Sometimes it’s hard

Sometimes it is hard to be thankful. On days when you spent most of the night dissecting the future of your marriage and making your wife cry, it’s hard to be thankful. On days when you wake up to news articles that say, “A grand jury of 9 whites and 3 blacks”, when you doubt that this world has made any progress at all, when black children are killed so much more frequently, when you worry that you won’t know how to show your children the awful unfairness of the world in which we live or how to show them how to be empathetic or how to show them that the racial divide that they seemingly benefit from hurts us all. On days when you struggle to get off of the couch because you’re depressed and exhausted and just can’t imagine making your way through the day, it is hard to be thankful.

I am trying. I am trying to notice the wonderful things in my life that I should be thankful for. So today, I will be thankful that my 4 year old likes to climb into my bed when she wakes up in the morning to cuddle for a few minutes before we get up to face whatever the day may bring.

Stories

My brain likes to tell stories.  Maybe “posit scenarios” might be a better description. I honestly don’t know.  I am unable to hear a bit of news, have a thought occur to me, or see other people without my brain churning and extrapolating and coming up with an entire string of thoughts, images, scenarios, backstory, etc.  It is sometimes hard, sometimes impossible, to make it stop, no matter how much I may like to.

Sometimes, this story-creating thing of mine is enjoyable and fun.  I’ll see an ad for the Powerball and I will have a thought.  “Wouldn’t it be nice if we won the Powerball jackpot?”  From there, my mind is off: planning on hiring a lawyer and financial adviser, what we would buy, would we sell our house or keep it as an income property, where would we move, would we build our own house, would we send the girls to this or that insanely expensive private school, would we quit our jobs (answer: always yes!), who makes the cut in getting a financial boost from us (answer: not my sister, not her brother)……I can lose many minutes, sometimes hours, living in my little fantasy world, to the point where I’m online researching real estate in the area, despite the fact that this has only happened in my head.

Sometimes, though, it’s painful and distressing and anxiety-provoking.  The most recent occurrence of this was when threats were made to schools in my area and ended with my deciding we were under attack and locking myself and my children in the house for two days, but that is far from the only example.  I have created crushes on other women for my wife, disorders for my children, debilitating and deadly diseases for myself, deaths for my family members.  My therapist says this is a symptom of a creative mind with a high IQ.  I don’t know, but if it is, I’d certainly trade in IQ points if it would get me some peace.

Paranoia, paranoia, everybody’s coming to get me….

Today, I spent most of the day worrying that I’ve been misdiagnosed.  I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) during my short time in the hospital.  Lately, though, I’ve been thinking that they screwed up.  That I’m more screwed up.  You see, I hear this voice.  Not “voices”, but a single, angry voice in my head yelling at me when I feel super stressed or I can’t sleep.  It’s not my voice.  It is an angry, male, deep, loud voice.  It’s not like I have conversations with the voice.  I just try to block it out as best I can and move on.  It’s something I’ve just lived with, so I’ve never considered it a “symptom”, per se.

I’ve begun to notice other things.  A feeling of being somehow separate from reality.  Confusion, memory problems, not being entirely sure if something happened or if I just thought it did.  Worry that things are not real, like my life is all just something I’m imagining.  The other night, cuddling with my 2 year old, I had the strangest feeling that it wasn’t really happening at all.  That she wasn’t real, that I’d never birthed her, although I vividly remember the screaming, the pain, the “ring of fire”, and her beautiful face when it was over.

So, now I’m worried that I’m a paranoid schizophrenic.  That would suck much worse than GAD and MDD.  I will absolutely be discussing it with my therapist tomorrow.  I was supposed to do EMDR again tomorrow.  I hope that I haven’t created this all in my head to avoid that experience again.  So, spiraling a bit over here.  People are noticing I’m being different again.  I hope that this resolves fairly quickly.

Living life in fear

So, as I mentioned in my last post, some crazy person sent in a “credible threat” to schools in my area, threatening to behead elementary school children.  As a result, my anxiety and agoraphobia have started to spiral out of control.  Yesterday, I spent the entire day locked in my house with my two year old and my four year old instead of sending them to school.  Anyone who has done that before knows that it’s not good for one’s sanity.  I was so scared that I didn’t even open a window.

Today, I had to leave the house to go to my weekly therapy session.  It wasn’t until mid-morning and we get up early around here, plus we were running out of staples like bread, milk, juice, and junk food, so I figured the girls and I would run to Target in the morning before I dropped them at my mom’s house and went to therapy.  Only….while showering, I started picturing all of the horrible things that could happen if I took my girls out in public.  Mass shootings.  Hostage situations.  So, we just went to my mother’s and I went to therapy.  While there, we discussed my big anxieties and decided to move to Plan B (as we’ve been calling it).  So, next week I will start EMDR again.  Honestly, it freaks me out.  I’ve done it exactly once and started out thinking it was silly.  My therapist waving her fingers in front of my face, having me think about things that bother me.  But, then, something actually happened.  My mind equated the powerlessness of the psychiatric ward with an earlier trauma.  It was painful and hard, but it actually did move me toward not feeling as trapped by my diagnosis and my time in the hospital.  But, now I need to do it again, and I am worried about what else it will bring up for me.  Either way, the idea is that while I’m home with the girls, I should try taking small steps to leave the house, so none of us are trapped here.

