The Beasts Beckon

The thing about depression and anxiety is that no matter what triggers them, you have to accept them and embrace them as living and breathing and almost as if they are a separate but intrinsically connected division of yourself.

It is the Hap Happiest Time of the Year...I know it is.  I just wrote about it last week.  But it seems that the beasts within me are very in tune with that and like to challenge it every time I acknowledge my contentment.  My happiness is therefore dependent on how responsive Depression and Anxiety are within me.

Sure enough, the nightmares are back this week.  Disrupting sleep, and well, just plain invading my life.  And with as much as I have going on (the trigger) the absolute last thing I have time for in this life are the anchors which are depression and anxiety.  Still here they are.  Screaming loud and clear for only me to hear.  Last night the dream was so vivid I cried out several times in my sleep and woke up the husband.

It's not fair.  And it's just that simple.  But it's my cross to bear and I have to figure out how to battle it back just a little while longer, then it can have me for a week or so in January...hear that depression - can you just hold out til then?  Actually, let me get through the rest of this fiscal quarter, til I can haul in a good performance review and (fingers crossed) a decent raise for next year.  Really need the reprieve buddy.  Just a year - please?  Pretty please?  I'd like to feel happy and enjoyment in my marriage, in my home, in my limited parenting skills...just for a while.  I'd like to get just a quick taste of liking my job for just the briefest of moments...you know, to remember what it was like to enjoy working.

Please - just back off a while.I need at least a short period of forgetting what it's like to live with you both.  Maybe I'll come to appreciate the grounding in reality that I get from carrying you both around all the time...Maybe then I'll come to want some of the whacky "unreality" of what you want me to believe.  But right now - I just want a bit of naivete back.  A little bit of "ignorance is bliss"...please.  Pretty please.

30% Awesome

So, I've been bad about posting, and that's probably because I've felt crummy.  I've felt so up and down over the past couple of months, that I'm afraid I'm back on my meds and I don't think I'll ever come off them now.

I struggle daily with feeling like I'm supposed to be sooo much more awesome than I actually have turned out.  Could be that Pinterest is responsible for me feeling so much the failure - there aren't enough hours in the day to learn and make all the things that inspire me on that site - but more than anything I think it comes from the execution or lack thereof of day to day tasks that seem to escape my capabilities.

My 3 year old challenges me at every single step - getting out of the house in the morning's is like trying to change the weather (in other words, it's impossible to leave on time).  Getting her to eat a meal is a never ending fight, and it's only because she's not willing to do as she's asked or expected.  Then she advises that it's "killing her" because well, she's repeating what I'm saying - her snail pace and her stubborness are often what I decry are "killing me".

Then there's work, and it's on one hand something I appreciate whole heartedly.  On the other hand, my ability to climb or move or change things up is extremely limited.  They want someone who can travel.  They want someone who will sing their praises.  They want someone who has already drunk the special koolaid and well, I'm afraid I tossed that cup before it even hit my lips.  And that means rot here and be happy about it, or find something else, and since finding another job is like well, trying to grow a new limb, I'm really trying hard to swallow my pride and rot with a smile on my face.  I'm not sure how long that will appease the powers that be, but it's my only game plan.  And even I know it sucks.

Which leaves me to wonder if I'll ever feel more than say 30% of the awesome I instinctively feel I'm supposed to be?  I'm less than the average person, in twice the average person's body, which brings me to the other thing I fail miserably at - weight management.  Add mood management to that I I feel about as infinitesimally small as a tick.

Which means I don't have a lot of wisdom to espouse at the moment.  I also don't have a lot of time.  I'm failing at all these things because I'm trying to make our Christmas gifts - my list is long, and I'm trying desperately to manage the hits to our pocket book this year by making as many gifts as I can.  I'd say roughly 50% will be handmade goodies and crafts...but all this takes every single spare second, and I started back in August.  I'll be working it right down to the wire.  It's keeping me awake at night.  The lists.  The lists of commitments made, the lists of things left to do, the lists of how I'm failing my kid, my husband...then the worries kick in, and it's about why my daughter does what she does, and am I handling it the best possible way - the answer of course is always no but I'll be damned if I can find something better.  AND then there's the millions of ways I'm failing my husband.  I want so much to make things better with him, and I'll say we're stronger than we have been in our relationship in over a year...but I have no drive, no interest and no time to invest and he suffers from it.

