Children Are a Blessing, Among Other Things

This evening I asked my eleven year old daughter, Emily, to sweep the floor. A fair and simplistic contribution to the household, I believe.  After a few sighs and groans, she gets the broom and dust pan and sets to work. I try not to be a nag, despite my OCD and control freak tendencies, but I did tell her she should move her brother's toys and her flip flops from the area she was sweeping to make it easier. She mumbles "okay" and continues sweeping around those items.

"Emily! Pick the stuff up and move it out of your way."

Apparently to an eleven year old "pick the stuff up" means to kick it across the room, scattering the dirt (mainly cracker crumbs from my toddler) along with it.  Still, I remain calm...okay, kind of calm.

"Emily! Now you have an even bigger mess to clean up."

"Ew, I have dirt on my feet now!"

"Maybe if you had picked the stuff up instead of kicking it..."

"You're the housewife. Why am I doing your job?"

"Emily, if this is any indication of what the rest of your preteen and teen years are going to be like, you may not survive."

Ahhh, I love my children. All three of them.  They are all so different. So precious.  So perfect.  At certain moments, it's a little harder to remember that. Sometimes they take on a personality more reminiscent of devils than darlings, but I still love them.

My two year old, Jacen, loves to sweep.  I hand him the broom and dust pan and he has a terrific time!  So terrific, in fact, that when I go to "help" him he produces a death clinch on the broom handle and screams like I am trying to take his soul.

The floors here stay dirty a lot.

Time to Simplify

I feel the need to simplify my life. I'm not exactly sure what that simplification will entail just yet, but I am in desperate need of securing the last threads of sanity I have.  I spend too much time on the mediocre things in life and too little on the important things (and people). My mind flits from one aspiration to another, getting too caught up in small details to the point that I am exhausted and overwhelmed before I even begin. I lose sleep over this. I lose valuable time with my family. I lose minutes, hours, days, months, years. I need to learn focus, and it can only be self-taught through practice. I am too distracted to practice, however. I've been a lifelong perfectionist, and of the worst sort, because if it is a task I have any doubt in my mind about achieving to the utmost degree then I back away and give it no effort whatsoever. And I doubt everything. So I make excuses. I dawdle. I ignore. And then I wonder why I feel so uprooted and fainthearted. I am my own oppressor. I stand in my way, and I pile up as much useless baggage as I possibly can to make that wall sound and secure. Grief, regrets, anger, fear. And I'm really tired of it all.

I'm so thankful for Douglas and my children. I constantly fear losing them (every known accident and natural disaster has come to mind), and I also fear dying myself. Religion is a big gooey clump of confusion for me, and it is not from lack of research. What once seemed so simple to believe has increasingly become more fiction than faith for me over the past years. What started out as a purposeful detachment from God due to shame for past actions has progressed into something just shy of complete disbelief. And yet I still pray. I pray several times every day to a God that I am unsure even exists any more. If that's not enough to give one a complex I don't know what is. But I can't NOT pray. I've tried, and I just have to pray. It's programmed into me. So I pray for protection for the ones I love and for anyone I feel needs a little extra help in life. I pray about my doubts. I pray about a lot of things, actually. And I really don't know if it does any good or not; whether coincidence or rhyme and reason are the only gods floating about out there, or if there really is an all-knowing Father who is still in control of this terribly malfunctioned earth.

So simplify, yes. It must be done. How? I really, really don't know. I will be giving it a lot of thought over the next few days. I have goals in mind, and I need to figure out what, besides my long list of inadequacies as a human being, is preventing success. These changes won't come overnight. It's taken me 34 years to even acknowledge the problem with enough determination to actually make a difference. I just don't want to be that foundationless person anymore.

