Self-saboteur

I am a self-saboteur. I constantly sabotage myself, that’s what I do. I feel myself becoming happy about something or someone and it is such an uncomfortable, foreign feeling to me, that my first instinct is to fuck it up and put a stop to this undeserved happiness. My self-talk is so negative and mean, it is like I can’t handle anything that contradicts what the dark part of my brain is telling me and it really fucking sucks.

 
I was born with faulty wiring in my brain. Basically, without getting too medical, my brain doesn’t know how to properly regulate the amount of serotonin it produces. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that controls several things, but specially, mood and anxiety. My body has a tendency to over produce serotonin at times, causing me to have manic episodes, which are rare for me these days. More often for me though, my brain under produce serotonin, which causes me to feel depressed and anxious. I’ve been this way all my life, with certain life events compounding my situation, but wasn’t properly diagnosed until a full-on suicidal break down at age 19. Since then I have been on medication, done lots of therapy, read books, changed lifestyle habits, and closely monitored my emotions. Of course, none of this gets rid of the depression completely, it only helps me manage it day to day. Which brings me back to my self-sabotaging behavior and incredibly negative self-talk.

 
Having lived with depression for so long, I have become an expert in masking my feelings. I am well aware that no one wants to be around the “sad girl.” No one wants to hang out with “Debbie downer,” or deal with someone else’s shit. I mean we all have our own shit going on, right? So, often times I am really good about putting on a smile, pushing through, and focusing on other people’s problems to distract myself from what I’m feeling. Most of the times I have everyone fooled, even myself. Sure, sometimes people will note that I am unusually quiet, which is a big red flag for me considering I never shut up or slow down. Usually at that point, I quietly withdraw from view and people just assume I’m busy with life. I’m able to hide it well.

 
As someone who suffers from depression, like most people, I do it in silence and have a terrible time asking for help or finally coming forward to say that I’m struggling. After more than 20 years of knowing what I’m dealing with and working tirelessly to deal with it, I still just can’t stand up and tell someone who cares about me that I need help. My self-talk tells me that doing this will just drive people away. No one wants to hear about my problems. I have good reason for feeling this way too. On multiple occasions, I’ve had people in my life, who I thought I could trust and confide it, tell me that I am just too much and walk away from me. That hurts worse than anything. That rejection of the darkest part of me. That feeling of never being able to truly be seen. It causes me to double down of the idea of never really showing people who I am, which is incredibly difficult because I believe in living a genuine and honest life. I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve. I want to be seen for who I am, but know I am not accepted for that person. Then that one piece of who I am, that dark part of my brain, is able to take over and cancel out all the good qualities I know I have. It is like a little devil sitting on my shoulder, whispering evil thoughts into my ear. These evil thoughts aren’t about others, they are all about me, and how unworthy I am of love, acceptance, and happiness.

 

As much as I fight the devil on my shoulder, I often give into her. I feel happiness coming into my life, things are going well, and that maybe I’m okay, but then the devil speaks, and it all falls apart. I hear all the awful things that she tells me, and I begin to doubt everything. My insecurities creep up on me like a thick fog in the night. Suddenly, I can’t see anything clearly. She tells me “Don’t be stupid! You don’t deserve to feel this way. You are being lulled into a false sense of security so that you let down your guard. As soon as you let that guard down, everything is going to turn to shit, and you are going to be hurt. Don’t fall for this trap! Run away, don’t let anyone in! You don’t deserve to be happy; you aren’t supposed to feel good. Stick with feeling shitty and you will never be too disappointed.” Then I do something to sabotage whatever is going right in my life. I strike out into that dark fog, hoping to hit anything I can. Usually that anything is a person. I say harsh things to push people away. I feel shitty, so I make others feel shitty. Then I feel more shitty for being such awful person. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I feel vindicated when the person I hurt retreats from me like a wounded animal. See, my devil was right. I am a horrible, terrible, unworthy person, who doesn’t know how to be a normal human being, and I don’t deserve to have people in my life because I treat them like shit. I am meant to be alone. Then the cycle continues. The depression pushes in from all sides until I feel I can no longer breath.

