Should I stay or Should I go: What would you want your child to do?

As my other half said at Laura’s blog*, the happiest couples are the ones who have worked through the crap together and come out the other side. 

(*If you’ve not read the “Our Story” at Snerkology, I highly encourage you to do so!  Laura writes beautifully and has a very special insight that I love to read.  This is a multi-post story, and I link you to the latest installment at this time because she links all the others there.  I don’t usually directly refer to situations in another blog like I will be here without spelling them out, but there’s too much!  I refer directly to part 6.  Go, read.  Or, skip over those here if you must!)

At my parents’ anniversary party not long ago, a friend of my mother’s who is about my age looked at a picture of my husband and I and said, “See, I LOVE that picture because it is so obvious that you two are in love and really cherish each other.”  I laughed and said, “Yeah, well, that’s the after picture: We’d spent the entire year before that deciding whether we should get divorced and working through YEARS of crap that we’d been ignoring, so at that point, we really were in love with each other again!”  She thanked me profusely for letting her know that ‘look’ isn’t just some magical thing that falls out of the sky because she’d been going through a lot with her husband recently too and the work was so challenging; it was nice for her to know that we had made it out the other side, not just alive but better for it.

Second, and very importantly, I hope that in retrospect, it is obvious to Calvin that the dissolution of his marriage is the best thing that could have happened to his children.  I am the product of a home that is (long pause here while I tried to figure out how to word this adequately) shattered like a mirror.  My parents stayed together, and their relationship is, to this day, like a shattered mirror for me - constantly stabbing and cutting at me with sharp edges and tiny pieces of glass that get stuck in my skin and burn.  I am the only child of people who cannot stand each other, and I have had a whole lot of counseling to understand that I am not a product of hatred and animosity just because, like their relationship, I am made up of both of them.  Their relationship still pains me to the point that I moved a few states away in part to get the hell away from its poisoning effect, I almost can’t handle visiting them, and it is very close to agonizing at times to have them visit us because of the way their hostility infects the peace of my own home.

Because they both use me against the other, solicit my support in their battle, and then also blame me as well, I do not and cannot trust them - and have not done so from a very young age.   There is a whole of story that follows that for me, and I’m sure that some of it will show up here in the future, but suffice to say that I understand Michael and Marie’s trauma in the early divorce at not being able to trust their mother to protect them, love them, and not hurt them.  I simply cannot imagine what happened in her mind to hurt her children in that way; there is no hurt that justifies that.  I’m not saying that a parent can’t snap - we are still human, but when you find yourself in that situation, you REMOVE yourself from it as quickly as possible.  But then, I guess, I have the experience of having been the child.

When I was a child, my mother chose to stay in the marriage because of who I might end up being exposed to as family if they divorced because my father had known affairs with, we’ll say, women who would be less than suitable in the stepmother department.  On that level, I totally understand and can certainly respect her decision (I know these people now).  BUT, I was obviously also seriously damaged by their relationship in other ways that have taken me years to get over, so I can’t say that at least once I got older, it was still the right decision to make.  And now that I have my own child who visits them too, I have become more assertive with them in order to look out for him - realizing that demanding some restraint from them was the best thing I could do for myself and, therefore, for my son.

The point is this:  Our kids learn from us.  By watching their parents, children learn what they should accept from another person in a relationship.  They learn when to bow down and when to stand up.  They learn how they will define love, respect, and partnership.  They learn about self-respect and how to define boundaries.  They learn when to stick it out and when to let go and how to go about making those decisions.  They learn about self-preservation and being true to who you are.  And they learn all of these incorrectly if that is all they ever see. 

Never do to yourself what you would never do to your child because they will learn it from you and do it to themselves.

Calvin ultimately did right by his children by that standard, and I sincerely hope that he knows that. 

If there is anyone else out there reading this who is in a similar situation in a bad relationship, please think long and hard about what you are teaching your child by how you are treating yourself and/or allowing yourself to be treated.  I’m not advocating leaving or staying, but know that what you’re doing is what you’re teaching your children to do for themselves.  It should be an important part of your decision.

