What a Wednesday

Wednesday was the first "bad day" I've had in a long time, and yes by "bad day" I mean depressive/episodic.

I've been having a hard time sleeping lately (shocker) so I've been sleeping in til about 9:30 am pretty regularly but Wednesday I didn't get out of bed until 11:00 am. There may have been a bowl of cereal in there somewhere to tide me over, but the point is I was dragging like I haven't dragged in a long time.

Of course, just lying in bed for longer wasn't the real bad part, it was the scary thoughts that made it an episode. I felt so isolated and sad and hopeless. There wasn't true suicidal ideation, no plans or such, but I did visualize myself dead and alone in the apartment. It was scary. I think the worst part of it all was the fear that the thoughts would get worse, that I would descend into further darkness or that this mood was just the beginning of a postpartum issue or larger depressive episode.

Thankfully I was able to talk to the hubster about it that day and I think we did a good job refocusing on getting through the day and not buying into the fear. He also made a good point that it's a really great thing that I've made it so long without really bad days and that I noticed this. Me being so hard on myself, "but I was doing so well for so long" etc., isn't the best but acknowledging that I've been doing better is a good step.

In addition to the scary thoughts I totally lost my appetite. It was really hard to eat enough Wednesday and I found myself feeling faint and sick. The hubbo reassured me baby would be fine, one or two days of not eating enough isn't going to ruin anything, but I felt guilty. Like I said, I'd been doing so well for so long having a rough day seemed like an immense failure.

Thursday things were still a little sticky but I definitely took a different approach to the day and got myself moving. I made it to the grocery store and got pulled pork going in the CrockPot, even did some cleaning. Still had problems with no appetite but ate better overall.

Today I still feel like I'm recovering a bit but definitely on an upswing. It's tough balancing pregnancy exhaustion with needing to keep busy to ward off the depressive slide, all while trying to avoid punitive over-activity like cleaning to the point of delirium (one of my long standing, sneaky self-harming habits).

So, it's been a bit of a roller coaster week but I think I'm making it through and I'm glad for that.

In other news, Iroh seems to have some signs of worms clinging to his ass fur again. *JOY* I've been trying to pay attention to his activity and get a stool sample for the vet but haven't caught him in the act yet. So not excited for "Worms Part Deux." The other animals seem fine, I'm just a little sick of pet maintenance at the moment!

I've been trying to slowly clean the house as part of baby preparations but it seems like I barely make any progress. Just trying to keep up with laundry and vacuuming and the kitchen on a day-to-day basis and the "oh gawd I can't stand for another second, I gotta lay down" tiredness or aches makes special projects seem like pie in the sky goals. My mom said she'd come up and help me clean after the shower so I'm banking on that.

Corn Sniffs

There is something special about corn on the cob boiling away on the stove. It just smells so good. So "summery." Of course, it's also in the 80s and boiling corn on the cob in our little kitchen is making our whole apartment feel like a Calcutta hostel but the smell is still delightful.

The heat has been getting to me-again. Yesterday I took a nap and woke up dehydrated and over heated. I stumbled around to the kitchen where I sipped water and tried to cool myself down with a wet washcloth but it took the hubster and a bag of ice to get me back to sensible.

I cannot wait until fall.

It's beautiful with the bright blue skies and shimmering lake, all the plants happily growing for the skies but without AC I'm miserable. I can enjoy weather in the low 70s but anything higher and I just wanna mope in a pool of cool water like a hippopotamus.

Who knows? We could have warm weather through most of September too! Yuck!

Well, if I can't enjoy the heat of summer at least I can enjoy the bounty. Corn and watermelon and such. And somehow lemonade just tastes better in the summer...

In other news, Millie killed a massive insect that got in the house this weekend. That thing cast a shadow. I could feel it banging around the ceiling it was so big! Took her nearly 30 minutes but she waited for her opportunity, smacked it into the wall, watched it skitter to the ground, and then pounced on it. Pawed for a bit and then carried it off to munch it down. She scares me sometimes.

Iroh has been enjoying the heat. I think it helps with the arthritis. He is such a slob though, laying in all the pine needles on the balcony with dried wet food on his nose and all his dandruff and scruffiness. If he were a human he would be a most interesting specimen.

Fio has been taxed by the heat much like me. Our walks our cut increasingly short as the temperature climbs. He starts slowing down, looking toward home and even laying down in whatever shade he can find until I cave in and reverse march to base.

My mood has been all right but I'm starting to feel the affects of isolation and getting lonely. We are going to my parents for a BBQ this weekend but I'm missing my best friend and wanting to have someone visit me up at my place so I can host. There is something different about having someone visit you instead of constantly visiting them. Maybe something about validation? Reciprocation? Whatever it is, I want it.

Kinda missing the age of the water sprinkler and kiddie pool, but that could very well be in our near future!

Warm Days

It's been nearly 3 weeks since my bad episode in late May. The marks on my arm are shiny pink and healing well, though the larger one may scar. Hard to tell. Sometimes the littlest things will scar on my skin and other times not. No idea what the rules are there.