So when in doubt, give in right?  I guess I'll try to find a way to lower the bar of my own expectations and be satisfied with my 30% awesomeness.  Maybe one day, I'll come into my own all by a surprise.  I'll wake up one day and never look back because each and every day won't be the drudgery of same old same old...it will be one more day of freaking fantastic, or as my daughter says "it was a perfect day today"...well, maybe one day in the far off future, I'll feel that way too.

One day.

Call to our Crusaders

Be loud.  There are people struggling with mental illness this very moment who need to hear they are normal.  That they are strong.  That they can cope with what ails them and come out victorious.

Be supportive.  Lend them a hand.  Help them pull themselves out of the pits and show them a light.  Any light.

Be there.  Day or night.  When they call on you, answer.  Be positive.  Share.

We have mounting needs for crusaders in the area of mental health.  I've long known about organizations that work with the health systems to process people and get people help, but there aren't nearly enough forums that reach out to individuals or where individuals who need a hand can turn to without stigma, without launching into a very cold and clinical system or without having hundreds of dollars to spare on out of network therapists, in a seriously underfunded portion of the health care programs.

In Ontario, I know this is changing, albeit ever so slowly.  And the fact that it's changing at all is a true testament to all of the crusading men and women in the clinical and non-profit programs who made it happen.  BUT, with the numbers of new people being included in the list of highly stressed, highly depressed and functionally living with the diseases growing each and every day, we really need to make our voices heard.

Let them ring clear.

Let me be the first to sing it from a roof top.

If you need me, I WILL BE HERE!
You are strong, you are normal and nothing you're going through right now is insurmountable.
I LOVE YOU!  And YOU ARE WORTH MY TIME and everyone else's...including your own.

Lucidity is Wishful Thinking

So it's felt a lot lately like the world's a bit out of control.  There's no rhyme, reason or sense to how insane people are acting.  Most of what I'm referring to is in the world at large, and some still is far more personal.  In any case, it's all insane, and it's getting rather difficult to keep hanging on to any tethers of normalcy.

For a start, there's the shut down of Congress in the US.  In essence, there are Americans not being paid, bills not being paid, and not because there isn't money...these aren't austerity measures, these are children, pissed off they haven't been able to run the world into the ground legally, so their going to do it illegally.  AND while there has been endless rantings and ravings over the lunacy of it all, there's absolute apathy at delivering, forcing driving a solution.  If this were 1786, there'd be far less talking and a whole lot more torches and pitch forks, and a new government would be forming, under a new constitution, and frankly a whole new individual investment in the outcomes would be obvious across the western world.  At the very least, every congress person who is responsible for this shut down should be fired, without their ever loving insane pensions, and the jobs should be completed by the people who actually sit there with a brain in their heads focused on doing something for the country - full stop.

Then there's this whole "wag the dog" stuff happening in the middle east - whereby it would be just really fucking nice if one person with some clout had a brain and said the whole fucking thing is corrupt - and it's either time we step up and take over, or leave them fucking to it - no support, no trade, no sides - step out and fix your own shit so the good ones see opportunity for change and ask for fucking help first.

Then there's the personal life which honestly combined with the lunacy of everything else around me, is just not letting me get back on a diet plan.  I'm eating.  I'm cowering in a corner, and while it's stressing me out, it still seems infinitely wiser than throwing myself out into any sort of fray where the cross fire is sure to kill me.

So my apologies for seemingly unending silences here - I'll pop back in now and again when things seem far less dangerous.