 
I can’t even identify how I am able to break that cycle and briefly get back to my life. Every time I fall into the cycle I ask myself, how did I get out of this last time? How did I beat my devil and quiet my negative self-talk long enough to pull myself out of the hole I constantly dig for myself? In all honestly, I don’t know. It is just another mystery of how my brain works. My brain, which is so messed up with faulty wiring and horrible messages about myself, that keeps me from feeling capable of being normal or happy. My brain that causes me to push everyone and everything good in my life away. My brain that feels like it is so rotted by this one, small, but pervasive dark aspect of me, that all that is good about me can never overcompensate for the darkness in me. My brain that is full of negative self-talk and constantly causes me to self-sabotage. My brain that I fight everyday just to survive.

Rediscovering Me

 

At the beginning of the year, I declared this year to be the year of me and I began making changes to take back my life. After 17 years in a relationship with one person, four kids, living in 2 different states, multiple jobs, all of which I eventually gave up, and devoting my life to my family, I was overdo for a year to focus on myself. The problem is, it had been so long since I’d focused on myself that I had a lot of rediscovering to do.
I am now six months in and making progress, but still have a ways to go. I lost over 20 pounds in the first 3 months, took control of my diet and began exercising again, something I’ve always enjoyed, but had to give up when my son got kicked out of school a few years ago and my life continued to spiral out of control with one issue after another. I made the decision to move my kids and myself back to the southwest after the divorce is over in order to be closer to family and have support. I even reconnected with old friends back there and am a little excited to move despite loving living in the pacific northwest. I explored several dating apps and began dating again for the first time in 17 years, which is weird, but knowing that I’ll be moving in a matter of months and that everything is temporary, has made it easier and fun. I’ve gotten back to doing art, something that has always been an important part of my life, but I hadn’t made time for in a long time. I even broke out my painting easel for the first time since moving here almost 7 years ago. I’ve been making more time for writing and am working on several things separate from my blog. Last week, I finally pulled the trigger and began applying for grad school, another thing that I’ve wanted to do forever and have always put on the back burner to care for my family.
Despite doing all these things for myself, I still often find myself sad and lonely. I couldn’t figure out why. My life was starting to go in the direction I wanted, and things were getting better day by day, so why did I still feel this way? I was finally getting some time to myself with my kids spending a full 24 hours at their dad’s each weekend and then a few hours for dinner during the week. So why was I struggling with this sudden alone time and needing to fill this time instead of enjoying the time alone? Then it hit me. I’ve spent the last almost 12 years devoting my life to other people. As time went on and my family expanded, I spent more and more time devoted to my love ones, putting them first, and I lost more and more of who I was and what made me happy. My happiness began to be dependent on the happiness of my family and not on things that actually made me happy. The last few years of my marriage were so bad; I’d become a shell of my former self. No wonder I was sad and lonely. I no longer knew who I was, and it had been so long since my happiness was important or put at the forefront, I had no idea what made me happy.
So now I’ve embarked on the big task of rediscovering who I am and what brings me joy. Clearly, I am not the same person that I was 17 years ago, when I was single, but there are still certain aspects of that person that exists inside of me. Over time and with life experience though, I have changed and gained new interests, perspective, and strength. I am finding that I am a better, more grounded, and confident version of the person I used to be in my 20s. Sometimes I just need to remind myself of the bad ass that I am and how much I am capable of. I’ve started going through pictures, old and more recent, finding ones that remind me of who I am and my personality when I am not being “mom” or “wife” because I am not limited to those labels, in fact, I no longer carry the label of wife. This rediscovery of me is important and freeing. As much as I love caring for my family and taking care of others, I lost myself in one aspect of my life. Now I am learning how to be happy without my happiness being dependent on other people. Yes, connecting with others is important and my boys will always be my highest priority, but now I am adding myself to that priority list, something I’ve never been good at. I think it is important for my boys as well, to see their mother as a whole, happy, independent person, who is not just there to care for them, but can care for herself and set boundaries too. I can connect with people, care for people, and still enjoy time to myself.