I've been feeling in pretty good spirits but have had several days where I've been immensely tired. A nap or early bedtime is helping but it is odd being the one excited to hit the hay, that's usually the hubbo!

I've fallen behind on some housework but haven't seen any molds sprouting up so I'm giving myself a break. The more important thing is that I haven't self-harmed and I've been doing very well taking my thyroid and supplements.

In wellness news, I've managed to lose a little more weight and have been exercising at least every other day. The tiredness can complicate the exercise regimen but more often than not I just exercise and yawn at the same time.

Fio is well on his way to recovery after spraining his leg several weeks ago. He's still not 100% but he does use the leg more often and can jump and run again.

Iroh is also doing well in recovery. Still taking medication for his bladder infection but already looking much more chipper. We've also upped his thyroid medication and are helping him off the couch and things when we can as the vet says he has some arthritis in his hips.

Millie. Millie doesn't really have any problems and I'm a little on guard waiting for something to go wrong since both the other pets had issues recently! Although she still vomits all the time. Maybe she doesn't have concentrated issues but rather an eternal problem to bother us with?

The weather has been warmer and I have really enjoyed being a few pounds lighter. It doesn't make a huge difference in my overall appearance but it has made me feel a little more comfortable wearing t-shirts and skirts (down to my knee or lower as a rule!). The hubster and I are getting excited for camping and having a road trip planned for July already :)

Day by day, I'll get where I'm going...

Taking Off Old Band-Aids

Over a month ago I received a F'book message from my cousin, M. I'm not sure quite how long it had been since we last saw each other but we guesstimated a year and a half. I think it had been nearly as long since I'd spoken to him or my aunt or vice versa, so definitely a bit of growing apart that so often happens in life.

I've written about my family dynamic a few times but it bears repeating or rehashing as I'm still in the midst of figuring all my feelings out and it's part of what is happening in my life lately.

Remembering my childhood I recall a lot of discussion about family. Mostly about how my immediate family wasn't very close to my relatives (usually as a response to me and my siblings' jealousy of other family units).

We saw my dad's side of the family a few times a year, and after my grandparents died usually only once a year at the family gift exchange and maybe at our family's 4th of July BBQ. We saw my mom's side of the family more often and the only relatives I recall ever "being close" to were my Aunt S and cousin M.

Aunt S and cousin M were the relatives I remember coming to graduations, seeing around the holidays, going to fairs with during the fall and summer, or just getting together with for games or a dinner party. M was the only cousin I remember really getting to know, being excited to see, or feel that knew me at all.

In addition to my blood family there are some close family friends that I consider family. My childhood neighbors R & I, and their daughter D and her husband P. My mother's best friend from college K and her children were like an extra aunt and cousins to me as well. My mother's teacher friend S and her family are also important to me and have been a great source of support for our family. For the most part I saw these people more often than relatives growing up.

I would say the status quo for my family involved seeing my Aunt S and cousin M several times a year, my other relatives a couple times a year, and my extra family friends often throughout the year. I remember being about 16 or 17 when I felt things beginning to change.

I don't know what the overarching story for my family was during this time, but for me I was growing up and getting new perspective (not accurate or good or bad, just new) and whether related or not, feeling and dealing with my depression for the first time.

From the middle of high school through college and even today I felt immense sadness for my Aunt S and for my family. With my depression and anxiety it quickly became overwhelming to see my Aunt S. I could not stand the sadness and despair I felt around her. Why so sad? Because my aunt is a chain smoker and killing herself. It sounds cliche but she has multiple surgeries under her belt, a cancer scare, difficulties walking and has never (to my knowledge) stopped smoking. Slowly I began to see less and less of Aunt S until we no longer knew how to talk to each other. It hurts me very much and I'm crying typing this, but that's what has happened. In turn, I saw much much less of my cousin M as well.

To complicate an already complicated transition period from childhood relationship to adult relationship, my other cousin J reappeared after nearly a decade absence. Where was he? Well, I had been led to assume he was in Bali but he was in prison. There was never a sit down discussion about this just secrecy, lying, and withholding information. In the end I found out from a friend of my aunt's, afterward that friend told my aunt what she had told me and Aunt S started talking about J like I knew the whole story, but she never told me herself. Eventually my mom apologized for not figuring out a way to tell me after I grew up (he initially went away when I was in grade school) but it's still a taboo and most of what she told me felt like a therapy session for her not a dialogue. So yeah.

I understand not telling the whole truth to a child, but withholding that information through high school and college, never discussing it... It really stung me. I suppose all the years I had been so close to my mom and aunt made it sting all the worse. Especially when the close relationship I had with my mom was a confusing codependency where I was sometimes made to feel like a companion or co-parent instead of a daughter, but that's a whole 'nother crazy story!

Basically, the relationship with my aunt and cousin started a downhill slide years ago was further complicated by my sense of betrayal over my invisible cousin J and then (from what I gather) further hindered by arguments and grudges between my mom, aunt, and their brother. What's all that amount to? A whole lot of distance, words unsaid, closeted feelings, and awkwardness.

So where does that put me today? Well, today I saw my cousin for the first time in over a year, maybe closer to two years. We walked Green Lake and caught up on each other's lives (he's moving out of the state soon and engaged to be married which kinda helped spur contacting me outta the blue) and while I tried to keep my cool, I cried a bit.

