and awake--for less than three hours a day, usually less. I think that the added work and stress of the kids being home combined with the absence of my husband are the perfect storm of I'mgoingtolosemyeverlovingmind.

I find it ironic that just a few weeks ago I considered writing a final post for this blog and wrapping things up. I felt like it had run its course and that I no longer needed it.

Turns out I was wrong.

Happy Anniversary!

Exactly one year ago today, my life was coming completely unraveled at the seams. If you're reading this, you probably have some sort of idea what this blog is about so I won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that today is the anniversary of me finding out just how many pain meds and in what quantities it takes for me to pass out for roughly two days.

Good times, good times.

Can I just say that I am so glad that I didn't find out how many pills it takes for me to off myself? I can? Okay. I'm so glad that I didn't find out how many pills it takes for me to off myself.

By no means has the past year been easy. Far from it. However, I have learned so many things about myself and those around me.

I don't want to take a lot of time writing here today. I just wanted to recognize the anniversary. I told my husband a few weeks ago that this anniversary was coming up and that I wanted to do something really special to mark the day. He said, "What, like go sky diving?" and I said, "Yeah, I think tempting death on the same day every year is a great idea!" (please note sarcasm)

Seriously, though, I really want to do something. Something that says, "I'm still here - and I'm happy about it. Hah! depression, you haven't won yet, and if I get my way, you never will." I don't really know how to go about doing that, though. Throwing a party for all of my friends seems sorta macabre, really.

I guess I'll just write it here and then go live it.

I'm still here, still kicking. A year ago was the lowest of lows. I may not be at the highest of highs, but I am so much better than I was last March it's ridiculous. I love life. I love the lessons that I have learned. I love the opportunities I have been given to get a glimpse of that dark side of life where so many people find themselves and yet have been able to come back.

I'm here, and I'm glad of it.

Thank you to all of you for your help and support. Thanks for the notes of encouragement. I have loved having total strangers leave comments or email me and tell me of their struggles. I appreciate the phone calls, the prayers, the laughter. We really are all in this together.

I know that the internet can be both a blessing and a curse, but I thank the Lord every day for the connections that I have been able to make and the people that I have been able to meet through this strange web of keyboards and monitors. Thanks, cyber friends, for your kind words.

Thanks even more to my flesh and blood friends who have been available for babysitting, house cleaning, meal cooking and tissue providing.

I never could have made it through this without all of the help from all of you.

Hello, World

Hello, dear bloggy friends. How are you all? Yeah? That's good. Me, I'm great. Really. That's why I haven't been on here for a while. I figured that y'all were wondering what had happened to me. At least, I hope some of you wondered. :)

I'm not sure what the switch was, but there was a switch flipped and I feel alive again. It wasn't a complete switch-flipping sort of experience; there was a lot of work and a lot of small changes that helped me get to where I am. I figured that I should blog and try to tell what's been going on with me, since this blog is primarily set up to help others. I've been meaning to blog for quite some time now but honestly, I haven't needed to. When things were so dark and ugly, blogging was cathartic and soothing. Now that I'm doing so much better, I just don't want to bother slowing down.

So, I'll try to catalogue some of the changes that I've made so that others may benefit from trying them.

I think the biggest change came about inadvertently. I think I've mentioned before that my husband and I started going to marriage counseling last fall. We went to a new counselor because the one that we have seen in the past didn't have any openings. I think that going to this new counselor has made all the difference. Our past counselors were great, but this guys cuts through all of the BS and gets right to the meat of the problem. He helped us to uncover things about each of us individually that were affecting everything in our lives. He helped me to see things about myself that I didn't even know existed. I kept waiting for him to tell us how to go about fixing the problems, but he never did. I'm sure if I had asked "And what do I do about that?" he would have had some suggestions, but I never asked. It turns out, once I had the knowledge about these things I was able to start changing my behaviors accordingly.

So, actually, the first thing was getting a counselor that really helped. The second thing, the one that came out inadvertently, was finding out how much my behavior was affecting my husband. Sometimes our marriage counseling sessions turned into individual sessions, with one spouse just sitting and listening. In some of the sessions where Morgan was able to bare some of his issues, he expressed how he felt about me and how my downward spiral had affected him.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, or who reads this blog and knows anything at all about reading in between the lines, but I'm pretty insecure in some things. One of my biggest fears is that Morgan will someday get sick of all of the crap and leave. He has never said or done anything to indicate that this was his plan, but I have an overactive imagination. Anyway, hearing how hard it was for him to deal with my problems was a bit of a wake up call for me and I really started trying to change my ways. At first, I was simply pretending. I just wanted him to believe that things were getting better so that he would stick around. I wasn't even doing it to make him happy, I was just doing it to make sure that he wouldn't leave me.

Again, let me stress that he never had any intentions (as far as I know) of leaving; it was purely my insecurities and imagination that drove me to the fear of him leaving. Hey, I have issues. We've been over this.

Anyway, during one of our sessions, Morgan mentioned that he knew that I wasn't really better, that I was pretending for his sake. I don't know what changed or how it changed, but after that it really did start to get better. I think we were able to overcome some big stumbling blocks that had been in our marriage all along. I also was able to put on my big girl panties and deal with stuff instead of hiding under the covers. I found that I had hope for the future. I cared whether or not I showered. I looked at my kids' homework. I played with my little boys instead of just tolerating them. I began to live again.

