Exhaustion and A Soapbox.

Guys?

I'm so tired.
Mind-numbingly so.

I forgot how exhausting it is for me (hell, most of us) to grow a tiny human.

Right before Christmas, everything was shiny, clean, and organized.

After the holiday and a week of guests, it looks like a bomb went off...

Piles like this are everywhere! 4 of 356

I need to get things back in order.
I need to put away dunes of laundry.
I need to scrub out the fridge before it starts taking hostages.

But.I.Just.Can't.

Just the basics of getting through the day with O saps all my energy.

He's fed, mostly clean (I kid) and loved, so I'm winning at life, right?

[Shout out to Disney Jr. and PBS for their supportive roles in this endeavor...ahem...]

Oh, Mickey...Thanks for inviting us to your clubhouse! 5 of 365

When he naps, I nap.
And keeping my eyes open after 9pm is quite the feat...

I miss my meds.

Aside from helping me manage the mental loops of depression, they were instrumental in managing the physical effects of not only depression, but of chronic illness/pain/fatigue.

Which I often feel are more damaging to my well-being then the mental side effects...

Quitting them cold-turkey has been a royal bitch.

The headaches alone...

But the thing I hate the most?
The way I'm treated off my meds...

(DISCLAIMER: it's not everyone and it's not all the time, but it's prevalent enough to be an established pattern)

Any emotion I have is typically treated as a farce.

It's that unspoken but CLEARLY stated attitude of:

"Pay no mind to her, she's off her meds."

Particularly if I'm upset about something...

Oh, we didn't actually hurt your feelings, disrespect your opinion, ignore your pain, or make you angry, you're just hormonal and unmedicated.


You poor thing, you.


Don't you worry though, we'll grin and bear it.

For you!

Well, isn't that fucking special.

I'm not mentally incompetent, people.
There is actual validity to my emotions.

Now, I will be the first to admit that off my meds and dependent on my level of stress, my patience wears thinner and my temper fuse is shorter, but the biggest thing that changes is my ability to  
smile and fake it.

I completely lose that ability to diplomatically sidestep and do-si-do around bullshit.

 I'm not trying to be a Negative Nelly, nor I am I trying to make anyone else uncomfortable/sad/whathaveyou. I'm just trying to
Deal with the reality of my life.
by being honest about it. 
Frank, even.


I get that my reality may be scary to some folks, or make others uncomfortable--
I try really hard to be aware of that, and do my best to compensate, but I don't always have it in me.

It's not very easy for me to pretend like everything is peachy when it's clearly not.



It takes a lot of fucking effort when I'm already trying to keep it together in a million other ways.

I spend a lot of time feeling guilty because I don't want to burden anyone.

Here's the thing though-

I should be able to be honest about my struggles and I should be able to ask for help.

More importantly, I deserve genuine respect and compassion when I do so...

Maybe I am a bit more blunt and a little less pliable than usual, but if you were dealing with another high-risk pregnancy (your 5th), pregnancy nausea, a busy 2-yr-old, a possibility of cancer, financial worries, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, hormone injections that give you dizziness and hot flashes, AND the effects of depression, I'd bet good money that you wouldn't be too full of roses and sunshine either.

And just because I'm unmedicated, and therefore less able to filter-- doesn't mean that someone hasn't legitimately been less than awesome.

Sigh.

This is (HOPEFULLY) going to be a loooong pregnancy.

Again.

I need some ice cream.





Nooo....I am so NOT eating my feelings!

It's for the BABY.
;)

Now I'm gonna go do like the cool toddlers do and NAP.

If you listen closely, you can hear the piles growing....the laundry is particularly prolific.  Day 6 of 365

I'm feeling all Sprat-like...

I grew up in a house where thinness was next to g-dliness.
You could never be too thin.
Jutting hipbones or razor-sharp clavicles were a source of pride.
A badge of fucking honor.

Unfortunately for me,
my mother was convinced that I was fat...
So I went on my first diet at 6.

I remember it vividly because we went out to dinner with my grandparents and she dictated what I could eat.
She also wouldn't let me have dessert.
I remember crying, not because of the lack of dessert, but from the abundance of shame.

Fueling her fervor--
I developed early.
Booooobs by 10.
Period by 11.
I was petite and curvy. (I'm 5'3ish)
Curvy in my house?

Just translated to:

You're too fat to wear that....suck in that tummy...you need to go back on a diet....wear black, it'll hide your pudge...

and so on.
In much uglier words than I care to repeat.

By the time I was 13, I had been on every diet known to man, and had serious body image/food issues.
I was basically a functioning anorexic.
It never got to a hospitalization level, but it was still there all the same.

I counted every calorie and starved myself whenever possible.
If I did eat, I berated myself and did crunches til I thought I would pass out.