Sins of the Mother

I have slept most of the day away. There is always such a pang of grief that overwhelms me after one or both of my daughters leaves to go back to their father. Even though he's a great father, and he provides for them, both mentally and financially, much better than I could ever do.  It aches, this part time parenting thing. It used to be that, although I only saw them every other weekend during the school year, I always looked forward to summer because that was my time with them. But now their summers are packed full of exciting trips and camping and other things that even if I could afford to do for them my anxiety would cause me to be anything but fun to be around. I want them to experience all these great things with their dad. I do. But I miss them. I'm not whole without them, and I know this is a consequence of my illness, and part of me even feels that I deserve it. Because, bipolar episode or not, the choices I made years ago were, in a word, crazy. Crazy decisions that I would not have made in my right mind. I would have never left my children. I would not have left my husband. But that's what happened, and I pay for it every day. All the things I miss in their lives, that's payment. All the times I cry myself to sleep after they leave my doorstep, that's payment. There's nothing I can do to change it. I'm not a segment of Doctor Who. I can't go back in time and do things differently. And even if I could, then I wouldn't have my son and his father in my life. It's a gamble of fates, to wish anything different than the way it is now. 

A Need For Structure

I have been very anxious ever since I woke up this morning. I'm trying to fight it, but I just want to be left alone. That's not possible with kids, and I am trying to not take my irritability and antisocial mood out on them. I am always like this after a day of social stimulation. Yesterday was chock full of it. Baby & Me class, a crowded restaurant (that didn't bother me at the time thanks to a nice strong margarita) and then the rest of the day spent with kids. I had trouble getting supper made last night because of storms and power outages. All of this I handled quite well and I even got a good night's sleep. But upon waking this morning, all the residue of stress (both good and bad) have grown to make me a complete grouch!

I am going to try to take it easy today, but I do have one project that desperately must be completed today. I think my whole family could benefit from a little more structure in our lives, and I am going to write out a daily schedule to help us stay more on task. It will of course be lenient in certain areas, but the major issue is my fiance's need to have adequate study time for his classes.  While I appreciate his love and support more than anything, I feel a lot of guilt over the fact that he was unable to complete two of his courses due to having to help me through a major mental breakdown that lasted a couple of weeks. I feel like if I could just keep myself together on my own, I wouldn't have to be such a burden to him! He says he doesn't mind, but still. I wish I could be a stronger person for him. I take my chosen traditional role of housewife and mother very seriously, and I feel like I should be helping him when he gets home from work, not the other way around. The degree of my illness prevents me from driving, from making important phone calls, etc. The man works 50+ hours a week, goes to college full time, spends time with his son, does most of the errands on his own, and does his best to keep me stable and out of the hospital. He's a real life Superman. He may actually be able to fly, I've never tested it. And then there's me, the one who's always needing saving. Well, the least I can do is try to clear out his schedule for him a bit. I want him to have more success with his next semester. He's already having to take two classes over because of me. I've got to find a way to make our lives more productive. So, that schedule is my first step. 

Who Matters Most?

Let me begin by saying that my mental health has improved drastically in the past three days. A small circuit of people knew about the struggles I was having; an even smaller circuit knew the severity. My last blog post indicated little hope of things getting better, but they did. Quickly after those words were penned, in fact. And I know who I owe that to. Sure, the adjustment in meds helped, but having my fiance there to support me, to hold me as I sobbed uncontrollably, to listen to my irrational thoughts, to love me despite it all...that's true healing power. To have my children love me and care about how I am feeling and to encourage me, just as I try to do for them...that's true healing power. The encouragement I received from online friends and fellow mental health bloggers, people who know the struggles firsthand and believed in my ability to push through like I have done countless times before...that's true healing power. To all of you, I want to say thank you. Thank you for saving my life.

Not everyone I know is as helpful. Most don't know much or anything about what goes on inside my head or how it affects my daily living. I try to be a lot more open about my illness than I used to; I stopped being ashamed a while back and consider it my duty to help others realize there is nothing about mental illness to be ashamed of. It opens my life up to a lot of scrutiny, from strangers, family, so-called friends, etc. I won't lie; people can be really hurtful at times. They're the ones who like to judge me for things I've done, things I haven't done, things they think I have done that I actually have not done; they basically just judge me for anything their little "perfect" minds can think of. I'm not like them, therefore something is wrong with me. Well, I think something is dreadfully wrong with THEM. So, who wins?

