If I Had My Child to Raise Over Again

"If I Had My Child to Raise Over Again"

by Diane Loomans

If I had my child to raise all over again,
I'd build self esteem first, and the house later.
I'd fingerpaint more, and point the finger less.
I would do less correcting and more connecting.
I'd take my eyes off my watch, and watch with my eyes.
I would care to know less and know to care more.
I'd take more hikes and fly more kites.
I'd stop playing serious, and seriously play.
I would run through more fields and gaze at more stars.
I'd do more hugging and less tugging.
I'd see the oak tree in the acorn more often.
I would be firm less often, and affirm much more.
I'd model less about the love of power,
And more about the power of love.

Small Things, True Things

I go through the motions of simplifying more often than anyone I know.  There are two reasons for this; one good, one bad:

1.)  I recognize that I am much more sensitive to stress than the average person.  Whether this stems more from my illness or my natural personality, I may never know, but I do know when the red lights are flashing and it's time to reevaluate what is essential in life and what must take the back burner for a while (or forever).

2.)  I keep adding things back after I simplify.  I suppose this is because the momentary relief I feel after I let some things go gets mistaken for me being in a more stable place mentally, and I foolishly start piling the crap back into my life, saying yes to people when I still should be saying no, making plans to resume this and that with bigger and better ideas than ever before, etc.  And then I end up in the same frazzled, overwhelmed, resentful spot that I thought I had escaped.  

It's an ongoing cycle.  The adding, the subtracting.  

I may never truly learn to stop doing this. Because I end up having to cut out things (and people) that I love, for my own psychiatric good, and then I miss those things and people and decide that I need them more than they are harming me.  

I also get in the mindset that everything I ever want to do in life must be done NOW.  After all, I am not promised tomorrow; no one is.  It's hard to pack up dreams and not know if they will ever be taken back out of the box again.  For instance, I had decided this year was THE YEAR for me to finish revising one of my books so that I could hopefully attempt getting it published.  I made cuts in things like social networking, I made a schedule, I made a freaking commitment to do this, okay?  But...I have the most remarkable toddler boy on my hands.  He's adorable.  He's funny.  He's a handful!  Like, on a level I never experienced with my daughters or even with the boys I used to babysit.  Imagine, this one little boy exhausting me more than the five toddlers/preschoolers I babysat for five years as a home daycare provider!  So, obviously writing while he is awake is out of the question.  Nap time is a joke.  And by the time I put the kid in bed I am so tired I can't keep my eyes propped open long enough to turn the lamp off, let alone put something intelligible in book form.  Excuses, excuses, my brain screams at me.  So-and-so did it with young children at home, why can't you? Because I am not so-and-so.  I am me.  And I know my personal limits.  I also know that, regardless of how much I love writing and the idea of being published, I love my children more.  And that being said, if I never get around to finishing a book because I was too busy raising my kids, that is the one excuse I will accept as a valid one.  

Mother Teresa once said “not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”  I may never amount to much in worldly terms, but I want to do the small things for my family with great love.  I have struggled to even do this as of late.  I have shamefully hated being a mother, a homemaker, and even being alive.  But I am going to try harder, and that means letting go of more.  Like the feeling that I am a failure because the house is an utter wreck and I can't seem to get a handle on the laundry. It means letting go of the idea that I have to please people who will continue to criticize and judge me anyway.  It means releasing the urge to belittle myself each time I get something wrong in the anal-retentive terms I have set for myself over the years.  It means neglecting the idea that I must look at the big picture in order to succeed in life.  Because often (perhaps always) it is the small snapshots along the way, the every day things, the true things, that are what really carry us from one triumph to another.  

So, simplify? Yes. Again and again.  Then simplify some more.  And whenever what is left is small enough to barely reach around you, gather it in your arms and give it the greatest of your time and love, and know that it is good enough. 