It isn’t an easy process, rediscovering who I am after all this time. Sometimes it can be scary and uncomfortable, but I am learning to sit in that uncomfortableness and see where it takes me. I am learning to be more patient and accepting of myself. Sure, there are parts of me that I still do not like and there are times I don’t want to be trapped inside my own head, but I think it is important that I learn to embrace myself during those times and to know that there is more to me than those faults and flaws. I am learning to love myself and the wonderful person I am. I am worthy of love and connection with others despite the messages I was given the last several years or any events that took place. I will not let a failed marriage or hurtful words and actions define me. Instead, I will redefine myself, rediscovering who I really am when I stand on my own two feet.

A son’s pain

As a parent, it is very hard to watch one of your children struggle. You want to somehow fix whatever they are struggling with. While some struggles are good for children to experience and build character, other struggles can feel unnecessary and pull at your heart strings. It is especially hard to watch your child struggle when that struggle is with the relationship with their own dad.
My oldest had a difficult relationship with his dad long before his father and I separated. In fact, I’d say that their relationship began to strain around the time my oldest turned four. I can remember constantly warning my husband that he was going to ruin his relationship with our oldest from early on. He would expect too much of our oldest at an early age, far more than he was developmentally able to handle. My ex expected our son to somehow, be more mature and take on more responsibility because he was the older brother, even though he was only two when he first became an older brother. He was always harsher with our oldest and it was obvious to many who observed them together. It didn’t help that our oldest had behavioral issues and was a lot like his dad.
As my son got older, the relationship between him and his father became more strained. His dad could be very mean to him, yelled at him a lot, and on occasion, would get physically rough with our oldest. When our oldest was about 8 years old, he asked me to write a note to his dad to tell him that he was scared of him. My then husband had a lot of his own issues that spilled over into his relationship with our oldest, who took the brunt of his father’s anger and frustration.
After his dad left the house, my oldest seemed to be more relaxed at home and happy. One day, as we were cleaning out the car, prompted by something my son’s therapist said, I asked my oldest how he felt about his dad not living with us anymore. What my oldest son told me broke my heart in so many ways. He told me that he liked it better because everyone seemed happier and there was less fighting in general in the house. He said that he didn’t really miss his dad because he never really had a good relationship with him and that he really wanted a new, different dad, one who loved him and accepted him for who he is. I sat there next to him, listening stoically, wanting nothing more than to burst into tears at these words. My eleven-year-old son perceived his dad as someone who didn’t love him or support him. He told me he wanted a dad that would play with him and support him and treat him better. How did I ever let things between them get this bad? Why hadn’t these two managed to bond? Why did my son feel so unloved by his own father? I reassured him that his dad did indeed love him, but that sometimes he had a hard time showing it. That didn’t seem to easy my son’s mind.
Yesterday was Father’s Day, the first Father’s Day since my marriage completely fell apart. My children’s father wasn’t sure that he wanted to see them yesterday. I really wanted to hate him for it, but I knew why. Still, I was heartbroken for my boys and decided to not even tell them it was Father’s Day if they weren’t going to get to celebrate with their dad. After some tearful pleading, I convinced their dad to see them for a brief time, knowing my second and fourth child would really want to be with him on this day. What I hadn’t considered was how my oldest would feel about this day in which he was supposed to celebrate the father, who he had a very difficult relationship with. It wasn’t until we reached the restaurant, which we were meeting his dad at, that I realized just how hard it was on my oldest.
My oldest began acting out immediately. He was bothering his brothers and misbehaving, trying to make everyone miserable. Upon looking closer at his behavior, I realized he was feeling miserable and wanted everyone else to feel the way he did. He was angry and confused about his feelings. I asked him about how he was feeling, but he just didn’t know, nor did he know why he was feeling this way. He was visibly upset by the whole situation. After a bit, I pulled him outside to talk about what he might be feeling and why. I talked to him about how I was feeling and reassured him that, even if his dad didn’t know how to show it, he did really love him. I explained to him that, like him, his dad also struggled sometimes. I told him that it was ok to be mad at his dad, and even at me, because I was the one who asked his dad to leave, but what wasn’t ok was how he was dealing with that anger. I told him some ways that I deal with my anger and talked with him about ways that he might want to try to deal with his. In the end, I held him and told him that no matter what, I loved him and would always be there for him. When we were done, we returned to the rest of the family, my oldest son much calmer, but I felt far from calm. My outward appearance may have seemed fine, but inside I was dying. All I wanted to do was go home, lock myself in my room, and sob.
I had to hold back tears as I drove my boys home. I was so heartbroken by the pain that my oldest son was feeling. I was angry and sad and disappointed and was in mama bear mode. I couldn’t protect my son from these feelings or this struggle. I couldn’t take away his pain or change the circumstances. All I could do was be there for my son in his pain and it filled me with pain and sadness.
I don’t know how this story ends. I don’t know what happens from here. I hope and pray that the relationship between my oldest son and his father will be healed eventually, but I honestly don’t know if it will. The only thing that I do know is how painful it is to watch my son experience and navigate his tenuous relationship with his father. This is one struggle that I wish my son did not have.