And then there are the people who only want to be around me when I am well. If I can do something for you, if I can make you laugh, if I can keep all my scribbles inside the lines and not do anything "weird" or "crazy", then I'm a swell family member or friend. As soon as I go a little "crazy", all bets are off. Lock your doors, Amy's gone bonkers again. Let's pretend she doesn't exist for a while. Maybe she will start acting normal again and then we may talk to her. Right now let's just stay far, far away. Thanks for nothing, folks!

I hate being hated. I hate when I lose friends. I hate when family walks out of my life. I hate when I have to distance myself from certain people because they do nothing but add pain and insecurity to my life. I miss people who I thought loved me, who I thought accepted me but for whatever reason, sanity-related or not, chose not to associate with me anymore. I really hate when they don't even tell me why. I'd really like to give them a questionnaire to fill out. Give me some pointers, eh?  I'm all about self-improvement.

But, if I spend time wondering about the unhelpful people in my life, I lose valuable time with the ones who are helpful. My true family. My true friends. If you know me, you know I go out of my way to do good things for others when I am well. When I am unwell...I am a bit useless, I admit. But my chances of wellness are a lot better around the people who accept me well or not. I give my all to them. I love them. I don't take them for granted. I'm about as loyal as a puppy, minus all the slobber and chewed-up shoes. I know who matters in my life. And I won't trade one more minute worrying about the ones who don't.

Depression is horrible.

Psychotic depression is wanting to write/scream what is really going on inside my head but I can't because I will be put away in a state funded asylum because I don't have insurance.

So I keep quiet and still and hope that no one can read my thoughts. The shadows do but they only laugh. They are of no use to me.

Meanwhile I just want so sleep 24/7 so I will have a break from these nonstop thoughts (though they almost always find their way into my dreams).

It's getting worse instead of better, I know it is. I hope we all make it out alive.

I think what sucks the most about depression is that no one wants to be around me when I am like this. And even if they did, I don't want to be around them. But at the same time I want-NEED-them to be. I just want a hug. A real hug. The kind of hug that lasts until I can't cry anymore. But who has time for that?

The Fix

Pills, pills, pills. 
Do they help? Do they hinder? 
Did I even take them today? I can't remember...


I am just angry at myself, because I was doing so well without them for a while, and actually felt like myself; like Amy, not an illness. I was doing so well...and yet I was doing horribly at the same time, and now I am doing absolutely horrible; more horrible than horrible, in fact; horribly horrible to the most horrible degree. But one pill makes me angry. The other one makes me stupid and also happens to make me want to eat large quantities of food, and that does happen even without me realizing I am eating all the food. The other one calms my nerves but makes me so numb and sleepy. It's not really life, or a living, or even remotely satisfying. I had weaned off all of these before because they were robbing my soul and poisoning my body--the pharmacy is only for shits and giggles and large quantities of money, after all--or at least that was my reasoning. So I was living, and living without pills, and living without the side effects, and living-managing-the symptoms through healthy choices and all that fun Barney happy stuff. And then life got more stressful than normal, and down down down I went. So the answer is...pills again. But the pills don't fix the problems in my life. They don't fix me. Twenty, thirty, who knows how many combinations have been tried so far, none of them "fix" it. More like a rather odd tasting bubble gum stuck over a cracked pipe, and I'm not even fond of chewing gum to begin with. It's just sticky and obnoxious. A sticky and obnoxious "fix" when the real problem is that I need a whole new pipe! How clever these doctors are. How clever the world as a whole is. Bubble gum! HA! 