Cowards among us

I didn't comment yesterday because honestly, I can't find the words to truly describe how repugnant, disgraceful and hateful it is that someone would write a letter recommending that a mother euthanize her autistic teen, donating his non-retarded body parts to science (their words not mine).  Nor do I really have the words to describe how sickened I am that people like that not only simply exist, but that they would exist in this country, and that they would so shamefully show their face in the world.  While I have often said that I would wish no one real harm, I do have to confess that I wish this woman an opportunity to feel a similar wrath from a similar stranger.  Unprovoked, unnecessary, and unbelievably horrifying.

As someone with friends and family who either have autistic kids or work closely to care for them, and moreover, just plainly as a parent, I'm dismayed by the heartlessness and evil of this letter. 

And to lament to GOD even, I'm just appalled...and honestly that's an understatement.

In a show of support to my friend who has an autistic teen whom I've only ever been delighted to be in company of, I wrote the following:

I hope you know that all parents out there, of all children, who have any type of moral compass at all, are questioning the contents of that woman's character. Not because this story is about an autistic child, but because it is about any child at all. And I hope what you can see in that, is how far the advocacy and awareness generation that families like yours have gone to improve the situation for people dealing with autism has done so much good. It's never enough, there's always more to do, but know that this woman is an outlier and people aren't seeing autism the way it was once seen way way way back. With much love and support. I hope armies of parents, children and concerned citizens show this woman the error of her ways.

It's really the best I can do.  No human being deserves this kind of treatment.  NONE.  

I do hope that armies of parents, children and concerned citizens unite to show this coward a mirror. I won't pray for God to do it.  That's not enough.  We as human beings need not to be vigilantes, but we most definitely need to be mirrors.  We need to hold hands and drown out the sounds of idiots everywhere.  Russian homophobic politicians, American homophobic politicians, religious fundamentalists in every single religion known to mankind.  

Hateful people everywhere need to be put on notice that it can no longer be tolerated.  That it will no longer be tolerated.

My love and support go out to those with children who have special needs of any kind.  

My heart and my ire and my stiff upper lip are right there with you as you field this blow.  Others like me have your back, and we will not rest until our children demonstrate the kindness every single person deserves. 

That is how to be good.  That is how to be Christian.  That is how to be human!

Can it be 2014 now?

If it were at all possible, I'd like to choose to just skip through this year and let all the things that are coming just happen without nary a moment more spent on them.

That's right, as if enough people weren't already happy enough to say sionara to 2012, the way this 2013 is starting, I think it's just better if we all get cast under someone's sleep spell right now so that when the bell tolls midnight on December 31st we can all just wake up refreshed and ready to greet a happy 2014, without even having acknowledged the presence of 2013.

Since January 1st, my mother in law has wrapped up her chemo but is still suffering side affects and depression and a financial hardship has befallen them because of the travelling they put into getting back and forth to her treatments.  My friend's mother in law, whom we really have enjoyed being around, has been handed a death sentence with a diagnosis of pancreatic and liver cancers, and it's all too likely that she won't make it til the end of the year.  My own mother has been having health troubles from start to finish, and we are now awaiting her diagnosis of well, just about anything you can swag your stick at - though in all likelihood it's looking like lung cancer and rheumatoid arthritis...if we're lucky.  Another friend's father has passed away, and another friend is facing debilitating effects of her own terminal illness...our own health has been plagued by the nasty viruses that knock us on our butts, and our own financial situation has become about as dire as it could get without sending us into bankruptcy...

So, it's all up hill from here right and this is all just a part of life?  One can bloody well hope so.  And while yes it is all a part of life, it all bloody well stinks.  Finding a silver lining is increasingly difficult, which is playing upon my own emotional stability.  The only one I've found so far is that finally my husband has recognized the state of our finances and is now ready to work on them with me.  Fighting that battle when your partner is busy sabotaging every effort is pretty well impossible, and leaves me with no confusion as to why my mental health has been so challenged the last year.  When every word out of your mouth seems to resonate like the words coming out of Charlie Brown's teacher, you start to question if you're actually the problem or not.

Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?  God I hope so.  Cuz if not, then there's truth to the old saying "life sucks and then you die".  I'd really hate to adopt that as my philosophy...