Mom to the Screaming Masses

Quarantine, Pandemic, Life, Hostility, Etc.

We've been under quarantine since mid March. Out of work, out of school, at home, with each other. My boys were sent to work from home, my daughter's sole proprietor business closed, my youngest two girls told to do their schooling at home. 

I have changed. 

A lot. 

I'm harder. Much, much harder. I am angry. I am angry at how this pandemic has been mishandled, so badly mismanaged. I don't tolerate people who don't take it seriously any longer. I am furious at the fact that 77,000 people have died, and it seems to phase very few people. I go to the grocery and people don't socially distance, and few wear masks. People refuse to wear masks, shoot each other over that refusal, beat each other up - and for what? Wearing a mask is a courtesy to your fellow human beings. It shows that you respect the people around you, that you care enough about others that you understand that you very well could be asymptomatic and spreading and you don't want to share it with the people around you - especially the store employees who stand in one store for hours and breathe the same recycled air for 6,8,10 hours a day. These things should not be political arguments. They shouldn't require an "us vs. them" mentality.

I am tired. 

I am tired of reading, over and over, about the fact that people don't care about each other. I'm tired of not seeing my granddaughter. I'm tired of not seeing my older children. I'm tired of not going to the gym, or the library, or hiking. I'm tired of people treating each other so shitty. I get it - we are all tired. We are all short tempered and stuck in our homes and we want to go out and party and have a good time and we want things the way they were

**newsflash** 

they aren't going to go back that way

and being rude to your fellow human isn't going to help.

My son told me tonight that he's bored. He asked me what I do so I am not bored. 

I learn, I told him. I have spent the vast majority of this time educating myself. 

I'm learning so much about politics. About history. About medicine, anatomy, viruses, cell biology, and the list goes on. I finished my latest semester of school, the next one starts on the 18th, and I'm still learning. I spend my free time reading and following trails and journaling. 

I've written 94 pages of what's been happening since we began this quarantine and I have so much more to say. I have no idea what I will do with what I'm writing - maybe it's just for me, so I can look back on it and say, "Whoa, did I live through all of that?" 

I am NOT saying that I am perfect. Nope. Far from it. I know I'm lucky to have a house. I'm lucky that so far, no one's gotten sick - I've been tested twice, though. I'm lucky to know that we are all here together, even though the all together, all the time is sometimes all too much. I miss my gym time. My dogs drive me nuts - well, not Layla, she's pretty much perfect, haha, but we have a new dog and he's young and huge and loves to lick everything to death and runs all over and barks like crazy and is one and so basically an enormous puppy - and my kids are home, all the time, and because everyone is insecure with what's going on and nervous, everyone wants to be with me and my husband is home a lot a lot a lot

and it's all different and different is hard

and all I can do is try but I am trying

and it's super disheartening when it seems like literally no one else is. I know other people are - I'm just having a hard time seeing it right now. 

Interior Monologue

I'm pretty sure you've seen the article that's gone around Facebook for a while, in which the author discusses if a person has an interior monologue with themselves. Do you? Do you talk to yourself, hold a conversation, hear your own voice in your head, talking to yourself?

Ok, so if I can get to the bank by noon, that will give me time to take Layla to get her shot, and then go to the store and grab some milk before I have to be at work....

Did someone say I need a shot???

I do it all the time. I constantly have a voice, specifically my own voice, running through my mind. 

It's better than it used to be, though. I used to have my own voice raging through my head, all the time. Thoughts tumbling over each other, one after another, each fighting for supremacy. It was exhausting, and I thought it was normal. It wasn't until I happened to mention it to my husband, and he suggested talking with my doctor, and she told me that it definitely wasn't typical.  What was happening to me was much different than the article mentions above, and much different than I think we all have now. 

It's now so much calmer, and for that, I am grateful. 

_________________________

Every so often, I flash back to the moment I was standing on the platform of the bullet train in Japan. 

I remember looking at the tracks. I remember looking at the conductor. I remember the flags in his hands, I remember looking into his eyes, and stepping forward, and seeing him step forward. I remember that the people I was traveling with all had their backs to me, and they were about 50 feet away from me, huddled together, talking, as they were, the entire trip. I was definitely not part of the group on this trip. I remember thinking that I could just - step out - and it would be over, how unhappy I was, how upset, how very tired and worn out. I remember stepping while looking at the man, and he looked at me, and hearing the train coming in, 

so, so fast

and seeing his eyes widen and his flags go up and the whistle in his mouth blew and I thought to myself

forward or back

And for a split second, it was so incredibly, ridiculously hard.

