Last night  I was hoping for sleep– I went to bed at 11:30 pm I fell asleep at 1:30 am,  woke up at 3:30am and blinked at the ceiling till 6:30.  When I don’t sleep I have a eyebrow that twitches, I feel like I have a wiggling caterpiller on my brow. I am ready to rip it off my face and fling.  I feel like I am giving everyone a “come on look” because I can see it moving, but others say they don’t.   In a sleep deprived way its funny.   Thank God its funny cause I am in such a miserable mood that something has to make me smile.   I am short-tempered and numb.  just numb.  I have had encouraging conversations with friends.  they are wonderful friends….and their words help, but I can’t get through the tough outer layer that is numbness.  Like knowing you have a cheek that is numb by the dentist.  You know you have a cheek,  you touch the cheek and see the cheek, but don’t feel the cheek.  Because of the numbness when you do not touch or see you feel it’s not there– kinda like parts of my heart.

I feel like I my feet are stuck in cement, and before me are the paths of my life.  I want to help people, I want to be involved, I have things I want to do, maybe even clean my house.  I am stuck, I see the paths drifting away and can’t move on with things.  I see life moving.  Kids growing up, one moved away, people having babies, getting married, working, changeling jobs, creating, living.  I lean forward to touch the ground where the journey starts but I can not slide out of the cement.  Seven years ago when I went through a career change I dreamed of planes taking off.  I was a pilot  and was at the controls, I could feel the thrill of the take off and the security of the landing it was wonderful and it filled me with confidence to do stuff, play music at church and be apart of biblestudies. Some days I can’t get out of the house. I felt assured by God that I was on the right paths.  I still love my job but my confidence is gone.

The thing that bothers me is my memory.  I don’t remember things or conversations sometimes I have periods of time I don’t remember.  Last week I came home did some things and went to  bed.  I woke up the next morning in a panic telling my daughter that I had to give her money for lunch cause I didn’t make it.  She said “Mom I watched you make my lunch we sat at the counter and talked for half an hour before you went to bed.  I remember nothing…..my daughter thinks I lost my mind — maybe she is right. 

As for now, I retrace my steps over and over to make sure I did what I wanted to do and repeat myself over and over to make sure that I said what I wanted to say and I didn’t say it in my mind.  That happens a lot too.  Its hard not to act crazy when you are acting crazy. 

till next time…..

how true

Sunday night …the end of a painful weekend.  I have had maybe 8 hours sleep all weekend.  I am tired, but can’t sleep, I am angry, I am negative, I am sad – and self-destructive. I fell into a hole, and nothing is real.  I feel nothing but pain, I am trying not to cut myself but the pain wishes to reveal itself on the outside and appears.  This is the account of a person dealing with depression and the feelings that come and the coping I do.  Causing myself pain believe it or not releases the inner struggle.  Do I want to hurt myself, no, but my mind goes away and I  am not found. a numbness comes, and can not be denied, put away, or hidden.   Things are surreal, I  do not know what is a real thing.  I can not even put into words the mess I am in right now.  I want to be good and loving and be so much more than I am becoming.  I am in a state of giving up.  I have given up so many things I wish to be involved with at church cause I can’t do them I have ministry things that are dear to me and I see them being set aside because I can’t cope.  Hell I couldn’t do the darn Costco shop on my own, don’t even look at my washrooms they are a mess.  I was a women in control…now I can’t even scrub a toilet.

this reads like self-pity and whining.  idiot.

how do you explain depression without sounding self-centered and pitiful.  It is this deep-seated pain that rests in your heart, and a voice which belittles everything about you.  My husband gets a call from a person from our church today — a hard ass- pardon the expression.  But had wonderful things to say about him and the lack of him playing in the band at church.   Nice it made him feel so good, she forgot I played guitar and didn’t realize I played in the band too.  I stand beside my husband — How invisible am I — is that pitiful.   maybe it is.

Bottom line tonight I don’t know what is what.  I don’t even know if there is a God. I look at the most delicate things he created in this world and look at the scars on my arm, If he is so great how can I feel so bad.  If he is so wonderful, how can he let his child hurt.  As a parent I have let my children suffer through things, instead of giving them all they want to teach them humility.  How proud must I be if this is my fathers lesson to me.

till next time

It’s the middle of September, made it through a month of work. Its been ok, very busy, keeping me on my toes. I needed a break so my husband and I went to our favorite Provincial Park and went camping. The evenings were cold but we had a fantastic dinner, sat in front of a fire cuddled up in our tent trailer and slept in Sunday Morning. We talked and talked and talked about everything. It was a really good weekend balm for my soul, and our marriage. We felt like we had been on a long vacation and it was only over night.