 

Blathering: Bad days, counseling, and paralysis

WARNING:  This post could be a trigger.  If you have ADD, please think about your current situation and how your day is going and whether you might want to read this now or put it off.   I’m not here to toxic up your life, so while there could be useful information here for you, there’s always another day to read it too.  Just give it some thought.

If you have ADD and are having a bad day, I hope you’re in a place that you can avoid the downward spiral.  If you read this, please use it to take comfort in knowing that you really aren’t alone.  There ARE other people out there who understand how hard things are for you, and there are people who survive it every day.  Hang in there.  The pit is not bottomless.

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Blathering is my term for a post that probably meanders all over the neighborhood before (hopefully, but I offer no guarantee) coming to a point.  Odds are good that I have a lot of posts that should be qualified as Blathering, but those actually in the category are ones that (a) are generally long as hell and (b) felt they were ending up scattered or disjointed as I wrote them.

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ya know it ain’t easy
for these thoughts here to leave me
…
I’m tellin’ you
these feelings won’t go away
they been knockin’ me Sideways
…
I keep thinkin’ in a moment that
time will take them away

It’s funny.  It took me 25 years to go see someone (furthered by a moron who thought his brand of ‘love’ should be enough to ‘cure’ me - what an ass) and to be open to antidepressant medication (to which the psychiatrist said, “Wait a minute.  You’ve had this level of PTSD and depression almost all your life and have never taken anything?  You have lived in America all of that time, right?  My God, how has no one helped you until now.”).  The reason it took me so long?  I had the usual fears of becoming a zombie, side effects, being mind-fucked by someone who didn’t know what they were doing, etc.  But the truth, which I can see now, is that I was deathly afraid - not of hoping that someone could actually help me but of being told there was no hope.

When I started seeing my current counselor, a woman who specializes in eating disorders with a subspecialty in ADD, I was a walking catastrophe.  It was a miracle that I was even there, after having had one previous wretched counseling experience.  I remember sitting in her office, looking down to my knees where my hands were wringing the life out of tissues drenched with tears, as she told me that things really could get better and that from what I had told her she truly believed she could help me.  My God, that moment.  If I spend much time thinking about it, the vivid memory floods in with the smells, the warmth of my clothing, the softness of the tissue in my hand, and her gentle touch on my shoulder - so honest and reassuring.  How I wanted to believe her, but as I told her, it had been so long.  I’d tried so much.  I’d believed so often.  I just couldn’t let myself hope anymore.  She promised me that I was there because the hope really was inside me, but it was okay that I couldn’t feel it right now.  She asked if she could hold the hope for me.  What a concept that was.  That someone else, someone who said they understood what I was saying, would choose to believe in me, to hope for me — and offer herself to me to trust her to be the one who carried the hope.  It’s been more than 3 years, and I’m still blown away by that.

I understand now that she was right, of course.  I was there, and continue to go, because I have hope.  My hopes have changed, thankfully.  Whereas I started my journey hoping for a miracle that would bestow ‘normalcy’ and ‘happiness’ (because, really, who doesn’t?), I now hope only for the chance to be my best self and to find joy in all the spaces of my life, with both goals being met while finding a way to work with my ADD instead of against it.

I used to think of myself as a cynic.  My life has been full of beautiful and devastating irony at every turn, so it isn’t a stretch to see how I’d think that; I learned to expect the worst.  It turns out, though, that I am an optimist in practice because I always still hope for the very best.  Actually, I always still hope beyond the very best; I’m working on reining that in a bit, but I’ll admit it is tough because, when it pays off, it’s stellar.  :)  In truth, I’m an optimist to the point of ridiculous sometimes.  I think we should all just be nice to each other.  I believe that peace is possible if everyone would just stop thinking it is so damn important to be ‘right.’  I put up stockings at Christmas for the adults in the house, and I expect them to have something in them on Christmas morning.  I believe that life should be magical past the age of 8, and I cannot fathom why someone wouldn’t want it to be.