And of course, I stepped back, and I took a breath and I got onto the train, and I sat down with the people I was traveling with - who wouldn't have cared anyway - and 

who didn't know. And I looked out the window, and I ate my provided cup of ice cream and I didn't tell anyone

and I thought about what I almost did

and I know now that I was not in a good place and that trip was a very bad time for me and the people I was with were not good for me and I've cut them all from my life. In fact, one of them came into my place of business this week and totally and completely ignored me, and I was A-OK with that. I've blocked them from my social and moved on with my life

but occasionally, I reflect on all of it and think about how my life has changed. 

_________________

I no longer attend therapy regularly, but I went for a touch up (touch back? touch in? touch base?) this week. I was feeling kind of funky about a couple of things and February has always, historically, been a shitty month for me. I was super proud of the fact that I made it through February, and my appt was Feb 28 - ahhhhhhh, crud. It was nice to see my therapist, and she gave me good advice, as usual. She wrote me another sticky- If you can't control a situation, and you probably can't, take a breathe and move on. 

The latest semester ended today - I have a B- in English (a class that wasn't English at all but online digital tech) and an A+ in Economics. I have a two week break and then I start Social Services and Bones, Stones and Human Evolution. Both are 7 week courses, which is the way ASU runs, so it makes for a speedy and intense semester. 

_________________

I've closed comments on this post. Most of it is kind of intense, and all of it is a stream of consciousness kind of thing and I don't want anyone to feel obligated to send me a "rah-rah,go you!" message! You can email me if you want, I'm totally cool with that, I just don't want anyone to feel obligated to comment. :)

Minutiae

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try

no matter how much you work at it

some people just cannot see you for who you are now.

They are determined to see you for the person you used to be. The person you were many years ago, wearing the skin that no longer fits. The one that became too tight, the skin that split and so you shrugged it off and discarded it and grew a new one

maybe a thicker one

maybe a more shiny one

or, maybe, your new skin is a bit more dull and you blend in to your surroundings just a tad bit more than you used to, but this doesn't make you invisible and unobtrusive 

On the contrary.

Quite possibly, it means that you are sitting back and observing and noticing things about people that you never took the time to notice before. Especially in a time of political unrest when you begin to see people for who they are. When you see how they feel about issues that are important to you

So, you have decisions to make. Do you stay true to yourself, knowing that it might make others uncomfortable or do you once again make yourself uncomfortable, in order to fit yourself into a box of containment that appeases all around you?

Decisions, decisions. I bet you can guess how I feel about all of this. 

__________________

School + work + kids + my new dog + the obscene reality that every stupid doctor/dentist/eye dr/allergist, etc appt came due all at once means that I have virtually no free time. I have voicemails on my phone from two weeks ago, text messages that are read and unanswered, emails that sit in my inbox. I am NEVER like this. EVER. I always answer things straight away. Always. Yet this month, this school semester really, is kicking my ass nine ways to Sunday. My class schedule means 5-6 hours of classwork a night and if I can make it through the next two weeks I will consider it a freakin' miracle. Every night I say to myself, "Why am I doing this?" I mean, I know why, and yet, staying up until 1 or 1:30 every night doing schoolwork after working a full shift is making me question my choices. So. If I owe you email/text/phone call/coffee visit - don't take it personally. I can barely keep us in clean underpants. 

It Sure is Echoey in Here

Sooooo, what's new, pussycat?

Woah, woah, woah, woah....

After many years of not being a dog person, I suddenly decided to adopt a dog. Maybe I talked about it here, maybe I didn't. I don't remember, I can't be certain. He was an old dog, had been turned in to the shelter, basically to die. And he did, in my house, with just me at home, two weeks later. That was hard on me, harder than I thought it was going to be. 

And then I decided I wanted another dog. 

Meet Layla.

She hates to look at the camera.

Today is my 30th wedding anniversary. It feels super weird. I married my husband 28 days after I met him, when I had just turned 20 four days before. We sat at breakfast and wrote this little paragraph up:

In thirty years we've had 6 homes, 13 jobs, 1 layoff, 6 births, 1 miscarriage, 1 parent and 2 siblings deceased, 10 surgeries, 1 broken leg, 1 torn calf muscle, 1 melanoma, 9 tattoos, 15 ER trips, innumerable road trips, 30 cars, 5 billion phone calls, far too many soccer games and dance performances, 12 schools, 14 out of the country trips, 1 cruise to Cuba, 3 trips to Disney, at least 30 pairs of glasses, an insane number of pairs of sneakers, 17 mattresses, 2 Kitchen Aid mixers, 3 espresso machines, 9 washing machines, countless bottles of extra virgin olive oil, innumerable pans of chicken Marsala, 2 dogs, 2 wedding rings and an immeasurable amount of fun and laughter.

