Mom to the Screaming Masses

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. 

Much Ado About Just About Damned Near Everything - and Nothing

As per usual. 

So, when we last left our intrepid heroine - 

Uh, that would be me -

She was rambling on about self care and prioritizing and not losing your damned mind. I'll get back to that in a bit, when I've solved for X. I thought I might give you a little peek into this week. 

It started off with the fact that my daughter - my newly licensed daughter -  was in an accident not entirely of her own making and totaled her Jeep Liberty. She was driving her 15 year old sister at the time. Both girls survived, the Jeep did not. My daughter the driver was badly shaken and we went to the Emergency because she hit her head several times on the driver's side window as the Jeep spun around and around. She has a concussion. Both girls were very mentally affected by the accident. It's been a very tough week.

My upstairs HVAC unit has given us trouble for many years. It's too hot when it should be cold - the upstairs can't ever seem to get below 80 degrees, no matter how low it's set - and trust me, my kids have tried lowering it prrrrettty low. This week, it officially died - sad trombone - and we've gotten a couple of estimates, nothing lower than $5,000. 

Yeah. Five. Thousand. Dollars. Which I do not have. 

I spent a couple of days worried because my insurance company said that they would not cover one of my important to function medications. Thankfully, I have a PEACH of a dr. who I would marry if I a) fell that way and b) wasn't already married and she worked very, very hard to get it approved. 

Which, Glory and Praise, because if it wasn't approved, the process would be trial and error six other meds, which I have already done, and that would mean six bad months, which is time that I most assuredly do not have, so yeah. My family has been through enough, thank you so very much. I do not need to put them through that mess again. 

My cell phone stopped accepting a charge. Something about too much time at the beach and sand in the port and I handed it over to my kids and they took care of it and I don't know. All I know is I need my phone. It was one more thing on a long list of things that I just could not handle at the end of a long, long week. 

School starts in a couple of days and I still have sneakers to buy for the girls (today!) and most of the supplies are purchased but not all and I have to go buy groceries today and do my homework and my husband just discovered a hornet's nest in the cable box outside of our house and my daughter's vocational school uniform pockets need to be sewn shut and my tailor is away until the end of next week. Work is work and I have a birthday party to plan - for myself, holla! - and, oh yeah, my husband dropped his glasses and scratched the lenses so we've got to get new glasses for him AND for me because I have moved from bifocals to mono vision because that's what happens when one gets to be an old, old person with sucky eyes. 

My kids would really like me to cook at some point, I need to get my house back in order, the laundry is taking over the house - but working from 1-10 most nights really puts a crimp in stuff, especially when you add school in the morning. Organization is proving to be a challenge, but just like I have to work with my girls on it, I have to work with myself on it. 

These are the things that are in my brain. Be glad you aren't in there. :)

What's new with you?

Prioritizing, Self Care, and Not Losing Your Damned Mind - Once Again

Yesterday was a super bad day. 

I still have them, I am not going to lie. Just because I go to therapy and take my meds and do all of the things that I am supposed to doesn't mean that I am "cured" of depression. That shit follows you around like toilet paper on your shoe - you don't know it's there until you trip over it or someone tells you it's there and then you are big time embarrassed and you just can't get over it 

side note - I'm listening to an interview with Lizzo right now where she's talking about dealing with depression and she's talking about dealing with actual super major depression and I really just love her for being open and honest about this. 

Yesterday started off great - I walked with a friend and had a good lunch and my husband and we were given tickets (great seats too!) to a concert that I super want to see and I went to work and all of a sudden everything just tanked and I just could not bring it up no matter what. And I had a couple of customer interactions that were horrible and then something really big and awful happened and by the end of the night, I was barely holding back tears and I got into the truck and called my husband and then did burst into tears and raged and sat and fumed and raged and talked and let it all out and then when I got off the phone I sat and stared into space some more and just 

thought for a long, long time. 

Old habits and patterns are hard to break. 

I have a therapy appointment on Monday. :)

I read this article by Lizzo in which she said:

I don't think that loving yourself is a choice. I think that it's a decision that has to be made for survival; it was in my case. Loving myself was the result of answering two things: Do you want to live? 'Cause this is who you're gonna be for the rest of your life. Or are you gonna just have a life of emptiness, self-hatred and self-loathing? And I chose to live, so I had to accept myself.