Hope is to optimism as faith is to trust.  Unfortunately, I still have a problem with faith/trust, one that is pervasive in almost all areas of my life, not just my ADD.  I can’t tell you what it was that made me trust my counselor; I certainly believe the hope in me played a huge part:  I wanted to trust her, I needed to trust her.  Ultimately, I knew things wouldn’t work if I didn’t, so maybe I just made the decision.  I doubt that it is that simple, and it certainly doesn’t give her credit for being the amazing person that she is.  Maybe I should ask her about that one.  I’d be interested to hear what she had to say.

But, back to faith and trust.  I am agnostic.  It doesn’t mean I don’t believe in God.  It means that I don’t trust the accounts I’ve been given.  I’m much more neutral than that (remember that thing about not needing to right?).  If God exists, it goes too much against my nature that he would be as spiteful as some believe or as generous as others believe.  I don’t think God ‘lets’ people get fatal diseases or ‘cures’ them because of prayer.  It doesn’t mean I don’t pray in times of crisis or fear, but that’s my way of expressing my hope.  If it goes somewhere or does some good, then great, but that’s not why I do it.  If God exists, who am I to ask for favors?  And why would my favor be more deserving than someone else’s?  No, there’s no justice in that, and I’m not about to request injustice.

Of course, that said, I also express gratitude ‘to God’ for nice things that happen in my life, just because I want to deliver my gratitude into the world.  I feel grateful for all living things I come across (all right, maybe not poison ivy or cockroaches…), and I think that taking my time to enjoy them shows my gratitude to the world.  I certainly look at my son and am nothing short of amazed and awed.  You also can count on a “Thank you, God” when I get a great parking space.  

Some days, though, it is terribly difficult for me to have faith that my life will continue to improve.  On the bad days, I feel incapable - of anything:  change, action, joy, communication, work, living.  On the bad days, the paralysis can set in, and I feel like nothing but a lump of cells that refuse to remember to live.  That’s actually a good description because the paralysis feels like a betrayal - a trap set by my body to bind me and keep me prisoner, a maze with no way out.  My rational mind knows that there is a way, a door, an exit that I cannot see.  It is often something that appears absurdly simple after the fact, but if you’ve ever squinted harder in an effort to see in the dark, you know that it’s merely wasted effort.  There’s a ‘trick’ to it, and you have to know what it is.  Have you ever driven in dense fog?  Can’t see a thing.  Lights on.  Fog lights on.  Windshield wipers going.  Defrost blowing like mad to keep the window clear.  You’re leaning up over the steering wheel and have a deathgrip on it, all in an effort to see just one more inch of the road.  You’ve driven this road for the last 5 years; you know it well.  But WHERE is that curve?  Is it now?  Haven’t you been driving this road for 20 minutes?  It should have been here by now.  It will be any second.  Are those lights ahead?  Are they in your lane??!  What are you going to do?!?!

If you don’t know to keep your low beams on and look down at the stripes on the road, the panic sets in, and your body becomes almost immobile behind the wheel, preparing for the fight it cannot see.  Exhausting itself by doing virtually nothing except being overwhelmed with possibility.  That is very similar to the paralysis of ADD, and in that moment, faith is very difficult to see.

The  most unfortunate part of that moment is that this is where the snowball meets the mountain, and the cycle begins.  As the ADD’er becomes paralyzed by overwhelm, too many decisions to make, fear, and too much hope, sections of their life start to slide:  work commitments, family commitments, the house, the bills, the car, the dog, the cat, school, appointments, nutrition, exercise, sleep - all the things that make a productive life.  As that slippage grows, support fades.  Coworkers start to wonder.  Family members become exasperated.  Needed nutrition, activity, sleep, counseling, and medication all become very shaky and dwindle.  The support systems that need to be in place cannot be maintained in paralysis, which only furthers the paralysis.  This is further complicated because ADD paralysis, in my experience, makes me feel toxic and not want to be around others.  I don’t feel like I can be helped, certainly not by people who, by my standards, have all the reason in the world to feel irritated, angry, or upset with me, and being around those people will only add to the depths of my pit.  In the past, this was cured by running away from my problems and the people around me.  While this can seem reasonably effective in the short run, I’m here to assure you that it only leaves piles of your own emotional baggage that you have to clean up later, even if you never see the other people again to have to deal with the piles you left for them.  Since I’m now married and have a child, a mortgage, and life insurance, that’s just not an option.  So what do I do?

