A Bad Monday.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised--it is Monday, after all--but today has been a bad day.

Actually, Saturday was the bad day. Today is the fall out day.

Long story short, I wanted to try Odyssey of the Mind with my kids and I've been working with the school since last autumn to get the program organized and rolling. I was hoping OM would be a good way to help my very (truly) creative kids apply their ideas and learn some life skills. I thought it would be a good way to make friends for them and begin to network with other parents. There was some good that came out of it, but mostly things have been slowly falling apart over the last month and then last Saturday (competition day) things blew up. I'm trying not to go into details because I know it's not Christlike and because I don't believe rehashing events is going to change how I feel about them. Some people did some things that really hurt me and hurt my kids because I made some mistakes that they felt jeopardized their chances of doing well in competition. One parent went so far as to grab me by a shoulder and question me as to why I would screw things up that way. Another parent left me a phone message with her yelling in to the phone. They also yelled at my children and said rude things to them.

It was humiliating. It was hurtful. And I can't shake it.

I'm really, really sad about it. I'm angry about it.

And, me being me, I turn it all on myself.

My kids have also been train wrecks today.  Lots of tantrums, screaming, crying. A complete mess.

All day my mind has been endlessly questioning my existential value. I'm such a failure; why should anyone ever bother with me or listen to me or believe me? I'm obviously a failure as a mother, too, so why do I have children? I'm pretty much a screwed up human being with no economic value, no true skills, and am therefore of no value to society. The world be a better place if I wasn't in it. (It is embarrassing to be this pathetic. Suicidal over angry parents? Sheesh I'm a loser.) There's a part of my brain that keeps saying if only I had a job, all of this would be different; that people like to crap on stay-at-home moms because they are obviously less than regular people. After all, why would you stay home and be jobless unless you were incapable of contributing to the greater world. One parent over the weekend passive-aggressively said to me, "Isn't it nice that you have the luxury of being at home and volunteering. That's just so, well, so nice for you." It's only a good thing to be a stay-at-home mom if your kids are perfectly groomed socially savvy over-achievers. And, by the way, as the mom you should be those things too. My kids aren't those things. I'm not those things.

The urge to self-harm is big. My brain keeps mapping out spots to cut and telling me I deserve the pain, that I should be punished. Of course I haven't done any of that--that's a line I have yet to cross and firmly plan not to. But I am spending a lot of energy reminding myself that the crazy is doing a heckuva lot today and I need to not get sucked in.

I really have been trying to let it go. I've been trying to distract myself. I keep telling myself that if I can choose to not stew over it then my brain will eventually let it go. There has been some good exercise (which helped). There has been prayer (was also helpful). There has been meditation and napping (also helpful). I keep hoping the hurt feelings will dispel or their intensity will lessen. But it keeps coming back--like the tide rolling in and out every 30 or 40 minutes.

It's just that I don't have a good response to the existential questions. I mean, seriously, what is the point? What am I doing? Everywhere I look I see half-finished projects and good intentions, but very few results. I have no way of proving that I'm not a complete waste of space.

That hurts.

*As an aside, I think that one reason I'm having trouble letting it go is because I know that those other people are right in some ways. I did screw up a couple times and they had every right to be angry at me. People have rights to their feelings.  I'm sure that in their hearts they feel their actions and words were perfectly justified. And I can't argue with that. They have every right to see the world  the way they see it. But feeling that way makes it very hard to defend myself.

30 Things About Being Thirty

Well. It happened. I have officially left my twenties. GAH. What a decade of turbulence. It college, early marriage, and the diaper decade all rolled into one. All of which makes me happy to have left the New Adolescence behind. (That's 1 Thing)

But. . .

I have now officially joined the establishment. Seriously. For my birthday, I helped set up and pull off my ward's Cub Scout Blue and Gold Banquet. For fun I wash the dishes while watching Cake Boss. To unwind I scrapbook pictures of my kids. I have four kids and have been married for a decade--and both facts have ceased to amaze people. I am settled. (That's 2-9)

But. . .

This new settled state (my recent SSRI ups and downs aside; BTW, doing much better now) has given me something I never expected it to: a new ground from which to take off. Sure, I'm tied down to a husband and kids so I won't be backpacking around Europe or driving the length of Route 66 any time soon, but, well, I'm also not spending a heckuva lot of energy worry about if anyone will ever really love me. (The answer to that one is both yes and no.) And I'm not constantly worrying about what to do with a new baby or if the changing color of their poop means something. (The answer to that one is also both yes and no.) I'm in a new phase. New opportunities are appearing on the horizon. Not only do I think there's a light at the end of the tunnel, I can actually see it. And it's inspiring. (Things number 10-21 just happened there.)

A Few Remaining Things About Being Thirty:

*It's not that old.
*My husband, sister, and best friends will always be older.
*I don't have to keep up with pop culture because no one expects me to be hip anymore
* Lots of other awesome people are thirty like Jessica Biel and Brittany Spears (and the fact that I just referenced those two chicks really makes me sound old. . .)
*All my favorite songs are playing on the radio again--they just happen to be during the retrospective hours
*Fashion trends from my childhood are back. As soon as people start pegging their jeans and wearing multiple layers of sock again, I will be psyched.
* I actually know how to cook.
* I have read enough great books to enable me to find more of them
* I can eat chocolate for lunch and--as long as my kids don't see me--it absolutely doesn't matter!

And that, my friends, is true freedom.