Getting to Know Myself

Self-reflection is a noble thing. I don't think we can really know who we are until we sit down and actually acquaint ourselves with our own thoughts, feelings, ideas, and beliefs. It could be considered a form of meditation, a soul-searching experience, or just plain fun. A few devils may float out of the stirring pot; so may a few angels. I don't believe any of us are all good or all bad, and we shouldn't have to be. Like a dynamic character in a beloved book, our faults make us vulnerable, believable, real. It's time to stop hating certain aspects of our genetic make-up, of our quirks and misgivings, and start embracing ourselves as a whole, full spectrum individual.

I'm sure you have all lay witness to the posts on blogs, Facebook, and countless other social sites that urge you to write thirty random facts about yourself. I don't know about you, but these posts always cause me to draw a blank. I have enough trouble writing two-sentence biographies for web articles! I don't know anything else about myself! Yet, I was lying in bed last night, too tired to get up, but too charged to sleep, and I began thinking about certain tidbits of my personality. I finally decided to get up and write some of them down. This is what I came up with:

1.) I believe in soul mates, and I know I have found mine. Now, maybe we can put up with each other for the rest of our lives. I'm betting we will. 

2.) Sometimes I just really want to curl up to a soft, purring cat. Instead, I snuggle up to my son. A plus side to this: his fur doesn't make me cough. The down side: he doesn't stay asleep as long as a cat would. He does occasionally purr though.

3.) I am addicted to chapstick. I get the shakes and feel like my lips are going to peel off my face if I can't find it. I try to keep at least one stick in each room, and always, always some in my purse/diaper bag. 

4.) Ditto with hand sanitizer, only instead of my lips peeling off I feel like germ bugs are crawling all over my skin until I can slather on a stout helping of alcohol-based goodness. Repeatedly. In among several hand washings. I know all about super-germs, but OCD accepts no logic. Consequently, my hands are always dry and look like they should be attached a very old lady, or perhaps a bearded dragon. 

5.) Sometimes I find myself in awe that I have given birth to three healthy children. By far, they are the biggest accomplishments of my life, and they give me more joy and hope than anything else in this world. 

6.) I worry too much. About everything. And when I say everything, I mean E V E R Y T H I N G. I am a creative worrier, and consistent. If I haven't worried about it, it just means I haven't thought of it yet. But I will. 

7.) I love to learn. I have a very easily distracted attention span so it is hard for me to absorb much information at one time, but I have a strong curiosity for things, and I try to learn at least one new thing a day. Even if it's just reading a study that proves more people use blue toothbrushes than red ones.

8.) My toothbrush is green.

9.) One of my most cherished memories from childhood is the Mushroom Game my dad and I used to play together. This consisted of running around in our yard and seeing who could stomp on the most mushrooms. What I would give to play one more round with him.

10.) I really miss my dad. He passed away in 2010. I am still a Daddy's Girl to the core, and I honor his memory by putting my best effort into things that I think would make him proud. I just wish I had accomplished more when he was alive.

11.) As much as I am on the computer, and as much as I love organization, I hate online calendars and to-do lists. These things must be handwritten on paper. They just have to be. THEY HAVE TO BE!

12.) I'm a lot more tired than someone my age should be.

13.) I love to write. Well, actually, I hate to write because it feels like my insides are being stretched and pulled and it hurts my head and it's exhausting. But I love to have written, to look back on it and, amid the many mistakes I undeniably will find, to see my heart in print...I love that part, and it makes the torture worth it. Most of the time.

14.) You know those oooh and aaaah sounds that most people make when they see an adorable baby, a cute little kitten, or a puppy? Those are the sounds I make when I see a spider. I just want to scoop it up and give it little spider kisses. Common sense prevents this from happening, since spiders tend to bite rather than kiss, but I love them all the same.

15.) My favorite number is seven. I'm also partial to numbers that are divisible by five, and thirteen. There is a "bad number" that I avoid whenever possible (and it makes me cringe when I can't avoid it--this makes reading counting books to my son very difficult). I won't type it here but here's a hint: it comes right before seven. So yes, the best follows the worst.