I’m in one of those spaces now.  My beloved husband, a very good man in general and sometimes saint for his attempts at learning to learning how to deal with my ADD and still love me (and not give into the occasional urge to strangle me) (*I have to caveat that he has plenty of his own pain-in-the-ass-itudes that I have dealt with so we’re not talking canonization here, but his were more in the past and we’re currently talking about mine.  This statement brought to you by a ‘not viewing myself as beneath my partner because of my ADD’ need.), ….yeah where the hell was I…  Oh, my husband is feeling very fed the hell up with me right now.  A feeling I don’t begrudge him.  I don’t enjoy it by any means, but I recognize that he has more than a leg to stand on.  The school year has just ended, the kid is home for the summer, work has gone nuts in not good ways, the deck is thoroughly trashed (see his Memorial Day blog), and every single room in our house (I wish I was kidding) is, well, wrecked.  For all the energy that spring can give me, since having a kid, summer can sap it back out with a vengeance.  We are into the paralysis cycle up there, and motivation is damned hard to come by for me right now - for anything.

Back to the question of what to do:  I’ve had a few solid days of this crap now, so I’m hoping that I’m on an upswing.  I don’t adjust well to changes in my ‘routine’ (imagine my shock at learning that I had one…), and there has been A LOT of change in the last week.  During all of the insanity of the last couple of weeks, my meds have been completely screwed up, I’ve not eaten right, and I’ve not gotten enough sleep.   I’ve had to cancel counseling appointments 3 weeks in a row.  I’ve certainly gotten almost no daily exercise or enriching activity on my own, and if I don’t make sure to do something that actually rewards/renews my spirit in virtually every single day, things go bad quickly.  SO, I need a plan. 

It started a few days ago with putting one foot in front of the other and going to get my meds out of the cabinet at the times I need to take them.

• I’ve already started being religious about my meds for the last couple of days, and I can feel the difference.  I also already scheduled some medical appointments I’ve needed to make for a while.
• I’m going to change my schedule at work to say that I will be working on only certain days of the week.  I will then at least know that I have very specific days that I will be free of that. 
• I’m going to sit down with my son and create a list of chores we complete on certain days.  We’ve talked about it, and it’s time to do it.
• Tomorrow, at some point, I’m supposed to be meeting with someone about watching my kid a couple mornings per week so that I at least have some quiet time, even if I’m working, where I don’t feel like I need to be immediately responsible for his well being and/or guilty if I’m working.
• I’m going to make sure we eat dinner together as a family tonight - hopefully at a table free of Legos.  (God help me.)

Sleep, nutrition, and activity need to be addressed, and soon, but that’s a list of 5 for right now.  I know myself well enough not to go beyond that as I’m starting out.  It doesn’t take much for it to get completely out of control, and then the snowball starts rolling again when I’ve expected too much, too fast.  I’d rather have a list of 3 to 5 successes, however small, then a list of 10 successes and 10 things I put on my list but couldn’t get done.

One day at a time.

 

FYI:  For anyone who hasn’t been able to start on the journey, I’m begging you:  Find help.  And if you’ve tried help, and it didn’t work, please find a way to try again.  Counseling and medication saved my life.  I’m still learning how to live, but I’m here to tell you that knowing your weakness doesn’t make you weak; it gives you the strength to live your own way.  You are not alone, and no one goes to battle by themselves and wins.  I am holding hope for you - because I know firsthand that your life can be better.

Spring Break is Officially OVER

Truly sick the week before spring break, missed all but 1 day of school.  Spent pretty much the whole of spring break running around like a madman and driving his poor, now-sick-herself mother nuts:

“Hey Son, how about you go get your clothes out for school tomorrow?”

“Okay.  But Mom?  You’ll have to check my cold in the morning.”

“Oh son…  You are SO going to school tomorrow.  In fact, in the history of the world, there has never BEEN a kid who was MORE going to school than you are, tomorrow.”