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

-Oscar Wilde

I Hope One Day I Will Figure This All Out

I survived the trip.  We chose an alternate route that did not involve going through Atlanta, which greatly pleased me.  Of course I was still petrified of riding anywhere outside of our regular errands, so before we left I dug out an old bottle of Klonopin that I had leftover from when I had a doctor to prescribe them to me and I had to take a few throughout the trip.  But I survived.  Panic attacks, paranoia and all.  But I can't say that I have been well since we returned home.  The stress of everything really did a number on me, and I think the only reason I have felt halfway okay today is because dissociation is beginning to block out the overwhelming burden of reality.  But it has yet to erase this nagging depression, this feeling that I am really, really not alright, as much as I try to pretend to be.  Every part of my life has cracks in it that are getting way too big to ignore.  And I think this trip made it all the more clear that something has to be done, and soon.  

I have been off medications since October.  Even now, with all the symptoms I am having, I can't really say I was doing better on medication.  I was just different.  And truth be told, I didn't like that version of myself any better than this one.  Medicated Amy is a slightly more subdued form of me, but she is also burdened with side effects like constant fatigue, weight gain (despite diet and exercise), and -in most cases- even moodier (at least at a more rapid level than my usual rapid cycles: think seconds instead of minutes or hours).  But Medicated Amy has less paranoia (most of the time), less hallucinations, and the highs and lows are usually not as high and low. Some medications calm down the OCD and/or other manifestations of anxiety.  Some make it worse.  Usually, whatever medication helps the OCD makes the bipolar worse, or the panic attacks worse, or the angry outbursts worse; likewise, if the medication improves the bipolar aspects of my illness, it often seems to irritate the anxiety.  And of course, this is frustrating for me, for my doctors, and for the therapists that have to listen to my complaints of how I can't concentrate and I can't function and I can't seem to feel okay on or off medication.  

Since my doctor dismissed me in October (and the place she tried to refer me to wouldn't take on another patient without insurance) I have tried very hard to keep myself within reasonable bounds of sanity.  As much as I have feared that a hospital stay might be the only answer, I have tried to hide the worst parts of me, and have relied on my fiance to fill in as parent when I was raging or suicidal or any of the other Not a Good Mom Moments that have come up.  We can't afford for me to go to the hospital, not a good one anyway.  And there's no one to take care of my son if I am not home. My ex-husband would probably make it even harder to see my daughters if he knew I was struggling enough to be committed for any length of time.  So my fiance and I have patched up the broken down spots as well as we could.  I regret how hard I have made things for him.  I regret bringing children into the world to witness a mother who is so not alright much of the time.  I regret being alive most days, and I regret that I fear death too much to take that leap.  Mainly, I regret not being whole.  I am fragments of this and that, nothing that adds up to a person who can do things properly.  And I know that sounds really melancholy and perhaps even ridiculous, but I don't know how else to look at it.  

I have great ideas sometimes, and I would be adequately intelligent, and I would most likely have the ability to focus and get things done, if it were not for all the uglies of mental illness.  And that makes me mad.  I actually get jealous of people who, despite their illness, go on to achieve highly functioning lives...how the hell do they do it??  And then there are others who are destined to a mental asylum for the rest of their lives, or a prison, or a halfway house, or at the very least 24/7 care from a guardian because they cannot attain a functional level regardless of the treatment options available.  And then, there are people like me who are just barely keeping their heads above water; enough to not be a danger to society, enough to get a shower half the time and take care of most basic needs for survival, but everything else is so unbelievably hard.  We're stuck in the middle, where it could be worse, but it could be so much better.  If only we could find the right doctor.  The right therapist.  The right medications.  The right opportunities.  We search and we try, and we are turned down so many, many times.  Life just has a way of sticking us in the ground and sitting on us.  After a while, it hurts too much to try.  But it's what we do, we can't give up, even if we wanted to.  So we keep trying to find a way out of the quicksand.  I think, hey, maybe I am okay enough to start driving again.  Maybe I can start working again.  But then I have another major episode and all those dreams get reburied.  I begin to think the only future for me is going to be in a state hospital, where the only thing to look forward to is that potential visit from my family each week.  And then maybe those visits don't ever happen.  The fiance finds a well person to spend his life with.  The kids grow up and have better things to do than spend time with a sad, lonely woman who tried her whole life and never got anywhere for it.  