The latest semester is over - four A's, holla. I'm really proud of myself - I'm working 30 hours a week and going to school and at this moment in time keeping my sanity, so I consider this a total win. We will see what spring semester brings - it starts in January, which seems so weird to me - I have a couple of tough classes lined up.

I've been pretty busy in the kitchen. I made stollen, so that it could bellow for a week or two before Christmas, and I made this nifty Christmas Star bread. 

And no, I am not ready for the holidays, but I am not stressing it. I've scaled way, way, way back. i have school and I have work and I have a new dog and I have kids and I have mental health to worry about that those things are way, way more important. Whatever will happen, will, and whatever doesn't, doesn't. 

What's new with you?

MidCentury

So, hi. 

Yesterday, I turned 50. 

Here I am. For better or for worse. 

Fifty seems to me an age that I never thought I'd reach, and two years ago, it seemed virtually impossible. And yet - 

Here I am

A little bit battered, a little bit bruised, a lot different than I was two years ago, much different in terms of my feelings with regards to relationships and friendships. I've learned a tremendous amount 

maybe more than I really wanted to learn about some situations and some people

but in the end, it's worked out exactly the way it's supposed to work out. I've become the person I am, for better or for worse. I'm still growing and evolving. 

I was told recently that I've made many choices recently that go against who I have been in the past, and that's fine. I don't necessarily like who I was

in some aspects

but I did the best I could with what I had and what I knew

and when you know better you do better. 

And all we can do in this life is keep moving forward. When you feel like you can't keep moving forward, you tread until you can move forward. I'm no longer treading and I'm moving forward. 

Happy Birthday to me. 

Turning the Tables - on Yourself

Even though I no longer (gulp) need to attend therapy, I rely heavily on my sticky notes. It's kind of my own form of personal therapy, if you will. 

My therapist would write sayings and thoughts on sticky notes, things she wanted me to work on and remember. I keep them in my bathroom on the mirror, in my truck, and around me in various places so that I can see them and remind myself of various and important (to me) concepts and thoughts. A lot of people think it's silly and stupid. Some people make fun of me for doing it, but I don't care, because these constant, tiny reminders have helped me in many ways and on many days. 

I am very grateful for sticky notes of inspiration, I guess one might say. 

Once, in a session, I was muttering and complaining, as is always my habit, and I said something along the lines of, Why, oh why do I always have a lesson to learn? And I was asked to turn my thinking around - Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, good, juicy stuff - and, instead, ponder this thought

what if, instead of being taught a lesson, 

what if I was put into a situation to help someone else learn something? What if I was the teacher?

Impossible, I said. There's nothing that I can teach people. I can barely manage to get myself dressed most days. 

Maybe not right this minute, or during this really horrible phase in your life, she replied. But soon. Soon the time is coming. 

Before the job that I am currently in, I worked at a different job, one that I thought would be a really good fit for me. Instead, it was a horrible fit, and I cried every day. Now, granted, some of that was my mental status, but some of that was the outright cruelty I experienced on a daily basis. I wondered at the time why I had to experience it - what lesson was this job teaching me?

Maybe I was teaching someone at that terrible job something. 

Maybe when I went to the grocery tonight, and I wiped up the soap that had been spilled on the floor instead of walking around it - even though I didn’t spill it and it wasn’t my responsibility - my actions set off a thought in someone else. 

Potentially, my interactions with other people have made positive ripples and not negative, as I’ve so often feared. 

I really like my current job, and I work with people who are mostly younger than I am. When one of them left tonight, she called out, "Bye, Mom!" and it struck me, for just a second. I'm not her mom, or anyone else's mom there - of course not. But I bring food and give advice on vitamins and skin care and dating and boyfriends and such and maybe

I'm meant to be where I am because someone needs me. I will probably never know, but instead of being upset that I'm almost 50 and just now in college and working at a job with people half my age who are just starting out - maybe everything I'm doing in my life isn't all a mistake, and it all leads me to where I'm supposed to be. 

Just like my sticky note says. 

You are exactly where you need to be at all times. 

Change your thinking. 

Swimming Up the Stream

One of the things that I had to work out in therapy, and I'm pretty much still working on - and newsflash, will be working on my entire life - is a feeling I've always had of not belonging. I am a different kind of person. What's new is that now I have accepted it and I am (mostly) at peace with it. I haven't always felt that way - it's really disheartening to always feel like an outsider, the one who isn't like the rest of the world, the one who isn't the way that everyone expects her to be. 