Things are still as confusing as ever. Our mothers aren't talking and he doesn't know what happened between them just as I have no clue. But solving our family's issues wasn't what I took from the visit. What struck me were the parallels between me and my cousin.

Both of us are in that marrying stage of life, he's engaged and I'm a newlywed. Both of us are working on ourselves, our emotional issues, our baggage, our relationships and thinking about kids. Both of us carry specific struggles with our moms, more precisely issues being typecast as "primary support person" instead of simply daughter or son. And both of us seem to desire that family we never had, or at least the family we miss having.

I wouldn't say there was any resolution to anything this afternoon, it certainly left me in an emotional tizzy! But I think it was important and valuable to see my cousin and have him tell me he loves me and tell him I love him too. I don't know where things go from here. All I know is I'm sad, I'm glad, I'm worried, I'm anxious, but I'm trying to simply be and remember that I can't help anyone until I help myself and I can't help anyone that won't help themselves first. M and I reiterated that numerous times today, "It's not our jobs to fix everything!" Ha!

Right now, I'm still reeling. I haven't had a therapist for a couple months now so sorting through my family issues had taken a back burner before being thrown in the fire today! But I've felt the sadness, worried about the relationship between my brother and sister and myself, wondered what type of support system my children will have, or I would have as a mother. I've felt lonely and today brought that back to the surface for me. Sure, it hurts and it makes me cry but I don't think it's a bad thing.

As an adult I've come to realize that families are always changing even though we like to think of them as stationary, reliable things they may actually be more like living, breathing entities. I can't say I know what a "functional" family looks like (then again, who does?) but I'm starting to see that a healthy family requires nourishment, exercise, and care just like any other living thing.

Feelings will be hurt, contact waxes and wanes, but love remains. A lot of families are out of practice, a lot of families don't quite have a language with which to conduct repairs and improvements, but the simple act of thinking, caring, and trying is worth the while. I may fail, I may be rebuked, I may be hurt, but the close family I want and miss isn't going to fall out of the sky. It's only as close as I'm willing to reach.

So I'll try. It may mean baby steps, it may mean popping a Xanax and charging into unknown territory, but I owe it to myself and the ones I love to try.

In other news, I saw Dave Matthews today without realizing it. Kind of a creepy moment while waiting for drinks at Starbucks. My initial reaction was, "Eek!" and thinking he was a hobo with a Dave Matthews complex wanting me to say he looked like Dave Matthews (had some grey-faced gauntness happening) but after the excited titters once he left I realized that was no hobo! That was Dave Matthews!

Fio goes to the groomer Friday bright and early (good grief I hope he kicks these "allergies" soon!) and Iroh has something funny stuck to his ear that I've yet to wash off (and the parenting award goes to...) and Millie came out of the catbox with litter on her nose recently. That pleased me, in a "ha, that's what you get!" sort of way. :)

Bad Days Start The Night Before

This is usually the case for me-a bad day put in motion by a bad night.

Last night I couldn't sleep. It wasn't my usual tossing and turning, I was nearly convulsing with pent up energy and frustration, anger and grief. My head hurt and my mind was racing. I must've sat straight up or on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands half-a-dozen times before the hubster got me Xanax and water.

Eventually I calmed down and fell asleep.

Then this morning he tried to get me out of bed to go take a walk with the dog.

It didn't go well.

I don't remember all the ins and outs but he ended up pulling me out of bed onto the floor and I ended up curling into a defensive fetal position as he grappled with me trying to get me up.

It hurt. I felt bullied. It reminded me of my mom forcing me to exercise or telling me over and over again what I already know and just can't seem to do for myself.

Wasn't long before I broke. Sobbing and tucking myself into as tight a blob I could manage pressed into the corner between mattress and carpet.

"It's true." I mumbled, thinking that it was finally for certain that I was worthless, that I wasn't enough and I never would be. "I knew it." My feeling of loneliness and isolation was finally complete with his betrayal. He'd given up on me, I'd finally broken his resolve, tapped out his reserve of patience and love. I was officially the lost cause I'd felt like for the last 9 months.

The next few hours I didn't make any eye contact and hardly spoke. Hobbled around as my body ached and lurched following my mental/physical break at my bedside.

He tried to apologize. I hardly acknowledged. I drank some water and watched Iroh eat kibble. Laid on the floor while he took the dog out for a potty break.

At some point he drew a bath for me and I made it into the hot water, hardly soothed but eventually I laid back and even fell asleep (only to wake up to a horrible crick in my neck).

The rest of the day was slow and dysfunctional. I stressed about a dinner date with my parents but it ended up being the highlight of my day.

It was nice to get out and chat, but I can't help wondering how aware they are of my problems. If tomorrow I lost it completely and offed myself how shocked those around me would be, if they would see it coming at all, understand how I've struggled lately, or if they assume I have a normal functional life like I assume everyone else around me has.

The Tub

Its an eight-pawed furry fury of masculine power divided by one thick wedge of tub and a world of differences....

Can there be peace????