After therapy, I brought them to the supermarket.  I was so anxious and terrified.  I imagined every person we passed as a threat.  Well, except the little old lady who couldn’t reach the canned tomatoes.  After we checked out, I practically ran to my car, loaded the girls and the bags of groceries, and slammed the lock button.  By the time we got home, I needed to run to the bathroom and throw up before I could put away the groceries.

I can not wait for a time when I can grocery shop, or go to the library, or the playground, or my kids’ school, without these kinds of reactions.

Aaaggrherhhh!

Today is one of those days. One of those days where no matter what I do, my children respond in that particular whiny tone that sets my teeth on edge. One of those days where within an hour or two of getting out of bed, I was already ready to call it a day. One of those days where I just wanted to call in the cavalry, crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head.

Sadly, my therapist has me trying to embrace the things that stress me out. So, I put on my big-girl panties and took the girls to the aquarium. It is filled with wonderful sea creatures, which my four year old asked many questions about while my two year old whined for Go-go-squeeze, cereal bars, lemonade, water, snacks, and a stuffed penguin. We got home and worked on phonics, played games, watched some television. All the while, my children whined, hit each other and me, and generally made my life miserable.

I don’t know if it is because I’ve stopped taking any anti-depressant medications, or what, but my agitation is huge today. HUGE. Enormous. All-encompassing. I am pulling at my hair and pinching my skin and trying to keep my shit under control for the next 20 minutes. Then, my wife will return from work and I will see her for a second, before she relieves me and I go upstairs to meditate. Hopefully, that will help me reset this day and I can face the evening with grace and gentleness and love and kisses and bedtime books.

Or I’ll give up and stay in bed with those covers over my head.

The Sunday Blahs

I have a bad case of the Sunday blahs. You know, where Sunday afternoon rolls around and you realize the weekend is coming to an end and you will soon embark on another round of weekdays? That feeling. Mine actually usually starts as soon as I wake up on Sunday, but I was trying to sound all tough with the afternoon thing. When I was teaching, the Sunday blahs would leave me in panic and tears by the time bedtime rolled around. Sometimes I would get so upset that I would become physically ill. Now that I’m not teaching anymore, I’m not in a state of abject horror and panic at bedtime, but I still get the blahs on Sunday.

I think it is a combination of things. For one, I know that my biggest supporter (not my bra—my wife) will be largely gone from the house for the next five days. I will be in the house, or the playground, or at swim class, or at the library, etc., by myself with my two daughters. I miss the interaction with other adults, particularly my wife. For another….Well, actually, that seems to be it. I know the next five days will be filled with love and cuddles and reading books and more Mickey Mouse Clubhouse than is good for any of us, as well as poop all over the place, cajoling a toddler to “For the Love of God, Eat Something!”, and trying to stay on top of a never-ending pile of dirty dishes and laundry. Sometimes, daily life becomes a little bit too much for me to handle. Having that safety net of my wife’s support makes it all a little easier to bear.

So, if only we were independently wealthy or won the lottery or something, we could all be happy together at home. Ah, if wishes were horses!

Where’s my freaking genie?

So, I am going to make what some might consider to be a shocking and startling statement. If I had to do it all over again, I would not have children. Possibly at all, but definitely in the plural. I am not even going to couch that statement in the usual, “But of course, I love my children and wouldn’t trade them for anything.” Of course that’s true, but it’s kind of beyond the point. Because if a genie popped out of my Target-purchased lamp, I would start all over again. I would go back to 2008, before I even knew that you could order sperm from the internet. Before I had any idea what fertile mucus meant. If you know what that is, I’m sorry for the visual. Before I took my temperature every morning. Before I peed on sticks every morning like it was just part of the routine. Before I learned that my uterus was misshapen. Before I spent $10,000 on sperm, shipping, supplies, doctor’s appointments, Clomid, etc. Before I had 2 inch wide stretch marks on my hips. Before I had a vacuum-assisted vaginal birth including an episiotomy. Again, I’m sorry for the visual. Before I lost my mind and did it ALL OVER AGAIN for a second baby. Minus the episiotomy, plus the 2nd degree tears and the very loud screaming when labor progressed from 0-10 in 2 short hours. Before the bleeding nipples, before the sleepless nights, before the empty bank accounts, before the postpartum depression that I seem to never have recovered from. Before the siblings started fighting like they were ultimate fighters on a pay-per-view event.
Before sex became a distant memory. Before my wife and I were simply comrades fighting a war to survive each day.

Or maybe I would wish for a lot of money. Then I could hire a nanny. Maybe that would work.