But, damn it, I am still fighting to make a better future for myself and the ones I love.  I hope one day I will figure this all out.  I don't want to die.  I don't want to fail my family. What I do want is to be able to trust my own mind when it tells me something, and to be able to share my good characteristics with others without all the bad getting in the way.  I want something to make sense for a change.  I don't know what it would feel like to walk through life without these bleeding colors and screeching sounds and fears and rules and clowns and devils all rushing in my brain nonstop.  If there is a silence to be known, I wish to hear it.  I want a quiet walk in a quiet town and the freedom to own my life and not feel like a prisoner.  I will always work toward that, like many pay to win the lottery.  I don't know if I will ever accomplish it, but I have to keep aiming for it. In a way, it is the only thing that keeps me from losing myself completely.  

I. Am Terrified

It's been a long time coming, but I finally had one of my major panic attacks.  It's been a while, I am proud of that fact, but it doesn't take away the pain and fear of this last one.  I know what sparked it; we are leaving for our trip tomorrow.  

I have been doing a lot better getting out of the house.  As long as my fiance is with me and I don't look at the people I pass by in the stores, I have even enjoyed myself.  Last week when we had to stay at the hotel during the snow storm, I managed my OCD germ phobies without freaking out.  But now...now we must drive through ATLANTA!  We are leaving early enough to miss rush hour, but come on, it's still ATLANTA.  Yes, that city must be in all capitals because, in my mind, it is a scary place that wants me dead.  It wants my children dead.  It will go out of its way to make us be in a horrible wreck or some other catastrophe.  Because, well, it's ATLANTA.  

I know the odds of being in a wreck are just as common close to home or whatnot, but I am terrified of riding in more than two lanes of traffic.  It just seems to me there are too many lanes going on in Atlanta, too many drivers smushed together at one time, for there not to be a few deaths along the way.  Take into account my fiance's road rage, travelling with two children, and the way my hyperventilating tends to piss him off even more in a situation like that, and...I really don't want to go through it.

But my oldest daughter is counting on me to be there at her livestock show, so I have to go through this.  If I die, I will die trying.  What really worries me is my children's lives...

But, I must try to push these thoughts out of my head.  There is packing to do.  A lot of it.  If all goes well, we should be home sometime Saturday.  I really, really hope all goes well.  I want to enjoy this trip.  It's the closest thing to a vacation that happens for us.  We even bought swimsuits for the indoor pool...and public pools are another one of my terror-sites, but at the moment it is a distant second to the drive to get there.  

A Setback is Not a Reason to Give Up

I am ten pounds closer in my journey back to 130.  I must say I have been doing excellent in eating well and exercising daily.  Well, until yesterday.  We finally got home from the hotel and it was FREEZING in the house!  So we turned on some heat and decided to grab a bite to eat in town while it warmed up.  There weren't many choices when it came to choosing a place that wasn't jam packed with early Valentiners, but we settled on Pizza Hut.  We got the buffet, and that is always a mistake when trying to lose weight.  I feel the need to at least get my money's worth.  I ended up eating three slices of pizza, a breadstick and a salad.  Not too bad, but not exceptional either.  But I figured, hey, I will add some extra time to my workout, no biggie.  But then, I don't know, I ended up binging on some of my fiance's chips that night. And eating a donut.  I felt terrible afterwards, both with shame and my tummy not being used to the excess junk in my system.  I made a mental note of how awful it makes me feel to eat this way and vowed to get back on track today.  Only, today we decided to go on our annual trip to Red Lobster.  It's our little treat each year around tax return time, and while at most restaurants I could be pretty good at sticking to a healthier version of something to eat, I just can't at Red Lobster.  It's my favorite, from the Cheddar Bay Biscuits to the Red Wine Vinaigrette to the Rock Island Stuffed Tilapia and more Cheddar Bay Biscuits.  It's a dieter's nightmare, but such, such heaven to my taste buds.  So I ate what I wanted to.  I didn't make myself sick, but I didn't go out of my way to make healthy choices either. I just finished up the leftovers for supper tonight.  So that is done.  And I am done with the bad food choices.  I've had my fill, and I feel more confident about tomorrow's menu.  

