I want...I need...

I'm still just feeling SO stuck.  As I've mentioned before, I often feel like I'm having kind of an out of body experience.  I can see myself and I can evaluate the things that would be most helpful in my life, but I just can't do them.  I watch/hear myself being mean and snappy, but the words and actions seem to come out of me before I can do anything about them.  I don't want to be mean.  I don't want to blame others for the hell I'm going through.  I don't want to get in a rut that makes me such an emotional wreck, that despite all of my efforts in the past, I just keep gaining weight (one of my biggest signs that things are not going the way they should emotionally).  I want to be able to stop pretending.  I just want to be able to do "normal" (and I'm even talking my altered normal) things without putting every bit of effort into them.  I want to have enough energy to help guide my sons through the struggles of being 2 & 4, and not just give up and give into whatever they want.  I want to be a support for my husband who works SO hard to provide for our family and truly make a difference in the life of SO many troubled youth and their families, often without much thanks and often in the face of open hostility.  I want...I want...I want...or really I NEED.  

Please LORD, I need thy help.

Ray of Light

My "Ray of Light" for today is directly linked with my last post. I am SO thankful that books like Stop Pretending are starting to become more and more available. As much as these books are a nightmare to read and definitely not light reading, I believe it is SO important that our society becomes more informed.

In my support group last week we were talking about how hard it is to have a disease that just isn't understood. One member was mentioning some struggles with needing some time off work and their employer just not understanding. If this member had said they needed to go in to get chemotherapy or that he was struggling with heart disease, the odds are the employer wouldn't have thought twice about giving the needed time off.

Depression, bipolar, and any other major mental health disorder are no different...but that's not how much of the world sees us. Often we get classified as "lazy" or "weak." Sometimes I wish other people could spend a day or two in our shoes. Try fighting through the darkness that makes you feel like you're drowning. Try convincing your body that everything's fine when your brain is SCREAMING that you're going to die. Try dealing with feeling happy and fine one minute and seriously the next, for what seems like no reason at all, you're as low as you've ever been. Then let me know who is "lazy" or "weak."

Phew...I need to wrap this up. As you can tell, I feel very passionately about this. I know I have it pretty bad, but thankfully I'm definitely going in an uphill direction, with only minor set backs, but I see SO many others that have been fighting with EVERYTHING they have and it's just not working.

So thank you to Sonya Sones and others out there that are doing their best to show the reality of such difficult and debilitating diseases.

Stop Pretending

These past few days (well almost as week) have been CRAZY! Some just plain busy, but others I've just been REALLY tired (probably because of the busy days). Thankfully I haven't been SUPER down, but when I'm tired, I just don't have enough energy to blog.

Yesterday night (when I should have been sleeping) I read this book:

I equally loved and hated this book. I loved it because it did such a great job of capturing what mental illness is and can be, especially to family members and I hated it for the same reason.

The basic premise is about a 13 year old girl watching her sister struggle with Bipolar Disorder (she calls it Manic-Depressive disorder...same thing as Bipolar). She shares her fears, her hopes, and her frustrations. I think what haunts me most, is when she worries that it is her fault. Yes, since she's 13 I'm sure to a certain extent she knows that it isn't her fault and couldn't be, but at the same time, we really don't know what triggers something like this and so that idea worries her. It's just so real.

I worry that Bradley (my 4 year old) might think he's contributing to my depression. I just killed me when he told me one day, "Mom, it's okay. We'll just go downstairs and play and you can rest." Sure a certain level of my was SO proud that my sweet little boy could be so sensitive, but the other part of me was dying to know that he was having to be grown up enough to understand that. Am I robbing my boys of their childhood? I know I could do a lot more with them, but I usually don't have the emotional energy to do it. In some ways I'm hoping that Bradley was young enough when this all started that he really hasn't noticed a change, but then in other ways, how sad to think that he's never really known his mom and neither had Braeden for that matter.

I try to stay up beat and not let things like this occupy my mind...they only make it worse. Usually I'm pretty successful in my attempts. But books like this really get to me. They also make me realize just how carefully I need to act around my boys to give them the best chance at coming through this "normally."