The curious mind

As I putting my two youngest to bed tonight, we listened to the same collection of music that we have listened to so many nights before to help them drift off to sleep. One of their favorite songs in the collection is “House at a Pooh Corner,” a song I have sung to them and listened to with them since they were babies. They call it the “Winnie the Pooh” song because they know the song is about him, but have never really said much else about it, aside from the fact that they like it. Tonight, however, as my five year old was listening to it for the millionth time as he drifted off into slumber, he suddenly asked, “why?” The question was so out of no where and I thought for sure he was almost asleep, so it took me a moment to understand the question. The lyrics had just sung “Winnie the Pooh doesn’t know what to do, got a honey jar stuck on his nose.” I explained to him that the honey jar was stuck and the the follow up questions began. “Why?” I explained he was trying to eat the honey from the jar. Then came “when? Right now? Is he real?” I looked over and could see by the dim light of the room wheels turning in my littlest one’s brain. Next came questions about bees and honey. It was as though he was listening to the song for the first time, I mean really listening. His little brain was processing all this information and trying to figure out exactly what was going on in this song he had heard so many times before. Then just as suddenly as all the questions started, they stopped. I looked over again and he was passed out asleep, clearly exhausted from his one last burst of curiosity into the world around him. These kids constantly amaze me with the way their minds work and all the connections they are constantly making.

The giant Teddy Bear that ended my marriage

 

Like most people, my wedding day was one of the best days of my life. It was full of hope, magic, and love. My own wedding caused me to cry at all weddings that I attended after that because it brought back the feelings of happiness and love that I felt on that day. Nothing is better than the way you feel on your wedding day. You hope those feeling will last forever. Things change with time, however, and not all marriages last. That is the reality I am currently trying to deal with in my life.

I love my husband, I always have, pretty much since the day I meet him. After 17 years together and 13 years of marriage though, I am no longer in love with my husband. Our years together have not been easy, especially in the last few years. There has been a lot of pain and disappointment that has taken its toll on our marriage. I continued to stick out the relationship for many years, thinking that if I just hung in there and kept loving him that things would change and get better. They never did, at least not for very long. So, when I told my husband last December that I wanted to sperate, it wasn’t me trying to get his attention in a last-ditch effort to save our marriage, it was me telling him that I was finally done with the marriage. The catalyst for this choice all comes down to a giant stuffed bear.

As I said before, things weren’t good for a long time between my husband and I. I had become a single parent despite being married. He was rarely there, and I could never really depend on him. It had gotten to the point where I would just plan life without him and hope that he would choose to show up. It was easier this way, it relieved some of the constant disappointment that I felt. Last December, when I planned a pre-Christmas trip to Portland for the family, I really didn’t expect my husband to join us, but as it got closer, he seemed so excited to go. I began to include him in the plans and the boys were excited to get to spend some time with their dad. However, when the day came to leave for our trip, my husband was not in our car as we pulled out of the driveway. I was sad and disappointed once again, but I was determined to make this an awesome trip with my boys that they would never forget. I think I did just that. They seemed happy and I definitely spoiled them, probably a little too much out of guilt. I figure that kids are resilient and that I’d kept them so busy with fun that their dad not being there wouldn’t affect them much. I was wrong about that though.