Normally, when I am trying to lose weight, just one day of bad choices causes me to give up and go back to my old ways.  I then end up gaining more weight than I lost because it's like I am trying to make up for lost time, shoveling in all that greasy, sweet, salty goodness and washing it down with nonstop sodas for good measure.  And it makes me really hate myself.  That annoying saying "nothing tastes as good as healthy feels", while true, just isn't enough to keep me from binging on junk.  And when I start binging I make it even worse by cutting out the exercise because, mainly, I feel so heavy and lethargic from the crap I'm putting into my body I can't move.  I know this cycle all too well, and I am saying enough is enough.  

So, as fun as Red Lobster was today, I don't want any more of it.  Not until next year's annual trip.  And I know I can make my goal by my 35th birthday if I really stick to good eating and fitness habits. I've had my first setback this time around.  I am wise enough to know it doesn't have to be the end of the road, and it's not going to be.  

What's New

Winter 2009

I have been a little scarce on both writing here and reading other blogs.  Hopefully I will feel more like myself soon.  I'm just trying to rest as much as possible and simplify my days for now.  I do have a few random thoughts and updates to share:

-Winter in Georgia can be quite a trainwreck sometimes.  A little bit of snow and/or ice and the whole state shuts down.  I'm sure we provide quite a few eyerolls for the northern states who are used to several feet of snow, but our little southern world is just never prepared for it, meaning that many roads are impossible to drive.  I have been packing today because we are spending the night at the hotel my fiance works at in preparation for the 7-inch snow and sheets of ice that are predicted.  I have packed for a three day stay, but hopefully we aren't stuck there for that long.  But by being at the hotel, it ensures that my fiance can work (and will probably rack up more overtime since other employees aren't apt to show up) and I will not be stuck at home, potentially without power, by myself with a crazed toddler (who, by the way, is terrified by the sight of snow). 

My girls playing nicely together! 2009

-I am 9 lb down in my weight loss endeavor.  I have 41 more to go until I reach the ideal healthy weight for a woman my height and age.  Making it through mild to moderate depression without binge eating is a challenge; usually I eat to feel the void; now I am forcing myself to get up and exercise every time I feel that urge.   

-Is it wrong of me to wish this 2 1/2 year old had an OFF button?  I swear I'd turn him right back on in just a few minutes.  

-While I will probably be offline for a few days due to the hotel stay, I am thinking when I get back I will run a few public domain articles on here that contain some useful information.  I figure it will be a nice break from my dreary personal posts, and I certainly haven't had time to write any of my own informational articles for a while, which is what I originally planned for this blog to be.  

-A couple of days ago I wrote down all the things I could think of that were bothering me.  The list was getting pretty long and, honestly, I got bored writing it all down.  I don't know if I will ever share it on here, but I will say it was an eye opener.  Sometimes it's hard to pinpoint exactly where the problem lies until we force ourselves to make note of it.  Looking at that list, I can now decide what I can change and what I must accept.  My next project:  writing down all the good things in my life. 

My son hating the snow 2014

Land of the Bland

I have been such a slacker in the writing department lately.  I am having a hard time concentrating, and while most of the time I can piece together my thoughts better through written word than verbal, right now there seems to be no solid form of communication that I can make proper use of.  I have plenty of things I want to say and write about, but there's a great chopping block in between my thoughts and their expression, and I am very sorry that I cannot do any better.  