Accepting all the parts of me, even the ugly parts, is the non fun aspect of life. Really, please go read that article. It's very good. 

Going hand in hand with this article, I read another one which talked about the "I Don't List". It suggested that everyone should have an  "I Don't List" - a list of things which they don't do. "Before", I didn't believe in "I don't" - I though I should try to do all of the things I was asked to do/should do/might need to do/would be expected to do. 

Now, I give many fewer shits. Mostly because I worry more about myownself. 

See the beginning of this post. I think I stopped caring in order to try to keep myself sane. 

At first, I thought my "I Don't List" wasn't that long. Until I actually started notating it. It consisted of things like:

• I don't always make dinner for my family. Sometimes meals consist of scrounge for yourself - and my kids choose to go for fast food and I make a pbj or a smoothie and I don't care and we all survive. 
• I don't help anyone with homework and I haven't for a while and I don't check on anyone's homework. In fact, I don't even ask if they've done it. If they don't do it, it's on them. 
• I like my house to be clean, but no one else does (except my husband), so I don't try to keep it clean anymore - except that it drives me C-R-A-Z-Y that my kids leave their shoes around the house. 
• I don't even reply to the emails from school asking for volunteers. I just - delete and move on. I can't. I just - can't any more. 
• I don't really keep track of how much time my kids spend online or in front of a screen. I know. I am the worst. 
• I don't decorate my house in any particular style - but my grown up kids do - their houses look great. The only style my house has is comfortable, and messy, and full of photos that I have taken. Which I like, so there. 
• I've managed to be almost 50 and still don't know how to be an adult. 
• I don't make my bed.
• I don't throw fancy parties. I throw loud, riotous, chaotic parties in which nothing is catered, nothing is fancy, and everything is flustered and chaotic and most often, I've spent 15 minutes yelling at my husband immediately before everyone arrives. And everything is served in old Pyrex bowls from 1950.
• I don't answer the phone. Text me, girl.
• I don't celebrate most people's birthday's - I used to, but most people didn't celebrate mine, so I stopped. 
• I don't care if people see me dance in public. 
• I don't separate my laundry. 

What's on your "I Don't" List?

Can You Be Halfway Friends?

You’d think I’d learn, by the age of 49.75, wouldn’t you, but apparently I’m a really slow learner. I’m always so super excited to make!new!friends! that I come in like gangbusters and talktalktalk and overshare and talk some more and try to be friends with everyone 

until I all of a sudden realize that 

hey, maybe I don’t WANT to be friends with this one or that one or this one doesn’t actually want to be friends with me, even though they might say they do

and I always, always make the mistake of confusing acquaintances with friends and coworkers with friends and neighbors with friends and let’s face it

I am just not so good at the boundary thing. I also frequently forget that other people may not have my best interests at the forefront of their minds, hmmmm? 

Going hand in hand with this is the pondering that most often in society, people pair up in couples, and it is rare for any of us to like both halves of a couple the same. Often we prefer one over the other, occasionally substantially. 

Most often, people like my husband better. :) I’m ok with that. He’s a genuinely nice guy. I’m kind of abrasive. I speak my mind too often for the comfort of most. I am loud and silly and pretty much the opposite of him. It’s ok. I’ve had thirty years to grow accustomed to it. It’s all good. I’m cool with it. 

What I'm wondering, though, is how others handle it when they don’t care for the half of a couple in which they really like the other half? Especially when everyone else really likes that other person, and it seems as if there is something wrong with you because you don’t. 

I often wonder that. What’s wrong with me, when I don’t like someone who everyone else clearly likes  

Life would be easier if we could like everyone and everyone could like us. 

More Ups and Downs than an Elevator in The Empire State Building

I know I'm writing more lately than I have in a long while. Apparently, I feel like I have more to say - I didn't say all of it was good, just that I have more on my mind. Don't worry, it'll dry up soon. Until then, let's just run with it, shall we?

The funny thing about depression and anxiety is that they often travel hand in hand with their best buddy low self esteem. I have that one in spades, my friends. I've hidden it for years behind a wicked sense of self deprecation - if I put myself down first, nothing you say can hurt. 

I know I have talked here before about the trouble I have with my internal voice and the trouble it causes me, and the work that my therapist and I do together to combat that voice.  We have role played and done theme work and she's given me papers and books to read and drawn me out theories and given me sticky notes to place everywhere I am to reinforce the positive messages. She's hypnotized me and I play that back when I go to sleep so that I can let positive affirmations sink in. 