While we were I Portland, we visited Santa, and he told me to take the boys to a special toy store to let them pick out anything they wanted from Santa, so we obeyed. My second oldest, who is currently 9, picked out a giant Teddy Bear that was almost as big as him. He was so excited about his Teddy Bear and still sleeps with it in his bed. As we were driving home from Portland, we talked about our favorite parts of the trip and how much fun we had. My 9-year-old commented that he wished his dad had come and that he couldn’t wait to see him when we got home to tell him all about the trip. All the other boys agreed that they had missed their dad and wished that he had joined us on the trip. They were all very excited to see their dad when we got home. After an extra-long weekend away, they were all very eager to get home. My 9-year-old said that all he wanted to do when he got home was to give his dad a big hug with his giant new Teddy Bear and to hold them both. It was such a sweet idea that really showed how much he’d missed his dad. Then we got home.

My husband came down to greet us and help bring in the bags, but within five minutes of us being home, he had returned to his office to play more video games, something he had been doing all weekend long while we were gone. He disappeared into his office for several hours, only reappearing after the two youngest were already sound asleep and I was about to put the two older boys to bed. He didn’t spend anytime with us that evening, he didn’t listen to the stories from our trip, and he didn’t help me bathe or settle children in after a very exhausting weekend. Instead, he did what he always did, he took care of himself and did what he wanted, which didn’t include his family. It broke my heart to know that his boys were so excited to see him and had missed him so much, but that he clearly didn’t feel the same way. I could see the devastation in my 9-year old’s eyes that he didn’t get to share that hug with his day and his giant stuffed Teddy Bear like he had wanted to so badly. That’s when I knew it was time to for things to change and that I finally needed to make the hard call of ending our marriage.

Over the past few years, I felt like my husband was drowning and I was constantly trying to save him, but instead he was pulling me under with him. In those moments, after our Portland trip, I looked around and realized, we weren’t the only two drowning in that pond. Our kids were there too, and they were barely treading water. I knew I had to let my husband go and get my kids and myself back to the safety of the shore. It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made, but I knew it was the right one and felt such relief after I told him.

Now we are in the messy processing of figuring out how to move forward while trying to keep our kids afloat. It is strange that I struggled for so long about what to do with my marriage, how to fix it, and what was best for my kids only to figure out what we all really needed because of a giant Teddy Bear.

Strong

I am not a Disney Princess. I don’t need to be rescued. I am strong, stronger than I get credit for.

I don’t sit patiently, waiting for permission. I don’t quietly obey. I am my own person. I live life on my own terms. I will not let limitations be set for me or be told what I can and cannot do. I will not be restricted in this life.

I will not willingly spread my legs at your command. I will not be controlled. I will not be guilted into continuing in a broken cycle. I will not be broken.

I will rise-up, out of the ashes, like a Phoenix. I will move on and beyond. I will survive because it is what I do and it is all I know. I will be strong because that is what I am.

I will not play the damsel in distress. I will not let a man define me. I will break free of these chains you constantly use to bind me.