I have reduced one of my meds– can’t remember if I mentioned this before previous blog, but I have and with out my Doctor’s advisement. I am beyond numb and I want to feel something so I am reducing one some. I have also decided to check out a Naturpathic Doctor. I saw her a week ago. I went through some testing and basically said I am in great health (“great now what” – I am thinking) but my adrenals are extremely low and could be causing some of my exhaustion problems. I tell her I want to be off the antidepressants and for now she doesn’t want me to touch the dose for now. So I continue on. In the mean time she prescribes some things to help improve the adrenals and my exhaustion. I didn’t tell her that I had a complete work up of blood tests a month or so ago I wanted to get an idea if she was for real or not. As we went through the testing she told me my thyroid was normal, iron is slightly off and blood pressure normal, and everything else she tested was normal– exactly what my medical doctor had told me. I have read and read and read so much on hormones and adrenals and everything I could on  menopause – listened to every TV show on the subject, and researched for at least the past 10 years so when she started to talk I knew what she was saying and it wasn’t anything new to me. So why did I go? the question is where to you start; from a natural point of view, to help yourself. Walk into Shoppers go to the vitamin section– what should I buy?? Lord knows I have bought most of it and thrown out just as much cause I forget to take it or it doesn’t work. But the Naturapath knows the right combinations and what interacts with what drugs, that is the important thing. Right off the bat when I started my antidepressants I was told by my family doctor not to take St John’s Wort cause it will not mix with the other drugs. So this Naturpathic Dr. takes the guess-work out of how much, what should I take, and not a dozen other things I think I need, but my body doesn’t use and I end up peeing money away. So I am relieved that way,
and this seems logical to me as a right step.

So I take my little baggy from the Doctor’s office and head home. I get home set my new collection out on the counter tell my husband all about the apt and head on with my life. This is week two of taking my little collection… and it dawns on me this morning (little slow -I am) I have gone from taking a pill in the morning and a pill at night to one liquid vit. and 3 other Vit.pills. Then I take 3 at lunch and my other pill in the evening. So to get off the anti depressant pills I have to take a teaspoon of liquid and 3 other pills more than once a day (picture head slowly tapping on a wall) Ironic !
Welcome to my life, one pill at a time , life of the mentally ill.
till next time………………..

I was watching a movie with my daughter the other weekend. It was called Perks of Being wall Flower. It is one of her favorites, she has watched it over and over and over.. read the book too. So finally I watch it with her. It becomes very apparent to me that one of the main characters suffers from mental illness. To make a long story short, his best friend takes his life, the main character struggles, he is friendless, gets friends, his friends leave him, and he gets them again, and his illness worstens and eventually leads to a black out, but his sister calls the cops and they break into the house, he awakes in the hospital mental ward. Movie in a nutshell.

At the end I am a mess. I leave the room go to the basement fold towels and cry for an hour. My husband is freaked out- afraid of my crying, I assure him I am fine and send him off to the gym and continue to cry once he is gone. It wasn’t the fact that the lead had a mental illness, it his slow break down that bothered me. You see the breakdown through images that are supposed to be going through his mind. Bits of this, Bits of friendships, bits of relationship pain, coming to a end with a black out. After the police break into the house and the lead ends up in the hospital in the mental ward, the psyc doctor comes in all puppy eyed and asking “so how you doing?” etc etc uggg really that is what the Doctor can come up with??? Cause if that was me I would be saying –“Fine, what the heck am I here for?” But it wasnt the doctor that made me cry- (eventhough the Doctor’s acting was aweful) It was the kids responce….”How do I stop it?” Stop what says the doctor, “Seeing it, all their lives all the time— there is so much pain I don’t know how to not notice it, its not my pain its is them everyone, it never stops”

