I'm back!!

It’s been a LONG hiatus. Much, much longer than I ever intended, but it was necessary.

Over the past few months, life has been overwhelming me. Nothing particularly huge has gone on, over-all (there have been moments!), but the sheer fact of getting out of bed each day, mothering my kids and keeping my house has driven me to a very dark place, which I haven’t felt like sharing with everyone.

I love blogging. It’s cathartic, it allows me to organise my own thoughts and air the views I can’t be bothered putting on social media outlets because I get annoyed when people hate on me for having an opinion. I like the thought that I’m reaching people, that I’m not alone. But I didn’t want to share my dark place, because none of you deserve that. No one in the world deserves to be party to the self-loathing, despair and bile I’ve waded through the past couple of weeks (months) and I’ve tried my hardest not to share with anyone.

My husband and kids, sadly, cannot avoid it all the time, but mindful of their love, their support and the fact that they don’t deserve it, I dish it out very little. Same with my friends. They know I’m sad, moody and very unpleasant, but self-restraint on my part has meant that they know only fractions of the bites the Big Black Dog takes from my soul, and that’s more than they need to know. I’m trying, in my own ways, to be the kind of person they deserve.

Big things have happened the past few weeks (months). Happy things, including finding out the sex of our tiny person and said tiny person being incredibly healthy, O learning to write her own name and spell it out loud, a wonderful honeymoon for B and I. Sad things, including losing our beautiful friend Katherine to the epic cancer that’s been eating her body and the realisation that I’m probably going to need a C-Section for the birth of our tiny person. All of these things have come with their own set of emotions, whether positive or not so, and each one, in its own way, has taken some of my rather limited energy. 

I’m working my way through all of my stuff, and I’m finally ready to re-join the blogosphere, hopefully with a happy outlook on life. Hope you’ll jump back aboard for the ride!!

What a great day to start back up!! It’s Flog Yo’ Blog Friday over at With Some Grace!

I want my solitude back!!

I’ve been suffering pretty badly from depression lately. Normally, I don’t say that I ‘suffer’ from anything, but for the past few weeks, my absence has come down to definite suffering. 

 

I mentioned a while back that I’m self-managed. I have been for several years. Every so often, the doctor and I agree to a course of ‘happy pills’ when I’ve had a bad few days, but I end up grinding my teeth to nubs, or completely characterless, or throwing furniture at people who annoy me, and we quietly agree that I go back to self-management and ride the bad day waves when they come.

However, in case I haven’t managed to mention it a time or seven, I’m ever so slightly pregnant at the moment. Yep, I’m 17 weeks in, and hormonal like you wouldn’t believe. I don’t remember there being so many bad days in a long, long time. Possibly because there haven’t been since my last pregnancy. 

However, last time I was pregnant, I didn’t have a 4-year-old daughter with an immense love for the sound of her own voice and no off switch. I didn’t have a 9-year-old stepson who, lately, seems incapable of personal autonomy (I’m getting to that, too!). And my partner at the time went out and worked. I could work my way through the bad days on my own, and no one expected human conversation or even smiles from me.

For 3 weeks now, B has been at home. He suffered a pretty nasty scare with his heart at work and as such has joined the ranks of the unemployed whose wives would cheerfully strangle them if we thought we’d cope with the kids on our own. Because B is now home, there is someone for my crankiness, bitterness and anxiety to be aimed at all the time.

 

Before B stopped working, I had O here on my own one day a week, and I could manage to be a Sunshine Mummy for that one day, and there was someone to palm her off to on weekends so I could hide under the bed and snarl at dust bunnies. And because B wasn’t here all the time, I loved and appreciated him when he was. Now, much as I adore him, I’m realising how much I LOVE being alone! I adore watching crappy cooking shows while I pretend I might make that someday. I love the absolute shit out of putting my headphones in, listening to podcasts and not worrying that anyone is going to destroy my rhythm while I clean, or cook, or pretend to be useful. I miss solitude. I miss stretches of silence where it’s just me and my thoughts.

