Category: Mental Health

  • not a soul-sucking day

    Just outside Newberg, Iowa last February

    Picture of vastness nothing Iowa cornfields that I took last February because it’s pretty akin to a desert, and I am kind of in that sort of mindset right now. It was a cold day.

    I’m not exactly depressed but not exactly vibrant and bubbly like I prefer to be.

    Nancy is better, and she seems to be eternally grateful to be alive. For once, she is very loving and interactive, which we are taking to mean that she understands that we did quite save her life (or at least her tongue) by getting her to the vet the other night. No more black drool or black crusty stuff around her mouth, and she’s eating and drinking as she should.

    We are not holding our collective breath that Nancy’s change in disposition is at all permanent.

    We put Nancy in Porter’s room, and moved Bess in there too, along with all their litter boxes, and have been feeding them canned food since that is what Nancy needs for at least the next few days. They both seem to appreciate the treat, and probably the respite from chaos of the dogs.

    And, I have gotten beyond my frozen action on cleaning the house: Today I cleaned the entirety of our guest bathroom in our laundry room. I cleaned the floors, baseboards, toilet, corners of the room, and sink and toilet. And dusted off the top of the intercom even though we never use it, and cleaned the top of the trash can even.

    The whole endeavor took me about half an hour.

    If I can spend this kind of dedicated time on even a section of a room in the house each day, then the house will be relatively clean in a few weeks.

    That is encouraging.

    I have also started budgeting more in earnest. Or rather: I am making a concerted effort to not spend money we don’t have right now.

    While Jared and I went on a date to Gallery Row tonight, we are not likely to do that on a regular basis.

    I did try a little photography today. This is a cameo ring I made for myself; I have several of these cameo rings I made. I had planned to post them on Etsy but honestly, I am not feeling it a great deal as far as Etsy stores go right now. I missed focus on the girl in the cameo and had to clean it up with Topaz Photo AI. This was with the GFX camera and the 37.5mm Super Cinelux lens– it’s. a great macro lens.

    I do not know how old this bird is; Sarah Belle gave it to me when I was in third grade but she said then that she had had it since she was a little girl, and she was born in 1920.

    And tonight, I am going to bed with hope for the future. I am almost ready to seek out more regular volunteer opportunities. I am ready to reinvest myself in our home, which I did quite fall in love with in 2021 when we found it.

    And today…..today was a good day.

  • for real: anybody want two cats?

    Abby and Trixie did not feel like having their picture taken this morning.

    I joked in the post about Nancy yesterday about whether anybody wants a cat, but it really wasn’t a joke– we really are looking to re-home Nancy and Bess. They’re a package deal though; a bonded pair.

    Bess
    Nancy

    On a wild hair one Saturday afternoon probably 3 years or so ago now, I wanted to go visit the cat cafe. And I wanted a cat even though I was noncommittal to Jared and the boys. And we came away with Nancy and Bess– a bonded pair.

    They’re good cats. Nancy may have a slight death wish given her recent shenanigans, but they’re good cats. And to all appearances Nancy and Bess are not a bonded pair, but things do go wonky with Bess’s litter habits when Nancy is not around, in all transparency. She is fine when she has adequate litter and Nancy. And to be completely honest, Bess is the lap cat– Nancy is definitely not.

    I just cannot keep up with the care of 5 pets. And MowMow is for sure Oliver’s baby, having spent much of the last 3 years in Oliver’s room since she doesn’t get along with Nancy. And Abby and Trixie….well…. They’re here for the long haul. They’re our children as much as our people children. And Trixie is Porter’s baby, and Abby is my therapy dog as much as I am her therapy human.

    Note that in the photo above Trixie was ambivalent about the camera, but Abby….Abby looked away because big cameras terrify her. I do not know why but the longer the lens, the more afraid she is.

    Plus, being 100% real here: the financial cost of caring for 5 pets is astronomical. We couldn’t afford them when we took them on and we can’t afford them now.

    Nothing will change if we can’t find homes for them. They have a home here as long as need be. We do love them and want what’s best for them.

    And all the boys know, and they all understand. They don’t like litter duty any more than we do, and they know our financial situation as much as is appropriate given their ages. Liam wasn’t in favor of more cats when we adopted Nancy and Bess.

    Liam is the most level-headed person in the house.

    I am trying to be more responsible, and being more responsible is doing what is best for everyone in the house. Including the cats, including the boys, including Jared, including myself.

    But if anybody local wants two cats….. well, it’s a serious thing.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • identity crisis

    I’m grasping for an identity.

    Because you see, it’s always been about work.

    For years, my identity was in my status in my non-profit work.

    Then, I struggled when I became dependent on SSDI.

    Then, I took up photography.

    Then, I opened a photography business.

    And, for eight full years, I basked in my status as a very part-time wedding and portrait photographer. I may have been very part-time, the business may not have been profitable, but by golly, I was an official photographer.

    And then, earlier this year, for a variety of reasons I won’t go into both heath-wise and money-wise, it became the prudent thing to close the business.

    And at the time, I told myself I would still be a hobbyist photographer.

    And then money got tighter– or more to the point, I got more serious about managing our finances more responsibly, and it became the wise thing to part with some of my camera gear.

    And I didn’t take more pictures for myself, my own personal art, like I said I was going to do.

    And life happened, and interpersonal drama happened, and my hormones are still settling from the hysterectomy, and….

    Well, depressed.

    And worse: struggling with a major identity crisis.

    And of late, I’ve felt like the answer was to move us all into Atlanta, away from Carrollton.

    The truth is, I know I can’t run from my depression. It will follow me.

    And, this house that I am sitting in, when we bought it in 2021, was my dream house. It was the house I wanted to grow old in just like the elderly people who lived here (twice) before us did. The primary bathroom is already outfitted for disability access, even.

    *sigh* I don’t know what I am doing.

    I do know that my psych professional says that seasonal affective disorder is on the rise earlier this year, and so I am sitting here just before bed (the wrong time of day, but I give myself points for doing it at all) with my light therapy lamp as she recommended I start now instead of waiting until late October like normal.

    And, it’s time to write more. I let myself get so caught up in analytics, and audiences, and I forget that the most productive, happiest years of my blogging was when I was using my blog primarily as my journal. And yes, I wanted readers, but the readers came because the content was raw. And real.

    So, here I am, telling you I am still depressed. And I don’t know where it’s going.

    And true to form in typical fashion, in an effort to bat away the true identity crisis and deal with it, a crap ton of job applications went out yesterday.

    Because I keep running from what I need to do: process my traumas, figure out who I am apart from being a wife, mother, and any vocation, and remember that I have been a writer since I was eight years old and that is how I deal with my feelings best.

    Stay tuned. I’m going to try to post more regularly.