Lucky

Little C never falls asleep by herself. She is afraid of the dark, in some primal way that no amount of night-lights can alleviate. Every night, one of us lays down with her to read stories. After lights-out, we talk a bit or she begs for a story “from when you were little, mom.” Tonight I told her about a few of the many times I got lost, separated from my family – at Sears, at Disney World, on a snorkeling trip to Sombrero Reef. Then she snuggled into my chest, her head on my arm and I rubbed her head until she fell asleep.

Some nights, when I am weary or she is rambunctious, I swear that I’ll break her of this habit soon – make her fall asleep on her own like I did when I was her age. But tonight I just felt so lucky. So lucky to be the person who gets to care for this amazing child. Lucky to feel love so intensely that I ache from it, lucky that she still wants me to snuggle her to sleep every night. Soon enough, I’m sure, she’ll be telling me she’s too big for this. So tonight, I laid there with her for a little while longer, watching her sleep, smelling her hair, feeling how blessed I am to be alive.

please please please

Maybe it’s just my nature to be unhappy, dissatisfied. Maybe it’s true that no matter how good my life is, I will always find something to hate about it. Maybe it could all be better if I could just get a better attitude.

No matter how awesome my job might be, I will always find something to bitch about. No matter how great my friends are, I never feel loved enough. No matter how wonderful my partner is, I will always find fault with him. And on, ad nauseum.

I’ve been happy before, for long stretches of time even. The kind of happy where you wake up looking forward to the day and what it might bring. Lately, when I try to look at my life and make a list of all the good, all that I should be grateful for, I see so much to be happy about. But I’m just not happy. And I don’t know why, I don’t know what’s missing. I’ve had depression for a long, long time. More than half my life. But for many of those years, even though I’d get horribly depressed, I still had this sense of somthing magical about my life. I’ve lost touch with that somehow.

Is that magical thing really just hope?

Depression, you fucking suck. I want my perspective back.

Maybe there isn’t anything missing. Maybe there’s just too much of something. Could I just be tired? Exhausted, I mean – spirtually, physically, mentally, emotionally? I never feel like I’m doing enough, but maybe I’m tyring to do too much right now. If I was healing from any other extended illness, would I be harshing on myself for not getting all my chores done? I don’t think so.

So hard to be kind to myself, to be compassionate.

But I did do a lot today. We made marzipan animals and finished a couple more penguins. I sorted out a bunch of c’s old clothes & bagged them up. I did a bunch of dishes and took out a lot of garbage. Hurt my back lifing the trampoline.

This is going nowhere. I think I should go meditate for a little bit.

Maybe I’ll start getting up early in the morning, before anyone else, to make sure I get some time to myself during the day. Maybe I’ll start going to bed early too. I feel like I need to make some kind of change, I feel like I’m just spinning my wheels.

I didn’t like the way I was talking to c today. I felt like I was channeling my mother. I try really hard not to guilt c about anything, because that shit is poision. Today, I heard myself saying things like: Why do you do that, when you know gum doesn’t go on the chair? Do you do it just to make more work for me? Do you not want me to have any time to play with you? Maybe you’re just trying to make me crazy?

Holy shit. That’s awful. And I knew it was awful as the words were coming out of my mouth, but I didn’t stop it. Not right away anyway. But I did stop, and then I talked to her and told her that I know that she’s just little and that’s why she makes mistakes, and I said I was sorry for being a grouch. But still. Who the fuck was that, saying that shit?

The one prayer I constantly pray is please please please let me not fuck her up. Please.

And the more I pray it the more I see that the only way, the only answer to that prayer is to fix myself. That’t the only way.

Wah!

We had a lotta grumpy around here today. I was cranky because I stayed up waaaay too late reading The Junky’s Wife last night, and then woke up to find that Mr. B never came home last night. So I was underslept and the sole parent-on-duty, meh.