I am experiencing what promises to be a long stretch of depression.  Yet, on the "bright" side of this darkness, it has, for the most part, been a functional misery.  I have been able to go about my duties as wife and mother, keep the house fairly clean, cook healthy meals, and even exercise every day (even with a screaming two year old clamped to my leg begging me to stop - built in weight training).  But I'm not finding joy in any of it, and that is a pity, because I know there is joy to be had, if only I could pry off these blinders. But all I see is work, work, work.  I am tired.  I want five minutes to myself.  I want someone to come take this burden from me for a short while so I can re-center.  But there's no one to do that.  And when I ask for help and get shot down, it makes me feel even worse, so I've stopped asking.  Really, there's no one to ask.  And even if there was, I don't truly believe a babysitter or housekeeper would solve what's wrong deep down inside of me.  

I am trying not to let my irritable, downright hateful view on things get in the way of the sunshiney mom I am supposed to be.  I am trying not to get annoyed by the little things.  I am trying not to break down crying every other hour of the day.  And I must be fooling everyone, or else they have their own set of blinders on.  No one seems to know how invisible I feel, how used up and broken and in need of something that I just can't put my finger on. No one  sees me sinking further and further down.  If they did, they would do something, right?  

“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.”

― Charles R. Swindoll

Time to Heal

"The key to happiness is good health and a bad memory." -Ingrid Bergman 

I have lost six pounds in the past two weeks.  I am proud of myself for maintaining good eating habits and daily exercise, and I need this success more than ever before.  Everything else in my life seems to be crumbling to the ground. So, by God, I need to at least be able to say I got skinny from it all, right?  

The truth is, I am heartbroken.  I am confused.  I don't know what is happening around me, or how to stop it.  I'm baffled and bewildered and feeling so very, very alone.  It's depression.  It's other things.  It's a losing battle all the way around.  And yet, I am still fighting.  

I am having a hard time accepting what has recently been brought to light.  After several months of being disowned by my father's family, I finally found out why. They all believe I did something that, in reality, I did not do.  But they believe I did it, and it's something awful, and apparently some other people outside of the family believe it as well.  I can't even begin to try to prove that it isn't true, not yet anyway, because then they would know who told me. Besides, the only "proof" I have is my word, and I doubt anyone would listen at this point. It's complicated, and I can't be any more specific about the situation on here. This whole situation has stressed me to no end.  I know I shouldn't care what people think of me.  I know the truth and that should be enough.  But my dad was the world to me, and now his family hates me.  It just stirs up the grief of losing him even more.  And it makes me wonder, have I lived my life in such a way that even family would believe I am capable of doing that?  Do I come across as that heartless and greedy? And why didn't anyone come to me about this and talk to me?  Chew me out about it if that's what you think I've done.  But to just walk out of my life and lock the door behind you?  Where is the sense in that??  

I wish I could forget this place.  I wish I could move so far away, where I could start over.  Where no one knew me, so I could begin again.  But, of course, I can't do that.  Even if money was not an issue, I will not move away from my daughters.  So, I am stuck here.  Indefinitely.  And my paranoia is running rampant.  Every person who seems to be avoiding me, I wonder if it's because "the rumor" has reached them.  It's embarrassing.  It's appalling.  For anyone, it would be troubling.  For someone with social phobia, it's earth-shattering.  Like I didn't worry enough already how I come across to people.  Ugh!  

Fiance says I should just forget it.  It doesn't matter what people believe.  If they are shallow enough to shut me out because of it then it's proof that they must not have cared that much for me to start with.  And I know that, but it's the truth of that statement that hurts so much.  To know I didn't matter.  Maybe it's because I was adopted; maybe they never viewed me as "true" family.  But that's not the way I felt about Daddy.  He was my father, regardless of blood.  He loved me.  He's the only parent I never doubted when it came to love and security.  I would never do anything to disrespect his memory. So, why does everyone else seem to believe otherwise? I have such good memories from my childhood of time spent with these relatives, and now all of those people are against me.  I am hurt and I am angry, and I wish I knew how to let this go and not care.  

I guess it's times like this when I really miss having a therapist the most.  I need someone to just listen without telling me what I already know.  I know I should just drop it.  I know I should move on and not give it a second thought.  But I need to grieve.  I need to be able to cry without being told how senseless it is to be this upset. I need time to heal from this in my own way.  I need patience from others during the process.