Category: health

  • fallout

    I’ve been procrastinating writing all day.

    First, I slept until nearly 10 AM today.

    Then I got up and ate breakfast, did my gratitude list, did our CHRISTMAS SHOPPING for heaven’s sake…..

    Then I swept the floors in the main area of the house.

    Then I doom scrolled for the better part of an hour.

    *sigh*

    I am on a mission to clean up my house. The house isn’t the problem. Living in my standards of squalor is the problem.

    Sweeping the floors is the first step in combatting this issue.

    My generous Mama offered to have someone come in and help do a deep clean, but honestly, I’d rather just get in the habit of doing it myself. And it’s very embarrassing to have someone come in here and see exactly how bad it really is/was.

    Sweeping the floors went a long way. If I can get to the boys’ bathroom floors yet today the house will nearly be presentable.

    We have 3 cats and 2 dogs. 2 elderly dogs. It makes keeping the house clean an ongoing, losing battle.

    The dogs have reached the puppy-pad stage of life. One of our dogs can no longer hold its bladder all night long and none of us can get up in the night to take her out.

    And truth be told, the grime and the gunk and the clutter– most of which, admittedly, is mine– is a major source of my depression.

    Laundry for 4 people will always be a challenge.

    It’s weird to say laundry for 4 people– I am not doing Porter’s laundry anymore since he has his own apartment on the other side of the state.

    Somehow, laundry for 4 people is not that much better than laundry for 5 people, actually.

    I’m on a mission to be a more regular blogger, too, and to write about the messiness of life on top of the actual messiness of the house.

    And the messiness of life means that writing about stuff that I really don’t want to write about.

    If I put it in writing, then I have to deal with it.

    And dealing with it is uncomfortable.

    It’s easier to be moody and go back to bed.

    But, I probably have the world’s best husband.

    And family, actually.

    And kids.

    And…..

    I am grateful.

    Even if I screw up sometimes.

    The truth is, I brought last December’s trauma on myself.

    I should have known better than to meet up with the person I did.

    But, I did so because I wanted to see for myself if I could face him.

    And, I could. I am stronger than I think I am.

    But the events of those two days plummeted me into a nearly 6-month long psychiatric issue that I am really only just coming to terms with.

    Friendships suffered. Relationships with family suffered.

    I did cut contact off with him, but I caved and messaged him in June.

    And it’s not like the things that bother me don’t bother me. It’s just that usually I can keep my mental crap together enough to watch my own verbal and emotional filters.

    And yeah, that man exposed me to his HPV. And I might have to deal with throat or some sort of other oral cancer someday because of it.

    And it’s even possible that the fallout discovered from the hysterectomy– the extensive fibrosis and scar tissue around my right ovary….all that might have been due to ancient pelvic inflammatory disease I never knew about, due to some unknown STD from being involved with that person a million years ago.

    I wanted to the hysterectomy because I wanted to prevent future cancer risks. I hadn’t known that it was sort of necessary now anyway.

    And I’m still dealing with all the emotional fallout from all that, too.

    And this is stuff I don’t talk about with anybody besides Jared.

    But not writing about it is not doing my mental health any good.

    So, here I am blogging in old 2010-2012 style.

    And hoping that I can keep my crap together long enough to at least get Oliver’s laundry and Liam’s sheets all washed and dried before bedtime.

  • something to say about tylenol and autism

    I have something to say about the stupidity that is going rampant in this country……

    Above is the ultrasound photo of my oldest when I was 16 weeks pregnant with him, in 2006.

    And that now young man is 19 years old. And he is autistic.

    And he is brilliant. And he loves his family. And he loves his dog Trixie. And he loves video games.

    And he happens to be in the honors college at his college. And his grades are stellar. He is majoring in philosophy, and because philosophy is so easy for him he is adding a second major, statistics, likely at the end of the semester.

    He has his driver’s license. He has a strong circle of good guy friends who are very good to him.

    He loves to play D&D. And, I think he likes school.

    And, you know what, he doesn’t just love to look people in the eye. He will do so with me, but I’m pretty sure that’s because at a fairly young age I told him he should do so.

    And his life really does pretty much revolve around video games- the next one coming out, the reviews, all of that. He’s pretty singularly focused.

    And he’s got slight tactile issues that I won’t go into here.

    And you know what else? I’m pretty unconcerned with why Porter is the way he is.

    You know why?

    Because he is literally one of the best men that I have ever met in my entire life. It utterly astounds me that I got so lucky as to be his mom.

    And you know what else? I did not take Tylenol during my pregnancy with him. Except during literally the hour that he was born, because due to my spinal fusion I could not have an epidural.

    But labor was fast, and I’m 99% sure that Tylenol never reached my bloodstream, and certainly not his.

    The whole premise behind the Tylenol and autism thing is that it is yet another way to shame women, to make them question their choices about their bodies.

    Tylenol did not cause my son’s autism. It offends me to even worry about why he has autism.

    But for sure, nothing I did in my pregnancy caused him to be the way he is.

    And even if it had, I’m damn proud to be his mom and if I went back and told that 26-year old version of myself that this beautiful baby she was staring at the ultrasound picture of, that that baby has autism, I’m damn sure she would be through the roof proud when I told her what else that baby is capable of. And that she gets to be the one he calls Mom.

