Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Rants of a Lunatic

I'm a cliche.

That's what I'm thinking right now. As I sit here in what must be the seventh or eighth day in my latest bout with depression.

The bouts that seem to be coming more and more often as I grow older. Or does it just feel that way.

It's humiliating to type. I hate. HATE. feeling out of control. I hate admitting my weaknesses.

I'm hoping that just writing it down this time will turn it around, and like so many times before, tomorrow I'll wake up and feel like my normal self. Stable and in control. Emotions in check with reality.

But right now, I'm coming out of a day of raw emotion and pain and into a day of mind numbing fog and isolation.

Frustrated beyond belief that I thought this was under control once with diet and exercise, and yet it reared it's ugly head. Frustrated again because after an extremely humiliating and weepy visit to my local clinic that up until now, only my husband and best friend knew about, I thought the medication they gave me was working.

Yet for the last week, I've felt less and less like talking. Or working. Or mothering. Or cleaning up. Or bothering to get dressed. And yesterday, emotion so raw and painful that it physically hurt. Every second was a battle to get through. Today is a fog of numbness, I imagine the brain's way of compensating for the rawness of yesterday.

"What is it? What are you thinking about that upsets you like this?" my husband asks helplessly. Do you have any idea how hard it is to explain depression to someone who has never really had it...there's nothing wrong, but EVERYTHING IS WRONG.

The racing thoughts. The problems that felt normal yesterday that feel completely insurmountable today. The overall feeling of doom and self-loathing. The endless spiral of "I am so fucked up" that makes you feel even more fucked up that makes you feel even more fucked up. The desperate mental searching for an end to the pain, anything to alleviate it, even a little.

And today I felt like crawling under the covers and telling everyone to fuck off. I hate myself like this. I hate me today. Somewhere on some level, the normal me is watching and is horrified at this version of herself. She feels sorry for everyone in her life. She is disgusted at herself for not being able to cook, work, and mother her children. Round and round and round we go.

But this is all I have today. I left my house today, and it took everything in my being to do it. Being self-employed is the greatest blessing and curse when you suffer from depression. I can hide if I need to, but really, I shouldn't be hiding. Every step I force myself to make is one step back to normalcy.

I'm trying to think of this as illness so I'm not so hard on myself and can deal accordingly. Then the guilt of all the illnesses I ALREADY BATTLE besides depression...the Meniere's, the anxiety, the autoimmune disorders...and the "I am so fucked up" starts again.

I feel guilt hitting the publish button on this post. I feel that everyone wants to hear about the happy hum and I should leave it at that. I'm a story somewhere in la la land that will cheer them up, and here I come along and fuck that up too with my negativity. SEE HOW THIS WORKS.

And then I choose not to hit publish for the 80th time since I've begun this blog. Except this time. Because I'm tired of isolation. I'm just. so. tired.

Please just let me wake up *me* tomorrow.





Friday, July 13, 2012

The Happy Hum

I don't have long to write because life has taken me on so many new and exciting journeys in the last several months, I don't have a whole lot of time to self-indulge and write about it.

But the weather has changed and like it does every season, this change makes me nostalgic. Recently, I began musing to my husband "remember when we..." and he finally looked at me and said, "why are you so nostalgic all of a sudden?"

And then it dawned on me that it was summer, and really just beginning to FEEL like summer. And summer is when my life changed forever, 3 years ago. July 18th to be exact.

That is the night that I walked into a small music venue with my bestie, having just declared myself Done With Men and Single Forever. It was that night that his friend hit on us and asked us to join his group of friends. That night that I scanned the faces that I now know as his buddies, and found myself drawn to the shy one sitting furthest away. That's the night that he asked me who I lived with, expecting my answer to be "roommate" or maybe even "boyfriend", and I held my breath, answered "my three kids", and waited for the hasty retreat that I was used to (or maybe the even dumber response I had from one moron who actually lifted my shirt up to see my belly).

That is the night that we talked until our voices ached, exchanged numbers, and he vowed to take me out for the short time he was in the country. The night I went to get breakfast food with my bestie afterwards, looked at her with my head in my hands and said "Amy, he's 27 and drives a Corvette WHAT THE FUCK am I thinking?" as he sent me a text while driving away, telling me goodnight.

And now, life is life. There is no big excitement, no staying up all night talking, just what I like to describe as the Happy Hum. Maybe I don't get butterflies in my stomach everytime I look at him, because most of that time we're either solving problems, discussing the kids, cleaning up dog poop, etc. Ordinary life. But every single day, I thank the universe that he is my husband, my partner, my absolute soul mate, and that I found him. My needs are all met, and if they aren't, I can bring that to his attention and he ACTUALLY ADDRESSES IT. Things are exactly the way that they are supposed to be. This is what marriage SHOULD feel like. I feel equal, I feel heard, I feel loved and cherished and supported and valued.

Then there are the evenings that we are discussing plans for the future, our goals and hopes and dreams, which we do quite often. We look into each others eyes with the knowledge of what we have and how lucky we are to have it. And it hits me how much we are actually on the same page and I do get chills and butterflies all over again.

Nostalgia is my way of respecting what brought us here to the present, which is where I am the happiest. I love to think of those nights, picturing him attempting to memorize my kids' names, but watching it in my mind with the knowledge that those names are now his children too. It blows my mind.

As the summer goes on and starts to change to fall, I'm sure the wave of nostalgia from just a year ago will begin to hit me as well. September 10 will be our 1 year wedding anniversary. I think of us sitting in a dark movie theater in September 2010, looking at my iphone, and choosing the date 9-10-11 based on visitation schedules and birthdays, and it makes me giggle.


I don't want to say that my life began 3 years ago, because everything that happened up until that point brought me to exactly where I needed to be to have my Mr. Wonderful. I'm so grateful to now be living in the Happy Hum that I never knew existed. It has wiped away all of my fears and anxieties that I brought into this marriage.

Equally I see my kids enjoying the Happy Hum as well, and I can't help but wonder what would have become of them if they never got to experience it. What happened 3 years ago, July 18th, was just as important to their futures as it was to mine...if not more important. They not only adore their stepdad, but they bask in the stability of our relationship, and our happiness. They share in it just as a family should.

And with that, back to the Happy Hum.