But nothing worked...
I was still "fat."

As I entered adulthood, my body started changing (like it DOES), and I did everything to fight the tide.

Getting to 100 on the scale was tough...
Especially with my mother constantly pointing out my every flaw.

From 18-22, while completely on my own, away from the environment I grew up in--
I still struggled with food and weight.
This time being my own tormentor...

I was trying to eat normally and abandon my anorexic-type habits (with the support from my then-boyfriend), but I discovered:

I didn't know how.

Add the stress of working full-time, supporting myself, the shitty eating habits of college kids, and weight started creeping on.

I "ballooned" from 100 lbs to 140lbs.
I looked at the scale and wanted to die.
Literally.
I was disgusting, right?


In the Summer of 2003, as most of you know, I was raped.

In what I saw as a protective measure, I started gaining weight.
A lot of weight.
I had been told my whole life that know one would want me if I was fat.

In my head?
I was already fat.
So in order to be safe, I needed to be really really fat.

Then no one would touch me ever again.

Fast-forward a year, and I had put on over 100lbs.
I woke up one day and didn't recognize myself.

It was as if every insult my mother had ever hurled at me, everything she said I was, her perception of my obesity- had come true.



I felt invisible.
Ugly.
Safe.

Eventually, I got some therapy, meds, support, and I started to heal.
I wanted my life back.
I wanted to move past the nightmare.

But I was trapped in my own body/my own head.
Years worth of tapes played in my head, and I hated myself even more.
The perception of fat was gone, and the reality of fat was here to stay.

The first time a doctor used the word obese in reference to me--
I felt like he was finally seeing the truth I had known my whole life.

I wanted to get the weight off but I didn't know what the hell to do.

Because of the CP, I am not a great exerciser.
Most workouts and machines are hard for me to do.
I can't go running/biking/rollerblading...

I was eating right, walking, doing the best I could to be healthy.
I quit smoking
I didn't drink.
I was TRYING.
It wasn't working.
At all.

Back to old habits!
Starvation.
Crunches galore.
Diet pills.

The weight was clinging to me like white on rice.
My metabolism was all kinds of fucked up due to the years of dieting, starvation and poor nutrition.
Go figure!

So here I am today, still battling the bulge, as it were....

It's been 7 years that I have carried the bulk of this weight...
and a lifetime that I have struggled to accept my body.

I've lost and gained and lost again...always just increments.
Never big losses.
I was my heaviest at 255
I'm now at 200.

A number that I am deeply ashamed of.

But there are days that I feel like I have accepted myself, and gotten closer to being mentally healthy about body/food/eating disorder issues.

Then there are days where I know the fight is not over.
It may never be.

Days like today.

My FIL got my Husband a Summer pass to the local gym.
He thought it would be a good stress reliever in the midst of our financial clusterfuck.

My husband came home sweaty and exhausted, but excited.
He needs to lose 30 lbs.
The trainer at the gym said that they can have him down to that in 20 weeks.
Six-pack and all...

My husband loves me. Tells me so every day.
He also tells me how beautiful I am, how attracted he is to me.
EVERY DAY.

He could give two shits about what I weigh or the size sewn into my pants.

But as he was talking?
I started to worry:

What if after he gets back in shape he notices how big I am?
What if he's no longer attracted to me?
I should go do some crunches....

Seriously. That ran frenzied through my brain....

Can I lose enough weight by the time he loses his weight that I won't look so bad next to him?

Fucking insane.

And I KNOW that, but it hasn't stopped me from feeling like Mrs. Jack Sprat all damn day.

Sigh.

The saddest part to me is that it wouldn't occur to me to look at someone else the way I often look at myself.

Never.

I don't look at my husband and see 30 extra lbs.
I just see my man.

I don't look at friends and see flaws.
I see people.

Despite my education, my years of therapy, a loving support system, etc.
I still have my days.

Days where I see myself through someone else's eyes and hear someone else's voice in my head.

I do need to lose weight.
We all know that it's good to maintain a healthy weight.
I am not at one.

What I fear is that If I ever make it back to that healthy weight, I won't accept it.

Because my body was never allowed to just BE.

Food was not simple nourishment and occasional pleasure, it was the enemy and my weakness.

I was not taught about healthy, I was tortured for perfection.

Healthy was never really the point.

I want it to be.
So I keep on trucking.

I force myself to eat. Because sometimes? I don't want to.

I try to exercise but if I eat a brownie, well then I ate a fucking brownie.

I make myself hear my husband's compliments.
Make myself accept them.

Someday, I hope to completely and wholly believe them.


In related news?

I started back on anti-depressants today.
We were approved for Medi-Cal.

Halle-fucking-lujah!

Meds for everybody!
Okay, just me, but still...