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

Lured and caught...Again.

I am not good with mornings.

It takes me a while to get adjusted.
To focus.
To calm.
To breathe.
To begin again.

A daily struggle to get out of bed.

For many reasons.

I lure myself out with visions of my son's face. The feeling of my husband's arms wrapped around me.

Last night I went to bed feeling really sad and guilty.
For many reasons.

This morning I woke up happy from dreams of a future I wish to have....

Such a rarity, good dreams...
(I never trust the nice ones)


But I am feeling good today, so rare or not, I'll take it!

Until I see the blood.

 I am kicked in the gut.


I know that we can't have another baby right now.
That's why I take Birth Control....you know, for that whole "controlled" part.


So why am I crying over a run-of-the-mill period?

For Many Reasons.






--Guys, if you didn't check out yesterday's post? Please Do!!!
Send this poor family some love, and donate if you can!
Thanks.

You don't appreciate my APPRECIATING!

Marriage?

It's hard.


[Aren't you so happy that I guide you through these earth-shattering epiphanies?]

It frightens me because I'm constantly struck with how many people just don't realize that.

And that even though I do, I'm still taken aback sometimes...

The Spouse Unit and I have been arguing a lot lately.
Not in the "We're heading for divorce" kinda way, but just a ton of annoyed/irritated bickering.

Which gets real old, real fast and leads to more fully-fleshed angries.

Yesterday morning?
I said something that I thought was helpful.
He snapped.
I snapped back.
Here.We.Go.AGAIN.

Seriously???
I had HAD it.

I didn't talk to him all day.
(We usually text/talk throughout the day)

I needed to calm down and organize my thoughts.

Why are we so freakin' crabby?
What is HIS problem?
What is MY problem?
WHAT IS HIS PROBLEM???

So I fumed all day.

I decided, finally, that I was feeling

Unappreciated. Disrespected.
 And also?
Like The Bad Guy.
All the time.

This really made me sad.

I work really hard at our lives.  At our marriage.  At raising our son.
My main goal in life?
To ensure that my husband and son are well-cared for and happy.
That our family is happy.
That is what makes ME happy.

So the fact that I was feeling like my Husband might be seeing me as the "Harpy Wife?"

HUGE BUMMER.
and I was pissed.

I am a fantastical wife, damn it!
What the HELL does he want from me?
I couldn't be more awesome, and he couldn't be more Lucky!
I am all sorts of appreciative of his hard work, how can he not appreciate me, appreciating that?

[...and Cue Spiral...]


Ahem.

We put O to bed.  I pulled the We Need to Talk card.
Which he hates.  All men hate it.  I'm aware.

But we really did need to talk.

After not getting anywhere for a while, we finally realized that we were both struggling in our roles.

As a Wife/Mother/Adult and Husband/Father/Adult

Specifically--how those roles were reflected to and on one another as a couple.

Make sense?  Hopefully.

We also figured out that while we both thought we we being all appreciative, helpful and respectful to the other?

It wasn't being received that way, a lot of the time.

This sorta scared us.

Ummm, holy shit. 
Communication in our marriage is TERRIBLE. We.ARE.DOOOOMED.


But notsomuch, really.

We just needed to have a couple reality checks and get back on track.
In addition (and probably most importantly), we needed to be frank about some outside factors affecting our attitudes, which would directly affect our "hearing."....

Frankly?

Living on a shoe-stringy budget (and all the stress that goes with it) is hard on your marriage


Living with Chronic pain (and the frustration and helplessness on both sides) is hard on your marriage.

Living without medication (ADD for him, Depression for me) is hard on your marriage.

Living with your in-laws (however awesome they may be and however grateful you ARE) is hard on your marriage.  

Trying to be a new parent in that environment? You guessed it! Haaaard on the marriage.


We will make it out of, and past these obstacles eventually, but it's going to be awhile. 
We are working, we are trying, we are hoping, we are waiting.
Waiting for the tides to turn in our favor.




The wait weighs on us both, heavily.  
The wait and the worry burdens our hearts.
Mostly out of concern for the other. And our son.
But those burdens can chafe once in awhile, and I don't know about you?

But,
chafing makes me cuh-rank-eeee.


I think the same can be said for my Darling Husband.


Yep.

Not an Edit, but a Revisit...

    I'm getting a cold....(I hope it's just a cold)

    Again.

    I immediately started panicking about having to go to the doctor.

    (no insurance=panic)

  It was making for kind of a Debbie-Downer kind of day.... 

Which reminded me of a post that had been nibbling at me: 

Remember my my post about Optimism?  Or, rather, my struggle with Optimism? 

I was not happy with the piece.  I didn't feel like I had articulated my feelings on the issue (my issues). 

From the second I hit "Publish," I was worried that people would read it and think that I was a really negative person....something I'm really not. 

I didn't take the post down, because it was where I was in that moment, and honestly?  I couldn't think of another way I wanted to address the post, so fuck it. 

But then I got an awesome comment of encouragement from my dear friend Andrea...Here's a snippet:

"...I think that if getting you through the day is to prepare for the worst and let optimism fly out the window, then more power to you. Seriously...."

I was so thankful for that.  I responded lengthily right.a-way.

 After reading my response to her comment a few times over, I realized that THAT was what I had been trying to say on the first go...

I was going to attempt to flesh that comment into its own post, but I'm feeling crappy and would rather watch a movie, so I'm just going to paste in (with a little bit of editing because this was originally typed via my iTouch) my response:

[Makes more sense, I think....?]

    "Yeah-Thanks so much for this comment! I really appreciate it. 

It's not optimism as a whole that I have a problem with, it's that 

"forced cheerfulness"  and "fantasyland optimism" that we seem to be forcing ourselves into as a society. 

Nothing is ever allowed to not be okay. 

Any time someone mentions how a portion or a time in life is hard, they are bombarded with reasons as to why it's "not that bad" and why the person should be happy. 

Planning for the possibility of hard times has become a character flaw. 

Acknowledging the toll that hardships take on you/your family has somehow been translated into ungratefulness. 

Rough times are turned into "blessings in disguise", disappointments become "lessons that needed to be learned",  disasters are not disastrous, but a healthy dose of "character-building"--and so on...

While I absolutely believe that you learn from the experiences in life, and need to look for the good in your life-not wallowing in negativity, I think we need to be a bit more realistic with ourselves. With each other.

Sometimes life is hard. 

Really fucking hard, and things don't always work out for the best. 

Most of life not going to just fall together happily in our laps. 

It takes work and planning and honesty about what lies ahead. 

And sometimes, even with all the planning or smiles in the world? 

It's not so positive. 

I wish that that could be talked about without the penalty of the label of Negative Nelly McUnappreciative Pants."

I am not a Negative Nelly McUnappreciative Pants.
But I'm not a Positive Polly McRainbowsandUnicorns Pants, either.

Does that make ANY sense?