Because of this turn of events, what might otherwise have been well-managed depression, anxiety and anger isn’t getting the time it needs to work out, because I can’t dance around the house to stupid Icona Pop songs, and I can’t scream at the top of my lungs. Without my solitude, I’m drowning in my own depressive thoughts. And, here’s the kicker, I can’t medicate!! I can’t do anything except hope to god I don’t snap and end up in a lovely padded room with a jacket that makes me give myself cuddles!

I love my husband. I love my kids. I’m so lucky and grateful to be surrounded by a loving, caring family, and I adore looking after them. But sometimes all I want is to be left alone.

Is that so wrong?

It's been a bad day

Yesterday was what we call a ‘bad’ day at my house. This is a day where my mood is somewhere below ‘despair’ and I can’t seem to get a toe-hold. I do my best on these days to keep my head above water, for my little girl if nothing else, but yesterday it was particularly hard.

Unfortunately, I have some pretty severe depression and anxiety, along with a lovely case of OCD. This turns my brain into a melting-pot of hideousness, and some days are so bad that I get antsy. I can’t sit still, but I can’t cope with practicalities like cleaning or homework. I need to run away.

Yesterday, despite severe exhaustion, I needed to get out. I popped in my car and went for a drive for an hour (yes, this is so bad for the environment, but I’ve not driven at all for 3 weeks so it balances). When I got home, B was here for his lunch break, and I felt all my muscles tense up. I was 15-minutes out from kinder pick-up time, I needed that time to calm down so I wasn’t a mess when my girl got home. As soon as I got inside, B started yet another soliloquy on ‘Asshole Co-worker’, a man at work who doesn’t work, smokes while standing right next to my non-smoking husband, lies, acts like an arrogant SOB and generally makes B’s life hellish. 

I understand and have sympathy for B’s upset over Asshole Co-worker. He’s frustrated, and he’s a man with a short fuse. However, I’ve been getting at least 20-30 minutes ranting about this guy after every single work day, and quite often during lunch breaks also. That can add up to an hour a day (or more!) that I spend listening to complaints about this guy. I’m starting to get really, really mad about it and yesterday, when I’d needed the cooldown time, I snapped. I asked B if he had the time to come get O with me, to which he replied ‘no, I have to get back’ before continuing with his rant. I yelled ‘I’VE HAD ENOUGH’ and stormed out. I got into my car and screamed for at least a full minute or two, before going to get my little girl.

Every single day of my life, I work hard to put on a brave, happy face. My family deserve me at my very best, and it’s my responsibility to make situations happen where I can be that best. Yesterday, despite all my best efforts, I wasn’t at that best. That was all on me, because unfortunately some days it just can’t be helped. On these days, I only want for nothing to make it worse. I give O anything she wants on these days, because it keeps her sweet and happy, and I can cope. I don’t argue, because I don’t have enough control over my emotions to pull back. All I want from the rest of my family is minimal conflict. I want to be able to swim under that big, scary, overwhelming wave and surface on the other side. Yesterday, I felt like I’d managed to get under the wave and just as I was trying to get my head up, but B was holding me down.

I’ve been self-managed for many years now. I’ve never thought of myself as a ‘sufferer’ of my mental disorders, they’re just something I have that I deal with. I avoid medication like the plague. It takes away my personality, and I’m not ‘me’. On medication, I don’t joke with my daughter, I’m a less loving partner to my husband, I’m a zombie-lady who operates on autopilot, so I don’t medicate. The upside is total control on the good days and my bouncy, fun personality. The downside is that the lows are much, MUCH lower. Terrifyingly low. 

I ask little of my husband. Love, equality, a little financial security while I can’t work. Mostly, I ask for support. I ask him to help me in keeping my moods even, and I ask that he doesn’t exacerbate things on the bad days. Yesterday was definitely a bad day, and with this having been communicated, it made me hurt that he couldn’t pull back, as I do so often. 

I’m interested to know how this post strikes you. Do you have a mental illness? How does it affect your family life? 

I'm loving the fact that these days, I Blog On Tuesdays with Essentially Jess. Do you?