I haven't ever followed the "traditional" path of anything. I've done things the hard way, the weird way, the different way. I never had a desire to be a secretary, working a 9-5 job in an office, with 2 kids and a young husband and we take 2 vacations a year. My husband would prefer that I have blonde hair, but he's got a dark haired wife who colors her hair darker and pulls the red hues out. I like to wear jeans and boots and buy most of my clothes at the thrift store - except my unders, those I do pay good money for, because I believe a woman should have good foundations that look attractive. I'd rather hang at the beach than a church, rather make a giant mess and have a ton of friends over than be in a quiet atmosphere. I have a big mouth and no filter. I argue. I like tattoos and piercings and most of my friends have both and are a bit rough around the edges. My big mouth gets me into trouble an awful lot, but you know where you stand with me. I'd rather know where I stand than have this constant pretense of surface pleasantness and backstabbing. I drive a big black truck, listen to loud music, dance like a fool, and laugh really, really loudly. In fact, my kids tell me I laugh like Cruella De Ville. (Try not to be hurt with a comment like that...)

well, you get it. I'm a mess. But I am who I am. I'm not a sweet, quiet, tiny, meek little person who doesn't take up space. I'm a space taker and a noise maker, and that's me. Acceptance is most of the battle, and I am accepting who I am. The hardest part is realizing that the people can't - or won't - accept me, all of me, and that it is their loss, and not mine, and actually internalizing that and not allowing myself to take it personally, when it happens. Gah, the not taking it personally is something I will always and forever be working on, because how can you learn to like yourself if other people don't? That's the conundrum, right there. When you feel like the parts of you that make you "you" are the parts of you that make the rest of the world uncomfortable, you have two choices - change those parts to make everyone else happy and yourself unhappy, or keep those parts and make yourself happy but know that there's a grouping out there who just won't like you. 

That part sucks and is so, so hard, because when it happens, it's deeply personal and it's a wound that never heals. Someone is telling you that the parts of you that make you "you" are offensive to them and you need to change them so as to make yourself more tolerable to them. 

I give everything I have and work as hard as a person possibly could. I help when I'm asked and often when I'm not, and I'm always, always ready to lend a hand. But because I'm different, I'm often ostracized or just thought less off because I'm not one of those societally similar people. I do something that is out of the typical and bam! That's it. 

Realize that your ostracization and unkindness cuts. 

I have decided that if someone is going to put me - or my decisions - down, that's their issue, not mine, Intellectually health and mentally strong people don't do that. Easier said than done, but it's my new resolution, a few months early, at any rate. 

I am actually not sure where this post came from, to be honest. It's been brewing for quite a while, and I just - sat down and it spilled out. I'm tired of feeling bad about being different, and apologizing for the fact that I'm different. I'm me. I'm not going to change to suit anyone's idea of who I should be, not ever again, because it made me desperately unhappy and an Unhappy Carmen made some not so good choices. 

------------

Want to read a fantastically accurate description of what depression feels like? Read this. 

Sleep is Ever Elusive

This face is brought to you by a 1 am bedtime, a 3 am migraine, 4 am meds, 6 am realization that sleep wasn’t going to happen, and and 8 am arrival at the beach. Where I slept.

I haven't had a true and serious, for realz, migraine in quite a while. I'd almost forgotten the joy. 

You know, I could do without. 

It’s not exactly a secret that I have trouble sleeping. I don’t sleep through the night, and haven’t for years. My mother told me that she thinks that so many years of interrupted sleep from babies has taken it’s toll and taught my body how not to sleep through the night, and she’s probably correct. I am a super, super light sleeper. One tiny noise or light can wake me and it takes more than an hour to go back to sleep. Yes, I've had a sleep study - I know I've talked about it here - and I practice good sleep hygiene, my talk about love for coffee notwithstanding, my caffeine intake is really small. Screen time is diminished at night, blue light yadda yadda, no television, no exercise close to bedtime, etc etc etc. 

All I know is that the only way I can sleep straight through is if I take medication, and I don't like to do that - unless I get to the point where the lack of sleep has tipped me into a different parallel. 

Last night was especially rough, and then to get a migraine on top of it, when I haven’t had a migraine in quite a while - well, it felt like a slap in the, well, head, haha. I took my migraine meds, which I hate to do, because they make me tired and worn out, but the alternative was wanting to hit my head with a shovel repeatedly, so from a bad choice to a worse choice, eh?