Before the antidepressant drugs, before I knew what was happening to me, I emailed my pastor and asked him how to deal with it. How do I deal with the pain of my brothers rejection of family and God. Why wasn’t God dealing with this. How can I deal with the pain it is causing, I was confused and didn’t understand that the pain of all those who I was praying for wasn’t mine, I needed to give it to God and let him deal with the burden, but it burdened me down and I didn’t understand under the magnitude of the pain, and you mix that with a unstable mind and you fall down some pretty deep holes you never thought existed. Months and months later on I sat in my pastor’s office with a piece of paper, I had scribbled all over the paper, notes of a mad person, analyzing a bible verse I had to understand, I had to grasp the meaning, then I could feel better, I would be ok. I had scribbled all kinds of points, questions, and rambling and in the course of the conversation I realized I wasn’t looking for a meaning, or understanding I was caught between a flight and fight moment of anxiety and thinking that understanding one simple point would bring my mind clarity. When the reality was I was caught in the cycle of pain that blinded me to what was real and what wasn’t, and I distinctly remember sitting in the office thinking —how did I get to this office and why am I here? What was my point? I was lost and again seeing the pain around me, I could not understand nor fix. A few months ago I had a bad episode – I had been sliding and I knew I was but I didn’t want to- and refused to acknowledge it, I hid it, and one night blacked out only to awaken in my bed the next morning with 7 or 8 cuts up and down my forearm I don’t really remember doing, I remember the feeling I had the night before, thinking I have made the outside look like the feeling inside, and feeling peace from the thought. I was horrified when I woke up the next morning, when I realized what I had done. I didn’t stop at that time, I after a month of hiding and trying to heal, I told my husband who freaked, but didn’t understand. Who can understand the inside of the messed up mind but another messed up mind.

I cried at the movie, because the last 5 minutes of the movie was me, I was watching my words being spoke by someone else, I watched someone else end up in the hospital on the silver screen that should have been me – had I not hid things so well. It was like an out of body experience and I was watching me. With shame, and pain, and understanding, I saw me.

It has taken me a month to talk about this movie. The previous months and things I have wrote about seem a lifetime ago, not months ago. In some ways they feel like a movie–someone else’s life, someone else’s illness. I am trying not to feel the pain of others, keeping my head down, not to see, not to notice.

Where does this put me in my walk with God? We are standing and looking at the clouds, neither moving forward, nor moving back. To move in a relationship you must feel, I do not wish to feel so I progress no where.

till next time…………………..

One week left in my holidays….my goodness time flies. I have lots to complete this week but that is ok, all will get done. On reflection it has been a good time off. It has had its up and downs but all in all its been good.

My goal for this summer was me, get healthy me, get fit me, slim down a bit me. In the downs I have faced this summer I think I have realized some of the beginning signs of certain behaviours. I know me better. I know when I should stop myself and reroute some of the things I am doing, feeling. The hardest part is fighting the direction the downs take you. Its like walking against the current in a river, sometime the current is slow and its a easy walk sometimes it is so fast it carries you away. It has taken me away from time to time this summer, not swept away never to come back, but I have been swept off my feet and dragged down a bit to regain some foot hold and crawl back to where I once were. I still am not in group therapy yet, but I will call and see where I am on the waiting list, in the mean time I have been creating my own strategies. My husband watches me like a hawk, he is so afraid of me hurting myself he is on me like a wet blanket. He has started going to a gym after work so I have been encouraging him to go often to give me a hour of breathing time. I am not ungrateful, he is a wonderful man, he loves me dearly and I him, he is just worried and I know that is my fault and I hate to see him that way. The thought just ran through my head when I wrote that last sentence that I should just stop, but sometimes you can not help the darkness that attacks. If a large wave is coming towards you, you can not stand still close your eyes and think it will not hit you cause you can’t see it. I fight in my head somedays, I don’t want to, but I have conversations in my head so I snap my elastic’s around my wrist if they get too loud to shock me into thinking about what is going on. My shock therapy with out wires.

I am heading to a naturopathic doctor in the next couple of weeks. I have tried the medical side of things. I am putting on weight and I eat all the right things, and doing a combo of p90x and Insanity workouts 6 days a week, the meds are creeping up the pounds- don’t think me vain, I just don’t want to have to buy new cloths. I have a closet full of cloths for work I want to fit back into. I keep trying to be healthy, and eat right, sleep right, what else can I do– just go forward and do my best

till next time………..

I wish to be hanging around, but my days seem to be filled with little jobs. I have been a little anxious this week but not just because of my depression – just feeling overwhelmed. I have been popular. That sounds silly but my husband wants me to do this….. my kids want me to take them here or there not just to shop, but to do things that need to be done. Even my neighbor wanted me to go with him to do some shopping. I just wanted to stay home and get some work done there, and to pay some bills, make some calls etc. The other thing I am a little anxious about is I am going to Ottawa on Sunday for a couple of days to take my daughter to a concert with her friend, and to do some sight seeing with my Mother. I have made the hotel arrangements and such its a case of the unknown and I makes me a little nervous. I have put that to the back of my mind, I will take some time later to deal with it. today maybe I can get myself on track…. we will see

A week later.