The other side of the coin

Sometimes I feel like I am talking, but no body is listening. It is a very lonely feeling. It hurts even more when someone I love is the one not listening. No matter how often it happens, it still seems to cut. I know I should be used to it by now, after all, I talk a lot and I am overly-passionate about things. My passion, though I love it, is often a huge turn off to people though. I tend to feel things much deeper and strongly than most people because I am bi-polar.
We live in a world where people really don’t want to feel anything. People become addicted to technology and consumerism as a means to dullen their feelings. We self-medicate with prescription pills that we over use and drugs, and alcohol to avoid pain and facing our problems. No one wants to be introspective, they all just want to live in some fantasy world like the ones on the tv. That is all a nice escape sometimes, but then people miss out on all that is around them. Sometimes I try to dull my senses like everyone else, but it never really works, at least not for long. My feelings, emotions, and passions are too great for me to contain and that’s when people stop listening.
I’m very open about talking about my depression and often write about it because it is a big part of me, and I think it is important for others out there to know that they are not alone in their loneliness and despair. I don’t often talk about the fact that I suffer from mania though. Most people don’t even realize that this is a part of me. I’m very up front and say I have depression, but I rarely say that I am manic-depressive. Maybe that’s because I don’t have frequent manic episodes or when I do, they are minor in comparison to my depression, or because mania seems a little more crazy than just straight up depression. My mania is part of what gives me my passions though. It is part of what makes my emotional capacity so great. It is a part of who I am, just another part that most people don’t seem to care for.
I work hard to maintain an even keel in my emotions. Sure, people see I’m passionate, but they don’t usually see the full range of that passion, that would be too scare. I keep close tabs on my emotions, careful clamping down when I feel they are getting too big. It would be so easy to go off the deep end and end up in a full manic state, which can be scare and always leads to a debilitating depressing afterwards. I try to tap into that manic side just enough to do the things I need to do; have that extra energy for something, to keep me going when on empty, or to be creative when I feel the need, but most of the time I keep that lid closed shut on my own personal Pandora’s box.
When I think of true, full blown mania, I think of being 19 and the beautiful chaos that was my world. Looking at it from a nostalgic view, it feels like a wonderful crazy adventure, but from the view of reality, it was a terrible, dangerous time for me that I can never ever allow to happen again. Being manic back then meant experiencing the world in such a vibrant way that could probably only be replicated with massive drug use, like tripping on acid (I can only assume, since that is not a drug I ever tried). In fact, I felt so high on life all the time that I refused to use any drugs back then, for fear it would dampen my senses, I didn’t even drink. I lived in a house full of pot heads for part of that time and I never once was tempted to use because what I was feeling was so much better than they could ever possibly feel by getting high. I was uninhibited and daring. I pulled all-nighters in college, writing papers or painting at the studio into the early morning. I went days without sleep and hardly needed food. I would dance naked in the rain and jump from highway over passes into rivers below to skinny dip in the moonlight. I had an insatiable sexual appetite that no person could quench, and I wielded my body as a sexual weapon. I had no shame, no fear, no limits. It was amazing! Expect that it wasn’t.
Not only did the mania make me reckless (I still count my blessings that I never contracted an STD during that time), but it led me to a crash. Multiple crashes, actually. Mania can’t last forever, no matter how wonderful it feels. What starts off as fun and exciting for the people around you quickly becomes too much when you are manic. They don’t experience the same euphoria you feel, and the adventures become a little too much, a little too scare for them. They eventually jump ship and you are left on your own seeking that high alone. Being alone turns into loneliness as the mania fades and the other side of it eats you alive. That’s when the crippling depression sets in. That’s when it becomes even more dangerous.
The biggest problem with being manic-depressive is the heat at which your emotions burn. Whether I’m manic, depressed, or just me, I am never able to escape the huge range of feelings that I feel. I am forever doomed to feel things at a level that most people never will. It can give me wonderful passion, but it is passion that no one else seems to share or even wants to hear about. Having such great passion and no one to share it with makes for a lonely world to live in. If only people were more interested in letting a little more passion into their lives.

The villain

I am a villain. I am a bad guy. In fact, I’m not just a bad guy, I’m the worst bad guy ever. I am mom and I am the worst. I ruin everything.
It doesn’t matter what I do or how much I sacrifice or love them, I am still the worst person ever to my children. I’m the one that says no. I am the one that lays down the law and gives out punishment. I am the one who yells when all four are screaming at me in a cacophony of noise, demanding that I do something for them at that exact moment. I am the only one and I am the one to blame.
You know who isn’t the bad guy, isn’t the one they demand things from, or blame for ruining their lives? Dad! Dad is never at fault. Mostly because Dad is never here. Even when He is here, it isn’t His job to deal with the screaming masses, that’s my job. They walk right past Dad to come ask me to do things for them as if I am their servant and it is beneath Dad to be bothered with their needs.
Today I am terrible mom because I have spent all day carting kids around where they need to be and talking my oldest to three dentist appointments in one day, and then spent over an hour at the grocery store fighting the crowd of people trying to stock up before the impending snow storm tomorrow. I fought traffic to get home and be greeted with great joy that quickly turns to complaints and hatred toward me when I tell them no. No, they can not go outside at 5:00 at night as the temperature is dropping, it is getting dark, and people are coming home from work not expecting to see three young children sledding into the street. I am an awful mother because I want to keep my kids safe and warm, knowing the snow will be there for the next few days. I have ruined everything though because they have waited all day for me to come home so they could go outside and sled, despite the fact that the one hour I had at home today, the older of the three refused to go outside, so the 7 year old wouldn’t stay outside to play by himself with me watching him from the window. Despite the fact that their Dad has been home all day with them, and they could’ve asked Him if they could go outside. So, I am the bad guy yet again, as they scream and yell at me before I can even unpack the groceries. Meanwhile, Dad is upstairs napping, free from abuse.
So, call up Disney and tell them that they have a new evil, horrible, villain to draw for their next movie and she is the worst one yet. Her name is mom and she is me and she is a villain worthy of hating.