  • weird dreams

    Last night was the night of weird dreams. I had two pretty wild ones.

    Notable because I rarely actually remember my dreams.

    In the first, there were commercial planes crashing all across the country, and the problem was particularly bad in my hometown of Carrollton, GA. One crashed in the backyard of the house next door, actually, though, it was the backyard of the house I grew up in, and the backyard was bigger than it is in reality. And I lived in the house I grew up in with Jared and the boys. But Porter and Liam were maybe 6 and 4.

    And in my dream, we were trying to get to my parents’ house, because for some reason that was deemed safer than anywhere else.

    And it must be that in my psyche Porter and Liam are forever going to be 6 and 4 years old, because they were those ages in my other dream from last night, too. Except Oliver was also in this dream, maybe 2-3 years old, as he will probably be forever to my subconscious.

    In the second dream, it was maybe 2015 and we had sold our Fairfield house in 2010 and moved. And the people who had bought it were selling it again, and I wanted it.

    That part is based in reality– our old Fairfield house really is for sale right now. But we sold in 2016, not 2010. And I do kind of want it back, but not enough to pay what they are asking without serious concessions, both for flooring and roof.

    But anyway, we had bought the house back and the people who had bought it had put a bunch of stuff we’d left back in the house, and restored the original paint colors to the colors they were in 2007 when we bought the house.

    But there was also a newborn baby, that we’d apparently left when we sold the house.

    The kicker is, the newborn baby was ours, but we’d been gone 5 years and it was alive and well, but frozen in time as a newborn baby– it hadn’t developed at all in the 5 years we had been gone.

    And I was mortified that I’d left a child behind– a child that, in my dream, I didn’ t remember having at all, such that there were actually 4 children.

    Now, 2010 was a pivotal year for me– that was the year that I left my last real big girl job, and it was the year that I had a breakdown that saw me realizing that I’d been sexually assaulted by multiple people I thought loved me, and it was also the year I started my first blog.

    And I will say, the takeaway is that I feel out of control in my life– both personally and professionally, as well with the general state of the crazy world we live in. That much I pretty much already didn’t need my subconscious to tell me. And I’ve pretty much felt out of control since 2010 or so, actually.

    Apparently my subconscious is telling me something has to give.

    I’m actually doing my best to do things about this fact, this out-of-control feeling.

    I let my psych nurse practitioner up my Latuda dose at my last appointment.

    I’m trying to more consistently keep my sleep schedule up. Bedtime ideally is 8:30 PM and while I like to wake up about 5 or so, I have let myself sleep until after 6 AM both of the last two mornings.

    I’m trying to better tend to my marriage. That one– that one has been hard of late. Jared and I are in a rut. And that’s all I care to say.

    I’m trying to watch what I eat, and manage better the timing of meals and snacks.

    I’m watching what entertainment I put into my brain– I’ve started listening more to my Moongate brainwave app during the day, and less to my random, mostly sad, Apple Music playlists.

    And, despite taking the bait on Facebook this morning with the whole Trump/ Tylenol debate (which is utter “horseshit,” to use the word of one of my exes turned friends who is genuinely a good guy)….

    I am actually thinking about leaving Facebook. Or at least not scrolling, only posting.

    I am back to using my therapy app.

    I am going to try to do more writing….more private journaling, more writing here, more writing in Scrivener since I re-purchased it for the purposes of writing a fictionalized memoir.

    And, I’m going to try to have more of a routine at home, just in general, for myself when nobody else is here.

    And, I’m mostly going to ignore my dreams. They take me on wild rides.

    It was a great night of sleep though. I did wake up rested.

  • nothing is in focus right now

    I took this photo with the X-S20. Apparently I am not so good as the selfie culture at making the camera work in focus with the full articulating selfie screen.

    Yeah. Depressed.

    Feeling my age, my ribs are on the move in a twisty way that isn’t fun feeling. Bored, tired of Carrollton.

    Jared tries. He took me out to the Marina again tonight, after taking me on our weekly outing for Burger King ice cream cones.

    Fun fact, at least in Carrollton, GA: You can get two ice cream cones for $2.12. That’s the main eating out we do during the week.

    And all that was well and good. Until I started in on how I hate Carrollton, how I want Jared to find another job so we can move to Atlanta.

    The same old same old.

    And I don’t know why, when I feel rejected, I go on this whole self-implosion thing.

    Something happened last week that made me change some plans in the next couple of weeks. And as it happens, I am going to see my aunt and uncle instead of doing the thing that I was going to do, and I will likely have a far superior time seeing them and being loved on and all that than I would have had doing the other thing, which was probably riskier than I really want to admit it likely was, to begin with.

    And I’m still mad about last December. Mostly because I’m mad at myself for thinking that inviting drama back into my life was a good idea at all.

    I’ve spent the last nine months pretty darn unhappy because of it. And had an arguably necessary-anyway hysterectomy because I got all freaked out about cancer risks because of that encounter.