Mirthful Monday (and Me Monkeying with my Meds)

Okay. So it's a Mirthful Monday. Here's some funny (but not as funny as the last Mirthful Monday). (Also worth the parentheses: Can I just say that I am so, so, so, so ridiculously grateful that I have never peddled scentsy/stampin' up/or what-have-yous. Seems so awkward!)



And then the other part of my headline: I've been monkeying around with my meds.

It started five ish months ago, when I last saw my psych, who suggested I try going off my Paxil. I don't know that  my psych really believes I have/had the crazies. She's never seen me at my low so I don't think she really understood what she was saying. When I first started seeing her I was in a proactive, well-adjusted place. I have not always been well-adjusted. True, I've never been hospitalized or done anything dangerous. . . but still. She mentioned it in passing and I declined  saying that I wanted to get through the insanity that usually comes with weaning and she said all right and wrote me a scrip for another four months. Well. The Little Cannoli weaned five months ago and there was no drama. Then the meds ran out at the end of January and refills through my psych's office are crazy-inconvenient and usually require a $100 visit. So I didn't bother. Since I was on the lowest therapeutic does I just swallowed my last pill one night and didn't take any more. Because it's not like the psych wanted to see me or prescribe me my med. Or maybe it's because I was tired and frustrated? Because I wanted to show the psych that I really do need the meds? Or, maybe, because I wanted to show myself that I don't need them? It was an exercise in impulsive frustration and self-loathing.

I'm pretty sure that is not what my psych wanted to have happen.

*sigh*

I have to admit I was really shaken up just by her suggestion that I go off my meds. I mean, I've been doing so well why mess with it? What ever happened to, "If it ain't broke don't fix it"? Then I remembered something: I am broken. Even with meds. I'm depressed. I have a mood disorder.  A medical condition. That means I'm broken. If I didn't need fixing then I wouldn't need the meds, right?

All that didn't sit well with me, though. On the Paxil, I didn't feel broken. I felt functional--even a little awesome some days. But her suggestion made me feel like a fake. And, too, there's all this research out there about temperament and I'm pretty sure I'm a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)--which at this point still sounds like pseudo-science but it feels very true to my experience, minus all the stuff about being shy. Of course, the new hip thing with being an HSP is to avoid medication and say to myself, "This is my temperament. I need to honor it and let it do what it needs to do so I can be who I am." That means I get easily overwhelmed, cycle through a lot of emotions, don't multitask, and need a great deal of down time to process my life. The current thinking is that a lot of the world needs to bend around me and make exceptions for my temperament (some researchers even think HSPs are leading the world to new evolutionary heights!). But that's not how life works. That's not real. Real life is that people around you do what they do and you need to be on your game all the time so that you can push back when you need to and keep moving forward, always, so that you don't get trampled or left behind or screw things up.

When I'm on my meds none of that is true. I don't get as overstimulated. I don't get as tired. I don't react as emotionally (I can't tell you how many times I've cried over the news in the last month.  My husband has put me on a no-CNN-or-NPR media diet.). It's kind of nice.

Of course, on my meds I'm also not as creative (over the last couple weeks, as the last of the Paxil has cleared my system, I've felt my writing brain reawaken; I'm scribbling thoughts and snippets of prose in little notebooks all over the house; who knows if they are any good). I'm not as driven--but I also don't get as stymied by all the different directions I get pulled in. On my meds I'm not restless; I'm focused. I feel a pleasant and desirable placidity, but I also feel muted. Muted isn't always bad, though. It can actually be very, very restorative. The medicated me is very good for my husband (definitely HSP; whoever said opposites attract had no idea what they are talking about) and children (at least two of whom are HSPs). The unmedicated me feels a little self-indulgent and exciting. I kind of like it (?).


There has been some self-medicating through all this. Mostly in the form of sugar. One of the things I miss most when I'm medicine free is the little energy lift that comes with the SSRI. I've been considering a "medicinal" dose of Diet Coke. But then soda is really bad for you. So I've been noshing out on various kinds of sugar. This last week, during all the post-Valentine sales, I stocked up on dark chocolate. . . and have eaten about a bag and a half of Dove Promises in the last two days. I'm pretty undisciplined about when I eat it so I've gained a couple pounds, am incredibly bloated, and it's starting to screw with my sleep. Now I'm contemplating diet pills.  Which would basically be trading one FDA approved and researched pill for some hackneyed, unregulated, pill? Not awesome. (And no, I'm not actually taking a diet pill. But I am thisclose to climbing on that roller coaster. The inner monologue likes to rant about how fat and ugly and desperately unattractive I am. Medicated, I can tune that out. Seriously. It's like, Hmmm I think I'm fat. Well, that may or may not be true. But if it is, fat happens. It's not the end of the world. Which is waaay preferable to diet-pill-contemplation.) And Facebook. I've been spending a lot more time Facebooking, which I think is a mild mental/emotional stimulant. (Have you read about this study? FB = worse than cigarettes or alcohol. Cue Ensign, New Era, and The Friend articles!)

 Obviously I'm of two minds about all this. There is probably some middle ground which involves mindfulness, stress management/reduction, and maybe even a low dose of some sort of medication. But right now I guess I just feel like I'm going to ride this out a see what happens. Maybe there is a middle ground that I can stumble into somehow. Maybe now that I am no longer in the constant upheaval of birthing and nursing babies (the Little Cannoli is almost two!!) there is a way to be a little self-indulgent and still be that dependable, unexciting person that my family needs.

Or maybe the farther I get from my last little white pill the swifter I'll descend into the swirling mass of mental self-immolation that I like to think is no longer a part of me but probably still is.