Feeling small in a big world

It is hard to fathom that there are over 7 billion people on this planet yet a person can still feel so alone in the world. You would think with all those people out there that we would all be able to find at least one to connect with, one person who would truly know us and see us for who we are. However, global depression rates stand at over 300,000 million people and there are probably more that aren’t accounted for in those numbers. That makes this planet an overwhelmingly lonely place to be.

We can stand in a room full of people, but still feel completely isolated and alone. We can talk and even laugh with people, but still feel unheard. Who really sees us? Who really ever knows us? Some people are lucky enough to find that someone or even several someones, but over 300,000 million of us never truly find that joy. Instead, we are isolated and alone.

Loneliness can make you do a lot of things. It can cause you to start a conversation with a complete and total stranger in hopes of finding a connection. It can make you retreat into a fantasy world that is not real no matter how much you want it to be. It can make you pour your inner most thoughts out onto a public forum in hopes that just one person will read it and connect with you. It can make you retreat into isolation in hopes that you will be able to protect yourself from some of the pain that hoping for and not finding connection brings. It can make you ache so much and feel so invisible that you feel you have no place on this earth. Loneliness can make warp the way you see the world and yourself.

So what do we do to feel less lonely, to easy that loneliness for all those people out there suffering from it in-spite of being surrounded by some many people? Clearly I don’t have an answer for that one. If I did, maybe I wouldn’t be one of those 300,000 million people feeling trapped in my loneliness.

Why this is “the year of me”

