Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Reflections

I'm happily counting down the hours to the New Year tonight, not for the champagne kisses at midnight or the night with friends, but for the end of this miserable, miserable year.  The year started badly, the year went badly and although it hasn't ended as badly as all that, I'm ready for the shiny newness of January 1st.

I learned many lessons, most of which have me frightened of my own shadow...or shortcomings.  I still can't drive by certain areas, hear certain names, watch certain commercials or see certain combinations of numbers without having a panic attack.  I still can't work the way I always planned to.  I am still not who I want to be, but I am closer.  My hope for this new year is that I will get even closer.

I'm not a resolutions kind of girl.  I never keep them and I just don't need one more failure this year to come.  Instead, I'm doing a sort of "Happiness Project", not only to be happier, but to take a conscious role in my own life, relationships and joy.  Outside of that, I'm vowing to be true to myself, to accept my mistakes, to forgive those mistakes, to set aside regret and to look to the moment I am in, rather than the moment to come or the moments passed.  I look forward to a year of moments, a year of something new, a year of appreciation for all the wonderful things I do have, and I look forward to leaving behind a year of mourning, of regret and of failure.

2013 has died a slow, painful death for me.  I'm looking forward to rebirth.

Friday, December 27, 2013

I am getting better

As I've recovered over the last year, I first measured my life in moments gone by.  Time dragged, nothing good happened and I mourned the loss of all that time just wasted.  There were so many sleepless nights and regrets that I couldn't separate them.

As I started to get better, I could measure things in momentous occasions, the day that client threatened me, the day I was served with my first OLR complaint, the day I hid under my desk, the day the police came to my house . . .

And as I continue to get better, I'm noticing that I have started to measure things in positive experiences, like the day I had my interview for yoga teacher training, the day I decided to stop practicing, the day I looked forward to doing something instead of wishing I could stay in bed.

I am getting better.  It is slow, slower than I am satisfied with, but if I look at the big picture, I AM getting better.

Friday, December 20, 2013

A bad, bad day

You know when you're always trying and trying and trying to make things right and somehow, something keeps slipping through your fingers?  That's a very frustrating feeling.  Until it's devastating.  Today was a day I was completely unprepared for.  It was a day I'm not sue I will survive.  It was a day that changed all of the choices I've made into avenues I had no choice but to take.  Today I considered dying for the first time in a long time.  It might be an easier outlet.  Don't panic.  I'm not planning anything.  I would never leave my children with that legacy.  I don't want them to ever feel like they weren't enough.

But I can't stop crying and I can't hide it from everyone.  So far I've hidden it from my children, but they'll hear someday how badly mommy failed.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Mommy, Mommy, Mommy

Despite how painful and raw this experience has been for me on a day-to-day basis, what's worse is how it has affected my family.  Every person in my life has been touched, in some way, by my failing mental health.  Although my husband has been most profoundly impacted outside of myself, he has been my champion.  He has managed to live with the very worst me for more than a year and he has never said or done the wrong thing, which is an amazing feat.  He has never failed to stand right beside me, just in case I could no longer stand on my own, and I have needed that support a number of times.  He has never echoed the ugly version of myself I have created in my head.  He has never reflected my lack of effort, lack of communication, lack of ability to make things work.  He simply kept going and somehow still loves me.

That's not what this blog is about though.  This blog is about the three most precious pieces of me, my children.  This has affected them all in different ways, but it has undoubtedly affected each of them.  It has impacted the mother I wanted to be to them.  Whether it's my eldest seeing me in the tears I so desperately tried to keep private or my youngest begging for "uppy," while I backed away because I just couldn't.  I see it in the way my oldest asks how I am, knowing how I've been instead of believing that I was the strong, infallible person I always meant to exemplify for her.  I see it in the way my baby girl covered her ears when she thought I might be angry and yell.  I see it in my son who so desperately needs his Mommy, and not this broken shell that I have slipped into.

It makes me a lesser parent, not to mention a lesser person.  Days ago, my son sneaked off with his Advent calendar.  He opened most of his remaining windows and had a handful of chocolate when I found him.  First he shoved the chocolate in his mouth, then he covered his ears.  I truly rarely yell, yet they've seen it too frequently to forget that sometimes Mommy is scary.  My initial reaction was not to be angry that he had done something he clearly knew he shouldn't have.  Instead, I immediately wondered what I had done to make him feel like he had to sneak off.  I felt like I had deprived him.

I don't want to parent by guilt.  I want to parent from my heart.  Sadly, my heart is so bound by the months that I have had feeling broken, frightened and alone.  I find myself doing and saying all the wrong things.  I cry in the dark, when everyone is finally quiet, and I think about each of my failures of the day.  As difficult as this time has been, it is the moments of sadness, fear or disappointment from my children that I fear I'll never recover from.  And heaven forbid our relationships don't recover.  My children love me, that I know.  But I wanted to be this wonderful mother, stepmother and wife and instead, lately, I have been this.  I am devastated by it.

My greatest fear is that I will spend more time as this mother than the one I used to be and the one I want to be again.  At some point, this is no longer something I am going through and it is simply who I am.

Monday, December 9, 2013

Below the surface

The combination of taking better care of myself, taking medication, and deciding to stop practicing has done wonders for my depression.  Although it hasn't helped my anxiety as significantly, I'm eradicating from my life many of the issues that plagued me, so my anxiety is inherently less.

But I still have the constant rumble below the surface.  There is always the nagging sensation that something is wrong.  It's in the phantom movements that always catch my eye.  It's underlying every phone call I receive before I identify the caller.  It's even present when I leave the house, worried that I'm going to run into someone who has it out for me.  It is the threat that keeps me awake as I lay next to my sleeping children.  I've found that, of all of the terrible things that have come out of this past year, the feeling that someone wishes to do me harm is the one that has taken root most deeply.

It's such a tragedy that this is what lingers as we move into the new year.  I hope time heals this wound.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Still Drowning

So I have to formal diagnoses and one informal, related diagnosis.  I suffer from generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder.  I also exhibit the symptoms of someone who suffers from PTSD, according to my therapist.  So there's all that.

My mood disorder (major depressive disorder) has been pretty well stabilized by medication.  While that's awesome.  My next question is, okay, so when can I stop taking the medications?  I don't like pumping this mind-altering stuff in my body and wondering whether I could function without it.

My anxiety is a completely different animal.  I still catch my breath every time a law-related commercial or show comes on the television.  I have anxiety attacks when I drive past firms that I have worked against.  I recently spent Thanksgiving at my in-laws and had a panic attack driving past one of their neighbors who is a former colleague of mine and had a "hard talk" with me a few weeks ago.  I spent most of Thanksgiving thinking about all of the family gatherings that included conversation about the piece of shit, deadbeat, disaster lawyer that they'd had the misfortune to hire.  I thought about all the scrutiny I am under without proper explanation.  I would apologize, but that puts me in jeopardy of accepting responsibility for every single thing that has ever gone wrong since I crossed paths with someone....because that's how that business works.

Admit nothing.  Show no fear.  Don't let them even smell it.

But I can't live like that and I don't want to live like this.  It aches to go through hours of days thinking about all of your perceived failures, all of the should haves and could haves.  It aches to have to be in silence in your own house, god forbid the doorbell ring unexpectedly, to feel safely away from all that's out there that causes more damage.  It's difficult for me to sit in my living room because of the windows.  It's difficult for me to sleep in a room where my children aren't.  It's difficult to breathe in this body, day after day, willing it, wishing it to finally stop this, but it's not in my control.