16.) Ironically, the "bad number" was my favorite as a child and I had to do everything by this number. I don't recall at what age this changed or why.

17.) I am very forgiving of others. I am rarely forgiving of myself.

18.) I can't watch the news, horror movies, or soap operas. The first two are because they invoke panic attacks; the latter because I just really hate soap operas.

19.) I'm a hypochondriac, and Google is my worst enemy.

20.) I am addicted to the Internet, and yes, I actually have looked up the signs of it up on Google. 

21.) I am a socially awkward person. Aside from the social anxiety, if that aspect of my character didn't exist, I imagine I would still have trouble communing with others. I'm never witty on time, my voice is so soft that half of what I say goes unnoticed anyway, and to be honest I don't really enjoy talking to people in the first place. 

22.) I am afraid of talking on the phone. It might steal my soul. If you call and I don't answer, or if I never call you back, this is why. I'm sorry. It's nothing personal. 

23.) I am in love with Sheldon Cooper. My fiancé is totally okay with this.

24.) I'm fairly partial to Spiderman as well.

25.) I refuse to refer to myself as "crazy" or to say "I'm bipolar". I have bipolar disorder. I'm not crazy, I'm Amy. The phrasing may mean nothing to some, but it means everything to me. 

26.) I really hate when people believe something about me that isn't true. It seems to me that quiet, distant people are the easiest to just assume things about. But if you really knew me, you would be quite surprised about a lot of things, I'm sure. 

27.) I still believe I will publish a book one day. This will require a lot more effort than I have put forth thus far. Yesterday I rewrote the first page to a book I had started eight years ago. At this rate, I may be in my seventies before it's completed, which means I better take better care of myself if I want to live that long! But I'm done with the insistent self-nagging that I should have been published by now. When I turned thirty, it was a major concern of mine. I felt like a failure. Thirty years old, with no completed college degree, and no completed manuscript. It really took it's toll on my mindset, and every year since then the self-hatred has gotten all the more grotesque. But I'm done with that. It will happen when it happens. And if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. What a freeing concept! It allows me to write without a twelve ton critic on my back digging his claws into every notion I have of success. 

28.) I am extremely sensitive to loud and/or sudden noises. This includes but is not excluded to vacuum cleaners, toasters, concerts, incessantly squealing children, construction work, chainsaws, applause, and thunder. 

29.) After much thought (and crying, and suicidal thoughts, and anger toward others and myself) I have come to this conclusion about a particular recent circumstance: I cannot control others' thoughts or actions. I can only control my own. I know the truth, at least to the point where I am concerned, and that is enough. If others want to think unkindly of me for something I had nothing to do with, so be it. It's petty, it's hurtful, but it's out of my hands. Illegitimi non carborundum.

30.) I am a work in progress. We all are. Stop judging my journey and walk your own.

The Circus

Stupidity likes to prance around in clown suits and wave big batons and yell through bullhorns "Look at me! I'm right! Look at all the clever ways I can prove it!" And Intelligence gets offended, sets out to silence Stupidity by wearing fancier suits and waving bigger batons and yelling much, much louder. Big ol' clown war, confetti shooting out everywhere. Before long, it's hard to tell who is on the side of Stupidity and who is on the side of Intelligence. Nothing is accomplished but there are lots of flashy colors littered about for the whole world to see. Many join in the ruckus, and others just sit back and enjoy the show. The few members of the Wisdom committee shuffle along among the outskirts, doing the hard labor so often neglected by those too busy with lead roles in the circus. For a moment they pause, consider the outcome of asking the baton wavers and bullhorn yellers to shut up, settle down, and help them carry out more noble chores. With a heavy sigh, they decide it is useless, a bargaining with the devil, and set out once again to do the quiet, colorless work they know must be done. Their brooms sweep about where they can fit, deep into the crevices of humanity, to do the changing, the mending, the making. If only those clowns would get out of the way.