It feels a little selfish to say I’m going to make this year about me. Putting myself first isn’t something that I typically do. In fact, it feels a little weird to say I’m putting myself first and even weirder to do it. That, however, is precisely why I am making this “the year of me.”
I am a care taker, I always have been, that is just my personality. I’m always worrying about others, trying to solve other people’s problems, and putting everyone else’s needs ahead of my own. I had my first child 11 years ago, so it made sense to put my son ahead of me, he was just a helpless baby after all. As time went on though, I had three more kids, meaning I had three more little ones to put ahead of myself. I had no problem doing this, until it started to affect my health. Everything I did to try to be healthy, stay active, and eat right went further and further out the window with each kid until, by the last kid, I had such high blood pressure that it put both our lives in danger and I never recovered from it.
It wasn’t just my kids though whose needs I put ahead of my own (not that their needs weren’t enough for one person to struggle with). I put my husband ahead of me too. My husband has issues and they seemed to get really bad after our fourth child was born. I tried to help him and encouraged him to seek help as well, but things seemed to only get worse. His needs were greater and greater, and I took on more and more. Somewhere in there, my dad got sick with cancer. That was hard because I no longer lived near my parents, so I flew back to help them a few times with a toddler in tow. They had cared for me my whole life and there was nothing I wanted more than to be able to care for them in their time of need. Of course, that help was cut short when my husband’s needs and inability to care for our over three children for a week overshadowed the needs of my parents. I hopped on an earlier flight home to save my husband and children. Things like this went on pretty much non-stop for a good five years. At one point, I even took a teenaged stranger into our home to try to help him, ultimately letting him go when I realized that he needed to be on his own and struggle for awhile to figure things out.
About a year ago, I started having strange symptoms. They started off once a week or so and got progressively more frequent. My doctor had the hardest time trying to figure out what was going on with me and ran several tests. Eventually I was diagnosed with Adrenal Fatigue. All my years of taking care of everyone except me had finally caught up to me. My body decided that it had had enough and completely gave out on me. For at least two weeks, last spring, I could barely get out of bed to use the bathroom and I would sleep for hours on end. My body hurt all over. After those two weeks, I was able to get up some, for small amounts of time, but I couldn’t really take care of myself and I definitely couldn’t take care of my boys. I did the best I could with help from others, but it was very difficult and incredibly frustrating. My whole life had to slow down, and I had to take it easy and say no to things I would normally say yes to. It took me months to fully recover and even now, if I start to over-do things, I can feel the symptoms start to creep up on me, telling my body to slow down.
During this struggle, I had given up all exercise and became the heaviest I’ve ever been (even heavier than any of my pregnancies). After the initial bout of Adrenal Fatigue, as life began to settle back in, my eating habits took another hit because I had yet again gone into survival mode and would eat whatever was easiest to make and whatever the kids liked. It was all about making life as easy and stress-free as possible for myself in an already super stressful and busy life. Admittedly, once I was feeling better most of the time, I began taking back on more responsibilities (though less than before) and I continued to put everyone else first. I continued to enable my husband’s lack of progress with his issues, I did 98% of the parenting, I drove kids to multiple activities 6 days of the week, I worked every other 7th day of the week at church, I hardly slept, and I felt overwhelmed and very alone. That’s when I finally decided that something needed to change.
So here we are in a new year and it is the perfect time to make that change a reality. The first thing I did was tell my husband that we needed some time and space apart. I told him that I loved him, but that he needed to get his shit together on his own now and come back when he was a better husband and father. That alone has been hard because it is really hard to watch someone you love fall apart and then fall apart more because they are afraid of losing you. I just know that I couldn’t put him first anymore because it was affecting my health and our kids needed at least one functioning parent. It also means that I had to face the reality that he might never pull his shit together enough for us to be a couple again and I had to be okay with letting him go if I it comes to that. Despite the inner struggle of wanting him to stay, but knowing he should go, I’ve been really strong at sticking to my guns and doing the hard thing, which I know is the right thing.
My next action for my “year of me” was to get myself healthy. That means eating healthier, exercising, and losing some weight. I’m totally addicted to sugar, which is a terrible thing. My dad has battled with his weight for as long as I can remember, and we would constantly beg him to take care of himself and do something about the way he ate. He never listened and ended up with diabetes and esophageal cancer. I don’t want my kids to be begging me to put down the cupcake, so I don’t get diabetes, so I’m determined to make myself healthy and kick the habit before it is too late. I know I can do it, I’ve done it twice before for a good amount of time and only stopped when life became too hard to handle. So, this week I am on a food detox and then for the next two weeks I have meal plans made up for me to get me back on the road to clean eating. I also got an elliptical that is up in my room and ready to use. I have promised myself that I will get on it, even if for just 10 minutes a day to start, after I am done with my detox (right now I feel like my body is starving and am too tired to do much). Despite my mother’s scoffs that it will become a clothes rack in my room, I am determined to do this. I figure I can get a quick exercise in before I shower.
My third action that I plan to put into place is to remove any negative people from my life. This one shouldn’t be too hard because one, I have amazing people in my life, and two, I don’t tend to put up with a lot of people’s crap anymore. I need people in my life who see me for who I am and love and support me. I need people who see that I’m wonder, loving, giving, passionate, and deserving of appreciation. I think the hardest person to get to see this was myself, but I have recently taken a hard look at myself and realized that I am better than the way I have been treated and I deserve more. The next hardest people to deal with will be my parents, who have a tendency to nay-say everything I do and constantly underestimate me (like the clothes rack comment). I’m going to have to figure out a way to minimize my interactions with them and only allow positive up-lifting conversations. That’s going to be hard because I usually talk to my mother every other day and because my mother and father watch way too much Fox news which just breeds negativity.
I know I’m only days into this promise to myself to make this “the year of me,” but I’m feeling positive and know I deserve it. I’ve spent so much time putting everyone else first, it is time I come first for a little while. I don’t want to run myself into the ground again or end up with something more serious than the health problems I had last year. I need to be healthy and be there for my kids, so this year I’m putting my own oxygen mask on first. I guess, in a way, my motives for my “year of me” aren’t even completely for me like the should be, but mostly for my kids, which means, even in a “year of me,” I’m still putting others first.