I hate yelling, I really do. This doesn’t mean that I don’t yell, I do yell though not as much as I used to, but I hate to be yelled at or even worse, hear someone else being yelled at. Especially if it’s my daughter on the receiving end of the yelling.

Mr. B finally got home sometime after 1 this afternoon, and he was grumpalicious as well. To make everything perfect, Little C decided she was going to act like a butt, and get up in my self-declared hour of me-time and then be all back-talkative and kick over my last can of Coke all over the carpet to boot. Mr. B blew his stack, which is not usually his style, especially over something so minor.

It was so hard for me to not jump all over him. C was crying, and looking like she felt really small, and Mr. B was still so mad that he was kinda trying to tell her that she was making him yell at her by not listening to him. This reasoning really triggers me, especially since it’s a really big deal in our house if I ever yell at Mr B, and if I do he would certainly never accept responsibility for making me yell at him, because that’s ludicrous. The whole yelling-dad thing is a big trigger too, I hate to see that dynamic in their relationship when they both just adore each other. It makes me want to cry. 

He did manage to calm himself down enough to remove himself from the situation today. We talked about it a little while later and I told him that I don’t think we should be yelling at our kid, and that I know it’s going to take time and effort to undo that habit, but that I thought we should agree that when one of us looses our temper with her, we should just make her sit on her bed until the angry party feels safe to talk without yelling. Mr B seemed a bit non-plussed, like he thought that I didn’t understand how freaking infuriating dealing with a precocious and headstrong 5-year-old can be (especially one who was raised to question authority – what were we thinking?!) but somehow I managed to stay calm and the discussion didn’t turn into a fight. We actually ended up in agreement.

I seriously think all the reading I did about detatchment at The Junky’s Wife last night, while I should have been sleeping, helped me today. Then Mr B went into our room and chilled out for a bit and when I came in to get something he totally apologized, and really owned his part in the exchange with C and acknowleged that he was being pretty edgey with me as well. He said when he laid down he realized how much his ankle was hurting (he broke it badly this summer and is still in a cast), and that the pain was making him pissy. He has been really good about this kind of thing lately – if I just leave him alone, he will usually realize that he was being mean or whatever, and then apologize. And I have been working hard on letting stuff go and not nursing my hurts.

I am proud of myself today, for being a good mama even though I am exhausted, and for navigating that emotional situation this afternoon without letting myself get all freaked-out and upset, and for doing a bunch of housework that really needed doing. I was also able to let go of being mad that Mr B wasn’t here to help me out this morning, and that my hoped-for day of family togetherness just didn’t work out. I did have a lot of fun with C this morning though. Oh, and when I was cleaning up this morning I found an OxyContin and I just put it away and didn’t even think about taking it. I really want to be well, and that want is outgrowing the want to get high. Amazing.

I still don’t know what the hell is up with the Probuphine. I bumped myself back up to my regular 14 mgs of Suboxone today, and I felt fine all day. Then I ate lunch around 3pm (I took my pills at 9am) and suddenly felt overly-medicated and almost like I was going to nod-out,  it was a most unpleasant feeling. I made myself get up and do the dishes, and it passed, but I don’t know what that was all about. I only have one more day of supplement before I get the 5th implant – and then I think I will try to hold out for as long as I can to see if the implants are working at all. I am also calling 2 alternative suboxone programs tomorrow, just in case.

In fact, I am starting to lean toward just doing that anyway. My arm is taking a long time to heal, and even if the implants are working, they are certainly not working as well as the suboxone does. I just want to feel ok, so that I can fix my life, go back to school, hang with my man and my kid and not feel shitty all the time. I’ve been trying to let myself think that that is an acceptable thing for me to want for myself. My therapist had to tell me so – I’ve so lost touch with what mental health feels like, it seems like too much to ask for myself. But it’s not.

I really should stop agonizing over the choice to stay in the study or not. I know I will know what to do when the time comes. I should stop worrying about it.

I do deserve to feel well, to not be in physical and mental pain all the time.