I'm a work in progress, but I'm doing better, is what I'm trying to say. At least I think so. 

But then every so often I have an evening like tonight, when every conversation I have, I'm overshadowed by another, more vibrant personality and I am left to look like fish bait. Dried up, dead fish bait, left on the dock - not even the seagulls want the dead fish bait. I tried to interject a couple of times but was just left standing there with my mouth wide open. 

It was an embarrassing feeling. I felt immensely ridiculous and as if I'd misjudged the situations - and my stupid internal voice began shrieking at me. 

"Why would you think anyone cares what you have to say? Just stop talking and let them have their conversation. You don't have anything vital to add. Just - STOP."

And I HATE it when that happens, because I know it isn't true and I know that I've once again built things up to be more than they are. 

This, my friends, is my brain. Welcome to the crazy show. It is exhausting. 

I saw this and never have I wished for something more. This would be so perfect for those of us who struggle with these areas.

 

Good, Bad or Indifferent?

I was asked yesterday if I thought I was a good person, and I actually had to stop and think about it for a hot minute. 

I mean, really, being good is so relative. And it's subjective. It definitely depends on the day. 

For real - do you think you are a good person? Is it hubris to say that you think you are (if you do indeed think you are a good person), and is it false humility if you say that you really aren't a very good person (if you don't think you are a good person)?

What makes a someone a good person?

I mean, I recycle. That makes me a decent person, I think. I care about the environment. I don't use paper or plastic cups or straws - I have reusable of both, and I've been known to give both to friends. I pick up trash when I walk past it. I pick up the fallen off the shelf groceries in the grocery store, and hang up the clothes that have fallen from hangers in the clothing store.

Unless it's the thrift store. EVERYTHING is on the floor there. Ain't nobody got time for that. 

I don't donate blood, even though I have a fairly rare type, A negative. (I had to get those dumb shots every pregnancy.) I would do donate, and I'd do it fairly often, but I have deep seated veins that roll and are difficult for the Red Cross peeps to locate and stick, and the last 5 or 6 times I went, I ended up being stuck by several different people, and I looked like I'd been in a prize fight after - and my iron has been so low for so long that I wasn't allowed. So, I don't donate blood. That could be a tick in the "bad person" category, I suppose. My dad is a super frequent donor and so is The Husband. 

I try to treat people the way I'd like to be treated, I told the guy who asked me. I try to put myself in his shoes and really think about the situation, and try to avoid leaping to conclusions. (This is easier said than done. Leaping is one of my most favorite activities.) At the same point in time, I'm working diligently on standing up for myself and not allowing myself to be treated poorly any longer - which can sometimes be thought of as being bitchy or self righteous. 

I'm nice to people - both old and young - but I can hold a grudge like nobody's business. You've wronged me once, man, and that's it. It's really hard for me to forgive. So I think that's a wash in terms of good and bad, right? 

I try to help the less fortunate, but I don't give money to those who beg at street corners. Not sure if that makes me a hypocrite, but I have spoken to people who work with street people, who say that the best way to help is to give to official channels. I keep a backpack in my truck with help stable foods (soft granola bars, pudding cups, beef jerky, small microwave cups of ravioli, cups of fruit, oatmeal packs in bowls with spoons), new socks, undershirts, and in the winter warm hats - and always water bottles. If I see someone on the street corner, I'll ask if they need a snack or clean socks. Most often, people say no, just money. But if someone is truly in need, and they want those items, I'm happy to help. So, that's a wash - not a good or bad. 

Hmmmmm. This is tougher than I thought. 

Are you snappy with people? Do you cheat on taxes? Do you fail to pay for something that the teller doesn't see at the grocery? Do you always, unfailingly, greet each and every person you see with a smile and a cheerful greeting? Do you keep a cheery disposition no matter what happens?

I don't know the answer - I had to think about it for a while, but I finally told the person who asked me that I felt like I was probably 70% good. And that was a hard figure to come to, because it felt like I was bragging. He asked me why I came up with that number, why it wasn't higher or lower. I don't know. Higher would have felt like bragging, lower would have felt disingenuous. 70% felt like a good, solid number. 

What percentage would you give yourself, and why?