Well here we are a week later. I went to Ottawa with my Mother, my daughter and her friend. We had a great time. I put worrying about the whole thing on the back burner, and by the time I had time we were there. I hadn’t been on a road trip with out my husband in 20+ years so it was freeing to hop in the car and take off. I don’t mean from my husband – it was a girl thing so it was cool. I did well — no anxious moments, I managed to keep everyone happy and got the ones who had to be somewhere where they had to be and was tour guide the rest of the time and we really enjoyed ourselves.
Home now and I have two weeks before I go back to school and I have a few things I want to do, husband back at work now, kids working, I get a little peace and quiet for a few days. Praise God.
Been feeling good, getting lots of exercise, doing ok. 🙂
till next time…………….

The hand of God, unending, boundless, yet unseeing.
The word of God, life, living, true, yet unheard.
The light of God, warm, endless, never-ending, yet unseen.

The hand of God can not be seen when your head is in your hands.
The word of God can not be read if your eyes are closed.
The light of God can not be felt if you hide yourself in the darkness.

Though the world covers our senses and begs us to not see, hear, or feel.
The truth is, God holds us in his hand with tender love.
His word is His truth of his character and love
His light is our shelter, his guide, his love.

So sinner I say to you to not wallow in the darkness of shame, lift your head.
See the love, the light, the truth, and repent, and live the life God wants you.
The darkness is close but fight it with the help of God and hold onto his truths;
not the yelling in your head for the word of God is not shouted to you, but is a gentle whisper.
The light of God does not attack you like the dark, the word of God does not taunt.
But when you bath in the light of truth the peace of God comes and crowds out the dark, the rude, the hatred. Run away in the light, and hide in plan sight, for the darkness hides from the light, and cowers to the truth.

till next time………….

Back from Camping it was a good get away, lots of activity and kayaking, hiking. Emotionally, I only had one night I was slipping and my Husband was on me like you would not have believed, he has good intentions but sometimes I just need to feel it, talk to myself deal with it. I was only a night, I bounced back the next day. I worked out in the morning, went swimming in the afternoon – had a nap, felt better. We packed for our weekend when it was hot – when we got camping it was cold, a little shock to go to pants and sweaters.
I haven’t heard from the anxiety clinic – will call tomorrow. So many things going on that I am a little stressed, son going back to college getting paperwork and stuff together. I am away from the weekend with out the kids so maybe I can relax get a reprieve and come back refreshed and go forward and get everyone launched at the end of August.

That is it for now. till next time…………

It has been a hot summer since I been off work, it was a slow spring but it is picking up as July goes by.   Today  is another hot day–I am ok with that, I really do like the hot weather.

How have I been since the episode.  I have been better, and that is nice.  I had a prayer secession with my Pastor his wife and my husband, a bit ago, it was not comfortable, but when the Lord is poking you its never comfortable.  In the middle of my last episode at a very dark moment I cut myself.  I am ashamed, embarrassed, to say the least, but I keep it a secret and God was not going to let me keep it that way.  My best friend realized a during the episode what was happening, she kept it to herself and talked only to me about it.   God wanted me to share during our prayer time together about what I had done.  I could not look any of them in the eye and tell them.  I kept it quiet, spent a tormented night and emailed them in the next day – after I sat my husband down to admit what I had done.  My husband is Scottish, to say he took it in stride would totally be wrong, he freaked.  He was ready to take me to the hospital on the spot.  I talked him out of it and eventually got him calmed down to discuss what is what.  To say he watches me like a hawk, is an understatement.  Another step in the process.  As for my Therapy.  My Psyc doctor didn’t send through my request so it got sent three days ago! so I have to call the Anxiety clinic to see how long I wait, and then I may get some help.  In the mean time I am working out trying to eat right and enjoying the heat.  I know its a rollercoaster and I know another down will come.  I just have to figure out how to handle it.  I need to make it a way of life and I don’t quite know how to handle the downs.  I am trying to create my own coping strategies and some work, some don’t.  I pray that my therapy group opens up and I can see if this will help.

For now, I am up, and I am busy getting ready for a camping trip.  My family goes with a few other families, and have so for 12 years now.  Oh how time flies.   Getting ready for this isn’t stressful.  I have had years where I felt very stressed out about this trip, not because I didn’t like the families, but because I felt I never fit in with the group.  Time passes, we grow up, things change, and it is all good.

That is all for now till next time………………………