I know that I will have relapses. I have a chemical imbalance that I've had my entire life and I don't expect that it will go away and never rear its ugly head ever again. But I have learned so much this time around. I have received valuable tools that help me to deal with my disease. I have learned just how much I stand to lose when I give in to the demons when they come knocking. And mostly, I have learned that my wonderful husband loves me, supports me, and has no intentions of leaving, no matter how crazy things may get.

I plan on writing more about things that I feel have helped me, but I think I'm going to stop here for today.

I remember several months ago someone encouraged me to "fake it until it was real." I thought that was the worst idea ever, besides cutting off my lips and setting fire to my hair. I didn't want to fake it. I wanted to be happy. Faking seemed like too much work, but, I guess in the end, that's kind of what happened. I don't know if that is advice I would give to anyone who is in the fog of depression because there was definitely more to it than that for me, but it may be worth a try.

I've started a project which I think anyone who reads this blog may find helpful or at least interesting. Read about it on my family blog.

So, Um, I Was Thinking....

Do you ever totally wig out about something then realize after a good night's sleep that it was totally unworthy of the wig?

Yeah, me too.

Guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt guilt....

I'm not sure about writing this post tonight. I thought about putting it on my family blog, but I try to keep things light-hearted and up-beat over there. I don't know if this blog has anything to do with depression, but there is a bunch of stuff on my mind and I'm hoping that writing will relieve some of my stress. I don't even know where this will go. I'm just typing the word vomit as it spews out of my brain.

I may or may not have mentioned that my husband quit his job to go to school full time, which means that for the last four months, our family of six has been living off of student financial aid we received in August. There are a multitude of reasons why, I'm sure, be it poor budgeting, unexpected expenses or just plain stupidity, but now that we are at the end of the four months that the money was supposed to last, things are stretched pretty thin.

We've had a little help from our parents and every once in a while I'll get a little bit of money for something I've sewn. However, it's extremely stressful to know that you have to make it 20-30 more days on $37.

Things have been stressful around here. In some ways, things are getting a lot better and in some ways they are getting worse. I feel like our relationship as a family has not been as great as it should be. I don't feel like our children have gotten the love and attention that they have needed. My husband is dealing with his own demons right now in addition to mine. He has obligations that I think he has been lax in fulfilling but I have felt that it was his business, not mine. He didn't stand over the bed and berate me on the days when I couldn't find it in me to get up so I would feel very hypocritical to constantly be on his back about doing the things that I feel he should do. I have felt for a long time that we needed some sort of release, a day to have fun and relax. I know that you don't need to spend money to have a good family bonding experience, but I also think that my kids have been told "No, we can't afford that" way too much lately.

I don't know the who, how or any of that, but yesterday someone gave my family a monetary gift. It wasn't a huge amount in worldly terms, but to me it was the equivalent of a million dollars. I knew that I could make it stretch a long way, definitely until we are able to get more money for the next semester. On our way out the door to church, the zipper on my son's coat broke. I'm a handy seamstress but I wasn't sure how to fix the zipper as it was put in the coat weird. I cried all the way to church, wondering how I was going to get my son a new coat and keep the small amount of money that we still had for gas or diapers. I didn't tell anyone about the coat. After church, I had some visitors who delivered that wonderful gift plus a new coat for me since I didn't have one. (I don't know who you are, but thank you. Thank you so much.)

This brings me to the crux of my story. I wanted to do something for my family. I wanted my husband to have a day in which nobody, okay, in which I didn't nag him to do the things that I felt he should be doing. I wanted my children to have some fun. I wanted us to get out. I did a little looking around on the internet and found that the natural hot springs that are about 45 minutes from our house offered a family pass for $15, Monday - Thursday. We had to take my daughter to an appointment this morning and I figured that we could finish at the doctor and then head to the hot springs to enjoy a family day of fun for a few gallons of gas and $15.

Then the guilt set in. What if the person who gave this money didn't want it to be used for recreation? Was I abusing a gift? Maybe we should stay home and try to get some things done, get more ready for Christmas, tend to our responsibilities. The mental argument went back and forth. Finally, my husband and I decided that we needed the family day. $15 dollars and one day weren't going to make enough of a dent to make a difference.

So we went. I enjoyed myself. My kids enjoyed themselves. I think my husband did, but he was quiet all day.

Did I do the right thing?

I don't know. The decision was made and we acted on it. There is no going back and undoing it. I know that I need to accept the choice that I made and move on, but the guilt and uncertainty keep eating away at me. Where is the line between responsibility and the emotional health of my family?

Also, I have good friends who are in a very similar boat, financially speaking. Full time student, no source of income. Who is going to take care of them?

Okay. I need to stop now. I don't want to make my problems worse or create new ones; I want to make things better by just getting these thoughts out of my head. I hesitate even to publish this, but I will, even if it is for the purpose of telling whoever gave us the gifts this: Thank you. I hope my decision today doesn't disappoint you.