 

Inspiration

Yeah, so Wednesday’s blog was a nice little tirade, huh?  Let’s do something fun and uplifting today instead.

My ADD has blessed me in that I have many different things that I enjoy doing (for at least 15 minutes at a time ), but I am decidedly a photo junkie.  I love pictures - taking them, looking at them, absorbing them.  I’m sure it comes from the creative side but also from the empathetic side - hence the “absorb.”  I love anything beautiful, which I don’t mean in the classical sense necessarily.  I wouldn’t say that the little deposits that my dog leaves for me to clean up in the backyard are beautiful, but I’ve certainly been known to be fascinated and awed by an empty cicada shell.

So, when from the moment I first learned about 26 things, I’ve been dying to do it  (they are updating the site as we speak, see link below for Flickr group).  Yes, that was over a year ago, but that doesn’t mean I lost interest in it; it just means I had ADD, heh.

So, I’m challening myself to accomplish a 26 things list this month.  Should be interesting since there’s a week-long trip in the middle of it, but that could help - who knows?

I’ll post my list here and will be back to update my progress (or not? - I hope so).  I will be using the May 2007 list.

keys
dance
fold
soft
tangle
panoramic
truck
sparkle
nose
round
currency
electronic
large
fake
stop
feast
multicoloured
before
after
landmark
from the hip
front page
a difference
telephone
the number 9
sticky

Are you feeling inspired?  Not yet?  Hop around the Flickr group to check out other people’s 26 things and see if it grabs you too. 

Wish me luck!

The Definition of Insanity

You’re saying it to yourself already aren’t you?

…doing something again and again, expecting a different result.

Yep, that’s the one.

You’d think I’d learn.  After all, as I always say, “Hell, you can teach a monkey to…”  Hmm, of course, now that I think about it, I wonder if you can teach a monkey to STOP doing something.  I’m sure that you could do it with physically painful stimuli but what about emotionally painful?

You see, I have done the same thing over and over and over and over — regrettably, even after I knew that I was doing it and what it has wrought me in my lifetime.  I’m sure that we all do it; I’m certainly not special in this aspect of my tortured psyche by any means.  But, ya know, it’s my blog, so I get to bitch about my stuff.  If you’d like me to bitch about yours, I’d be happy to do that, and for your convenience, I accept PayPal.

I’m an only child.  I have a tendency to, how to put this nicely, “attempt to overachieve,” with some obvious, pathetic need to get something rewarding back out of it from someone else.  It’s a pervasive theme:  work, love, friendships - you name it.  What am I searching for?  Was I not held enough as a kid?  Is there a tiny spot in my brain that just functions as a damn black hole for emotional reassurance?  Do I really need someone else to tell me I’m good enough?  Honestly, for that last one, I don’t think that’s true anymore.  BUT, there’s something still happening there, and boy is it just pissing me right the hell off.  (Btw, dear, that was the abbreviation I couldn’t remember and just down did:  FRTHO.)

I think, on some level at least, part of what it boils down to is that I want to be appreciated.  Therefore, I put myself out there in ways that I’m not even asked to, repeatedly.  After a while, appreciation ends up turning into expectation on the part of the recipient, which I have to admit only seems a natural, albeit still faulty, course of events, and then suddenly, I’ve spent all morning working on something very special for someone I really care about, who is supposed to REALLY care about me, and while I was asked for help, I’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty, giving up my work time to complete it to the point of “just right.”  And do I get so much as a damn thank you out of it?  No.  In point of fact, by the end of the conversation, the person was so irritated about something having nothing to do with me that a real “Goodbye” wasn’t even muttered before the click.

In short?  I am a moron.

I know that I should be thinking differently about this.  I know that I should be saying to myself that the person in question is truly the one with the issue; I mean, how inconsiderate can you get, right?  But, no, while I know all of that, it only serves to make me feel the bigger fool - because I know better.

Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.

Fool me for my whole damn life without me managing to stand up and do anything about it?  I’m an idiot.

…and I once wondered why I might have issues with trust.

Damn it.