So I got up and went to the beach early. There was not one other soul around, which was glorious. The far from tourist beach is ideal for this.  I've been going to the beach an awful lot this summer. I usually bring my homework, but today, my brain just couldn't handle it, because on top of the migraine, I also have a bad tooth. I texted my dentist today - love her, she's so amazing - and it sounds like I might have cracked yet another tooth from grinding. (Yes, I wear a mouthguard, and I'm on a fiberglass one at this point because I have broken several regular ones. Go me.) I didn't bring my AirPods, because again, my head couldn't handle it, so I just 

went to the beach, got into the water up to my neck, floated for a while (and the thought briefly entered my head that I was alone on the beach and in the water and there was no one around and wasn't that just interesting....) and then laid out on my towel. I turned off my phone - completely, which I never do, but I just could not handle one more thing. One more notification, phone call, text, one more Where are you?, email, bing, noise at all

I stared into space for a long time and just

thought about completely and totally nothing. 

Eventually, I drifted off to sleep. Me being me, I only slept about 20 minutes, flipped over, and slept about another 20 minutes. Then I went back in the water, and repeated the process. 

The beach being the beach, salt and sand doing what it does best, after about two hours I felt somewhat better. I tried to take a couple of nice selfies and the wind kept blowing my hair into my face and I thought

you know what? That's what I look like right now, and I'm not messing with any more pictures. 

And so I didn't. 

Sometimes, your body makes you take a break. I just wish my body was a teeny tiny bit less radical about getting the message across. 

It Happened JustLikeThat

I had therapy today. 

It was a normal session. It was light, breezy and very calm. She asked questions and I answered. I talked about situations I'd encountered during the six weeks since my last session (I'd missed and had to reschedule so it had been longer than typical) and she smiled at hearing of my responses. Several times she asked clarifying questions, and at one point she stood up and clapped for me, telling me that she was proud of me, for learning how to tell people how to talk to me and treat me and that I was dealing with my depression and anxiety like a boss and I had had a very good six months with few, although not zero, issues

and at the end of the session, she said

I have always loved our sessions, and I smile when I see your name in my appointment schedule. I enjoy talking with you and hearing about your life. You don't need to make another appointment. 

I looked at her in puzzlement. Was this her way of firing me as a patient?

She said, 

I don't think you need to continue to come see me. You can, of course, call me if you feel the need, and I'd love it if you stop in to say hi. But you don't need to have therapy on a regular basis any longer. 

PEOPLE.

After just about 22 months, I have been released from therapy. I don't know how I feel about this. Strange. Weird. Unfamiliar. Unsteady. Unsure of myself. 

I know that I've done a tremendous amount of work, more work than I even realize until I think about it. She's told me, over and over, how hard I have worked and how proud of me she is. She's told me that I'm one of her hardest working patients, and although I have that annoying tendency to belittle myself and say something like, "Do you only have two patients?" I don't, because it isn't fair or kind to myself to say that. 

I feel a bit like a wobbly newborn calf, afraid to stand alone. I know I can, I know I have the tools and equipment necessary to do so, I have definitely put in the work and the effort to keep myself straight and clean and happy. 

It didn't escape my thought that this happened on World Suicide Prevention Day.

Life is funny that way. 

And Yet

 

She handed me a sticky note (man, i love it when she gives me sticky notes - I ask for them all the time, I put them in my truck and in my bathroom, so I can read them and remember the things she tells me) at the second to last session I had (note, not that I'm done with my sessions, just the second to last one I've had recently, clarification there) and on it said:

What others say and do is most often about them and seldom about you

And yet

I have the WORST time with this. 

I always think everything is about me. Even when I know it isn't. That's the thing about being an empath - which sometimes others say I'm not, but I really do feel as if I am. Empaths often feel others feelings and what they say and even more importantly

what they don't say with their words, but with their faces and their bodies

strongly.

But sometimes I wonder if I am overthinking a situation.  (Who, me? Overthink something? IMPOSSIBLE.)

And yet.

I feel how people talk to me, but more importantly, I feel how people don't - silence and looks speak too. I also watch carefully how people treat other people - how they treat those who wash floors, how they look at homeless people, how they deal with cashiers, how they pass by those on the street who can do nothing for them and how they behave around those who have all of the money and power and they believe (rightly or incorrectly) have all the power. 

I've learned to listen to how I feel when I'm around people. If someone says or does something towards me or another person that just doesn't sit right, I go with it. I've ignored it too many times and found myself burned in the past, trusted people who have hurt me, and been on the wrong side of a relationship with someone who hasn't had my best interest forefront in their mind. 

Which sucks. 

I don't want to think of people that way, but I have to protect myself - that tiny, interior part of me that has been hurt too many times in the past and is really, really tired of being sacrificed to the greater good of another's ego and another's enjoyment. 

If you can't be nice, just keep to yourself.