    I guess in that respect, I should be grateful for last December. It probably wouldn’t have occurred to me to worry about cancer risks if I hadn’t had that encounter last December.

    And mostly I go around mad all the time because it feels, to me, like just about everybody in my life has some sort of purpose, has their shit together, and I’m just sitting at home.

    And I guess it’s accurate to say that some of the people I have in mind do actually have their shit together.

    But none of them are married to Jared Price. I’m the only one who got to do that.

    And probably not many of them are told on a daily basis the things he tells only me.

    It’s about now in the depression cycle that I realize that it’s been about a week since I’ve done a gratitude list.

    The truth is, not much about my life has turned out the way I thought it would, or honestly, the way that I wanted it to.

    And I mostly walk around mad, angry at the world, and despondent because of it.

    And I think back to that 18 year old and I would tell her to ditch all the preconceived notions about how life should go. That it’s all about to change, like, tomorrow.

    But probably, she’d already known that for a good couple of years or so.

    Tomorrow is a new day. I’ll go volunteer in the city with “my ladies,” as Jared calls them.

    And then I’ll go see my aunt and uncle for the weekend, and probably have some yummy Costco mac and cheese, which I haven’t actually had since the last time I saw them, in February.

    And, I do actually realized how privileged it is that I was born into the family that I was born into, and that we can afford to feed ourselves despite the fact that I do not work.

    It does not negate the fact that I feel somehow that I am not living up to my potential, and there have been missed opportunities. And squandered opportunities. And lost time. and lost relationships.

    But tomorrow, I can try again.

  • i should have told somebody

    **Trigger Warning:** This post contains sensitive material regarding domestic abuse, psychological torture, and suicidal ideation.

    What follows is a sample of the types of writing you can find at my blog, as well as my Substack.

    ________

    When I was 15, I didn’t think much about giving the boy sitting behind me in the lunch room my phone number.

    I mean, I was elated that he asked for it. But I didn’t think about the implications.

    He called me that afternoon, and we chatted for about 45 minutes.

    And he told me about his life, and his mom, and his plans for graduation— he was going to art school, thinking about a school in California or Florida.

    And when he asked me if I’d like to see a movie, I didn’t think much about it either. I was excited that a boy was asking me to go out with him for the first time ever.

    My friends were sort of conspiring to push us together. I knew it, too.

    He bought two tickets for ”Legends of the Fall” because he was 17. But I was 15, and the girlfriend going with us and his friend was 14, and we couldn’t buy the R-rated tickets. So even though he’d already bought two tickets, he turned around and bought another for himself to match the one I had for “Dumb and Dumber.” I found out about the other tickets later.

    He didn’t talk much, but when he did I adored the soft depth of his voice.

    But then, that soft, deep voice started telling me his dark secrets.

    And, for years upon years, I kept those dark secrets.

    He didn’t go to art school when he graduated. He waited for me to graduate, two years later. He went to art school, I went to GSU.

    He went to art school for a quarter, I should say.

    He hadn’t consulted me as to whether he should wait for me, for us to go to school together.

    So when I met someone else the night before classes started, and decided about a week later I wanted to go out with that person, I broke up with the first boy I’d kissed.

    I broke his heart.

    I can still see him standing outside the gate to my dorm complex, from the view from my floor.

    But maybe I should have told his dark secrets to somebody when I was 15.

    Because that boy could have had a free ride due to his mother’s employment, to a prestigious private university.

    But that boy was depressed and didn’t understand the value of a liberal arts education. He only saw the pressure: that his mom wanted him to go to that prestigious private university so that he could become a rich doctor, so he could support her.

    And maybe I should have told somebody that the stories that boy told me scared me.

    That it scared me when he told me about carving words in his chest.

    That it scared me when he told me about holding his mother’s gun in his mouth. That it petrified me when he told me the only reason he didn’t pull the trigger was that he couldn’t stand the idea of me standing over his coffin, crying.

    Maybe, if I’d told somebody, anybody, about some of that when I was 17, I wouldn’t have felt trapped when I was living with that boy when I was a 21-year old college student.

    Maybe I could have prevented him assaulting another boy, threatening him with a knife.

    Maybe I could have prevented the sneer in the police officer’s expression when he checked on me that night, telling that boy that no judge would take my word over his if the other boy decided to press charges.

    Maybe, just maybe, I could have prevented the psychological torture I went through myself when that boy figured out I was planning to leave.

    Because when I really started getting serious about leaving, that boy trapped me in the dark. He knew I was afraid of the dark. He inverted the locks to a section of our apartment, tripped the breaker. One night after I arrived home, finding the apartment dark, I found myself trapped in the locked portion of that apartment.

    I can still hear the sound of the door slamming behind me.

    I was pretty sure I was going to die that night.

    And I managed to save my own life by telling that boy I would stay. I knew there was no point in telling the police what had happened; it had been made clear the week before that I was trash for the boy to do with as he would.

    But the next day, I called my parents, telling them I needed rent money.

    __________

    This story is one piece of a much longer journey. If you’re ready to read more about the truth behind these moments and what I’ve learned about being a survivor, you can find the rest of the story at my Substack.

    Follow my journey at Tickle the Sun— https://www.ticklethesun.com.